That was half of it. The other half of it—the possibility that books with a significant connection to the alternate world could affect that world itself, could somehow even change it—was only a theory at her level in the Library. It was a theory that she was increasingly wanting to research in more detail, but there wasn’t time for that at the moment. It was also something that she definitely wasn’t going to tell Vale. Call her a cynic, but Irene suspected that if she were to tell him that, then there would be no way in hell that he’d cooperate in getting the book for her. He’d be far too concerned at what it might mean for his own world. After all, he’d made it clear that he didn’t necessarily trust the Library’s intentions.
“And my world?” Vale pounced on her words. “Which books are ‘significant’ here?”
“I don’t know, sir.” She saw Vale was about to object, and she shook her head. “No, please. Believe me, Mr. Vale. We don’t get told. They don’t tell us. It’s dangerous knowledge.”
He leaned back in his chair, his expression hungry and unsatisfied. “And aren’t you ever curious, Miss Winters? Don’t you want to know?”
“You’re suggesting that I have some sort of academic curiosity about the fact,” Irene said curtly. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Kai leaning forward. “I’ve already told you that our interest is in books. Not . . .” She looked for words that would convey her meaning with sufficient strength. “Not in overarching world-changing forces.”
“Yes, Miss Winters,” Vale said drily. “That is indeed what you have told me.”
The unspoken accusation of lying, or at the very least prevarication, hit her like a slap across the face. It didn’t help matters that it was in some respects true. She lowered her eyes and couldn’t answer him. Worst of all, for the first time in years, We’re just doing this to save the books sounded petty, and choosing not to know more seemed childish.
“And yet there might be good reasons for not knowing,” Vale went on, talking over her bowed head. “Perhaps for fear this Alberich fellow might find out. Perhaps simply the senior members of this library would refuse to tell you, if they knew themselves. And perhaps you would simply refuse to tell me, for your own safety, or for mine.” His voice was dispassionately kind. She didn’t deserve it. “It must be very frustrating, Miss Winters. Wondering.”
She still couldn’t bring herself to look up. “If it was important,” she said, “then they’d tell me.”
“Or possibly it is too important to tell you,” Vale answered. “Just as with the suggestion that the book contains classified information, which we discussed earlier. We lack sufficient information to know for certain which is true. But one thing is sure. We cannot allow this book to fall into Alberich’s hands.”
“You’ll accept that?” Kai demanded, his face brightening.
“I may be suspicious,” Vale said, “but I hope that I am not stupid. He has already made his position towards me extremely clear, after all.”
Irene took a deep breath. “If you have no objection, there is one more thing I would like to do before we sleep.”
“What is that?”
Irene smiled a little. It was good to know that this was within her power again, now that the chaos contamination was out of her system, and that Vale trusted her enough to consider it. It helped her feel less ashamed of herself. “It’s possible to link a suitably similar space to the Library.” She surveyed Vale’s office again. “In practice, that means there has to be a reasonable number of books present, or some other sort of storage media. It won’t enable passage, but it will . . . well, it can make that area a sort of annex of the Library, and that would prohibit creatures of chaos from entering. Or, more specifically, it will prevent Alberich from being able to get in. If he does realize that we survived . . .”
“Ah. A good thought. Will this involve any sort of ‘magic’?”
“Only the innate force of the Library itself,” Irene said, she hoped reassuringly. She didn’t want to go into the whole question of the Language. She’d already said more than enough for one night, to an outsider. “You probably won’t notice anything at all.”
“Why did your colleague who was murdered not do this?” Vale asked. “Or did he?”
“It wouldn’t have lasted,” Irene answered. She’d been through this in basic training. “The problem with declaring an area in sympathy with the Library is that it only works as long as nobody takes any books away from it. Your lodgings will be safe because nobody will be removing any books from here this evening. Mr. Aubrey couldn’t have done the same to the British Library. The protection would have come down the moment someone took a book out of it.”
“Ah.” Vale sat back in his chair. “Very well. You may proceed, Miss Winters.”
It didn’t take long. She simply invoked the Library, in the Language, in the shortest possible way that it could conveniently be done without damage to the speaker or the surroundings. The more precise the definition, the more harm it might do to everything around it by linguistically shaking its surroundings into conformity. Declaring the Library’s unabbreviated name, a single word, would remove everything that was not Library.
Irene therefore used half a dozen sentences. She felt the snap of coherence as the synchronization took place, and with it a greater sense of comfort. She felt in control again.
“Odd,” Vale said. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, frowning. “I thought that I would feel something more than that.”
“What did you feel?” Irene asked curiously.
“Something of a headache, like the high pressure before a storm.” Vale shrugged. “I have no talent for such sorceries. Another reason for my differences with my family.”
Irene was about to say, It’s hardly sorcery, but decided that it wasn’t worth the argument. She was also wildly curious about Vale’s break with his family, but this wasn’t the moment to pry. “It should keep Alberich out, which is the important thing,” she reiterated.
