The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library Novel)

by Genevieve Cogman

  The room was just as it had been yesterday. Early morning sunlight came in dimly through the windows, muffled by the fog beyond, and gleamed on the gold leaf and glass cases. The Library door itself was secured by means of a chain and padlock, the chain running through both the door-handle and a metal link set into the wall. It would be useless to prevent anyone coming from the other side, as the power of the Library would prevail, but it was efficient enough to stop people from trying it from this side.

  “Irene,” Kai said uneasily.

  “Yes?”

  “If the door out was bolted from this side, and if the door to the Library was padlocked from this side too, how did anyone leave the room?”

  “A good point,” Irene said. Encourage useful habits of thought. “There must be a secret door here somewhere. Or he left through sorcery.”

  “So can you use the Language to find the secret door?”

  Irene sat down on the chair behind the desk. It was clearly Dominic Aubrey’s personal chair. It yielded with the ease of long use, with a single graceful creak, and smelled of snuff and coffee. “Not exactly. Field exam; tell me why.”

  “Oh, that’s not fair . . . ,” Kai started, then looked at her expression and shut his mouth to think. “Okay,” he said a moment later. “Sorry. I think I’ve got it. Everything within range of the Language reacts to it unless the command or sentence specifies otherwise, right? So if you just tell everything within range to unlock . . .”

  Irene nodded. “Then I’ll end up opening the cases, the drawers, the cabinets along the wall there, the padlock on the Library door, and quite possibly my handbag and your wallet and the windows while we’re at it. It’s a reasonable suggestion, but it won’t do unless we have absolutely no other choice. Now tell me why I’m not going to use sorcery.”

  Kai thought, then shrugged. “Because Dominic may have put wards on any secret door, which will blow up when you use sorcery to detect them?”

  “Actually, no.” Irene leaned her elbows on the desk. “It’s because I’m bad at sorcery.”

  “What? But anyone can do sorcery!”

  She lifted her eyebrows.

  “Seriously,” Kai said. “You must be joking. Sorcery’s one of the simplest skills around. Even my—my youngest brother could command the simpler spirits and invoke the elements. You’re not telling me that . . .” He ran out of words mid-sentence, with the uneasy look of someone who’d spotted that he’d said the wrong thing.

  Irene had noticed it too. “Your youngest brother,” she repeated softly.

  “Irene, I—”

  “If I’d had a family, you told me before.” She remembered the conversation in the Library, as forgetting was the last thing a fully trained Librarian should do. Memories were as important as books and almost as important as proper indexing. “Kai, you’ve been lying to me about some things and hiding others. I know it, and you know it.” She wished that she could run her hands through her hair in the way that he was doing now, but she was the older Librarian, and he was her apprentice, and she couldn’t afford to show weakness. She had to be in control. She liked him, and she didn’t actually like many people, and she didn’t want to accuse him. She didn’t want to . . . drive him away. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He drew himself up and stood in front of her, suddenly appearing very tall and yet somehow fragile. “I can’t,” he said.

  “You can,” Irene corrected him. “But it seems you won’t.”

  “Irene.” He swallowed. “I swear to you that it has nothing to do with the current situation. By my name and my honour and my descent, I swear it.”

  Saying As far as you know was the obvious response, but it would have made light of his obvious struggle and sincerity. And he was sincere; Irene was certain of that.

  Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that he was right or that he wasn’t an idiot.

  She sighed. “I accept your word and won’t ask for more unless the current situation dictates otherwise. But I will have to tell Coppelia about this, Kai. I can’t keep it secret.”

  “I’d expect that,” Kai said. He raised his eyes to look nobly at the opposite wall. “I would have known that you would report it, seeing as—”

  “Assuming she doesn’t already know,” Irene said thoughtfully.

  Kai twitched. “She can’t,” he said, in a tone that was more desperate hope than genuine conviction.

