Paper and Fire (The Great Library) (3 page)

T
he Alexandrian black market had two obvious faces. The more public one, known as the shadow market, sold illegal but harmless copies of common Library volumes—punishable, at worst, with fines and short prison stays. It catered to those who wanted a book purely for the criminal thrill of it, even if the book was shoddily transcribed and incomplete, as they often were.

A smuggler called Red Ibrahim presided over the darker, more private end of the trade, and he was legendary well beyond the city; his reputation was spoken of even in Jess’s house back in London. He was a
cousin
, someone in the trade you could rely on in a pinch and for a price. Jess had actual
blood
cousins in the trade, but the main tests to becoming a trade cousin were long-term success and a certain ruthless loyalty to fellow smugglers. They were bound—pun intended, he supposed—by the business of books, of history set in leather and paper.

Forbidden fruits.

For months, Jess had steadily dealt with a succession of Red Ibrahim’s subordinates—he had a network of at least thirty—and found them all cold-eyed and capable. His Brightwell bona fides had been checked again and again at every stage; he was, after all, a High Garda soldier, wearing the copper band of service to the Library, even if he
was
a smuggler by
birth. Reconciling that and earning trust, even with the Brightwell name, had been a tricky job.

Tonight, as he walked, his initial directions wrote themselves out into his Codex in the Brightwell family code, and he immediately erased them. He visited a market stall, where he was told verbally to go to another shop, and then to a third, a darkened bar where sailors cursed at one another over dice games and a proprietor slipped him a paper note. The route took him halfway across the city, and his legs were truly aching by the time five words scribed themselves in his Codex:
Knock on the blue door.

He stopped, put the book away, and looked at the houses on the street where he stood. They were neat rectangles painted in pale shades, with Egyptian decorations at the roofs and fluted columns in miniature on the porticos. Respectable homes for modestly well-off families, something a silver-band Scholar might own, perhaps.

There was a house with a dark blue door on the right, and he stepped through the square gate and passed through a garden of herbs shaded by a spreading acacia tree. An ornamental pond cradled lazy fish and large lotus plants. It was a traditional household, with Egyptian household god statues in a niche by the door, and he made the required respect to them before he knocked.

The man who opened the door was nondescript—not young, not old, not tall or short or thin or fat. A native Egyptian, almost certainly, with sharp, dark eyes and skin with a rich coppery sheen. The local fashion was to shave all body hair, even eyebrows, and this man clearly abided by it.

“Jess Brightwell,” he said, and smiled. “I’m honored. Be welcome to my home.” He stepped back to allow Jess entry, and closed the door behind him. It had a significant lock, and Red Ibrahim engaged it immediately. “We’ve heard much about each other, I’m sure.”

“I expected you to be ginger,” Jess said. The man raised what would have been his eyebrows. “Sorry. English term. Red haired, I mean.”

“I am not called Red for that.”

“Then for what?”

Ibrahim smiled, just enough to send a chill down Jess’s back. “A story for another time, I think. Please.” The man—Jess placed him at about forty, but he could have been younger, or even older—gestured to a small, dainty divan, and Jess sat. A young girl with straight black hair worn in a shoulder-length cut walked in with a tray of delicate coffee cups and a silver urn. She was maybe fourteen years old, petite and pretty, and smiled at Jess as she poured for both of them.

She took a seat on the divan at the other end from Jess, to his surprise.

“This is my daughter, Anit. The gods have smiled upon my house, and she is an intelligent girl who wishes to study the trade. Do you mind if she listens?”

“No objection,” Jess said. He remembered his father doing the same for him and his twin brother, Brendan, though he didn’t recall either of them having much of a choice. “It took quite a while to arrange to see you.”

“Yes, of course, and I mean no offense by my caution. Does your father, the excellent Callum, receive every stranger claiming to be in the trade?” Red Ibrahim handed him a cup so small it felt like a child’s toy in Jess’s fingers, but the coffee inside was sweet and potent enough to make his heart race after only a sip. “Or does he ensure his business’s—and his family’s—safety by being wary?”

“He’s a careful man,” Jess agreed, though he remembered his father ruthlessly risking him, and his brothers, without much thought for the consequences. His older brother, Liam, had swung from a gallows for the
careful
way his father did business. “He wants to obtain some information, and you’re the best positioned to have it at your fingertips. It’s a delicate matter, of course.”

“Of course,” Ibrahim agreed. “Naturally.” He waited with polite attention.

“Automata,” Jess said.

“There are no truly rare versions of Heron’s work, as you no doubt know—”

“Not interested in rare volumes,” Jess said. “We’re looking for books that describe the inner workings of the creatures. And how to disable them.”

Red Ibrahim was in the act of drinking his coffee, and though he hesitated an instant, he finished so smoothly Jess almost missed the reaction. Almost. Then he laughed, and it sounded completely natural. “Do you know how often this request is made, young Brightwell? The automata are the enemies of both smugglers and Burners in every city on earth! Do you not think that if such information was available, we would have obtained it and made an incredible fortune with it by now?”

“A unique treasure like that is more useful when employed strategically, for your own purposes.” Jess put an edge on his voice. “This is the most dangerous place in the world to smuggle a book, and yet you’ve made a career of it—an empire, of sorts. You’d make it a mission to have that information at your disposal.”

“No one can disable these creatures. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Jess said. “They’re mechanical creatures. They’re made. Someone knows their secrets, and secrets are always for sale to those who look hard enough. And if I know anything about you, sir, it’s that you would look
very
hard.”

“At everyone,” Red Ibrahim agreed. He put down his coffee cup with precise control. “What does your father offer in exchange for this gift of all gifts? Presuming such a thing exists at all.”

