The page stayed blank.

“Put that away,” the man across from him said. “No messages on missions.”

Jess should have known that. He nodded and put the Codex away, and tried to hope that being sent to Rome was just some lucky, happy coincidence.

He was too cynical to believe it for long.

“On your feet!”

Jess hadn’t realized he’d slept until the squad leader’s shout roared over him, amplified by the very suddenness of it; he jerked awake and was up fast enough that he banged his head on the low ceiling of the carrier. It had stopped moving, though he could feel the faint vibration of the steam engine still working. The impact was hard enough to make his vision spark, and the pain radiated through the top of his head like an acid bath, but he grimly stumbled out after Glain, into what proved to be a heavily walled courtyard large enough to hold all the vehicles and the soldiers disembarking from them, but only just. Overhead, the sky had turned a teal that told him twilight was approaching, the day well gone. He’d slept a long time. He supposed he’d needed it, but he’d missed meals and—most important now—a latrine.

Wherever they were, it wasn’t Rome, but it also didn’t feel like Alexandria. On the smooth surface of the courtyard there were drifts of fine dirt that crunched under his boots as he turned to see the soaring structure of a pyramid-shaped building. A Serapeum, a daughter branch of the Library. This one was made of searingly white stone, with a slice of gold at the top that he realized, on squinting, was a spire holding up the Library’s seal. The shadows drowning half the courtyard seemed deeper than usual.

He formed up with the squad, and the Blue Dog squad leader—he still didn’t know the young man’s name—moved quickly down the line to inspect them. He was shorter than Jess but radiated a commanding presence that made Jess straighten just a bit more.

“Where are we, sir?” That was Glain, surprisingly.

Even more surprisingly, the squad leader seemed willing to answer. “We’re at the port city of Darnah. Ships are waiting to take most of the company, but we lucky few will be going on with the captain directly.”

“Directly,” Glain said. “You mean by Translation.”

The squad leader grinned, dispelling all his years and authority in one flash of teeth . . . and then getting it back in the next instant as he said, “Exactly what I mean. Move. Consider this an honor. We’re in the advance guard of the Artifex Magnus today.”

The arrogant old man was making Niccolo Santi guard him. It was a deliberate insult; there was no doubt of that. The Artifex had been the one to take Wolfe to prison and oversee his . . . conversion, just as he’d taken Thomas. It had to be a constant struggle for Santi not to shoot the bastard in the back.