Ash and Quill(46)

"There, where? What am I supposed to be seeing?"

She didn't bother to answer, only gave him a cool side eye that he knew all too well from their time in training. She expected him to work it out, so he tried, staring until his eyes ached.

And then he got it. "That's . . . not right."

She nodded, clearly pleased she didn't have to bang his head into the melted wall to make him recognize the truth. "Why not?"

"Is this rhetoric class? Who died and made you Scholar Wolfe?"

"Shut up and answer the question. If you can."

"All right," Jess said. "This damage isn't the same. If the Library had launched a bomb from beyond the walls that landed here, the whole prison should have gone up, not just this one corner." And, he thought with a chill, that would have killed everyone inside. It had been a miracle only Santi was badly hurt, but he'd been so grateful for the miracle, he hadn't really thought about anything else.

Glain handed him a sharp-edged piece of age-clouded glass. When he reached for it, she said, "I took it from the rubble. Careful. There's still residue." She transferred it to him, and he held it by one small corner, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed.

The odor was unmistakable, an oily blend of sweet and rotten. He coughed it out and handed it back, and Glain slipped it into a folded piece of cloth that she concealed in a pocket of those truly unfashionable trousers she'd acquired. "Greek fire," he confirmed. "But the glass is too thin to have been thrown by any ballista."

"Exactly. It was a bottle of the stuff, tossed by hand from . . ." Glain measured off paces, moving back as she stared at the damage. Nobody, Jess realized, seemed to be paying attention to them, but he was suddenly very aware of what Glain was saying. "About here."

She exchanged a look with him, and he understood her meaning perfectly. Someone had stood within these walls and tossed that bottle. Someone inside Philadelphia had tried to kill them. It hadn't been a ballista on the other side of the wall with blind lucky aim. They'd been targeted, very precisely.

Jess was too angry to speak, so he just nodded, stuck his hands in his pockets-a habit he had, when thinking-and rocked on his heels. "Do you think that was done on Beck's orders? Or by someone acting on impulse against us?"

She sighed, as if he were utterly hopeless. "Jess. Grow a brain. That glass for the bomb must have been at least, oh, this large-" She described it with her hands, and Jess nodded to accept the estimate. "Glass is precious here. So is Greek fire. So who has those things freely available?"

"Beck."

"And it would have been filled with liquid. Heavy, yes? Someone came prepared. And I don't think he'd have done it without authorization."

"Beck knew a Library bombardment would come, sooner or later. He must have, if he had someone waiting with the Greek fire." He mimed pitching an imaginary bottle at the prison's roof and, in his mind's eye, saw it tumble and shatter on the corner . . . not in the center of the roof, where it would have done its worst. "Which is why the angle of impact is all wrong for a bombardment bomb. But he knew the Library would be attacking and trusted that to cover his tracks. Trusted no one would look closer."


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"You seem proud to have figured it out. That's mildly charming," Glain said. "I don't suppose Wolfe would have given you full credit, so I won't, either. But yes. This was planned, cold-blooded attempted murder."

"Do you think they were specifically after Wolfe? Or Santi? Or both?"

"I don't think Beck much cared," she said. "He thinks that without them, we'll be easier to manipulate. He's probably bloody disappointed that it only resulted in a wounding, which means he could try again. We need Wolfe and Santi back with us. Now." She hesitated, which wasn't like her. "Let's talk about Morgan. Specifically, that you're trying to hold her back."

"Not funny, Glain."

"Stop thinking like a lovestruck idiot; she's a weapon. She can build us a channel to communicate with your brother. Let her do the job she needs to do, all right?"

He turned toward her. Hands out of his pockets, body set as if he expected her to attack. He saw her shift to match it. It was probably unconscious. Probably. "I'm not willing to break her to serve the rest of us. We do that, we're no better than the Archivist."

Glain's expression didn't shift. It was calm and set and confident. "Flavia chose to pick up the knife."