Jess nodded and kept walking. He was swinging the door shut when he said, "Make sure you lock the door. I don't trust my father any more than you do."
He waited until he heard the thunk of the lock being turned, and then leaned against the wood, heaved a great sigh, and wished he could push away the plan that was forming in his head. Because it was starting to come clear to him exactly what his father had planned for them, and why his brother still wasn't being honest about the whole of it.
///
And it was horribly clear that the wild idea that had come to him at dinner, watching his brother, represented the best chance any of them would ever have to accomplish the impossible . . . but it would cost them dearly.
It would cost him everything. But if he was right . . . it had to be done.
EPHEMERA
Text of a letter from Callimachus, first Archivist of the Great Library, near the end of his service. Interdicted from the Codex to the personal records of the Archivists.
I look back on this road we have together paved, stone by stone. I have served my pharaoh faithfully, but my gods more faithfully still, and the Library itself most of all. I have put it ahead of my own happiness, my own achievement. This is not a sorrow for me, and here is where I depart from this road, into the setting sun.
But I warn you, my successors: even now, in such a short space as my single lifetime, I come to understand that knowledge is like any other treasure: it can be hoarded. It can be stolen. It can be scattered to the winds. And worst of all, it can inspire greed of a particularly poisonous kind.
For who am I to say who should know a thing? Who am I to say to you, a farmer, that you may not read of a mason's work, or to you, a mason, that you may not read of a priest's duties? Who am I to say this is too dangerous, and that is not? Some say that women should not read, for they may be led astray into impurity, as if our women are not fit guardians of their own worthiness. Some of my fellow Scholars, to my eternal shame, say those of different skins and faces and nations are too backward to learn, and when that false belief is proven wrong, they claim such examples as prodigies, as exemptions, instead of realizing their own grave errors of evil pride.
It is a terrible arrogance to think that there are any of humankind who are better or worse, or worthy or not. It comes of a pitiful need to believe in one's own worth when one is hollow within. We are all worthy. And none of us are, all at once. Once that is acknowledged, that hollow, howling space may be filled with understanding.
But so many cling to their emptiness, and I fear that they may yet prevail.
I worry, you who come after me, that we will stray from this barely begun path of truth, and instead set our stones toward . . . more. More wealth. More power. More authority. Away from a path up, and toward one that seems easier, and leads down.
Never forget that we, too, are mortal. And the greed that the Library has already felt to possess, to control, to judge . . . and if it continues, all will end in fire.
CHAPTER TEN
He couldn't sleep.
Jess prowled the halls of the castle, which were mostly deserted; he ached and felt a terrible drag of weariness, but the bed held no real comfort for him. Neither did dreams, because he knew, without question, that they would turn to nightmares.
When he tapped quietly on Morgan's door, he heard nothing from within, but her door wasn't locked, and after hesitating only a few breaths, he eased in, closed the door, and whispered her name.
She touched a glow beside the bed, and the warmth of it spread over her, shimmering in her skin, her eyes, the fall of her tousled hair. It took him a second to realize that she was fully dressed, still. Wearing the same thing she'd worn down to dinner.
"Can't sleep," Jess said. "You?"
She sat up and shook her head. "I keep waiting-waiting for something. The moment I close my eyes, it's there. Coming in the dark."
It perfectly described his restlessness. "Walk with me?"
She nodded and slipped off the bed. Stupid, he shouted at himself, because he wanted to be in that bed with her, the way that Wolfe and Santi were no doubt already in theirs, and put everything else away for a time. But it wasn't right now. He could feel it.
It was freezing outside, and Jess fetched coats and blankets. The drawbridge was up. There was little inside the walls except the smooth, paved courtyard, but they walked down the steps into the cold, heavy moonlight.
"There," Morgan said, and pointed. To the south side of the fortress wall, part of the grounds had been tamed into a garden. Hedges and an arched iron gate, and beyond that, a beautiful little oasis. A fountain bubbled softly, though the water ran thick, on the verge of icing over as it dribbled from the edge into a bowl below. The cold had already stripped the trees bare, but the hedges were still full, with sharp, waxed leaves. A few winter-blooming flowers struggled on. The grass had gone a pale yellow.