Текст книги "Ink and Bone"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Still twenty minutes to the Alexandrian train, and he wondered whether or not to get a warm drink from one of the vendors in the stalls around the tracks, but as he was considering tea, he heard a commotion begin somewhere behind him.

It was a man raising his voice to a strident yell, and there was something in it that made him turn and listen.

‘—say to you that you are deceived! That words are nothing more than false idols at which you worship! The Great Library may have once been a boon, but what is it today? What does it give us? It suppresses! It stifles! You, sir, do you own a book? No, sir, not a blank, filled only with what they want you to read … a real book, an original work, in the hand of the writer? Do you dare, madam? The Library owns our memories, yet you cannot own your own books! Why? Why do they fear it? Why do they fear to allow you the choice?’

Jess spotted the speaker, who’d climbed on a stone bench and was now lecturing those passing by as he held up a journal. It wasn’t a blank from the Serapeum, stamped with the Library’s emblem. What the man brandished was far finer, with a hand-tooled leather cover and his name on it in gilt. His personal journal, in which he would write daily. Jess had one quite like it. After all, the Library provided them free on the birth of a child, and encouraged every citizen of the world to write their thoughts and memories from the earliest age possible. Everyone kept a record of the days and hours of their lives to be archived in the Library upon their deaths. The Library was a kind of memorial, in that way. It was one reason the people loved it so, for the fact it lent them a kind of immortality.

This man waved his personal journal like a torch, and there was a fever-light in his face that made Jess feel uneasy. He knew the rhetoric. The Garda would be on the way soon.

People gave the lecturer a wide berth, scared off by his passion and his wild eyes. Jess looked around. Sure enough, a knot of red-coated London Garda was heading towards the spot. The Burner saw them coming, too, and Jess saw his face go pale and set under that untidy mop of hair. He raised his voice even more. ‘A man cannot be reduced to paper, to lines and letters! He cannot be consigned to a shelf! A life is worth more than a book! Vita hominis plus libro valet!’

That last rose to a ringing shout of victory. The man reached under his coat and took out a bottle of poison-green liquid, thumbed off the cap, and poured a single drop on the cover of the personal journal he held. Then he threw the book down to the stone floor, and in a second it ignited with a shocking burst of flame that burnt emerald at the edges and bloomed in a towering column straight up into the air. Those closest stumbled back with alarmed gasps and cries of surprise.

‘Greek Fire!’ someone screamed, and then there was a scramble, a full-on rush of people for the exits. It impeded the progress of the London Garda, who were heading against the tide.

‘The Library wants you to live blind!’ the Burner shouted. ‘I die to show you the light! Don’t trust them! They lie!’

Jess should have run, he supposed; he was buffeted on all sides by those with more sense, but he lingered to watch the man with frozen dread and – yes – fascination. The book, burning on the stones, held a ghastly echo for him of helpless fury and horror, as if the pages themselves were screaming for rescue. It was an original work, an only copy, written in ink on paper. It was the man’s thoughts and dreams, and it was … dying. It wasn’t On Sphere Making, but Jess had to fight the impulse to rush to save it, regardless.

‘Out of the way!’ a Garda cried, and pushed him almost off his feet, towards the exit. ‘Get clear! Don’t you know Greek Fire when you see it, you fool?’

He did, and he also realised – all too late – that the Burner didn’t just have the drop that he’d used on the book for his demonstration. The man had a full flask-sized bottle of the stuff, and he was holding it high. It glittered in the dim light from the windows like a murky emerald.

Jess took a step back, and stumbled on his train case. He fell over it, still watching the Burner. I should get out of here, he thought, but it felt as if his brain had gone to sleep, lulled by the mesmerising rush of the fire. He wanted to leave, but his body wouldn’t respond.

‘Cork that bottle, son,’ one of the Garda said as he approached the Burner. He was older, and he sounded authoritative and oddly kind. ‘There’s no need for this. You’ve made your point, and if you want to destroy your own words, well, that’s your burden and no one else’s, sure enough. Cork that and put it down. No harm done. You’ll only have a fine, I promise you.’

‘Liar,’ the man said, and for the first time, Jess realised that he was, in fact, only a little older than Jess himself. Twenty years old, at most. He looked serious, and desperate, and afraid, but there was something in his eyes, something wild. ‘You’re a tool of the Library, and I will not be silenced by you! Vita hominis plus libro valet!’

