He knew the way to his brother’s rented home; he’d walked past it a few times, studying it. But it occurred to him that along the way, he needed to make a stop at the shadow markets.

Growing up in the book-market trade, he’d been dragged along to these sorts of places since he was old enough to understand what went on there and the risks. He remembered, at ten years old, carrying a satchel of rare books for his father as they followed warrenlike alleys into a particularly wretched little shop near Cricklewood. It had not, of course, sold books; it sold pens, journals, Codices—all the products of the Library. The old man who ran it had opened up a trapdoor to a tunnel that ran below the shop, and well beneath the city, they’d found London’s Graymarket, a moving, ever-changing feast of illegal books and those who craved them. There were always two or three clumps of nervous newcomers who’d found caches of books in dead relatives’ homes and looked to sell them off for a quick profit; those, his father always targeted first. He bought cheap, and relieved those otherwise upright citizens to scamper home with their guilty money.

Then he’d set up at a table all his own, and sell the real beauties to true collectors.

The Alexandrian market was nothing like that, of course; there were no tunnels here, or if there were, Jess had never found them, except for sewer drains. It meant that the Alexandrian smugglers had to be even cleverer and a good deal bolder.

He found Red Ibrahim’s daughter, Anit, minding a table. There was absolutely nothing on it, not even a hint of what was for sale; everyone knew it was a matter of requests and fees, not options. She looked up at him as he approached and gave him a calm look. “I have nothing else for you,” she said. “I heard about your adventures at Alexander’s tomb. Clever of you to escape.”

“Clever had help,” he said, and handed her a paper drawing of a sphinx, and the location of the switch he’d found. “In memory of your brothers, Anit. Thank you.”

She said nothing for a moment, just stared at the page hard, then folded it up and slipped it into a pocket of her skirt. “You’re not negotiating for this?”

“No.”

She pulled the chain from beneath the neck of her dress and held the embossed ring that hung on it like a talisman. “Then I’m in your debt.”

“If you mean that, there’s something you could do for me. I’m trying to locate someone who can tell me about the fate of a boy who was arrested at Ptolemy House about six months ago, taken to the Serapeum, and questioned. I want to find out where he was sent after that.”

Anit sat back in her chair. “This is not what we do, Jess Brightwell. We sell books. Not information.” Then she looked down, and said quietly, “But I will ask.”