Ash and Quill(67)

"You try finding a solid meal in a city that's been under siege for a hundred years." Jess cut his brother a look. "Worried about me?"

Brendan snorted. "Hell freezes and the devil skates before that happens. You can survive anything." But despite the tone, the words, his hand was tight on Jess's shoulder, and there was a dark shadow in his eyes. Not for Jess's sake, purely. None of them could remain unaffected by what had just happened. There was no screaming from Philadelphia now. It was a city of dead bones and ash, and they all knew it. For the first time, Jess was glad the smell of Greek fire was so overpowering.

He didn't want to think about what that hot, searing wind would bring otherwise.

"I don't know why they did it," Jess said. He felt dull now that the pain was passing away. The Medica hadn't spoken again; she was covering his hands in a thick salve, and he expected the next step would be bandages. "A hundred years, the Library let Philadelphia stand. Why would they declare no quarter now? Why-"

"Doesn't matter," Brendan said, and this time, Jess heard the false note in his voice. Saw the telltale hitch. His brother was lying to him. "Lucky they did, though. They were about to kill you, I understand. Without that distraction, you'd never have made it out."

Jess's stomach turned cold. "We had a plan."

"Yeah. How'd your plan go, then?" 

"We made it out!"

"Would you have, if the bombs hadn't started falling?" Brendan's face was fixed now. Masklike, and reflecting green from the flames beyond the wall. "Serves them right. Beck thought he could take on everyone. The Library. Their own allies. Us."

Us. It was hard to know if us meant the brothers, the Brightwells, the smugglers. Jess turned and stared at him, and Brendan looked away, into the middle distance-but not in the direction of the dead town. For no reason at all, Jess remembered the woman in the glass shop, worn and tired and poor, desperately living as best she could.

"What did you do, Brendan?" he asked quietly. His brother shook his head. "Brendan."

His brother squeezed his shoulder, painfully tight, and then said, "Look after him for me," to the Medica, who nodded without looking up. She was fully fixed on her work. Jess watched his brother walk away with a disconnected, drifting sense of horror and loss, and closed his eyes when it all swept over him again. Flames. Screams. Beck, lying helpless as the bomb exploded. Indira, falling with the knife in her chest. What happened to sour Diwell? The woman in the glass shop? The counselors who'd been so captivated by the press?

What did our survival just cost?

He sat, unmoving, locked inside that private hell, until the Medica finished and said, with a gentleness not usual for her type, "Rest if you can."

Jess shook his head. He didn't know if he'd ever rest again. But he was thinking one thing now, over and over: There's no going back. We have to make this mean something.

No matter the cost to him.



He did rest, because the Medica gave him some kind of injection to knock him out. At least it kept him from nightmares . . . from any he remembered, anyway.

Jess woke to a rush of nausea so intense it made his whole body burn with it, and immediately turned on his side and threw up thick black bile. Then he coughed up more.

Someone, he vaguely realized, was holding a bucket for him, and as he finished and collapsed back to the ground-no, to a cot, a real one-he realized that the person holding the bucket was Scholar Wolfe.

He was truly a Scholar again, washed clean, wearing a black robe and a severe expression of distaste as he set the bucket on the ground beside Jess's bed. "Don't do that again," he said, and gave Jess a clinical stare. "Can you breathe?"

He could. Not easily; his lungs felt scorched and fragile, but each breath he took in felt cleaner than the last. The ceiling overhead waved and rippled, and he finally realized he wasn't imagining it. He was in a tent. A High Garda tent. He struggled to remember, because all he had in that moment were disorienting flashes . . . Beck, screaming, his leg bent wrong. Ben Franklin's golden statue tumbling and melting into green flames as the tower collapsed.

When he blinked, he realized his heart was racing and cold sweat had broken out on his face and arms. He felt filthy and, despite the sleep, dully exhausted. "We're safe?" he asked. It seemed important to ask. His voice sounded appalling-a toad's croak, barely understandable even to his own ears. Wolfe silently offered him a cup of water-clean, fresh water that washed the grit out of his throat and went down wonderfully cool. Jess closed his eyes a moment to enjoy that, and then repeated what he'd tried to say.

"For the moment," Wolfe said. "We'll leave soon. But we have some choices to make, and I want everyone healthy enough to make them intelligently." He paused a moment and then said, "We were lucky, Jess. We won't be lucky again. From now on, once the Library knows we've survived, it will do everything in its power to wipe us from the earth. Us, our families, our friends. Everyone who has ever known our names. It's the only way the Archivist can win now."