Текст книги "Ink and Bone"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

So did all the rest of them. Even Dario.

‘This is foolish,’ Santiago complained the next night. It was direly late, and Jess’s whole body ached from it. Apparently, the bells were set to clang every morning at dawn, and classes began before any of them were properly awake, but the amount of study that needed to be done left them with little chance of sleep. ‘I thought he said we’d be learning real skills. He’s doing nothing but stuffing nonsense in our heads. Who cares about the name of the forty-second Artifex Magnus?’

Khalila lifted her finger without looking up from the blank she studied. She had claimed a chair in the corner, while Jess had contented himself with sitting against the smooth white wall near the hearth, legs crossed. ‘Sarenpet.’

‘How do you do that?’ Thomas asked. Even Thomas, usually sunny, seemed clouded over and tired. ‘Can you name all the Archivists as well?’

‘There was an emphasis on study in my household,’ Khalila said. ‘And I had little interest in more traditional things, like cooking. So yes. I can name them all. You should probably try.’

‘Better history than distasteful conversations on smuggling,’ Dario said. ‘That is unnecessary information.’

‘Scholars frequently investigate the black trades and markets, looking for rare books,’ Izumi said. ‘At least where I come from. Don’t they have such in your country? Or are you so virtuous no one sells originals?’

‘Well, it’s like kissing one’s sister,’ Dario said ‘If you have the bad taste to do it, you don’t talk about it.’

Khalila laughed and reached for the tea sitting on the table beside her. ‘I’m not afraid to talk about it. There’s a flourishing black trade near the docks, I hear. I’ve heard a few names.’

Jess deeply hoped that she was exaggerating. Khalila was mostly honest, but sometimes her stories stretched too far. ‘You’d better stay well away from those people.’ For my sake, he added silently. Those were his contacts, after all. He’d been given a list of names and addresses before his father had sent him off on the train, and he still recited them nightly before he went to sleep.

‘I am a woman of many parts,’ she said. ‘And one of them is the ability to look to the future. Should I become a Scholar like Wolfe, I will need such resources, won’t I?’

‘Rough company,’ Dario said. ‘Unsuitable for an innocent flower like you.’

‘You sound like my uncle. One can be innocent and not be ignorant, after all.’ It was, Jess thought, nearly impossible to hate her, even when she sounded so smug. ‘I’m warning you: at least try to memorise the Archivists. It’s just the kind of thing Wolfe will keep asking.’

‘We are trying,’ Jess said. His eyes burnt, and he couldn’t stop a yawn. It spread to the rest of them crowded in the common room, and he got muttered curses for it. ‘We’re just not as good at it as you, Khalila. You should probably get used to hearing that.’

‘Did I give you permission to use my first name?’ she asked, but it was a mild sort of tease, not offence.

‘Forgive me, Postulant Seif,’ Jess said, and bowed as low as he could without really putting an effort in. ‘Your unworthy servant.’

‘Finally,’ Dario muttered. He’d claimed the most comfortable chair, and had a strong little group of followers fanned out around him. ‘The scrubber knows his place at last.’

Jess looked up, and met his roommate’s eyes. Dario’s were challenging and bitter, and his smile matched. No jokes there. And no quarter.

‘Oh, I do know my place, Dario,’ he said. ‘It’s ahead of yours. What was your test score again?’

That woke hushed laughter from some of the others, and a smile from Khalila. Dario seemed to let it drop.

But of course, he didn’t.

Jess slept like the dead, when he had the chance, and that proved to be a mistake. When he woke the next morning, after a bare three hours of rest, the bells were clanging in the dark, and Dario’s bed was already empty. He’d missed his chance at the shower, again.

When he opened his chest to grab fresh clothes, it was empty.

The shock echoed up from his toes, hit the top of his skull, and shot back down again. He was no longer sleepy. You bastard. He thought about kicking in the bathroom door and dragging Dario wet and naked out to kick his arrogant arse, but that seemed too easy.