It was the Burner’s motto: A life is worth more than a book.

They were also his last words.

The young man upended the bottle of Greek Fire over the front of his clothes and then poured the rest on his head, and the men who’d been advancing on him backed up, then turned and ran.

Jess saw the chemicals glow, spark, ignite, and consume the Burner in green fire that blew up towards the vaulted ceiling in an awful explosion of light. The sound was like nothing Jess had ever heard before – an indrawn breath of sucking air, and the crackle and fizz, and then the screams.

Oh, God, the terrible screams.

One of the Garda grabbed Jess and bowled him over the edge of the platform to crash hard down onto the gravel bed of the tracks, only a few feet from the iron skirt of a locomotive. The man’s weight crushed him down on a rail, and he struggled to breathe. From the corner of his eye he saw the firestorm billowing over their heads, a torrent of green and yellow and red.

The screaming stopped, and the horrible banner of flame drew back in, though the fire still raged.

The Garda who’d pulled him over the edge kept him down when he tried to stand up. ‘No,’ he said, panting. His face was pale under his black helmet. ‘Just stay down, the air’s toxic up there until it burns completely out.’

‘But he’s—’

‘Dead,’ the man said, and held Jess’s shoulder tightly. ‘And nothing we can do for him. The stupid boy, he didn’t need to—’ His voice was unsteady, and then it failed him altogether, and for all that Jess had grown up as enemies with the Garda, in that moment they were united in horror. ‘Damned Burners. No reasoning with ’em. Getting worse every year.’ The man blinked back tears and looked away.

Jess sat back against the rough stone wall and stared at the flickering glow of the fire above them until, at last, it died.

The Garda questioned him – not that they suspected him of anything, but he’d stayed while others fled, and he was of an age when young men might turn to such causes. He answered truthfully and showed them his Codex, which contained his travel papers to Alexandria, and his official acceptance letter. He worried about missing the train, but nothing was running, not until the Garda were satisfied the danger was gone.

It took several hours, and he supposed they’d sent word to his family, but no one came. He remembered his da being told that his older brother Liam had been taken while running books, and the grief and resignation on his father’s face. His father hadn’t stood up to claim Liam. He’d not be visiting the Garda to retrieve Jess, either, should the worst come to pass.

Jess’s nerves were as tight as wires, but the Garda finally let him return to the tracks, where scrubbing had removed all trace of the Burner’s death, except for discolorations. The book, Jess thought, as he stood and looked down at the smaller stain on the floor. This is where the book died. It was the same ugly black scar as where the Burner had ignited himself on the bench.

Books and men left the same traces where they burnt.

The idea that the young man had taken his personal journal with him into the flames left a sour taste in the back of Jess’s throat; it wasn’t just that he’d given up his life, it was that he’d given up any hope of people understanding his purpose. Maybe nobody would have ever read it; maybe his reasons would have been found utterly mundane and useless. But by burning it, he’d erased himself as completely as anyone could. To a modern man, growing up with the comfort of knowing the Library would keep his memories intact, it seemed … inconceivable.

Jess realised that he was getting strange looks as he stood there, and picked up his train case to move to his platform.

They’d delayed the schedules, and the station was once again full to bursting. Funny how normal it all was again. Trains chuffed their pale mist into the air, and men, women and children strolled or bustled, absorbed in their own business. The pigeons had returned too, to peck at crumbs falling from hastily eaten pies and sandwiches. The only difference, as far as Jess could tell, was that there were more Garda scattered around the station, looking out for more Burners come to imitate their newest martyr.

Brutal as it was, it seemed to Jess that the man’s death had been nothing but a rock dropped in a fast-moving stream: a brief splash, then no trace left. He didn’t know whether that was appalling, or comforting.

He moved onto the platform and joined the long queue for boarding the long, sleekly silver train. At the gate, the elderly uniformed conductor said, ‘Best make yourself comfortable, my lad. Long journey ahead. Under to France, through to Spain, across to Morocco, then on to the city. Be sure to keep your papers handy to show at the last Alexandrian border. Sure you have everything?’

