“Yes. Your family—blood and bonded by trade—is powerful and wealthy enough to hide you,” the Obscurist agreed. “You’ll need more than that, but it’s a start.”

“Did you plan this?”

“I’m not gifted with so much foresight. But when I saw you together the day I came to get Morgan, and saw how much you all cared for one another, I hoped you would be the ones to finally, finally have the skills and the courage to do this. I knew you wouldn’t let Thomas just vanish into the dark. You’d poke and dig, until you found him, and . . . this.”

Thomas’s eyes were bright now, and very strange as he stared at the older woman. Was it anger? Jess couldn’t tell, but it unnerved him. Badly. “You didn’t want them to have a choice, did you? Betray the Library or die. So you let them take me away. To motivate my friends.”

“I did what I needed to do,” Keria said. “I always have.”

Wolfe was still between Santi and his mother, but in that moment, he looked like he might go for her throat himself. “I thought I understood how cold you were,” he said. “But there’s no calculation for that. Mother.”

“Perhaps not,” Keria Morning said, and turned away. “Choose the books you want to take. You won’t get another chance.”

EPHEMERA

Text of a letter from the Artifex Magnus to the Archivist Magister, secured and coded at the highest level of security. Destroyed upon reading.

Are you sure you want to take this step? I don’t normally question your directives, but this is a thing we can’t undo. It crosses a boundary that we have never before broken. If anyone learns what we’ve done . . . You understand that it will destroy not just us, but everything we have given our lives to build and protect.

I must ask you to verify that this is exactly what you want. That there will be no last-minute changes of heart. No reprieves. Because once the thing is begun, it can’t be stopped, and it can’t ever be repaired or replaced.

What we’re doing . . . I have a strong stomach.

This, I will tell you frankly, sickens me.

I need your order here on this paper. I need proof.

Reply from the Archivist. Destroyed upon reading.

I don’t order this lightly. I have agonized over this decision. The weight of generations of my predecessors, who avoided it, rests solely on me, but we live in a far more dangerous world than any of them ever did. A world of increasing risk. Increasing dissent.

You have your orders, and I want them carried out to the letter.

Destroy it all.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

This is like old times, Jess thought, stuffing illegal volumes into packs, and once the packs were full, into thick canvas bags that the Obscurist brought from somewhere in a storage room. He’d been born running rare, valuable books. The only difference was that this smuggling was done much more clumsily and more openly than he’d prefer. And was vastly more important.