Dario had a lock on his chest, and clearly, he’d foreseen the need to fasten it, but Jess had come from a family of smugglers, with a dash of thieving thrown in. He knew how to pick locks, and this one wasn’t even much of a challenge.

Dario’s silken shirt felt good against his skin. Definitely a step up from his own wardrobe. He took the other boy’s trousers, which were a bit long, and tucked them into his own boots. Dario hadn’t bothered to steal those, at least.

Then he took his Codex and strolled down to grab a breakfast of fruit and thick, hot Egyptian coffee in the common room. He was early, but the room had filled with students by the time Dario burst in the door, hair still damp, face flushed. His bitter-black eyes fixed on Jess, and he advanced on him. Fast.

Jess sat at his ease, peeling an orange. ‘Good morning,’ he said. He didn’t try to defend himself, and didn’t stand. Dario reached down and grabbed hold of the shirt, then froze and let go, probably because he remembered that he would be manhandling his own expensive garments.

‘I should have known someone with your gutter manners would be a filthy little thief.’

Jess dropped a piece of peel into his bowl. ‘When my clothes are in my chest, I’ll give these back,’ he said. ‘Until then, I’ll assume you mean to share.’

Dario cursed at him in fluent, liquid Spanish, and reached for a sharp knife on the breakfast table. Jess got there first and slapped it down with a clatter.

‘Think,’ he said, and leant forward. ‘Which one of us knows how to use this better, little prince, you, or the one with gutter manners? And which one of us is more likely to be sent home packing after the crying’s done?’

Khalila eased up and put a gentle hand on Dario’s arm. ‘Dario,’ she said. ‘Please. We have struggle enough to survive already. Fighting among ourselves is foolish.’

Dario turned his head and glared at her. ‘Are you calling me a fool?’

‘Yes,’ she said, very calmly. ‘Now stop.’

He blinked, and there was a twitch of a frown on his high, smooth forehead, and then the smooth noble facade came down. He gave her an elaborate bow. ‘For you, desert flower, anything.’

Khalila gave him an unreadable look, picked up a bread roll, and carried it to the farthest corner of the room, where she pointedly opened her blank to read.

Jess took his hand off the knife and went back to freeing his orange from its thick prison. He wanted to goad Dario, but he knew it wouldn’t be wise; he could see Thomas silently beseeching him not to push his luck, and of course, Thomas was right.

The day’s session with Wolfe was in the classroom – a normal enough place, with narrow windows, desks, chairs, and a large, flat, blank sheet mounted on the wall for Wolfe’s use, should he need it. He didn’t. It was five hours of relentless questioning, which ranged from history to geography (Jess had failed to memorise the locations of all of the daughter libraries, but the weight of that question had crushed three other students) and on to the proper usage of a Codex to conduct advanced research.

They were all exhausted and fearing the reappearance of the lottery tiles when Khalila suddenly said, ‘Are you going to teach us about the Iron Tower, Scholar Wolfe?’

It put a stop to everything for a few seconds, and then Wolfe slowly turned towards her. His expression put chills through Jess; he couldn’t imagine how it felt to be on the direct receiving end of it. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The Iron Tower?’ She said it with slightly less confidence this time. There was a darkness in the way Wolfe was looking at her, and a calculation, as if he was trying to decide what she meant by the question.

‘If you wish to learn about the Iron Tower, so be it. Tell me what you know about it, Postulant Schreiber.’

It was an unexpected lash of a question, but it didn’t seem to bother Thomas at all. In fact, he seemed delighted to answer. ‘It was built by engineers from Artifex in the year 1789, to the specifications of the Obscurist Magnus at that time. It was made from a rare type of iron which, quite remarkably, does not rust – the Iron Pillar in Delhi is made from the same, and the process has been under study for—’

‘Fascinating, I am certain.’ Wolfe cut him off, in an utterly bored voice. ‘I was referring to those who reside inside the tower, however extraordinary the exterior might be.’