Jess thanked him, and looked for his spot. He wasn’t surprised his father had bought him a cheap fare; the fancier travellers had plush seats and tea trolleys, but the car he settled in was well used, and smelt of mould and stale food and feet. Crowded, too; more and more bodies jammed on, taking space to pile their bags and cases. Jess rested his feet on his own luggage. He hadn’t grown up trusting the good intentions of strangers.

He wrote in his journal about the Burner, about the trip and his fellow passengers, then put away his pen and slept and ate as the miles clacked by and stops ticked off. Travellers disembarked, and fewer got on than off, which was a relief. The make-up of those around him changed slowly as they left England through the underground tunnel to the Library territory of France; there was nervous talk of danger all the way to the coast, and many breathed a sigh of relief when they made it to the safety of the tunnel without incident; the Welsh army had been pushing in, closer and closer. No one took safe passage for granted, though so far the trains had been spared any threat.

By the time they pulled close to the Spanish border a full day later, most of those on board seemed to fall into two types: new postulants like him, young and mostly nervous, huddled in small groups, or self-assured Library employees, easily picked out even in civilian dress by the bands they wore on their wrists in copper, silver and – a rare sighting – one in gold. Jess wondered what it would feel like, knowing you had a position that would last a lifetime. Would it free you, or make you feel trapped? Not that I’ll ever know, he thought. The Library only offered gold to a select few in a generation.

The rest of the trip was long, but uneventful; some storms along the way, but a smooth enough ride all the way to the tip of Spain, where the entire remaining company disembarked, blinking in the fierce sun before boarding a large ferry for the trip across the water.

When they boarded the Alexandrian train in Morocco, a few new passengers entered. One of them was hard to miss. A blond, blue-eyed boy of about Jess’s own age who looked big enough to bend iron … which made it odd how he moved so carefully past others, and apologised for every bump. Too considerate by half.

Jess met his gaze for a second and nodded, and that was a mistake. The giant headed straight for him and said, ‘May I sit here?’ His English was good, but accented with German.

‘Plenty of seats, mate. Sit where you like.’

He thought that might be a sign to the boy to move on, but instead, Jess was presented with a meaty hand to be shaken, and the other boy said, ‘Thomas Schreiber.’

‘Jess Brightwell.’ They shook, and the boy wedged his big frame into the seat beside Jess and let out a lingering sigh of relief.

‘Finally, room to breathe.’

Jess didn’t much agree with that, as Thomas had just taken up most of his. ‘Come a long way?’

‘Berlin. You know Berlin?’

‘Not personally,’ Jess said. ‘Nice place?’

‘Very nice. And you? From?’

‘London.’

‘In England? But that is a long way also!’

‘It is, yeah. Guess you’re off to Library training too?’

‘I am. I hope for a placement in engineering. My grandfather was a silver band for many years.’

‘Engineering … that falls under Artifex. Heard that was a hard one. Does having a silver band relative make you some kind of legacy, then?’ When he received a blank look from Thomas, Jess tried again. ‘Legacy means you didn’t have to sit for the entry tests. Kids of gold bands get to go straight into training. Wasn’t sure about silver.’

‘Would be nice, yes? No, no, nothing like that. I had to take the examination.’

‘Yeah? How’d you do?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘All right.’

‘I got seven hundred and fifty. Highest score in London.’ He realised, as he said it, that it sounded like boasting. Well, all right. He was proud of it.

Thomas raised his pale eyebrows and nodded. ‘Very good.’ There was something in the carefully polite way he said it that made Jess glower at him.

‘What was yours?’

Thomas looked reluctant to say it, but Jess’s stare finally dragged it out of him. ‘Nine hundred twenty-five.’

‘What?’

‘Students from Berlin have always done well on the examination.’ Thomas made it sound both proud and apologetic at the same time.

‘Done well? Mate, I’m sure none of the Scholars in London could have scored that. Must be the highest score of the year!’

‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘That would be hers.’ He looked around the train and nodded towards a young woman sitting near the back. Jess belatedly recognised her. She’d boarded earlier, with a flurry of relatives who’d clustered around her and departed only when the conductor had given them a warning.

She was as small as Thomas was large, and from the little Jess could see of her, she seemed darker skinned, with a closely pinned black cloth covering her hair. Hard to see anything, really, because she was engrossed in a book.