  “If I can spot something being odd in two days, then she can probably notice it in five years.” Irene stood up and patted Kai on the shoulder. “Relax. Now, let’s find this secret door. I’ll check the cabinets on this wall; you check the shelves on that wall.”

  She could hear Kai muttering behind her as she walked across to check the ranks of cabinets. They were full of carefully pinned-down pages, shards of pottery, pens, quills, typewriters, and other bits and pieces that obviously hadn’t been dusted for at least a couple of years. The locks on the cabinets were good, but the wood was dry and fragile. Any serious thief (such as herself, on more than one occasion) would simply have broken the frame or cut out the glass rather than trying to pick the lock.

  Kai sneezed.

  “Found anything?” she called across, not bothering to turn and look.

  “Only dust,” he said, and sneezed again.

  Irene went down on her hands and knees to check the bottom edge of the cabinets, looking for traces that they’d been moved. If this didn’t get her anywhere, then she’d forget about confidentiality and go through the drawers of Dominic’s desk. She didn’t seriously expect him to keep anything incriminating or important there, but it might at least give them his home address. Failing that, she and Kai could check with the British Library administration. Failing that—

  Kai sneezed again.

  “If there’s that much dust,” she called across, “then any secret doors should be fairly obvious.”

  “It’s not just dust,” Kai said. He took a step. Paused. Took another step. “There’s something in this room which smells odd.”

  Irene gave up on the cabinets and pulled herself to her feet, brushing off her skirt. “What is it?”

  Kai sniffed. “I’m not sure. Spicy. Salty. Somewhere round here . . .” He wandered along the bookcases, sniffing again.

  She followed him, fascinated by this new approach to finding secret doors.

  “Got it!” Kai leaned in and pointed at the small cabinet at the end of the shelves. Half a dozen volumes of The Perfumed Garden Summarized for the Young were piled on top of it, but the actual door of the cabinet was accessible, if locked.

  “Let me see.” Irene went down on her knees again to check it. “Hm. Looks like a normal cabinet. Anything odd about the lock?”

  “Not that I can see,” Kai replied, joining her at ground level. “Do you want to open it or shall I?”

  “Oh, allow me.” Irene leaned in and ordered the lock open in the Language.

  The cabinet door didn’t open.

  “That’s interesting,” she said.

  “How can it not open?” Kai asked.

  “The easiest explanation is that it’s sealed by some other method, on top of the lock,” Irene explained. “Something that’s not obvious, so I wouldn’t know it’s there to tell it to open. Or then again . . . you were saying you could smell something. On which side of the cabinet is the smell strongest?”

  Kai gave her a look suggesting that he wasn’t here to sniff on her behalf, but he complied after a moment. “This side,” he said, tapping the right-hand panel of the cabinet.

  “Right.” Irene shuffled round to get a better look at it, then prodded carefully at the corners and the inlaid design.

  “Hm. Yes. Thought so. When is a door not a door?”

  Kai just looked at her.

  “When,” Irene said triumphantly, “it’s a fake. Here.” She pressed
the upper corners simultaneously, and the whole side of the cabinet swung open on a hidden hinge. “There. Now . . .” She would have said more, but a powerful stink of vinegar hit her, and she rocked back on her knees, fanning the air in front of her nose.

  “That’s rather raw,” Kai said. “Is it a Library way of preserving documents?”

  “Not one that I’ve ever heard of.” Irene regained her self-control and drew out the contents of the cabinet. It was a single Canopic jar in the ancient Egyptian style. “So let’s see what’s in here.”

  “Should we?” Kai asked.

  “Kai,” Irene said gently. “If Dominic really wanted to keep this secret from us, he wouldn’t have hidden it and then been late for work, knowing we’d snoop around.”

  “Just purely for information,” Kai said, “are all Librarians like this over private stuff?”

