In a way, passing the test was more of a shock than failing; at least Jess had been properly prepared to be sent on his way, without a future. He couldn’t process the moment fast enough to really comprehend what had just happened. He’d gotten so used to assuming the worst that having the best actually arrive was somehow wrong, coming on the heels as it did of the escape from the tomb—and what had almost been his own tomb—in the park.

“Brightwell,” the High Commander said, and caught Jess in midturn. He spun back to face front. “A moment.”

He heard Glain’s footsteps hesitate, but only for an instant, and then she was gone. The door shut behind his friends, and he was alone with a man who could destroy his future in a breath.

At least he was used to that, after Scholar Wolfe and his harsh postulant training. And before that, life with his own father.

Jess stood perfectly still, perfectly at attention, while the man regarded him. Finally, the High Commander reached for a folded sheet of paper on his desk. It was sealed with gold, and stamped with the symbol of the Library. Jess opened it. His hands were steady, though his heartbeat jumped faster when he saw the name written at the bottom—a personal signature, not just a scribe’s notation.

The Artifex Magnus, head of the Artifex division of the Great Library. One of the members of the Curia, who advised the Archivist. But, in reality, the Archivist’s bullyboy and henchman. A villain with elegant handwriting, it seemed.

The message read, Our eyes are on you. Nothing else. But on the heels of that unsettling mess at Alexander’s tomb, it seemed even more ominous.

“Bad news?”

Jess’s head snapped up, and he met the High Commander’s eyes. He couldn’t read the man at all and he couldn’t trust him. So he folded up the note, put it in his coat, and said, “No, sir.”

He half-expected the man to ask harder questions, but it was late, and he was of too insignificant a rank. The High Commander brushed a hand toward him. “Go.”

“Sir.”

He walked out on legs that felt less steady than those he’d walked in on, and once he was out and the door boomed shut behind him, he still felt eyes on his back, as if gravity had increased its pull.

As he stood for a moment in the round vestibule, getting his mind together, for the first time Jess realized that there were no guards. The man in charge of the most feared army on earth had no guards. That was a stunning statement of his power.

That was when he looked up at the flanking statues of Horus and Menhit. The hawk-headed Horus and lion-headed Menhit stared back, and, as he watched, Menhit shifted her weight from the traditional pose. She held a flail in one hand, and the flexible metal strips dangling from it whispered against each other as she moved.