“Tragic,” he shot back. “Be serious. You know I’ve got—”

“Morgan,” she finished for him, when he stopped. “Yes. You do enjoy a challenge. Now she’s a princess locked in a tower. That makes you want her even more, doesn’t it? I think you’ve read too many tales of knighthood, Jess.”

That effectively silenced him while he processed the words; a flush of anger ran through him, followed by a chill of something like understanding. Was that why he loved Morgan? Because of the challenge? He couldn’t deny that it might be a part of it. Damn Glain and her sharp eyes. Challenge and guilt.

“I’m not saying that because I’m jealous,” Glain continued, still with that maddening, calm smile. “You and me? No. Agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now there’s no confusion.”

How like Glain, to take action to dispel any uncertainty that might exist, however awkward that might be. The cold blast of it was shocking, but it did clear the air.

“Remind me never to be polite to you again,” he said, and she laughed this time, came around, and draped a comrade’s arm around his shoulders.

“Of course I will.”

Days passed, and other squads finished their final tests. Recruits were dismissed or assigned to new duties, and their wing of the barracks emptied and filled with another quota of aspiring High Garda soldiers.

But there was no word on their future. That was worrying, and Jess inquired—carefully—among other soldiers. There were a few examples of squads whose fate had been held in suspense for a while, but only a few, and almost all of those had ended up dismissed. The delays, Jess thought, had to do with debates within the higher ranks.

Maybe Captain Santi was fighting for them. And losing.

Jess was just as glad, because he spent his days chasing down obscure information through the Codex, and nights with Red Ibrahim and Anit, looking through rare volumes for anything that might give small details about what happened to the enemies of the Archivist. What he did find wasn’t heartening; almost everyone accused of heresy was recorded as executed, though those executions were done privately now, rather than as the vast spectacle they’d once been. The Alexandrian prisons that had once existed in the early, brutal days of the Library were long torn down. There might be a few cells beneath the Serapeum, but Khalila’s work had turned up guard rosters, and by matching up those assigned to duties, she’d been able to create a dizzying map of assignments that accounted for every one of the High Garda guards assigned to the Archivist. There would have to be some whose duties remained unaccounted for, if they actually guarded a secret prison.

Wherever Thomas was, he wasn’t being kept in Alexandria.

“We should press Wolfe,” Khalila said as she, Jess, Glain, and Dario sat together in a small café near the water. Twilight dyed the sky a rich teal, though Jess couldn’t much appreciate the beauty. All the information she and Dario had unearthed was proving to be useless. No nuggets of gold had turned up. The inaction drove Jess mad. “Surely he must remember more than he’s telling.”