‘That one,’ Thomas said. ‘She was the first in the history of the examination to have a perfect score, they say. Not the first girl. The first anyone.’ He sounded impressed, and respectful. As Jess stared back, the girl lowered her book and returned their gazes with forthright brown-eyed intensity. Thomas, embarrassed at being caught out, quickly turned face forward again.

Jess, on the other hand, kept looking. She was pretty, not beautiful, but there was something about her that he found interesting. She cocked one eyebrow higher than the other, just like his brother’s favourite trick, and he tried to mirror it back. Still couldn’t.

So he settled for standing up and climbing past the mountain range of Thomas’s knees.

‘Where are you going?’ Thomas whispered.

‘To say hello,’ Jess said. ‘Smartest girl in the world? Worth knowing.’

‘I wouldn’t …’

Jess was already walking back towards the girl, who was still watching him with that challenging dark stare, when a man moved over to take a seat next to her. He was a rounded fellow, older, expensively dressed in traditional Arab robes.

Jess stopped and bowed politely to the girl. She nodded back. ‘Wanted to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘Jess Brightwell. That’s my mate Thomas Schreiber, the big shy one back there.’

‘Khalila Seif,’ she said. ‘May I present my uncle Nasir? He is accompanying me to the Alexandrian border.’

The uncle gave Jess a warm smile, rose, and gave him a bow in return. It was all very civil, but he wasn’t leaving the girl’s side, that much was obvious.

Jess turned back to Khalila. ‘Highest score on the test,’ he said. ‘You’d be guaranteed a place, I suppose.’

‘Nothing in life is guaranteed. I may not be able to handle the work, after all. Some people prove fragile.’

‘Fragile,’ Jess repeated. ‘Yeah, you don’t strike me that way.’

‘You are also a student, sir?’ her uncle asked.

‘Nowhere near as bright as your niece, sir, but yes.’

‘And from where?’

‘England, sir.’

‘Ah. Are you not at war …?’

‘Not the part of the country I’m from,’ Jess said. The man was too well mannered to say it, but he clearly thought England was a hotbed of trouble. ‘Well, I’ll let you read, then, Miss Seif. Pleasant trip.’

‘Thank you for your courtesy, Mr Brightwell,’ she said. ‘I wish you a smooth journey as well.’ Very formal, but the smile less so. Not warm, exactly. But not afraid.

And definitely not fragile.

Jess climbed back over Thomas to his seat and said, ‘Well, that’s one placement spoken for; she’ll end up a Curator one day, if not the damned Archivist. My future’s looking dimmer all the time.’ He didn’t mean it. He liked challenges, and this … this was turning out to be one of the best challenges he’d faced in his life. It was boring, always being smarter. Already, he felt he’d have to work for it here.

You’re never coming back. Brendan’s words suddenly returned to him. They were prophetic, because already his family seemed like a fading dream. He felt good here.

He felt right.

As the conductors outside the train windows cried last boarding, a raw-boned young woman ran hell-bent for their car. Not a graceful sort of movement, but those long legs ate up the platform’s length, and she leapt for the still-open door in the last second before the conductor slammed it shut and the train’s whistle blew. She leant against the panelling, flushed and sweating, and overbalanced and fell onto Jess and Thomas’s laps as the train lurched into motion.

No lightweight, this girl. And sharp elbows. Jess winced and rubbed his chest as she fought her way back to her feet and glared at him and Thomas as though they were guilty of an assault on her person.

‘Welcome,’ Thomas said. ‘Thomas Schreiber. Berlin.’ He offered her a hand. She clawed disordered, curling brown hair back from her face, and her glare turned to an outright frown, but she shook. Grudgingly. ‘And you are … ?’

‘Glain Wathen. Merthyr Tydfil.’ She shut up fast as her eyes fell on Jess.

‘Jess Brightwell. London.’

She gave him a sour look, then pushed off and found a seat near the back.

‘She doesn’t like you,’ Thomas said. ‘Does she know you?’

‘No need,’ Jess replied. He could feel Glain’s stare boring into the back of his head. ‘By the sound of her, she’s Welsh. She’s probably making a plan to stick a knife in my kidney before we get to the border.’ When Thomas just continued to look confused, he said, ‘I’m English. Blood feuds. Makes people irrational.’