“Excellent.” Vale brushed his hands together and rose to his feet, all business once more. “Then, for the moment, I suggest we all get some sleep. Madame Bradamant’s information is necessary for any further hypotheses. Unless it is possible for you to reach her via some arcane method?” he added hopefully.
“I’m sorry,” Irene said. “I have no specific link that I can use to reach her.”
“Your connection to the Library?” Vale suggested. “Would that work on its own, or could it be used as the focal point for some other spell?”
“That wouldn’t work,” Kai said. “The Library link is to the Library rather than other Librarians, and it surpasses lesser sorceries. Irene and Bradamant are safe from Fae glamours and minor spells because they’re directly connected to a greater power. Such glamours would be as insignificant as starlight in sunlight.”
Vale raised his brows. “But not yourself?” he asked, giving Kai more friendly attention than he had done since the river-spirit incident.
“I’m still a trainee,” Kai said, smiling as he stood in turn, then offering Irene a hand to help her rise. “For the moment I don’t have that sort of connection. What powers I have are my own and my family’s.”
“Your . . . family?” Vale enquired, in a tone that was an invitation to expand on the subject.
“There is a temporary disagreement on the subject of my future,” Kai said. “I hope to win them round.”
Irene suspected there was more to it than that. The dragons—very well, the single dragon whom she had met—seemed to tolerate the Library as some sort of human eccentricity. It seemed notable only for its admirable taste in fiction, and certainly not a prospective life for one of their children. (Spawn? Eggs? Younglings? She didn’t have vocabulary for this.) It was now quite obvious why Kai had claimed that his family was dead; she could understand why he’d told the lie, in view of the greater secret. What she didn’t know was
how he was going to resolve the situation. Or how the Library would resolve it for him.
But then again, if Coppelia knew about Kai’s true nature, perhaps there were other dragons at large in the Library.
Maybe there was a Secret Alliance. (That sort of thing would demand capital letters.) Perhaps the lower depths of the Library sheltered great slithering coils of ancient dragons and . . .
And she was going to drive herself into paranoia at this rate. “I agree that sleep would be a good idea,” she said, causing both Vale and Kai to give her aggrieved looks. They could have a bonding session some other time, or after she had gone to sleep. Dragons might be stand-offish in general, but this particular dragon seemed inclined to be friendly, or even outright demonstrative, and possibly even a thorough romantic. She was much more detached. Semi-detached. Her brain was tired enough that her thoughts were making stupid connections. “I hate to impose on you for a bed, Mr. Vale, but . . .”
“Of course,” Vale said, giving in gracefully. “The bed in the spare room has already been made up for you. I’m afraid that Mr. Strongrock will have to make do with the couch in here. My housekeeper has put out some blankets. I’ll just fetch them.”
The moment he was out of the room, Kai turned to Irene.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
He folded his arms defensively, drawing himself to his full height. “I expected you’d want to talk about . . . well, you know. You’ve probably guessed.”
She’d thought about how to handle this. She’d run through several different scenarios in her head, and none of them that started out So explain why you’re a dragon had ended well. He was proud. She was familiar with the emotion. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to ask you any questions.”
Kai stood there like a beautiful statue (in a second-hand dressing-gown with frayed cuffs), blinking at her. The rain was audible on the window for several seconds before he could bring himself to speak again. “You’re not?”
“My trust in you hasn’t changed.” She put her unbandaged hand on his wrist. “I believe that if it mattered, if it was truly important, then you would tell me. You wouldn’t jeopardize the mission for the sake of your own pride. But when it comes to your private matters—yours and your family’s—I don’t intend to pry.”
“Irene.” He swallowed. “That’s very generous of you.”
“Think nothing of it,” she said, turning away.
“And it makes me feel like hell,” he said to her back.
Ah, guilt. Which Irene was very definitely feeling herself at the moment, for what she’d said and also what she hadn’t said to Vale, and for the way that she’d manipulated Kai. She could tell herself that she’d only acted as was necessary in a dangerous situation, but she knew perfectly well that he’d confessed his nature to save her life, and she’d just . . . well, given him orders and enforced their relationship as superior and trainee. All her feelings of natural justice encouraged her to confess something to him in return, but she wasn’t sure what she could say.
And now he was offering her another chance to manipulate him. Under some conditions, Irene would happily have encouraged his guilt in the hopes of getting him to spill the full details, but in the middle of a mission wasn’t one of them. I am not a nice person, she thought, to be thinking only of the mission, sparing nothing for my responsibilities to him.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked, turning round to look at him. “I’m grateful that you saved our lives. Thank you.”
“You’re taking this far too calmly.” He ran one hand through his hair. “You should be demanding answers, being furious—”
“I thought you said you knew me.” She pointed a finger at him. “Look. So far—so far just today—I have coped with discovering the skin of a senior Librarian, with running into a trap of chaos energies, with an attack by alligators, with an encounter with Alberich himself, and with an attempt to drown us in the Thames. And you have the nerve, the insolence, the undiluted gall”—she could hear her voice rising, and at this point she didn’t much care—“to expect me to throw my hands in the air and run round in little circles just because you happen to be a dragon?”