Thomas was on firm ground when speaking of the accomplishments of engineers, but less so now, and Jess saw him hesitate before he said, ‘You mean the Obscurists?’

‘The Obscurists would be a correct answer, if woefully inadequate,’ Wolfe agreed. ‘Expound.’

‘They … maintain the Library’s Codex system.’

‘How?’

‘Sir?’

‘Postulant Seif wishes to discuss the Obscurists, and so we shall discuss them. Can you explain to me exactly how they accomplish the mirroring of the Library’s information across so much distance? The exact mechanism they use to perform this miraculous feat?’

‘I—’ Thomas swallowed. ‘No, Scholar.’

‘Then what else do they provide to the Library?’

‘They … provide the spark to power the automata that guard the Serapeum?’

Wolfe let him dangle in silence for a moment, then crossed to stare out the window at the Iron Tower with his hands clasped behind his back.

‘The burning of the Serapeum at Rayy, as we discussed on the first day, changed everything,’ he said. ‘Prior to that loss, alchemists worked in secret; after, they began to work together. Their discoveries led to the Doctrine of Mirroring, but they also found something curious: alchemical successes were not a simple matter of chemicals and potions and the time at which they were combined, as everyone had thought. The formulae worked for some earnest masters and not others, because there was a spark in only some, a talent that could imbue formulae with real power.’

‘And those people became the Obscurists,’ Khalila said.

‘The most valuable resource in the world.’ Wolfe suddenly rounded on Khalila, stalked directly to her, and Jess saw the fine tremble that went through her that marked a desperate desire to retreat. It was a significant achievement that she held her ground; Jess wasn’t sure he could have done the same. ‘Do not ever bring up the Obscurists again, Postulant Seif. Your idle curiosity will not be so well rewarded.’

She was silent for a second, and then – remarkably, to Jess’s eyes – she drew herself up and held Wolfe’s gaze quite steadily. Then she said, with only a tiny hint of a tremor in her voice, ‘With the greatest respect, Scholar Wolfe, I do not ask from idle curiosity, but from a desire to more fully understand the duties of a librarian. Librarians instruct, assist, research, develop, create … and protect, do they not?’

‘Yes. Your point?’

‘You said they are our greatest resource. Does that not also make the Obscurists our greatest weakness?’

That sparked a sudden, common intake of breath, because it seemed more than daring, that question.

It seemed seditious.

Wolfe stepped back without blinking, and clasped his hands behind his back. Smiled. It was a strange expression on him, unnatural, almost brittle. ‘Explain,’ he said.

‘All of the other specialities of the Library – Medica, Artifex, Historia, Lingua – are positions to which we can aspire. But alchemy cannot be taught in the same way. None of us can become Obscurists, because they are born with a special gift. That makes them rare,’ Khalila continued. The tremor in her voice was more obvious now, and she stopped to swallow. ‘We must know if we are to help protect them.’

‘And when you rise to the rank of a Senior Scholar, you might be granted that knowledge,’ he told her. ‘Until then, the question is a waste of your time. Obscurists do their work in seclusion and protection within the Iron Tower. That is all you need know.’

‘But without them, documents can’t be added to the Archive, isn’t that true? Without them, the automata that guard our daughter libraries cannot have the spark of life. Without them—’

She seemed to run out of courage, suddenly, and her voice fell silent.

Jess finished the thought. ‘Without them, the Codex doesn’t work,’ he said. ‘And if the Codex doesn’t work, the Library falls.’

That got Wolfe’s attention. He instantly regretted opening his mouth. The room was hot and still, and when he gritted his teeth in order not to flinch under that stare, his jaw ached tightly in the corners.

But he didn’t look away.

‘Remember,’ Wolfe said. The word was silky soft, almost gentle. ‘Even here, you can ask the wrong questions and speak the wrong truths, postulants. Here ends today’s lesson. Tota est scientia.’