‘Ah,’ Thomas said, but he didn’t seem particularly illuminated. Not up on his current wars, Jess thought. Or didn’t seem to understand that the Southern Conflict had been going on for more than fifty years, with bloody losses on both the Welsh and English sides. Of late, the Welsh had been handily winning the day.

Glain looked like one of those unpleasant firebrands who couldn’t just leave it at the border. Jess didn’t mind, really. At least that was one fellow student he wouldn’t mind cutting out in competition for a spot.

The miles clacked on, towards their uncertain future.

The Alexandrian border crossing meant that anyone without commissions into Library territory had to disembark, which meant the departure of Khalila’s uncle. He clearly didn’t like leaving his girl to the unwashed masses – and to be fair, they were all fairly unwashed, at the moment, on this train – but he went with good grace.

Jess nodded a polite goodbye, then turned and winked at Khalila. She ignored him. She’d fallen into a hushed, intense conversation with the Welsh girl, Glain, though whatever they had in common he couldn’t imagine. Glain was as plain as Khalila was pretty, and her manners seemed rude where the Arab girl had grace and charm to spare. No accounting for taste, he supposed. He and Thomas played cards, and drew in a few more players as the hours clicked by; even one of the Library’s silver bands sat in, and though his English was dodgy and spiced with Chinese accents, he was a right madman for a bet, and Jess lost half his cash before he bowed out and slept.

When he woke up, Thomas had won back most of the money, had a contented, cherubic look on his face, and they were pulling into Alexandria, in Egypt.

Jess wasn’t the only one gawking out the windows; most of those in the car were doing it, even adults with their bands of service on their wrists. Because this city … it was worth seeing.

They were arriving at Misr Station, all gleaming white marble and buff-coloured stones; it was blinding in the noonday glare. The station itself rose three graceful stories of fluted columns, with ancient Egyptian statues of the old gods reaching to the same height. When the carriage stopped, they were facing hawk-faced Horus’s massive feet, and Jess craned his head to look up. The beaked head blocked out the sun, and the gold leaf and blue enamel gleamed brighter than anything Jess had ever seen.

‘Amazing,’ Thomas breathed. ‘Do you think it’s an automaton? At that size?’

Jess shuddered. ‘Perish the thought.’

Thomas scrambled up, grabbed his bag (twice the size of Jess’s, but then, he was twice Jess’s size) and rushed for the train car door. He was onto the platform before Jess could pull his own case from beneath his seat, but he caught up with the German quickly, and against his will, his steps slowed and stopped. The two of them stood together, just drinking it in. The sun felt different here: relentlessly hot, but strangely welcoming just the same. Humid ocean air blew in and ruffled Jess’s hair, drying the sweat that was already beading on his face. And the silent, majestic rows of gods stretched on in a cleanly ordered march that seemed to go on for miles, each one of them different. They’ve all got stories, Jess thought. I need to know them. Best of all, he could know them. He could learn anything here.

It felt like limitless possibilities.

Khalila had joined them, he realised, and was gaping just as openly. Even Glain seemed stunned as she climbed down off the train steps and landed in this new, alien, intimidating land.

It seemed so clean.

Soon enough, they’d drawn a real cluster around them, as new postulants disembarked. Maybe it was just because Thomas was so tall and made a good centre pole, but when Jess looked around there must have been thirty of them together, and they were all milling about, uncertain of their next steps … until a man strode out from the shadow of Horus’s feet towards them.

He drew everyone’s attention: black Scholar’s robes that billowed around a plain black day suit. A gleaming gold band on his wrist, chased with elegant hieroglyphs and the Library seal. Dark shoulder-length hair swept back in a mane from a fiercely intelligent face. Narrow, dark eyes, and nut-brown skin. The students fell silent as he approached, and pulled closer together. Gazelles facing a lion, Jess thought.

The Scholar looked them over with unforgiving assessment. The silence stretched until Jess thought it might shatter poor old Horus’s legs, and then the man said, ‘My name is Scholar Christopher Wolfe, and I take it you are incoming postulants. Let me be clear; most of you might as well turn around and board the train now for home. I have six slots to fill, if I decide to fill them at all, which at first glance is unlikely. Does anyone want to book a return now and save themselves the time and pain?’

No one stirred, though several made twitchy moves, as though they were considering it. Not Jess. Nor Thomas, nor Khalila, nor Glain. Rock solid. For now, Jess thought.

This had just got very interesting.