Kai made desperate calm-down gestures with his hands. “I thought you were going to interrogate me! I was trying to think what to tell you!”
“Well, I’m not going to interrogate you.” Irene lowered her voice. “So calm down. Will it make you feel better if I promise that later on we’ll have some coffee and I’ll ask you a lot of personal questions?” Yes, she could look forward to that. She would look forward to that.
It surprised her that she was indeed looking forward to that.
He sighed. “At least I’ll have that to dread, I suppose.”
“Kai.” Irene gave him a very deliberate stare. “Were you actually looking forward to telling me everything?”
Kai tried to meet her eyes in a decisive way. He settled for looking over her shoulder. “It isn’t as if I’ve done this before,” he muttered.
“Later,” she said meaningfully. “I promise.”
She turned to see Vale at the door with an armful of blankets. “Am I interrupting?” he asked politely.
“Not at all,” Irene said firmly, and swept past him with as much dignity as she could manage. He and Kai could stay up talking as long as they wanted.
Hopefully Bradamant wouldn’t turn up with any emergencies until after breakfast.
CHAPTER 15
Kai and Vale were both up before Irene, and she walked in to find them sharing breakfast. Yesterday’s awkwardness seemed to have vanished, and they were talking amiably enough now. They seemed to be enjoying discussing politics (a hindrance to all right-minded men), previous investigations that Vale had undertaken (though generally without books being involved), zeppelins, and the proper method for eliminating giant centipedes.
Irene made the proper noises of Good morning and Yes, I slept very well, thank you for asking and Please pass the marmalade as she took a seat. She then inhaled coffee by the cupful until she felt more human, letting the men resume their conversation. Her hand was feeling much better, even if it was still in bandages. Last night’s rain had passed, and outside the window the sky was—well, as clear as could be expected, given the constant smog. Rays of sunlight were filtering down. No doubt birds were singing in the countryside. Things weren’t too bad.
She wondered if she could actually get to quite like this alternate.
The door banged downstairs, and two sets of feet came hastening up the stairs.
“Ah!” Vale said, dusting toast crumbs off his fingers with a napkin and pushing aside the spoon and egg he’d been using to demonstrate the finer points of zeppelin control. “That would be Singh. I know his step. And no doubt Madame Bradamant with him.”
Irene hastily refilled her coffee cup and tried to ignore feelings of imminent doom. It had been such a nice morning, too. “They’re up early,” she commented.
“Oh, Singh is always welcome here for breakfast,” Vale said cheerfully. “Especially when I’m working on a case that involves him.”
Perhaps that was why Singh had allowed Bradamant to meet them here, rather than keeping her at the station. Irene wondered a bit nervously if there had been any communication between Vale and Singh last night after she’d gone to bed. She stiffened her spine and was smiling pleasantly when Bradamant and Singh came in. Bradamant had somehow managed proper morning dress, neat and pristine in dove grey with violet cuffs and jabot, and had an umbrella tucked under one arm. Singh, behind her, was still in the same uniform as last night, but his moustache and beard had a spruce, freshly combed look to them. He carried a well-stuffed black briefcase that looked as though it had seen an investigation or two.
“Ah!” Singh said, his eyes fixing on the breakfast table.
“My dear Singh,” Vale said, springing to h
is feet and seizing the coffee-pot, “we must speak a moment. Ladies, Mr. Strongrock, please excuse us. Miss Winters, please do invite your friend to some breakfast. We will be back in a moment.” With one bound he had swept Singh out of the room, taking the coffee with him, and abandoning Bradamant in the process.
“Would you like some toast?” Kai said helpfully, rising to his feet.
“By all means.” Bradamant furled her skirts and seated herself on the sofa next to Irene. “Is our host usually prone to such dramatic moments?”
“I think he wanted to explain something to Inspector Singh,” Irene replied. Her feeling of imminent doom was getting worse. She passed the toast and butter. “They’re old friends, and no doubt they wanted to discuss things without us listening. Quite reasonable.”
“Oh, absolutely.” Bradamant drew off her gloves, picked up a knife, and swiped butter across the toast. “So what do we all have to say to each other while they’re out of the room?”
Irene ran through her mental list of languages and their applicability to this alternate. She wouldn’t put it past Vale to be listening to the conversation. Imperial Russia had conquered China and Japan a while back in this alternate, so the odds were against Vale knowing Japanese. However, Bradamant did know it, and all things considered, she rather thought Kai would as well. “Last night I told Vale the basics of the Library,” she said bluntly in Japanese.
The toast cracked and splintered in Bradamant’s hand.
“You what?”
Irene returned the other woman’s glare. “We were attacked by Alberich on our way back here.” She decided to leave Kai’s contribution out of it. “He trapped us in a carriage in the river and left us to drown. We escaped, but after that I had to give Vale some sort of explanation.”
Now she recognized the churning in her guts, the uncertainty in her mind. It was the nervous reaction she always used to get when reporting to Bradamant, decades back, when she had been a student and Bradamant had been mentoring her in the field. It was, apparently, something she still had to get over, if she could figure out how.
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