Irene found herself shivering. She pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and tried to rein her thoughts back from a train of needlessly baroque images. Stupid thoughts. After all, it wasn’t as if Alberich was on her trail at this very moment . . .
Was it?
The message from the Library couldn’t have been faked. It must have been sent by one of the senior Librarians, probably Coppelia. It wouldn’t have been sent unless the situation was urgent, which meant that she had to assume that Alberich was in the area. Worst-case scenario.
She glanced back into a shop window. Nobody seemed to be following her.
She needed to talk to Dominic, urgently, but the British Library would be shut at this time of night. He’d be at home—the address being somewhere in the papers Kai was safeguarding. Tomorrow morning would be easier. For the moment she and Kai had to find a new hotel and go undercover.
Irene wanted to go very deeply undercover. She wanted to go so deeply undercover that it’d take an automated steam shovel to excavate her out of it. She also had to decide how much to tell Kai. It was too dangerous to leave him in the dark, not to mention simply unfair, but at the same time she didn’t want to panic him. After all, look how panicked she was herself. One panicked person was quite enough. Two would be overkill.
Possibly he’d be ignorant enough not to realize just how bad the situation might be. Possibly he wouldn’t have heard the horror stories that had been traded round in quiet alcoves about some of the things that Alberich had done.
And possibly, Irene decided, as she came within sight of Holborn Tube station and saw Kai loitering under a street lamp, pigs would fly—which would at least mean bacon for breakfast. Oh well. Hotel first. Dramatic explanations later.
CHAPTER 7
“I don’t want to complain or anything,” Kai said, “but we’re currently holed up in a cheap hotel.”
“We are,” Irene agreed. She sat down and began to work her buttoned boots off, with a sigh of relief.
“This place isn’t just cheap; it’s filthy!” Kai gestured round at the tatty yellow wallpaper, the dirt-streaked window, the threadbare counterpane on the double bed, the sallow mirror on the rickety dresser. “You can’t seriously expect us to—”
“Kai,” Irene said firmly. “You’re spoilt. What happened to the shady but useful background? What happened to being a cool street runner who could handle that sort of thing? Have five years in the Library really softened you up that much?”
Kai looked around, and his nose wrinkled. “Yes,” he finally said. “They have.” He sat down on the very edge of the bed. “Is this much deep cover really necessary? Couldn’t we, you know, go and hide out at the most expensive hotel in town and claim we’re Canadians?”
“No,” Irene said. She removed one boot and started to work on the other. “Deep cover. For the moment, I want us untraceable. We’ll clean up tomorrow and find a nicer place.”
“Is something the matter?”
Irene pulled off the second boot. “Oof.” She had to tell him; it wouldn’t be safe to keep him ignorant. “There is a potential problem,” she admitted slowly. “I don’t know that it’s an immediate issue.”
Kai just looked at her.
“I had an urgent message from the Library.” The next few words were difficult to say and even more difficult to keep calm and reasonable. “It warned me to beware Alberich. You can pour me some of that brandy now.”
Kai’s hand halted halfway to the brandy bottle, on Irene’s list of essential supplies. “Wait,” he said slowly. “When you say Alberich, do you mean the one who’s supposed to be . . .” He trailed off, leaving it hanging. And, Irene noted to her displeasure, not pouring her brandy, either.
“No,” Irene said. “I don’t mean the one who’s supposed to be. I mean the one who is. Not that I’ve ever met him, and with any luck we won’t have to and this is just a precaution.” She hoped. “Now can I have that brandy?”
“He’s real?” Kai said. Still no brandy.
“He’s recorded in the Library. How could he not be real?”
Kai looked blank. “He could be fictional?”
Irene gritted her teeth. “No. He was formally marked for the Library, given the initiation and everything. That’s why he can’t go back there. It’d know he was there. But it proves that he is real, that he’s not some sort of urban legend like the thing about the pipes and the tentacle monster.” That had been one of the popular ones when she was a trainee. The logic was that if rooms of the Library could be connected by the plumbing, then there was some sort of dark central cistern with a huge tentacle monster living in it that ate old Librarians. And of course it was all covered up by order from on high . . . She and other trainees had spent several hopeful hours rapping on pipes and trying to pass messages or find tentacles. “Brandy?” she finished.
Kai finally remembered to get up and open the bottle. He splashed a bare quarter inch into a battered china cup and offered it to her.
“Thank you,” Irene said, and knocked it back in one gulp, then offered the cup for a refill. “A bit more this time, please.”
Kai stared at her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“It’s been a busy evening,” Irene said. “And I’m going to be sitting up for the next few hours studying the local Language listings that Dominic gave us. You can get some sleep.”
“But we ought to tell Dominic at once! After all, if Alberich’s here, it proves how important the book is! And we should warn Dominic—”
“How?” Irene enquired. She’d decided a while back that Socratic questioning was a good idea, because (a) it got students thinking for themselves, (b) sometimes they came up with ideas she hadn’t thought of, and (c) it gave her more time to think while they were trying to find answers.
