The street ahead had but maybe fifty people on foot, including at least ten Scholars stalking in their billowing black robes. No steam carriages; they weren't permitted here any more, not since they'd closed this road to through traffic. The golden dome rose up serene and gleaming overhead, and below it, a waterfall of steps flowed down from it.
There were still scars on the steps, despite all efforts to clean it, from the last Burner explosion. Stains from the Greek Fire and the burnt bodies of those who'd been killed. A mound of dying flowers marked the spot, though a groundsman was in the process of shoving them into a bag for disposal. The mourning period was over. Time to move on.
Jess slowed to a jog as he caught sight of the lions. Stone, they resembled, but they had the feral look of life - something caught in a moment of violence, of fury and blood and death about to spring. He'd heard of the automata, machines that moved on their own, but they were far, far more terrifying in person, now that he was close enough to really see them.
Jess risked another look behind. The London Garda would be organising men to meet him beyond the barriers on the other side, if the High Garda of the Library didn't bestir themselves to get him first. He needed to run, quick as lightning, but despite that knowledge his feet slowed down to a walk.
He was smothered by dread. Fear. A horrible sense of being hunted.
And then one of the automaton lions turned its head towards him. The eyes shone red. Red like blood. Red like fire.
They could smell it on him, the illegal book. Or maybe just his fear.
Jess felt a wash of cold terror so strong it almost loosened his bladder, but he somehow managed to hold the lion's fiery gaze as he kept walking on. He left the pavement and took to the middle of the street where the authorised pedestrians seemed more comfortably gathered, and hoped to hide himself from those feral eyes.
The lion rose from its haunches, shook itself, and padded down the steps, soundless and beautiful and deadly. The other beasts woke, too, their eyes flickering red, bodies stretching.
A woman on the street - someone who'd been passed through the checkpoint - shrieked in alarm, clutched her bag, and ran for it. The others caught the fever and ran, too, and Jess ran with them, hoping they'd cover him like cutters even though they didn't know they were part of his gang.
When he glanced back, two lions were loping behind them. They weren't hurrying. They didn't have to work very hard to overtake mere humans.
The first lion reached the laggardmost of the fleeing people - a female Scholar, dressed in clumsy robes and burdened with a heavy bag that she'd foolishly not abandoned - and leapt. Jess paused, because it was the most graceful and horrible thing he'd ever seen, and he saw the woman look back and see it coming and the horror on her face, her shriek cut short as the lion's bulk crushed her down ...
... but the lion never took its eyes off of Jess. It killed her and left her and came on, straight for him. He could hear the whir and click of the gears inside.
He didn't have time to feel the horror.
He'd thought he'd run himself flat out before, but now, now, seeing the death that was at his heels, Jess flew. He felt nothing but the pressure of the wind; he knew there was a crowd around him screaming for help and mercy, but he heard none of it. At the far end of the street stood the other Garda barrier, another crowd of people waiting for their turn, but that crowd was starting to scatter. The lions weren't supposed to chase anyone past the boundaries of St Paul's, but nobody was going to take that risk. Not even the Garda, who abandoned their stations with the rest.
Jess was the first to the barricade, and he vaulted over it as the lions caught and crushed two more behind him. He tripped and fell and knew, knew he would feel death on him in the next heartbeat. He flipped over on his back so he could see it coming, gagged for breath, and held up his hands in an entirely useless defence.
There was no need. The lions pulled up at the barricade. They paced back and forth and watching him with cold, red fury, but they didn't, or couldn't, leap the thin wooden line to come after him.
One roared. It was a sound like stones grinding, and the screams of those it had killed, and he saw the sharp fangs in its mouth ... and then both the lions turned and padded back up the street to the steps and back to the landing, where they settled into a waiting crouch.
He could see the bloody paw prints and human wreckage they left in their wake, and he couldn't forget - knew he never would - the look of despair and horror on the look of the woman who'd been the first to be crushed.
My fault.
He couldn't think about that. Not now.
