“All you have to do is dump all of this into the Archive Codex!” Khalila said. “You have the power to do it!”

“No. I don’t.” The Obscurist touched her collar, the thick gold traced with alchemical symbols. “There are things even I can’t change, or I would have done it when I was young. When I was still brave.”

“So you want us to do it,” Glain said. It was the first thing she’d said, and she was absolutely white with rage. “You coward. You ask us to bring down a giant with a—a pebble!”

“The Jewish king David did,” Khalila said. “Or so the stories tell us. Goliath fell to a slingshot and a stone. And the Library is a lumbering giant, dying of its own arrogance; it has to change or fall. We have the tools. The will. The knowledge.” She nodded to the book Wolfe still held in his hands. “We’ll have your printing press.”

Of all people, Jess had never expected Khalila Seif to propose such a thing. It was such a radical betrayal of the Library that Jess’s head spun from the whole idea. “Well, we couldn’t do it here, in Alexandria,” he said. “Certainly not here in the Iron Tower. And we’re out of time. The Archivist is coming, isn’t he?”

“He is,” the Obscurist agreed. “My delays in handing you over have already been noted; that will lead to my demotion, most likely today. Gregory has been wriggling to make himself the new Obscurist, and he’ll get his wish, for all the joy it will bring him. No, it’s inevitable. It’s already done,” she said, as Wolfe started to speak. “But I can get you out of here. Sending you on your way is the last gift I can ever give you, Christopher.” Her voice dropped lower, to a pitch Jess hardly even heard. “Except my love.”

Wolfe said nothing. He stared at her as if she were a stranger, and maybe she was. Families so often are, Jess thought. The silence stretched, and then he said, “What you’re suggesting we do—it’s like cutting loose a wild tiger. All this unchained knowledge will cause chaos and destruction, and what will happen can’t be managed. I can’t guess what will come of it. Can you?”

“No,” his mother said, and looked around the room. “But it will be better than this sad place.”

“We’ll need a safe haven, somewhere to build these machines,” Morgan said. “Allies to hide us and help us distribute the books we print. Most of all, we’ll need these.” She gestured at the Black Archives, the forbidden knowledge. “With the right books, we can change everything.”

“Then take them,” the Obscurist said. “Take as much as you can carry. I’ll erase them from the records, and no one will ever know they disappeared. You’ll have to carry them with you, and you can never come back here. Not as long as the Library controls the Iron Tower.”

“Go where?” Jess asked, but then he answered his own question. “London.”