  Irene didn’t dignify his question with an answer. Besides, he’d learn better. A Librarian’s mission to seek out books for the Library developed, after a few years, into an urge to find out everything that was going on around one. It wasn’t even a personal curiosity. It was a simple, impersonal, uncontrollable need to know. One came to terms with it. She lifted off the Canopic jar’s stylized jackal-head lid. “There’s something in here,” she reported.

  Kai forgot moral scruples and leaned in closer. “What is it?”

  “Some sort of leather.” Irene rolled back her sleeves and pulled it out. It was larger than it looked, thin, delicate stuff with long trailing attachments. She shook it out to get an idea of its full length and shape, then froze, horrified. Behind her she could sense Kai’s stillness and shock.

  It was a complete human skin, all in one piece, with a single slit down the front from chin to groin.

  It was Dominic Aubrey’s skin.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kai drew back with an indrawn hiss, raising his hands in front of him like claws. The skin lay there on the floor, limp and wet, staining the polished boards with vinegar.

  Irene swallowed, holding on to the smell of the vinegar to keep her own nausea at bay. Dominic Aubrey’s features looked so different like this. The flattened face was recognizable but lacking shape, spirit, and the congenial warmth that had animated it just the day before.

  “Is it some sort of fake?” Kai demanded.

  Irene flipped it over. The Library mark ran across its back in a complex tracery of flourishes. It was unmistakable; the Language couldn’t be faked, even if someone tried to copy it. She felt the mark across her own shoulders twitch in a kind of sympathy. “No,” she said, numbly. “It’s real. But it’s not possible for someone to shed their skin like this . . . I mean, it may just be possible to remove your skin, if you consider some wilder fictional texts, but you couldn’t remove the Library’s mark and survive.”

  “Alberich,” Kai said.

  Irene didn’t need to ask him what he meant. “Certainly possible,” she agreed. “Even likely. But there’s the Fae to consider as well, and there may be other factions at work. Right. We have to report this.”

  Kai sighed deeply in relief. “I was afraid you were going to say that we had to investigate it ourselves.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Irene said briskly. “We may collect fiction, but we are not required to imitate the stupider parts of it.” And let’s hope we don’t just get told to investigate this mess without backup anyway. “First things first. We’ll hide this thing again; then I’ll open the door to the Library.”

  The handle of the outer door began to turn.

  Irene barely had time to think, But I know I locked it! She hastily shoved skin and jar behind one of the display tables and rose to shield it further with her skirts.

  Kai managed two paces towards the door before it swung fully open.

  A tall young woman stood there, clutching some books to her chest. She looked at the two of them.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Irene said quickly. “Mr. Aubrey isn’t here yet. Can we help you?”

  The woman stared at the two of them. “I beg your pardon?” she said slowly. “Who are you?” Her brown hair was looped untidily on the back of her head and smeared with dust, and there were traces of dust and ash on her grey skirt and jacket.

  “Vermin preventative defence,” Irene invented quickly. “We’re working through all the rooms, looking for signs of infestation. Tell me, Miss—” She paused invitingly.

  “Todd,” the woman said. “Rebecca Todd. He told me to come in this morning about the Lamia manuscript.” She shifted her grip on her books.

  “He should be in soon,” Irene said. “I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t ask you to wait inside because we need to deploy some hazardous chemicals while we’re testing for silverfish. Would you mind waiting outside in the corridor? We’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Of course,” Miss Todd said readily. “If Mr. Aubrey does arrive while you’re still testing, I’ll let him know.”

  “Thank you,” Irene said with a smile. She waited until Miss Todd was safely out of the room before breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Silverfish?” Kai muttered.

  “Hush,” Irene said. “We’ll be out of here before she knows it.” She knelt down again, avoiding the growing puddle of vinegar, and hastily stuffed the skin back into the jar. “Ugh. I need to wash my hands. Actually, I’ll take this with us. Perhaps Coppelia or one of the others will know what it means.” She passed the jar to Kai. “You hold this.”

  “Must I?” he said, taking it distastefully.

