“Mercy?” Santi’s voice was as dark as the dried blood on the walls. “Look around. Does it appear to you the Library has an abundance of that? Shoot me. You’ll have to, to stop me.”

She would, Jess realized. She wasn’t like Santi. Like Jess.

She couldn’t admit her world was a lie and everything she’d done had been in the service of something dark.

Jess fired, but he was too late. She fired at exactly the same moment his bullet hit her armor.

Zara and Santi fell at the same time.

EPHEMERA

Text of a letter from Pharaoh Ptolemy II to the Archivist Callimachus, in the time of his reign, long may his name be known

From the scribe of Pharaoh Ptolemy II, to his most excellent servant Callimachus, Archivist of the Great Library, in the twelfth year of his glorious reign:

Great King Ptolemy, Light of Egypt, has wishes to endow you with his great wisdom on the subject of the loyalty of the Great Library, this sacred endeavor, to the throne of Egypt, as has been blessed by the gods from the first rays of dawn on the eternal Nile.

It is his wisdom that always must the Library exist to cast glory upon Egypt and the pharaoh, and any thought that the Library shall be a power unto itself is a dangerous and heretical whisper that must be crushed out.

Knowledge is not a pure goal. All that you gather together shall lift the pharaoh, sacred be his duty to the gods and the people of Egypt.

So speaks he, in his great and divine wisdom.

A notation to this document from Archivist Callimachus, sent to the Scholars of the Great Library

A great decision is now upon us. Will we be nothing but a mirror for Pharaoh to gaze into, to see himself as beautiful and powerful? Or do we follow our truest calling, that of benefit for all who seek to learn, and gather up this knowledge in the name of the seekers, the scholars, the teachers, the students? Is what we do nothing but a prop for a king, or is it a lever by which we move the world?

It falls to us to decide this. It will be difficult. It will be dangerous. Pharaoh has power and strength, and if we declare ourselves independent from his power, we must defend that independence with our blood. More, we must seek that same hard course of independence from every kingdom, every philosophy, every religion that would take us as its own prop, its own polished mirror in which to gaze.

I say, let us throw the bones and see what fortune brings us. Knowledge is power, so they say.

If so, then we have more than any king.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He’s dead, Jess thought, and felt a wave of sick horror. My fault. She’d been aiming for a killing shot, and he should have been, too. He’d tried to save her, and she’d killed Captain Santi . . .