Their murmured response followed him as he turned and walked from the room, blending with the whisper of his black robes on stone. Finally, after the doors closed, Jess let out his breath in a rush.

‘Scheisse, Jess,’ Thomas said. ‘Did he just threaten you?’

Khalila was looking at him in concern, and her face was several shades too pale. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Never mind,’ Jess replied, and picked up his Codex from the desk. ‘It was a good question.’

Outside, Wolfe’s High Garda friend was waiting with the pot of tiles. Jess automatically reached for one.

The man pulled it back and gave him an unexpectedly friendly grin. ‘Not you,’ he said. ‘Pass.’

Somehow, Jess thought, that only made it seem more ominous.

The day’s lottery yielded no losers, by some miracle. By the time they made it back to Ptolemy House, the sun was down, they were all soaked with exhausted sweat, and Jess stood in the shower for well on an hour, wondering if he could survive this gruelling process, and more, if he should.

When he came out of the shower, his missing clothes were back in his trunk. Stained, muddy, and filthy, but returned, and fair point, he hadn’t told Dario they had to be in the same condition as they’d left. Jess silently scrubbed the worst of the mud out of a shirt and trousers, donned them, and then pondered taking revenge to the next level. His brother would have, until it came to knives and someone dead on the floor.

He wasn’t his brother. For that reason, he decided to just let it go. Dario had kept his end of the bargain … exacted some petty revenge, but a little mud didn’t bother Jess much. Benefits of an urchin childhood. Jess even wrote something that was almost civil about his roommate in his personal journal that night, simply because he believed they might have reached an understanding.

It was premature, as he found out the next morning when Dario roughly shook him awake.

‘Where is it?’ Dario growled. Jess blinked spots from his eyes and tried to sit up. Dario pushed him back down. ‘Now, scrubber!’

‘Where’s what?’

Dario lunged for him, and Jess on his side, delivered a quick elbow to Dario’s face, and was on his feet and balanced for a fight in seconds as the other boy staggered away. Dario, however, went down hard on his arse, and stayed there, breathing hard and holding his nose. It wasn’t broken. It wasn’t even bleeding.

‘I’ll kill you,’ Dario growled. It came up from the depths of him, and Jess believed he meant it.

‘For what?’ Jess asked. ‘Other than just on general principles? What do you think I did?’

‘My Codex,’ Dario said. ‘You took it, out of revenge. Give it back.’

That was serious. To steal someone’s Codex was to cut off access to the Library, and even under normal circumstances that would be a vile thing to do; now, with Wolfe’s class reaping a daily crop of failures, it was catastrophic.

‘I didn’t take it,’ Jess said, and held out his hand. Dario stared at him for a second, then took the offer and let Jess haul him back to his feet. ‘I’d do a lot of things. Thought of sending your entire wardrobe to Barcelona, in fact, and making you beg for it back. But I didn’t do that, and I didn’t take your Codex.’

‘Unfortunately, I believe you,’ Dario said. ‘But admit it, you were the most likely suspect.’

‘I’m flattered. Where did you leave it?’

‘Are you going to be my mother now, and tell me to look in the last place I saw it? Vete al diablo! It was here. On my desk. And now it is not.’

Jess went to the door. It swung easily open. ‘I locked the door. Someone opened it.’

‘I … might have done that when I came in.’

‘Left it unlocked?’

Dario shrugged. ‘Maybe … also not closed. There was wine involved. But I didn’t lose my Codex. I’ve never been that drunk.’

‘Just buy a new one. You’re not poor.’

‘My father gave it to me,’ Dario said. He looked away. ‘When I was ten. It was the last gift I had from him. I want it back.’

Jess pulled in a breath and let it out.

‘All right. Let’s look,’ he said. ‘In case you really were that drunk.’