“We can go to the British Library—oh wait. It won’t be open at this time of night.”
“It won’t,” Irene agreed, “which is going to be annoying if we need to sneak back in there at some point to get back to the Library. And he didn’t give us a home address.” It should have been in those papers he’d given them. It wasn’t. Which, a niggling voice at the back of her mind pointed out, had been careless of Dominic. Almost to the point of outright dereliction of duty in such a dangerous location. She might have needed his help urgently.
“We can use the Language to contact him,” Kai said triumphantly.
Irene considered that. “I can make a construct and send it to warn him, but it will need to travel and find him.”
“Magic,” Kai said.
“Not my field,” Irene replied. “Are you any good at it?”
“I can command some spirits,” Kai said modestly. “But I haven’t had time to introduce myself to any local ones. I wouldn’t want to try that unless we have no other choice.”
Irene nodded. “And Dominic did say they could be dangerous. So we’ll go to the British Library in the morning and talk to Dominic in person, then. The Library will have updated him in any case, just as they did me. It’s not as if we’re leaving him in danger. This isn’t a bad horror film.” She smiled, hopefully reassuringly.
“Oh,” Kai said. He glanced at the small case by the door with the documents in it. “So,” he said, with a little too much casualness, “can you show me some of the Language words in there?”
“I could, but it wouldn’t do you any good.” Irene put down the cup. “It won’t be any different from how it is inside the Library. It still won’t look like anything other than normal speech to you.”
“Did it hurt?”
Irene blinked at the change of subject. “Did what hurt?”
“Getting the Library mark.” Kai threw himself back down on the bed. It creaked under him. “If that’s the only way to understand the Language.”
“Yes, and yes.” Since Kai evidently wasn’t going to bring it ov
er to her, Irene got up and walked across to fetch the case. “Look, you should get some sleep. There’s no point us both staying up all night.”
Kai rolled onto his front, resting his chin on his hands, and looked up at her. “Irene,” he said, and there was something low and stroking in his voice. “When you say sleep, do you really mean just sleep?”
Irene looked at him, the case in her hands, and raised her eyebrows pointedly. “Yes. I do really mean just sleep.”
“But you, me—we’re sharing rather a small space, don’t you think?” He stretched, and she noticed his trousers clung appealingly tightly. “You’re not feeling some kind of in loco parentis responsibility towards a novice, are you? Is that what it is?”
“No,” Irene said briefly. “But it’s irrelevant in any case.”
“But—”
“Look,” she cut him off, before he got any ideas about standing up and taking her in his arms or anything like that. “Kai, I like you, you’re extremely handsome, and I hope we’ll stay good friends, but you are not my type.”
“Oh,” he said.
She walked back, sat down, and opened the case, starting to thumb through the papers inside.
“What is your type?” Kai asked hopefully.
Irene looked up to see that he’d removed his cravat and unbuttoned his shirt and was showing a triangle of smooth, pale, muscular chest. She could imagine what he would feel like under her fingers.
She swallowed. “Do we really have to do this?”
“I’m not just trying to flatter you,” Kai said. There was a thread of annoyance in his voice now. “But I like you, I think you’re clever and witty and charming, and I have a lot of respect for you. And believe me when I say I am marvellous in bed.”
“I do believe you,” Irene said, looking for a way out of this. “I’m sure that we would spend a very nice evening. But I wouldn’t get any study done then.”
“After the study,” Kai said hopefully.
Irene rubbed her forehead with the back of one hand. She was getting a headache. “Look, I appreciate you being polite about this, I appreciate you being absolutely charming, and I wish I could be more polite about turning you down. But it’s been a long day and I still have work to do, and you’re not really my type. And before this goes any further, my type is darkly dangerous and fascinating, of dubious morality. And yes, this caused the whole problem in the cat burglar scandal that was mentioned earlier. Which was deeply embarrassing at the time. And still is. Also, let me make myself perfectly clear that if you repeat this I will skin you alive. Right?”
Kai looked at her with big disappointed eyes. “I would have enjoyed partnering you,” he said. “Really. You would too.”
“Allow me to inform you that I am an exquisite bed partner,” Irene said, a little sniffily. “I have travelled through hundreds of alternates and sampled partners from many different cultures. If I took you to bed, you certainly wouldn’t be complaining.”
Kai gave her another deep stare from those drowning-dark eyes of his.
She sighed. “But right now, we have a book to find, I have to study, and you need to sleep. Please?”
Eventually he did, and she could work in peace, with only the occasional side thought about tempting offers and beautifully contoured muscles.
A couple of hours later, with Kai soundly asleep, Irene put down her papers and rubbed her sore temples. She’d just memorized a dozen different adverbs for the way that an airship moved, and fifteen adjectives for types of smog. She was due a break.
Unfortunately, thought came along with it.
Alberich was known to be allied with some of the Fae; he’d gone to them when he first went renegade. Now he allegedly played on their various factions with the energy of a lunatic musician with a pipe organ. The few fragmented reports that the Library had on him—at least those that were accessible to juniors like herself—suggested that he was after immortality.
