Ash and Quill(44)

The way her tired face lit up in joy felt like standing in sunshine, dazzling and warming. "Thank you." He hated to see the smile go thinner, more tentative. She moved over, he slid in place beside her, and she lifted the book to show it to him. "Askuwheteau said he gave you a book, too."

"Fiction," Jess said. He watched her twirl the small blue feather idly and brush it against her cheek. He imagined the softness of her skin under his fingers and quickly looked away to put a stop to that. Not the time. He had more serious things to discuss. "You didn't tell me Beck made you an offer to stay."

"He made all of us that offer."

"Not like he made to you," Jess said. "Your own home? Askuwheteau told me."

She didn't quite meet his eyes. She concentrated on twirling the feather in her fingers. "Are you afraid that I'll take it?" He didn't answer. She risked a glance at him, and he saw half circles like bruises under her eyes. Darker today than yesterday. "I won't. Even though the idea of a real home is appealing."


      ///
       
         
       
        

"Nothing's safe here."

"I know."

"Did you find anything inside city hall? Any sign of tunnels?"

"Nothing. I'd hoped-but if there's anything there, I couldn't see it. Tell me how you and Thomas are doing."

"We're a day or two from being ready with our work. But we need that tunnel."

"The wall is almost ready," Morgan said. "I spent hours at it today." She hesitated, on the verge of saying something; he saw doubt in her eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"It isn't."

"It's just that-" She fell silent, twirling the feather in her fingers. "It's hard, what I'm doing. Exhausting, I admit that. And today it felt . . . different. I couldn't concentrate as well, toward the end."

"That's because you're running yourself too hard," Jess said.

"Says the pot to the kettle. But it has to be ready."

He took her hand and held it. "Morgan. I don't have a smuggling tunnel where I can leave a message out to my family. I can't communicate with anyone outside these walls. There are High Garda camped out there. Even if you do get the wall weakened, even if Thomas's mad invention works, what then? We walk into the arms of the Library?"

"You know, you're both depressing me," said a new voice from the door of the cell. Glain stepped in and leaned against the bars. "Sorry. Hard to have a private conversation in here, since these walls are not just paper-thin, but actual paper." She was right. The thin pages torn from Blanks that Beck had given them to make their cells into proper rooms weren't soundproofing. Weren't even much of a modesty screen. "What are we weeping about now?"

"No way to contact anyone outside these walls," Jess said. "So there's no point in escape, if we just die out there rather than in here."

"It's a fair point," Glain said. "We can pass for Scholars and soldiers."

"The Scholar robes are ashes," Morgan pointed out. "And I'd expect the Archivist would have our likenesses in every Codex by now."

"What about your family?" Glain asked Jess. "Would they help?"

He shrugged. "Honestly? I don't know. Beck was going to write to my da, but he hasn't said anything yet about a reply." 

"But your family knows we're here."

"Presumably, if Beck kept his word."

Glain sank down into a comfortable, cross-legged position on the floor. "Then you just need a way to talk to them secretly, right?"

He gave her an exasperated look. "That's what I was saying."

"Thick," she said, and shook her head. "What exactly do you think is pasted up behind me?"

She tapped the papers fixed to the bars of Morgan's cell. Jess glanced at them, then her, and lifted his shoulders. "Paper?"

Glain plucked a sheet free. Then another. Then another. She gathered up a handful and gave them to Morgan. "Now what do you have?"

Morgan's turn to shrug this time. "I don't understand what you're getting at, Glain."

"How exactly does a Codex work?"

It was a ridiculous question on the face of it, but Jess and Morgan put it together at the same jolting moment. Jess looked at her. Morgan stared back. "A script written by an Obscurist," Jess said.

"In the binding!" Morgan finished. "My God, why didn't I think of it?"

"Because you're tired, and I'm smarter than you think," Glain said. "We can stitch together the pages; I'll sacrifice my extra shirt for the thread, if Thomas can forge us a decently thick needle. For the binding . . ."