“We were thinking about Thomas!” Jess shouted back. “The longer we hide from this, the more he’ll be hurt! Broken! You—of all people, you know that!”

Santi looked at Wolfe with a stilled expression. His long fingers curled too tightly around the edge of the table, and then he nodded. “I know, too,” he said. “I was there when Wolfe crawled bloody to this door. I’m the one who saw what was done to him. And we are not taking this risk blindly.”

“That’s the point, sir. That’s why I’m here. We’re all going to die if we don’t take action now. We need to get Thomas and get out!”

“Not without more definitive information.”

Jess swallowed, and said, “I think part of that answer is locked up in your memories, Scholar. You were taken, just like Thomas. You were even taken for the same reasons. Maybe they took you to the same place.” He spread his hands. “We’ve tried everything else.”

“No,” Santi said.

Wolfe ignored that. “There’s no guarantee that anything I recall will help,” he said. “Still less will it be real proof that’s where they’re holding Thomas.”

“It’s more than what we’ve got right now, isn’t it?”

Wolfe looked at him for a moment without any expression, and then shook his head. “I can’t recall any useful details. What they did to me was very effective.”

“Leave it, Jess,” Santi said. “I’m sorry, but this has gone far enough. I have to look after Christopher’s safety now.”

“There is no safety—you said so yourself.”

“I told you, leave it alone. This isn’t some adventure; it’s a bloody war. They pay me to be a tactician, and I can tell you this: we can’t win. We don’t have the numbers or the weapons or the knowledge. We’re defeated before we start, and, yes, I will look after the one I love before all else, and devil take the rest of you if it comes to that!”

Wolfe didn’t seem to hear any of that as he paced, but suddenly he said, “Brightwell. Can you secure a Mesmer who knows his business and can be trusted?”

Mesmers weren’t common in Alexandria, but there were a few, and some who plied a trade more in the shadows than in the light. The entertainers—the ones who made volunteers dance like chickens or pretend to fly—those had been certified by the Library. There were others whose motives were more purely profit driven. “I think so,” Jess said.

Santi said, “No. Under no circumstances will I allow it.”

Wolfe said, in the same mild tone, “Ignore that. He doesn’t want me to remember more, of course. He thinks I’ll shatter like a dropped vase if I do.”

“Will you?” Jess asked.

“Yes!” Santi said, and it was a shout compressed beneath an artificial calm. “He’ll destroy himself. And you’ve got a target on your back, Jess. Don’t forget it.”

Jess shrugged. “I grew up with the Garda chewing at my heels. Business as usual.”