Paper and Fire: Deleted Scene

He was at Glain's door a minute early, and wasn't surprised to find her already pacing the floor, showered and dressed and ready. When he rapped on wood, she turned, grabbed the light muslin of his shirt, and pulled him inside to slam it behind him.

"Careful," Jess said, and kept his voice very low. "They're going to think we're lovers."

She laughed under her breath. "I should damn well hope so. Why else would I be dragging you in here?" It was a bitter, sarcastic question, and she shoved him backward with enough force he banged into the door.

"Be gentle," he said. "Where are we going?" Because he expected that their meeting—whoever it was with—would happen off High Garda grounds. As trainees, they weren't supposed to leave the grounds, but he slipped off regularly, and knew Glain did the same.

"No need to leave on my account."

That was a new voice, coming from the far corner of the small room, near the closet and Jess's instincts whipped his hand to the knife he had concealed. In the next instant he knew he didn't need it. The voice was dry and cool, and it belonged to Scholar Christopher Wolfe.

Wolfe. Here. In Glain's quarters, in the heart of High Garda country. For a moment, all Jess could do was stare, and then he said, "This isn't bright."

"Oh, believe me, I know. But it can't be helped," Wolfe said. He was in his black Scholar's robes, which matched well to his coal-dark hair, only lightly shot here and there with threads of silver; his sharp, thin face looked, as always, serious. He settled himself on Glain's small, neatly made cot like a crow taking a perch, and as his sleeve slipped back, Jess glimpsed the thick gold bracelet around his wrist—the gold of a Scholar, bonded to the Library for life. Jess had always thought of that bracelet as a badge of honor, but since his time with Wolfe, he now saw it as something else altogether: a shackle. A painful reminder that the Library he'd always believed in wasn't what it seemed.

Jess had a one year contract. At the end, he could run away.

Wolfe never could.

Glain dragged up two small folding camp stools she kept in the corner and perched on one without a glance toward Jess. "You take a devil of a chance, coming here. Something must have happened."

Wolfe fixed his iron-hard gaze on her, and only her. "I told you that I wished to see you. Not Brightwell."

"We're a team," she said. "We're in this together. I'm not your Postulant. I don't take orders from you anymore, Scholar."

"You still owe me respect, Sergeant."

"Respect you have. Not obedience."

That got her a direct, dark stare from Christopher Wolfe, and in that flat regard, Jess saw the damage. Wolfe was a complicated man who'd suffered a great deal, and with remarkably little visible scarring—at least, where it could be seen. But sometimes, just sometimes, you saw it in his eyes. This was a man who fought with ghosts.

Wolfe said, "Brightwell's reaction will be emotional. I need logic just now."

"Is it Morgan?" Jess leaped to that conclusion without any evidence at all, and damn well yes, his reaction was emotional. He didn't want to think about Morgan; the pain of that was like touch the sharp edge of a razor. "Is she all right—"

"The girl's safe," Wolfe interrupted, with a note of impatience in his voice. "She's the Library's most valuable asset. They'll treat her very well, until she causes trouble, and I trust she's smart enough not to do that ... yet."