She stared at the papers without really seeing them. Immortality. The Library gave an effective sort of immortality, or at least a continued life until the person involved grew tired of it. As long as a Library initiate bearing its mark was inside the Library, he or she didn’t age. Out in the multiple worlds, one grew old, but inside the Library, ageing just stopped. She’d spent years in the Library herself while she was training. She’d had years of experience that didn’t show anywhere obvious. Except perhaps her eyes sometimes, but she tried not to think about that.
That was why the Library hierarchy functioned as it did. Junior Librarians operated out in the divergent worlds while they still had the years to spare. Once they grew old, they retreated to work in the Library for as long as they chose, with only the occasional trip outside if necessary. These were people like Coppelia and Kostchei, spending their days in the endless rooms, finally able to get their research done properly. Some Librarians just lived on and on until they decided that they’d had enough, or went out into the alternate worlds to finish their days somewhere they liked. The Library paid for it, however expensive or exotic, on the grounds that “nothing is too good for those who’ve spent their lives in service to the Library.” Of course, it was similarly aged Librarians who voted for the funding on that sort of thing . . .
Irene wasn’t going to start thinking about that sort of thing yet. She had years in the field ahead of her yet. Decades. Things to do. People to see.
But then there was Alberich. He’d left the Library five hundred years ago. There was no way that he could still be alive by the Library’s normal methods. He must have made some sort of bargain with the Fae, creatures defined by their impossibility. Common horror or fantasy literature supplied half a dozen unpleasant ideas on how Alberich could still exist, though some of them might not count as living.
And what did he want to do with that continued existence? The Library could use unique books to connect and bind itself to particular alternate worlds. But what could someone else—someone from outside the Library—do with those linking books? It wasn’t an area within which junior Librarians had been encouraged to speculate. The best answer she could come up with at the moment was something bad.
After all, what might it imply if Alberich could influence whole worlds simply by owning certain key texts?
Irene seriously considered another brandy. This was all growing overly complicated. Bradamant wanting to take over the mission, the Fae involvement, Alberich . . . and then there was Kai.
She looked across at his sleeping form. He didn’t snore. Kai breathed gently and regularly, like an advertisement for particularly comfortable pillows. And he’d managed to fall asleep in just the sort of position that might require her to smooth his brow or wake him with a kiss. As for that earlier shift of persona from street punk to semi-aristocrat—he’d handled that detective like a gentleman born. And his current interest in wardrobe, seduction, and general adventure really didn’t fit the young man who’d introduced himself to her as Coppelia’s latest student. There was something off. Coppelia had to have noticed it herself.
Irene realized that she was tapping her finger against the papers. She deliberately stopped herself. Habits were dangerous; they could get you killed.
Had Bradamant’s interest in Kai been suspicious?
Irene had her own history with Bradamant, which she certainly wasn’t going to discuss in front of Kai, or behind Kai, or in any place where Kai might end up hearing about it. The woman was a poisonous snake. No, that was unfair to snakes. Irene had been Bradamant’s student once, and she knew exactly what it meant. Get used as a live decoy, somehow miss any of the credit, but catch all the blame. Then spend years putting your research credentials back together again, after the blot on your record caused by rejecting an older Librarian’s offer to take you out on another mission.
With an effort, she stopped herself from tapping on the papers again.
It was
just three in the morning; she could hear distant church bells and clock chimes drifting through the fog outside. Another hour of study; then she’d sleep and Kai could keep watch. She was paranoid enough to want someone keeping watch, however unlikely it was that Alberich or anyone else could find them here.
Paranoia was one of the few habits that was worth keeping.
* * *
At eight o’clock the next morning, the doors of the combined British Museum and British Library opened. Irene and Kai joined the crowd of people heading in. Luckily nobody was in the mood for talking at that hour of the morning. People kept their gazes fixed on their boots, stared blankly ahead, or buried themselves ferociously in notebooks.
The Department of Classical Manuscripts was open, but Dominic Aubrey’s office was closed. The door was locked, bolted, and possibly even barred on the inside, for all that Irene could tell. She didn’t remember noticing a bar when she’d been inside, but she might have missed it.
“Shall I pick the lock?” Kai asked as they (not for the first time) straightened from peering at it and did their best to imitate hopeful students, just in time to smile at passing staff.
“I’ll do it,” Irene said. “He may have put some sort of wards up against physical or sorcerous lock picking, but he can’t ward against the Language.” She paused. “Stand back.”
“Oh?” Kai said, doing as she’d told him.
“Well, wards are one thing, but traps and alarms are something else.” She ignored Kai’s expression of sudden dismay (really, he should be grateful; he was getting an excellent education) and quickly went down on one knee. There she informed the door in the Language that all seals and bars on it were undone, all locks and bolts opened, and all wards gone.
It swung open quietly when she set her hand on the handle. She beckoned Kai in quickly after her and closed the door behind him.
The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library Novel) Page 10