Jess rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and melted into the panicked crowd. He cut back onto his route after another few long, tense blocks. The Garda seemed to have lost the will to chase him. The deaths at the Serapeum would be explained away in the official news; nobody wanted to hear that the Library's pet automata had slipped their leashes and killed innocents. Whispers said it had happened before, but this was the first time Jess had really seen it.
Or believed it.
He stopped at a public fountain to gulp some water and try to stop his shaking, and then a public convenience to check that the book was still snug and safe in its harness. It was. He took a slower pace the rest of the way, and arrived at the end of the route just a few minutes late - exhausted, but weak with relief. He just wanted to be finished, be home, for all the cold comfort it would offer him.
Buck up, boy. He could almost hear his father's rough voice. No one lives for ever. Count the day a victory.
It might be a victory, Jess reckoned, but it was a hollow one.
His instructions were to look for the man with a red waistcoat, and there the man was, sitting at his ease at an outdoor table. He sipped tea from a china cup. Jess didn't know him, but he knew the type: filthy rich, idle, determined to make themselves important by collecting important things. Everything the man wore seemed tailored and perfect.
Jess knew how to make the approach. He ran up to the man and put on his best urchin face and said, 'Please, sir, can you spare a bit for my sick mum?'
'Sick, is she?' The man raised his well-groomed eyebrows and set down his cup. 'What ails the woman?'
This was the key question, and Jess held the man's eyes as he said, 'Her stomach, sir. Right here.' He placed a careful finger on the centre of his chest, where his harness formed the bulge beneath.
The man nodded and smiled. 'Well, that would seem to be a worthwhile cause. Come with me and I'll see you right. Come on, now, don't be afraid.'
Jess followed. Around the corner waited a beautiful steam carriage, all ornate curls of gold and silver and black enamel, with some coat of arms on the door that he only got a quick glance at before the man boosted him up inside. Jess expected the buyer to follow him in, but he didn't.
The inside of the carriage had a glow tube running around the top that cast a dim golden light, and by it Jess realised that the one he'd taken for the flash client was really only a servant.
The old man sitting across from him was ever so much grander. His black suit seemed sharp enough to cut, the shirt the finest quality silk, and he looked effortlessly pampered. Jess caught the rich gleam of gold at his cuffs, and the shine of a huge diamond on the stickpin piercing his silk tie.
The only detail that didn't fit with the image of a toff were the ice-cold eyes in that soft, wrinkled face. They looked like a killer's.
What if this isn't about the book? Jess thought. He knew kids could be taken for vile purposes, but his father always made precautions, and punished those who took advantage of cutters ... which was passing rare, these days, as even the toffs knew they weren't safe from the long, strong arm of the Brightwells.
But looking at this man, nothing seemed so safe as all that. He glanced at the wide windows, but they were blacked out. No one could see inside.
'You were late.' The toff's voice was soft and even. 'I'm not accustomed to waiting.'
Jess swallow
ed hard. 'Sorry, sir. Only by a minute,' he said. He unbuttoned his vest and pulled off his shirt, and worked the buckles behind his back to release the harness. It was, as he feared, dark with sweat, but the book compartment had been well lined, and the book itself wrapped in layers of protective oiled paper. 'The book's safe.'
The man grabbed for it like an addict for a pipe, and ripped away the coverings. He let out a slow breath when his trembling fingers touched the ornate leather casing.
With a jolt of shock, Jess realised that he knew that book. He'd grown up seeing it in a glass case in his father's deepest, darkest secret treasure trove. He didn't yet read Greek, but he knew what the letters incised on the leather cover meant, because his father had taught him that much. It was the only existing hand copy of On Sphere Making by Aristotle, and one of the first ever bound books. The original scroll had been destroyed by a Burner at the Alexandrian Library ages ago, but there had been one copy made. This one. Owning it carried a death penalty. When you steal a book, you steal from the world, the Library propaganda said, and Jess supposed it might be true.
Especially for this book.
