‘It’s colder here,’ Jess said. ‘Maybe it’s a cold-weather weapon.’

Thomas gave him a long-suffering look. ‘That’s nonsense.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s a perfectly good question!’

‘It’s an engineering question.’ Jess put a hand on his own sidearm, but didn’t draw it. It felt warm. That was probably just an illusion. ‘As long as they work, I don’t care. Though I’d rather have the ones that do real damage.’

‘That’s because you’re insane,’ Thomas said. ‘I’m happy I don’t have one.’

‘Well, you’re a terrible shot.’ Jess realised the two of them were chattering at each other to pretend they weren’t resisting the urge to run. All this had seemed better in concept.

Costigan had finished dispensing the weapons, and disappeared back into the straight, perfect lines of the soldiers. Santi nodded to Wolfe, who turned towards the students.

‘Follow me,’ he said, and took them past the motionless, expressionless soldiers to a waiting steam carriage, one clearly painted with the Library’s symbol. It hissed a steady white stream into the air from the exhaust pipe, and unlike most public or private carriages Jess had ever seen, it had no brightwork at all on it … just plain, dull paint, the bright metallic symbol standing bolder than ever.

When the door swung open for them, there was nothing inside it except a bare, metal floor, and two seats up front for the driver and his escort gunner.

‘Where do we sit?’ Portero, the first one in, asked Wolfe.

‘On the floor,’ Wolfe said, as patiently as if it wasn’t painfully obvious. ‘It’s a tight fit. Get comfortable. You won’t have this much luxury on the way out.’

Tight fit was right. Jess, who, last in, had hardly enough space to sit without making a home on the ill-placed feet of those around him. Poor Thomas was squashed in the corner, which couldn’t have been half so comfortable. At least Jess had the door at his back to lean against. Could have been worse. Was, for those in the middle.

Morgan and Khalila had managed to find places at the back, against a wall. Jess nodded to Morgan, but she didn’t seem to notice.

Khalila did, and gave him a brave smile. Which made Dario, intercepting it, scowl.

‘Welcome to the war,’ their driver said, with frightening good cheer. ‘Water’s in the canteens on the side. Drink up. We’ll be on the road a while. If you get sick, try to spew on each other, not on me.’

‘How long is the ride?’ Glain asked from the back.

‘Four hours, more or less. Patience. We’ll get you where you’re going.’

‘Might even get you there in one piece, if you’re lucky,’ his gunner said, and did something to the large gun he held that made it give a sharp, metallic click.

The driver nodded to someone outside the carriage. ‘We’re rolling.’

‘Rolling,’ the gunner confirmed, and the carriage moved forward with a sudden jerk. It picked up speed, rattling over old cobbles, and Jess gritted his teeth against the juddering motion.

As Wolfe had already promised, it was to be a hard trip.

By the time they reached the forward positions of the Welsh army, the pace of the Library carriages had slowed to a crawl, lurching over rough and broken roads, through mud, over debris that Jess was glad he didn’t have to look at through the front windows. Someone in the back had asked what the smell was, and the gunner had answered, woodenly and accurately, ‘War.’ It was a foul mix of things that worked on the brain in terrible ways, and Jess was fairly certain that what they were smelling had to be the bodies of unburied dead.

When they finally ground to a halt, Jess felt as sore as if he’d been run through the same number of hours of Wolfe’s brutal training, and he knew everyone felt the same.

‘Everybody out,’ the gunner said, and slid open the door at Jess’s back. Jess had to catch himself from tumbling to the mud. His legs had gone to sleep, and he endured the sharp-prick pain of blood reviving dulled, sleeping nerves. While he leant against the muddy surface of the carriage and helped the others out, he realised that they were all being watched.

The Welsh were camped here in wide tents – hard, dangerous-looking men and women sitting on camp stools, cleaning weapons. Some were talking together, but they all had their wary, assessing eyes on the newcomers.

The Welsh wore dark green, dappled with brown, but the colours were camouflaged further by the ever-present mud. The only colourful spot on them were the red Welsh dragons embroidered on their shoulders. Jess returned their stares for a second before helping the others down from the carriage. When they were all assembled in a tight, anxious cluster, Wolfe arrived, with Captain Santi. Santi, like his men, was dressed in black, with the Library’s symbol prominently displayed in gold on the front and back. He was also armed to the teeth, and moved more confidently than Jess had ever seen him. This was Captain Santi’s natural home, the battlefield, and his dark eyes missed nothing – not the tension of the Welsh troops, the muttering, the hands gripping weapons a shade too tightly.

‘With me,’ Wolfe said to his flock, and they all scrambled after him and Santi as they strode through the muddy field towards the centre of the encampment. When Jess looked back, he saw that the other Library troops had fallen into a guard formation around the vehicles. They’d also picked up a squad of High Garda men and women behind them.

‘Do we need so much protection? We’re armed, after all,’ Thomas said. He sounded a touch anxious, though he was fighting to press it down. Jess sent him a glance. The young German’s face was tense, but still.

‘So are the Welsh,’ Jess said. ‘And they’ve fired at real targets.’

Thomas wasn’t the only one feeling unsettled; every one of them seemed to be, even Dario, though the Spaniard covered it by returning challenging looks from Welsh troops with glares of his own. Khalila kept her head down, but that might have only been because of the treacherous footing.

Morgan pulled closer to Jess, close enough that their arms brushed as they walked. He sent her a sidelong glance. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Why would I be?’

He hadn’t thought about what it would feel like, coming home to this … to the war, the destruction, the ruin of everything she knew. The fact that she was bearing it with dry eyes and steady hands seemed remarkable to him.

Glain, on the other hand, looked pallid in the cold, damp air, with hectic spots of red high in her cheeks. It occurred to Jess for the first time that she was walking through her own country’s men and women, and yet seen as an intruder. Could have even been her kin standing there, watching her, he supposed. It must have been as much of a shock to her as what Morgan was feeling.

No one menaced them on the march to the tent. A light rain started to fall, which was miserable in the cold; the Library’s coat was waterproofed, at least, and Jess pulled up the hood to shield his face as the rain pattered harder, and then, without warning, cut loose in a silver flood from above. It only made the muddy footing worse, but Wolfe and Santi kept a quick pace, and the rest of them stumbled along as best they could in their wake.

An immaculately turned-out Welsh soldier met them at the entrance and directed them to wipe their boots on the stiff mat before coming in; they all dutifully followed that instruction, not that Jess imagined it would help very much. The mud seemed determined to get everywhere.

Inside, the floor was a thick, stiff material, and within the canvas walls it was mysteriously warm. Jess hadn’t realised how chilled he’d become until the heat began to chip it away. Wolfe motioned his students back against the walls, out of the way. Jess pulled his hood back and stood silently as Wolfe and Santi greeted the Welsh commander, who waited on a square of carpeting in the centre of the room next to a large camp table. Plans and maps were still on it, but rolled away from prying eyes.