He was checking the tangled bedding when Dario, over by the desk, said, ‘I think I know what happened.’ His voice sounded odd. As Jess came towards him, Dario handed him a piece of paper with a handwritten note.

You shove your money and nobility and privilege down our throats, and expect us to smile and thank you. We’ve had enough of you. Take the next train home, and we’ll return your Codex. Stay, and you’ll never see it again.

No signature.

‘It’s not from you,’ Dario said. ‘You’d tell me to my face.’ He sank into the desk chair, staring out at the thick orange dawn smudging the eastern horizon.

‘Who else have you tried to bully out of here?’

Dario’s shrug said it all. ‘Everyone, at one time or another. I earned this, didn’t I?’

‘You did.’ No reason to lie about it. ‘What are you going to do, then? Give in and leave?’

Dario sat silently for a moment, then took in an audible breath and said, ‘It’s just a Codex. I’ll get another, as you said.’ But there was something broken in his gaze. ‘Leave me alone, scrubber.’ He pulled out his personal journal and pen. Jess understood the impulse, all too well, to spill out the bile and hurt into ink, where no one could see it.

He didn’t waste the opportunity to be the first into the bathroom.

EPHEMERA

Text of a note sent via Codex to Jess Brightwell from his mother, Charity Brightwell:

My dearest boy:

I pray this message finds you well and happy in your exciting new life. Your father and I miss you awfully each day, as does your brother, who likewise sends his best wishes. Business is going well, he says, and he hopes that one day you will be able to participate in it in a more meaningful way.

Your father received an appointment to a select committee on the beautification of our borough. As a consequence, Lord Peter Foxworth had us to dinner the other night to discuss hedges. It was a lovely event, and I know you would have greatly enjoyed meeting his daughter Juliet, who is quite lovely. Your uncle Thaddeus has retired and moved to his country home in the north, and has made it known that we are always welcome there. He fears that London may fall victim to the Welsh advance, but we don’t believe that could ever happen, of course. Surely the army will stop them.

I am eager to hear all of the news of your brilliant success, Jess. Please do write, and know that I send my love.

Fondly,

Your mother

A separate note from Callum Brightwell, attached to the same message. Suspected of hidden coded messaging and reviewed by Obscurists. Found to be inconclusive.

Greetings from your old da, boy. Always remember the words of Descartes: The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries. Take full advantage of your opportunities at the Great Library, and do your family proud. All your siblings, living and dead, count upon you to prove your worth to the world. And don’t forget your cousins. They’re eager to see you again.

CHAPTER THREE

When Jess got the letter from home, he knew his father was finally calling in the debt. Mother’s letter was mere camouflage, but his father’s scribble … that was different.

Father had mentioned Descartes in his note. It was an urgent code, quoting Descartes, who was his father’s least favourite philosopher. Jess, as he read the message, felt his pulse quicken. All your siblings … Brendan and Liam, but Jess knew there had been a third child born after Liam and before him and his brother. Stillborn. So that made three siblings. Descartes’ third work was on the subject of optics and refraction, which meant his father was telling him to look … but look for what?

Worth to the world. An odd turn of phrase for his father, and Jess read it several times before the meaning sank in. It was a quotation, hiding in plain sight. He couldn’t quite place the work in question by memory, and he didn’t dare an obvious request to the Library to track it down.

His father wanted him to obtain the book where that quotation was to be found, and deliver it to his cousins … names his father had made him memorise before he’d boarded the train for Alexandria. Distant relations, some of them, but just as often trusted colleagues in the trade.

In that one message, his father had ordered him to search for a particular book, and to deliver it to contacts in the Alexandrian smuggling trade … and by using a quotation by Descartes, he’d indicated how urgent the acquisition was.

Very.

His first real job, on behalf of the Brightwells.

Jess had expected to feel exhilarated in that moment, useful at last, but instead, he felt … used. Nothing different about that, he told himself. He’d been used by his family since the day he’d been old enough to run. You don’t have to do it, some little part of him whispered. He can’t punish you now. He’s got too much invested. What if he was caught? Not only would he be dismissed, but this time, he wasn’t just an anonymous cutter in the streets of London. He’d be known. Identified.

