Ash and Quill(91)

"As soon as we come to an arrangement," Thomas said. "You are a negotiator, I understand. So what do you offer?"

"You don't think saving your hides from the High Garda and the Archivist is payment enough? You do set a high price on yourself, Scholar."

Thomas gave him a pure, and purely alarming, smile. "Not on myself, sir. But on the knowledge I have to share, yes. On the lives of my friends, yes. On the future of the Library . . . yes. That, I put a high price on."

Callum shot a glance at Jess. "Last I met this one, he was a featherheaded optimist. You've had a bad influence on him."

"He's right," Jess said. "What he has is valuable. Anit sold us passage here. What are you selling?"

"Safety and shelter! A place to conduct whatever inventing you plan to do, at my cost, so long as I share in these discoveries! Isn't that enough?"

Thomas didn't answer. He left it to Jess, which was wise. "We're going to need a way back to Alexandria," he said. "Something secure and secret. That's part of the deal, when we want to go."

"For how many of you?"

"All of us."

"That's a stupid waste," his father said. "Dragging your friends right back into the hands of executioners. Unless you have some larger plan . . . ?" 

"We can discuss it later," Jess said. "Thomas and I will build the press for you, to pay for the cost of our protection here. Thomas gets to build anything else he wants, and you pay for the costs of that. We'll discuss payment for the plans."

"Payment!"

"I know exactly how much money you're going to be making from this." Jess smiled slowly. "Did you really expect us to give things away for free, Da?"

Callum glared at him for a long, red moment, and then, quite suddenly, laughed. Slapped the surface of his desk so hard a sheet of paper curled into the air in surprise and floated back down. "My son," he said. "I used to think you'd never be good for much in our trade. I might have been wrong about that."

From the corner of his eye, Jess saw Thomas flinch a little at the casual insult; he'd come from a different sort of family, and that had stung him, on Jess's behalf. But it hardly even registered, really. Growing up in the Brightwell household had meant being coldly judged, measured, trained, slapped, and corrected. Not encouraged.

By Callum's standards, that had been a real compliment.

"Do we have an accord?" Jess asked.

His father reached for a piece of paper, pulled it over, and wrote rapidly. Signed with a flourish. Handed it to him with the pen. "Sign," he said.

Jess scanned the text of what his father had written down. Flawlessly phrased in his own favor, of course, but it didn't much matter; Jess nodded and signed his name. His father took pen and paper back, sealed the document with wax, and filed it in a drawer that probably held a hundred similar agreements, some going back decades.

"Now," Callum said, and sat back in his chair. "I expect you'll want to get yourselves off to a decent bed. Dinner's served at eight in the small reception room; they'll fetch you for it. Clothes in your rooms. Had to guess at sizes, but I think our tailors did well enough. Go on with you. I have other business."

Callum had already pulled a stack of paper onto his desk and was rifling through it, ignoring them completely. Jess shrugged when Thomas sent him a baffled look.

This was the kind of welcome he'd been expecting all along.

They walked out together and closed his father's office door behind them, and Jess said nothing. Felt nothing, really, until he glanced at his friend's face and saw the anger there.

"I don't mean to offend, Jess, but your father is a fool if he thinks so little of you. Is that how he always treats you?"

It was an odd question, and Jess shrugged. "He's had his moments of fondness, I suppose. Swings between that, benign indifference, and from time to time, the back of his hand when he felt he needed to make a point."

Thomas was staring at him with the oddest expression. "It's wrong, you know. For a father to be so cold."

"I know," Jess said. He forced out a grin and wondered if it looked as false as it felt. "Whatever doesn't kill you, isn't that the saying?"

Thomas shook his head. "You are strong in spite of him. Not because of him."

It was, Jess thought, the kindest thing anyone had said to him, and for a moment he didn't say anything at all. Didn't quite know how. Then he said, "Come on. If I don't find a bath and a bed, I might not live until dinner."


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