Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(11)

He was afraid of this.

The Medica left him to it, and he dutifully breathed, coughed, breathed more. After half an hour breathing came easier and hurt less. After an hour, he felt almost himself. Almost. He took the portable mask the Medica thrust at him when it was time to go, and promised to use it and return for more treatments and a better analysis of his progress.

Glain had waited. Jess wasn’t surprised by that, or by how impatient she was. The last thing she’d wanted, he imagined, was to be his sheepdog. She could have been doing important things, he supposed. Instead, she was wasting time looking after him.

He wanted to tell her. But that seemed worse than just brooding over it on his own. Glain didn’t have much patience with vulnerabilities. “Sorry,” he told her as they left the Medica’s station and took another steam carriage on to the High Garda compound. “I know this is shit duty.”

“Oh, it is,” she agreed, and gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret. “What did you do to yourself, Brightwell?”

“It’s Brightwell again? I thought we’d made progress, Glain.”

“You’re my subordinate now. So it’s back to Brightwell. And that’s Lieutenant Wathen, to you.”

“Lieutenant!”

She shrugged. “Field appointment. I’m sure I’ll go down in rank as soon as the crisis is over.”

He doubted that. Glain was among the very few people he’d met who were born to be soldiers and who accepted the hardships and responsibilities with ease. “Congratulations.”

She nodded. “Back to my question. What happened?”

He told her. She listened intently, asked him about the mist with the analytical interest of someone whose business is in weapons, and he answered as best he could. She considered the matter for a few moments in silence, then said, “I know poisonous gases were among the inventions suppressed in the Black Archives. Some attacked the nerves; some killed almost instantly. Some smothered. It sounds like you encountered that last type. You were lucky to survive.”

“I was lucky Wolfe and Dario were there to save me,” he said. “I’d given up. I couldn’t have made it without them.” When he said it, he realized it was true. He owed both of them his life, such as it was at the moment.

It made him feel weak, and he hated it.

He turned his head toward Glain and fixed her with a look. “You seem to know a lot about it. Was that in one of the books we saved from the Black Archives?”

“It was in the Black Archives,” she said. “But I left it behind. I thought it was better left undiscovered by anyone else. It must have burned in the fire.”

“Good,” he said. “Maybe the Archivists were right: some knowledge is too dangerous to be spread.”

“Heretic.”

“You’re the one who chose not to rescue it.”

She sighed. “Yes. But let’s keep that between us, shall we?”



* * *



—

Going back into the High Garda compound felt like falling back in time for Jess. It hadn’t been so very long since he’d first entered these gates and become a soldier, but he’d been a different person then. Grieving Thomas, then intent on rescuing him from the trap he was in. But never dreaming that his actions would start a building wave of chaos and resistance that would come to a head here in Alexandria and force the most powerful man in the world to run for his life.

Strange how things had gotten so wildly out of his control, when all he’d meant to do was help a friend.

This place still felt oddly like home, though he hadn’t spent much time in it. Jess stared at the gleaming Spartan automaton as they passed it; the statue’s head turned to track and identify them, then went back to never-ending guard duty.

They walked slowly, out of deference for Jess’s lungs; he felt impatient with himself, but he could not afford to push. He needed to remember that and not feel that he was holding Glain back.

But he was holding her back. He could sense it in the tension in her body, like a tiger poised to run. He tried walking faster. It woke an ache in his lungs almost instantly, and he felt abused tissues start to swell.

He slowed down.

Glain sent him a look. “All right, then?”

He nodded and didn’t try to explain.

The entire High Garda barracks was mostly deserted now, all the clean and gleaming halls echoing with their footsteps. For the first time, Jess wondered what had been done with his room. He pointed toward the door. “Is my stuff still there?” Not that he’d had much. Growing up as he had meant being ready to abandon everything when the law came to call.

“Sorry. Your room was reassigned to another soldier. Your possessions were boxed up and sent back to your father. We’ll kit you out of general stores.”

“I liked that room,” he said. “Good light.”

“Are you going to stay a soldier? After this?” she asked him. Perfectly reasonable question, and one he honestly didn’t know how to answer. When he hesitated, she turned her head toward him. There was real gravity to her stare. She must have learned it from Santi. “If you have to think about your answer, it isn’t for you. You realize that.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do. But what else will I be, if not that?”