Turning down his father had just as many risks.

‘Everything all right?’

Jess flinched and almost fumbled his Codex, because Thomas was right at his shoulder, and Jess hadn’t sensed his approach. Too stealthy by far, for such a solid young man. Jess shut the book. ‘Family business,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

Thomas sat down across from him, on an old divan that wasn’t meant to hold someone of his size; it creaked alarmingly, and the ornamental legs bowed, but he didn’t seem to notice. Glain, who was sitting on the other end, got up to ease the load on the furniture, with a typically grim scowl at the both of them. She went to the water jug in the corner of the common room and then found another seat far away. Apart from Glain and a rowdy group playing dice in the corner, they were almost alone. It was far later than any of them should have been awake.

‘My family messages don’t make me so grim in the face,’ Thomas said. ‘Is it bad news?’

Jess shrugged and forced a smile. ‘It’s always bad in my family. Can you think of a book that has the phrase in it worth to the world?’

‘No, why?’

In truth, Jess couldn’t; he didn’t dare. He shrugged. ‘Not important. I just heard it somewhere, and it sounded familiar.’

‘It’s from one of the Lost Books,’ Glain said, which was unexpected; he didn’t think she was even listening. ‘A play by Aristophanes burnt in the sack of Rayy. I thought you were supposed to be the expert, Brightwell.’

‘Not tonight, apparently,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ He was genuinely grateful. His father wanted him to find a lost book by Aristophanes, urgently, and deliver it to the shadow market contacts. A book that was somewhere in Alexandria.

Somewhere in Alexandria wasn’t a reasonable area to search.

Jess yawned, stretched, and closed his Codex. Thomas, who’d put his head back against the divan’s cushions, cracked a blurry eye and said, ‘Off to bed?’

‘Yeah, dawn’s coming fast, and Wolfe has no mercy,’ Jess said. ‘Gute Nacht.’

‘Your accent is still terrible, you know.’

‘You taught me.’

Jess didn’t go to bed. He slipped up the stairs to the second floor, which was now mostly deserted, thanks to the early departure of some of their classmates. He took the route he’d scouted earlier through the back corner window of a little-used storage room. From there, it was a short drop to a ledge, then down to the alley behind Ptolemy House. Even this late, the streets were still busy, and he’d been out enough to know his way.

It took most of the night to find a shadow market ‘cousin’ who knew the book in question and who in town possessed a copy: he found it was in the collection of a man named Abdul Nejem. Nejem, he was told, wouldn’t sell it; it was the prize jewel of his treasure chest of books.

It didn’t matter, because Jess didn’t have the funds to buy it in any case. His father had only instructed him to get it.

So he stole it.

It was an easy enough job, though it was near dawn when Jess delivered the Aristophanes scroll back to his market contact … but the cousin-in-crime who’d been waiting to receive the book was gone, and someone new waited in the darkness.

That was almost never a good sign, new faces. Jess stopped and took a step back, getting ready to run.

The figure stepped into the light with a tight, guarded smile on his face. ‘Hello, brother,’ Brendan said. ‘See you haven’t lost your touch. That’s good. Thought this place might make you turn honest.’

He stepped forward and pulled Jess into a hard embrace. Hard to admit how good that felt, to see family. ‘I’m as honest as I’ll ever get,’ Jess said. ‘Which will do fine, thanks. What are you doing here?’

‘Came for that,’ Brendan said, and gestured to the ornate scroll case in Jess’s hand. ‘Aristophanes, right? Never cared for him, but I don’t care about personal taste when hard currency’s involved. Any problems getting hold of it?’

‘Brendan …’ Jess took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘What are you doing here? In Alexandria?’

‘Told you already. Were you followed?’