  “I need to open the door.” Irene walked across to the Library door. She remembered seeing the chain last time, but she rather thought it wasn’t in use then, perhaps freed by their own journey through the door. It was clearly for show rather than substance, presumably to discourage outsiders from using it. And, of course, anyone like Irene could just use the Language.

  “Chain, open,” she said, laying her hand on the padlock.

  It didn’t explode. It burst open. It unfurled like a chrysanthemum and then fastened onto her palm, spreading across her skin in a slick of white-hot metal. But there was more to it than heat. Through the acute pain, Irene sensed active malice and deliberate will. Behind it all, as she almost lost consciousness, she caught a dazzle of brightness that ultimately faded to darkness.

  “Irene,” Kai was saying, but she had fallen to her knees and didn’t have the space in her head to register his words or his expression. Or anything except the blazing pain crackling from her hand to shoot up her arm. “Irene!”

  The mark across her back flared to life, automatically resisting the invasive chaotic forces linked to the padlock. Order and chaos now battled for authority over her body. And it was too late to recognize this as a trap laid for someone who’d use the Language, even though it was so clearly that in hindsight.

  She could smell something burning. That would be her dress. Fabric was so flammable.

  “Get me loose,” she gasped. If only she could break the physical link that held her to the padlock, or the forces powering it, that might be enough to let her regain control and finish cleansing herself.

  Kai closed a hand round her wrist and pulled. He didn’t try touching the padlock.

  The padlock was stuck to her hand. She couldn’t even shift the grip that she had on it; her fingers were locked round what was left of it in a spasm that she couldn’t break. Through the agony, she recognized this as a chaos-fuelled trap. A normal human being, one not sealed to the Library, would already have been warped to something on the verge of possible. Or he or she would have been accelerated all the way into something that couldn’t exist in this alternate, and outright destroyed. Though a normal human being wouldn’t have triggered the trap . . .

  She felt her grip slipping.

  For the moment her Library seal was saving her, but it couldn’t last. The two competing forces would burn her out
like an understrength fuse if she couldn’t break the connection somehow.

  “Irene!” Kai yelled in her ear, as if volume would make a difference. “Can I get you into the Library? Will that help?”

  She jerked her head in a shake. “No,” she gasped. She couldn’t enter the Library in this state. “I’m polluted—can’t—” She tried to think of any teachings covering this but could only remember it was called the Babelfish Principle, which was no use. And it was hurting; it was hurting . . .

  Then a solution came to her. But if the Library door wasn’t the trap’s power source, she was so screwed. “Break my link to the door . . . break the chain!”

  “Right,” Kai said as he pulled the chain taut, trying to wrench out the flimsy-looking loop holding it to the wall by brute force. It shifted but not nearly enough, and he slipped a knife from his sleeve, trying to prise open the links. One parted with a sudden snap, weakened by the forces flowing to the lock. Then the chain whipped free, and he yanked it through what remained of the original padlock.

  With the chain gone, the power circuit broke, and the padlock clicked open to fall from Irene’s hand to the floor. Irene knelt there, breathing in deep sobbing gasps, unable to quite look at her hand yet and see what damage had been done.

  “Irene?” Kai said. “What the hell was that? Are you all right? How did you get it loose?”

  She looked up at him. Her vision was a little blurry.

  Maybe that was why he was swaying. “It was a trap,” she tried to explain. “Set to react to the Language and bind to the user, using the Library door as an energy source. That was why it stopped functioning when you broke the chain. It was very energy-efficient.” There was a buzzing in her ears. “Kai? Can you hear something? Is it the silverfish?”

  “Irene,” Kai said. He went down on one knee beside her. “Are you all right?”

  Irene looked at her hand. It was red all over the fingers and down the palm. “Oh,” she said, in deep comprehension. “Kai. I think I’m . . .” The buzzing was getting louder. “I think I have to lie down for a bit.”