He'd been running the rarest and most valuable thing in the entire world. No wonder his father hadn't dared tell him what he carried.
The man looked up at him with an insanely bright gleam in his eyes. 'You don't know how long I've waited for this,' he said. 'There's nothing like possessing the best, boy. Nothing.'
As Jess watched in numb horror, the man tore a page from the book and stuffed it into his mouth.
'Stop!' Jess shrieked, and snatched for the book. 'What are you doing?'
The old man shoved back, and pinned Jess against the carriage wall with a silver-tipped walking stick. He grinned at him and ripped another page loose to chew and swallow.
'No,' Jess whispered. He felt horror-stricken, and he didn't even know why. This was like watching murder. Defilement. And it was somehow worse than either of those things. Even among his family, black trade as they were, books were holy things. Only the Burners thought different. Burners, and whatever this perverse creature might be.
The old man leisurely ripped loose another page. He seemed relaxed now. Sated. 'Do you understand what I'm doing, boy?'
Jess shook his head. He was trembling all over.
'I have fellows who spend fortunes to slay the last living example of a rare animal and serve it for a dinner party. There's no act of possession more complete than consuming the unique. It's mine now. It will never be anyone else's.'
'You're mad,' Jess spat. He felt as though he might spew all over the fine leather and brightwork, and he couldn't seem to get a clean breath.
The rich man chewed another page and swallowed, and his expression turned bitter. 'Hold your tongue. You're an unlettered guttersnipe, a nobody. I could kill you and leave you here, and no one would notice or care. But you're not special enough to kill, boy. Ten a penny, the likes of you.' He ripped out another page. When Jess tried to grab for the book again, the old man pulled it out of his reach and smacked him soundly on the side of the head with the cane.
Jess reeled back with tears in his eyes and his head ringing like the bells of St Paul's. The man rapped on the carriage door. The flash servant in his red vest opened the door and grabbed Jess's arm to haul him out to sprawl on the cobbles.
The toff leant out and grinned at him with ink-stained teeth. He tossed something out - Jess's rag-picker shirt and vest. And a single gold coin.
'For your troubles, gutter rat,' the old man said, and shoved another page of something that had once been perfect into his maw to chew it to bits.
Jess found he was weeping, and he didn't know why, except he knew he could never go back to what he'd been before he'd climbed in that carriage. Never not remember.
The man in the vest climbed up to the driver's seat of the carriage. He looked down on Jess with an unsmiling, unfeeling stare, then engaged the engine.
Jess saw the old toff inside the carriage tip his hat before he slammed the door, and then the conveyance lurched to a roll, heading away.
Jess came to his feet and ran a few steps after the departing carriage. 'Wait!' he yelled, but it was useless, worthless, and it drew attention to the fact he was half-naked, and there was a very visible smuggling harness clutched to his chest. Jess wanted to retch. The death of people crushed under the paws of the Library's lions had shocked him, but seeing that deliberate, horrifying destruction of a book, especially that book - it was far worse. St Paul had said, lives are short, but knowledge is eternal. Jess had never imagined that someone would be so empty that they'd need to destroy something that precious, that unique, to feel full.
The carriage disappeared around a corner, and Jess had to think about himself, even shaky as he was. He tightened the buckles on the harness again, slipped the shirt over his head and added the vest, and then he walked - he did not run - back to the warehouse where his father waited. The city swirled around him in vague colours and faces.
He couldn't even feel his legs, and he shivered almost constantly. Because the route had been burnt into him, he walked by rote, taking the twists and turns without noting them, until he realised he was standing in the street of his father's warehouse.
One of the guards at the door spotted him, darted out, and hustled him inside. 'Jess? What happened, boy?'
Jess blinked. The man had a kind sort of look at the moment, not the killer Jess knew he could be. Jess shook his head and swiped at his face. His hand came away wet.
The man looked grave when Jess refused to speak, and motioned over one of his fellows, who ran off quick in search of Jess's father. Jess sank down in a corner, still shaking, and when he looked up, his mirror image was standing in front of him - not quite his mirror, really, since Brendan's hair had grown longer and he had a tiny scar on his chin.