‘No, I’m not an amateur, and answer the bloody question!’

‘Da wanted it in the safest possible hands,’ his brother said, ‘which happen to be mine, of course. It’s a trip to the buyer, he didn’t want it entrusted to anyone else along the way. Including our cousins.’

The idea of Brendan strolling bold as brass into Alexandria and smuggling out a book made Jess feel sick to his stomach. Physically ill. ‘It’s not simple death by hanging here, brother. They’ve got a long, inventive tradition of finding ways to make people die in pain. Let the others take the risk, that’s what Da pays them for!’

‘Da’s orders were for me to do it personally,’ Brendan said. ‘I know what I’m getting into, ta for caring.’

‘I—’ I do care, Jess wanted to say, and it was true, but he knew neither one of them felt comfortable with having that said aloud. ‘If you’re caught, I’m in it, too. You know that. Same face.’

Brendan’s smile had teeth now. ‘Well, can’t have my brutal torture and death get you failed out of your class, can we? Stop worrying, brother. I’ll be fine. Best get back to your school before you’re missed.’

‘Brendan—’

‘At least you’ve learnt not to call me Scraps. Thought I’d have to beat that out of you, one day.’ The smile faded, and his brother looked like half a stranger now. Someone he loved, but someone he wasn’t sure he could ever really trust. ‘I’ll give Father your love.’

There was just enough sarcasm in it to sting, and then Brendan was gone through a hidden door at the back of the empty shop, and Jess was left alone to hope that the next time he saw his twin, Brendan wasn’t dying. Or dead.

He made it to Ptolemy House just as the bells clanged, summoning them to another day with Scholar Wolfe.

‘You look terrible,’ Thomas said, as Jess went straight for the common room, and coffee. ‘Bad night?’

That was, Jess thought, putting it mildly.

The Aristophanes book was valuable, but sending Brendan was stupid. Reckless. He wondered what his father was thinking … and then he wondered if it had really been his father’s idea at all.

‘This is impossible!’ Izumi burst out the next morning, when their Codexes all flashed and chimed in unison, and Jess opened it to find instructions from Wolfe. ‘We get so little sleep, he asks so much, and for what? Now this?’

‘What?’ Jess asked her. ‘Mine says report to the classroom. What’s yours?’

Her mouth was set in a grim straight line. ‘He wants me to report to the Medica headquarters. I’m to receive special half-day training on top of classroom study.’

Jess looked around at those in the common room. ‘Anyone else?’ About half the class raised hands, including Thomas. ‘Where are you off to, then?’

‘Artifex,’ he said. He was trying not to seem happy, but as usual with Thomas, he couldn’t conceal it. ‘I am to study the making of blueprints.’

The rest were similar; it was apparent that Wolfe had identified specific traits in them he felt needed cultivation. Khalila had special study with another Scholar versed in sophisticated mathematics and the study of the heavens. Dario seemed fairly content to be studying intensively in history. Glain, not surprisingly, ended up training with the High Garda.

Jess had nothing additional. It seemed ominous, as if Wolfe had simply given up on him. Jack of all trades, master of none, was another favourite saying of the Brightwell household. He’d always thought knowing many things gave him strength.

Now it made him feel vulnerable.

The day’s classroom training, though, was also curiously individual. They were kept waiting in the room and told to read on the internal structure of the Library hierarchy, which Jess could already recite in his sleep, and then were taken one by one to a smaller side room where Wolfe waited. When it was Jess’s turn, he felt that it was a critical moment: either he would impress Wolfe today, or he would be struck off.

He was in sixth place in the class rank, and sixth place would be impossible to hang on to without standing out in some way.

‘Sit,’ Wolfe said, and nodded to a simple wooden desk and chair in the middle of the room, with a box on top of the desk. ‘Do you understand the theory of Translation?’

‘Yes sir. It is an offshoot of mirroring, but instead of just creating a copy of a thing, you actually move the thing from one place to another.’