Jess tried to keep his face as calm as Ibrahim’s, his pulse as slow. He didn’t blink. “I have a copy of
The First
Book of Urizen
by William Blake.”

Ibrahim’s expression was just as still. “There are eight copies of such a book in the world,” he said. “I would need something a great deal more rare. It is, as you say, precious treasure indeed, this information.”

“There
were
eight copies,” Jess said. “Six of them were purchased by ink-lickers, who ate them in some sort of sick ritual four months back. As I’m sure you already know. That leaves two: the one in my father’s vaults . . . and the one I have stashed here in Alexandria. Which can be yours, if you have what I want.”

“Ah,” Ibrahim said softly. “Now we come to it, I believe. What
you
want. It is not your father who asks. He’d never let you trade away such an important, valuable volume. He’s gotten along well enough without such information, despite the best efforts of the London Garda. No, I think it is
you
who needs it so badly.”

Jess didn’t answer that. He felt sweat break out hotly on the back of his neck, but he hoped his face remained unreadable. After a moment, he said, “One of two copies left in the world. I’m offering it in a fair exchange. It’s a prince’s ransom.”

Ibrahim shared a look with his daughter. Anit said, “It is a good price, is it not?”

“It is,” Ibrahim agreed. “But that isn’t the point. The point is that young Brightwell here is trading against his family’s interests, for personal reasons. Tell me, does it have to do with the book you spent so much time and
geneih
tracking down, and bought only yesterday, perhaps? The one about the prisoners of the Archivist?”

This was dangerous. Very dangerous. Jess said nothing. Ibrahim sat back against the cushions and rested his chin on one hand. He wore a ruby ring on one finger, and it looked like a drop of fresh blood. “I want no involvement in Library affairs,” he continued. “Nor in the private crusade of a brash young man. This is not our trade.”

“I’m asking for information, and that
is
your trade,” Jess shot back. “Do we have a deal or not?”

Ibrahim continued to stare at him with those unsettling dark eyes for so long Jess felt words bubbling up and trying to escape—angry words. He swallowed them down and waited. Finally, the man stirred, rose to his feet, and looked at his daughter, who still sat quietly watching. “Anit. I leave it to you.”

“What?” Jess shot to his feet, but Red Ibrahim was already going, heading for the doorway that led to the interior of the house. For a hot moment, Jess thought about chasing after him, but he also knew a man
like that didn’t survive by being careless. If he’d turned his back, there were plenty of knives ready to protect him.

“Sit,” Anit said, and there was an unexpected layer of steel to her voice. “Sit down, Jess.” Young and tender she might be, but she was something else, too. Hard in a way that he had never seen before—not unless he saw it in the mirror. She put her hand to a chain around her neck, one that held a ring dangling from it—a large carved ring, with an Egyptian hieroglyph of a bird.

He stared after her father as the man closed the door, but he sank onto the cushions again. “What’s he training you in tonight? How to refuse to help and still keep the Brightwells as allies?”

“He meant what he said. It is my decision. He has left it to me.” Jess moved his gaze to her, and found her nearly as unreadable as her father, but there was a little lift at the corners of her mouth. Amusement. “I imagine you’re thinking what a cruel fate it is, being left to the whims of a mere girl.”

“Something like that.”

She played idly with the ring on the chain. “We are survivors, Jess,” she said. “You and I. We come from the same dark places. If you think I don’t understand you . . . But tell me: why didn’t you go to your brother for this instead? Surely it would have been simpler and cheaper?”

“Brendan?” Jess felt his brows lower in a frown. “He’s not in Alexandria. He’s gone. Back to London.”

“No,” Anit said. “You should perhaps keep better track of your twin. I don’t wish to offend you, but he can be a nasty piece of work.”

“Sounds like my brother, all right. Why is he still here?”

She lifted both palms. “Ask him. I’ll tell you where he stays.”

“And you’d like to be rid of him, is that it?”

“One Brightwell in Alexandria is more than sufficient. We would rather that be you.” She lowered her hands to her lap and cocked her head, with a real smile dancing on her lips now. “I had two brothers myself. I know how difficult they can be.”

Jess cleared his throat. “So what’s your decision? Your father left it up to you.”

“He did.” She studied him for a long moment, then said, “Will you swear you will never betray where you got this information?”

“I swear on—what would you like me to swear on?”

“The soul of your firstborn.” She outright grinned this time. “It’s traditional.”

“The rate I’m going, it may be an empty promise. All right. I swear on the soul of my firstborn that I won’t tell anyone where I got this information. Not my friends, not my family. I’ll never betray the house of Red Ibrahim.”

“I believe you,” she said. “And if you break that oath, Egyptian curses are cruel, Jess. And quick. Remember that.” She rose to her feet and headed for the door.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“To get the book you asked for,” she said.

“I didn’t bring—”

“I trust you,” Anit said. “If I didn’t, you’d be dead already.”

It wasn’t a long wait, which surprised him; they must have kept this incredibly dangerous information here, in their
home
. His father would have been scandalized. The Brightwell business was always kept completely separate from the Brightwell residence, though Jess had sneaked in plenty of illegal books in his time—to read, not trade.

She was back in only moments, casually carrying a little leather-bound volume. It looked worn and plain, obviously someone’s personal notebook. As he took the volume from her, his fingers felt a rougher patch on the leather, and when he looked closer, there were dark stains soaked into it. Blood.

He opened it to look at the contents, stared, and then raised his gaze to hers. “It’s in code.”

“Of course,” she said. “And I will give you the cipher to read it when you bring me the payment you promised. I said I trusted you. I’m not a
complete fool.” She hesitated for a moment. “Jess, I said I had two brothers.”