Brendan crouched down to stare directly into his brother's eyes. 'You all right?' he asked. Jess shook his head. 'You're not bleeding, are you?' When Jess didn't respond, Brendan leant closer and dropped his voice low. 'Did you run into a fiddler?'
Fiddler was the slang they used for the perverts, men and women alike, who liked to get their pleasure from children. For the first time, Jess found his voice. 'No,' he said. 'Not like that. Worse.'
Brendan blinked. 'What's worse than a fiddler?'
Jess didn't want to tell him, and at that moment, he didn't have to. The office door upstairs slammed, and Brendan jumped to his feet and disappeared again as he climbed up a ladder to the darkened storage where the book crates were hidden.
His father hurried over to where his eldest son sat leaning against the warehouse wall, and quickly ran hands over him to check for wounds. When he found none, he took off Jess's vest and shirt. Callum breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the harness sat empty. 'You delivered,' he said, and ruffled Jess's hair. 'Good lad.'
Approval from his father brought instant tears to Jess's eyes, and he had to choke them down. I'm all untied, he thought, and he was ashamed of himself. He hadn't been hurt. He hadn't been fiddled. Why did he feel so sullied?
He took a deep breath and told his father the truth, from the lions and the dead people, to the toff in the carriage, to the death of On Sphere Making. Because that was what he'd seen: a murder - the murder of something utterly unique and irreplaceable. That, he began to realise, was what he felt that had left him so unsettled: grief. Grief, and horror.
Jess expected his father - a man who still, at heart, loved the books he bought and sold so illegally - to be outraged, or at least share his son's horror. Instead, Callum Brightwell just seemed resigned.
'You're lucky to get away with your life, Jess,' he said. 'He must have been drunk on his own power to let you see that, and walk. I'm sorry. It's true, there are a few like him out there; we call 'em ink-lickers. Perverts, the lot of them.'
'But ... that was the book. Aristotle's book.' Jess understood, at a very fundamental level, that when he'd seen that book be destroyed, he'd seen a li
ght pass out of the world. 'Why did you do it, Da? Why did you sell it to him?'
Callum averted his eyes. He clapped Jess hard on the shoulder, and squeezed with enough force to bend bone. 'Because that's our business. We sell books to those who pay for the privilege, and you'd best learn that what is done with them after is not our affair. But still, well done. Well done this day. We'll make a Brightwell of you yet.'
His father had always been strict about his children writing nightly in their handwritten journals, and Jess took up his pen before bed. After much thought, he described the ink-licker, and what it was like seeing him chew up such a rare, beautiful thing. His da had always said it was for the future, a way for family to remember him once he was gone ... and to never talk about business, because business lived beyond them. So he left that part out, running the book. He only talked about the pervert and how it had made him feel, seeing that. His da might not approve, but no one read personal journals. Even Brendan wouldn't dare.
Jess dreamt uneasily that night of blood and lions and ink-stained teeth, and he knew nothing he'd done had been well done at all.
But it was the world in which he lived, in London, in the year 2025.
EPHEMERA
Decree of the Work submitted by the Scholar Johannes Gutenberg, in the year 1455. Restricted to the Black Archive under the order of the Archivist Magister, for use of Curators only.
... One thing is certain: the foundation of the Great Library itself, from the Doctrine of Mirroring forward, rests the safety and security of human knowledge upon the work of Obscurists, and this system cannot be long sustained.
I propose a purely mechanical solution. The attached designs show a device that can efficiently, accurately reproduce text without the involvement of an Obscurist, through the simple use of hand-cut letters, a frame in which they would be placed, ink, and plain paper. Through this method, we may eliminate the Doctrine of Mirroring and instead create fast, easily made reproductions of our volumes.
I have created a working model, and reproduced the page you hold now. It is the first of its kind, and I believe it is the future of the world.
Tota est scientia.