The Artifex wanted him dead, that much was certain, but he wasn’t quite ready to make it a public execution. Not yet. He needed Jess to give him some excuse, however minor, to explain away the behavior of the automata. Today would have been a fine one, in the chaos of the Burners, and Jess knew if he’d made the wrong move, he’d be another stain to clean up on the steps tonight.

Rome is a trap. It was too neat, too convenient, that suddenly they’d been dispatched here just after finding the information about the secret prison. The Artifex must have known their plans, or at least strongly suspected them. Khalila and Dario had gone missing. Maybe already locked away.

Disposing of Glain, Jess, and Santi would just be a sensible precaution. Get rid of the fighters; keep the Scholars out of the group who—in the Artifex’s counting, maybe—could be controlled and used. It made a sickening kind of sense.

Below, Medica attendants came to claim the bodies, and a squad of firefighters put out the Greek fire blaze. People began to filter back into the Forum in ones and twos, and then suddenly it was full again, as if nothing had happened at all. Only the blackened chemical stains on the stones behind Jupiter and the bloodstains on those near Mercury showed anything at all had interrupted a normal day.

Troll stopped next to him and scanned the people below with distant, cold eyes. “Seems useless, doesn’t it?” he asked. “They put us out here, and the Burners take their shot at us, and they die.”

“It’s a waste on both sides,” Jess said. “But we can’t let them win. They want to destroy the Library.”

He knew that wasn’t strictly true; he’d been among the Burners once, had spoken to a local leader. They wanted the Library to change, just as Jess did . . . but their tactics were unacceptably violent.

Troll shifted his weight just a little. “Any idea why the lions hate you so much?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” Troll surely didn’t believe it for a moment. “You know I have to report it. Even if I didn’t, there’s another squad leader who will. They might pull you out and try to find out what about you alerts them.”

Troll seemed to be fishing for something, and Jess didn’t like it. He turned and looked at the young man directly to say, “I’m not a Burner, if you’re thinking it.” But I knew some. That was a secret the Artifex held in reserve, too. Guillaume, his classmate, had come from a Burner family; his bereaved father had taken Jess prisoner in France. If the Artifex wanted to make it seem Jess had become an agent, it would be child’s play to make that appear reasonable. “No offense, sir, but why do you care? I’m a one-day-in recruit. You should shed me and get someone else, according to any kind of logic.”

“Not that simple,” Troll said. “Believe me, I wish it were.”