“I’ve defended Scholars I loved and Scholars I hated. Just part of the job,” he said. “I defend an idea, not an individual.”

“None of that matters now,” Dario said. “The Artifex sees us as chess pieces he can move as he wishes, and, eventually, he’ll knock us off the board one by one, if not all at once. Are we just waiting to be killed?”

Santi said nothing. Did nothing. Jess stayed quiet as he watched him; he could see the man thinking, weighing, calculating odds and tactics. This was Santi’s specialty, the art of war. Surprise and defense.

“No,” he finally said. “We can’t wait. Dario’s correct. We’re in a position of great weakness—away from home, easily disposed of. I think bringing us here was a demonstration of his power. He can’t know we’ve found out anything.”

“We haven’t,” Khalila murmured. “Not for certain.”

“We have,” Jess said. He took a deep breath and told them about the information he’d received from Anit. “Thomas is here. He is definitely here. Now.”

“Do you trust her?” Khalila asked.

“She wouldn’t have any reason to betray me,” Jess said. “Our families are old trading partners. Throw me to the lions, and she has the Brightwell clan to deal with after. Her father wouldn’t want that.”

Santi nodded slowly. He looked up at them, and the anger in his face was chilling. “Then we can’t wait. We must get Thomas and get out of here. I’ll send word to Christopher to join us, and we’ll have to go into hiding, immediately. Jess? Can you arrange that with your family?”

Leave the Library. He saw Khalila and Dario exchange looks. They’d had to know this was coming, but it was all happening—and Jess surely felt it, too—so fast. “Not Khalila,” Dario said. “Surely no one would suspect her of anything. She could go back afterward . . .”

Khalila cut him off. “Dario. You don’t decide on my behalf. I love the Library. I grew up believing I would spend my life serving it. But that ideal, the one they made us believe, it doesn’t exist. I would rather spend my life fighting to change it. I can’t continue to pretend to be loyal to it, not if all of you are gone!”

“Maybe that Library, the one we all believed in, maybe that could exist after all,” Jess said. “It’s not the idea that’s bad; it’s thousands of years of bad decisions and desperation. We could change that, but we can’t do it from Alexandria.” He swallowed hard and glanced at Santi before he took the last step. The last risk. “The reason Thomas was taken was that he invented a machine to cheaply and easily reproduce books. If we can get him, if we can build it and start distributing private books, it will change everything.”

Glain, Khalila, and Dario all looked blank. “I can call up any book I like from the Codex,” Dario said. “What use is something to make them, except to benefit smugglers like . . . well, like you, who can sell them to hoarders?”