The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library Novel)

by Genevieve Cogman

  Ramsbottom’s hands fell to his sides, and he gave up all attempts to be helpful to stare at Silver in mute fascination. Vale didn’t seem to be affected. Irene was tempted to look behind her to see what Kai was doing, but as a dragon, he should surely be immune to anything that Silver could throw at him. At least, she hoped so.

  Silver thought that the book was still here. There had to be some way that they could use that. At least Bradamant was playing along and keeping Silver occupied.

  “But how did you know I was from the Library?” Bradamant asked, edging still farther to the left.

  One of the thugs twitched forward as if to make a grab for her, but Silver shook his head. “No, my adversary deserves to know at least that much. How well you fooled me, my dear! I was quite distracted by your mousy little minion over there in her drab dress”—he gestured at Irene—“and by your cunning thefts. How could I have realized that you were the mastermind behind it all? It was only after I put it all together that I saw you in your true light.”

  Irene was torn between relief that he wasn’t focusing on her and a certain amount of irritation that she was apparently a mousy little minion unworthy of his attention. Was she so utterly unnoticeable? Why wasn’t he pointing a finger at Irene and declaiming about her being an impressive mastermind? In fact, why was Silver claiming that there was a mastermind at all?

  Part of her was aware that this was an incredibly stupid attitude to take, a reaction to his Fae charm or something. The same thing that was making her want to pout and preen at him. Maybe bare a shoulder or breathe deeply or somehow get him to notice her. To have him touch her with those beautiful long hands, his body pressing . . .

  Right.

  A thought at the back of her head was trying to get her attention. This is the problem with interacting with the Fae. An instructor’s voice from back at the Library, talking to half a dozen trainees while they made notes (or surreptitiously tried to plot out bestselling novels), droning away while rain spattered against the window that looked out onto a deserted grey stone square full of empty market stalls. They see everything in terms of their own personal drama. If you are not careful, they will drag you into it. This is in fact a problem and a risk with all chaos-infected alternates . . .

  “I see.” Bradamant did a good job of drooping in response to Silver’s accusations. “Then you know everything.”

  “Everything!” Silver declared. “I am not surprised that Aubrey should have called for reinforcements from the Library with such a prize at stake, but now he will have to admit that he has failed. Our long rivalry is at an end!”

  Irene blinked in shock. No. No. That couldn’t be right. If Silver had known Dominic Aubrey and had learnt that he was a Library agent, then Dominic should have known about Silver being a threat. But Dominic hadn’t said a single word about Silver being an enemy of his, or warned them about him, or even told them that Silver existed . . .

  And why was Bradamant nodding? What did she know? “Aubrey warned me about you,” she said, “but I believe he did not prepare me enough.”

  No, surely this was impossible. There was no conceivable reason for Dominic to warn Bradamant but not her or Kai. They could well have come into contact, as the only door to the Library was in Aubrey’s office. But there had been no sign that they had exchanged this sort of intelligence. Of course, Dominic might have had his own patrons in the Library, who wanted Bradamant to find the book first. That was entirely plausible and wasn’t even an offence as such. But deliberately hiding the threat of Silver from her and Kai wasn’t just a casual slip; it was a betrayal. If she’d got back and told her superiors, then Dominic might well have been removed from his post.

  Could Bradamant be lying? Her thoughts rattled in her head like computer keys. And the tension in the room escalated as Silver considered his next dramatic reply, as Vale and Kai shifted their positions behind her, and as the werewolves panted and waited to lunge.

  No. It didn’t fit. Oh, all right, maybe Bradamant and Silver might be secret allies staging an argument to convince her. But that was taking paranoia too far. So if Dominic knew about Silver and considered him significant enough to warn Bradamant—but didn’t even bother mentioning him to Irene later, when he knew Irene was on a confirmed mission—then what did that imply? What had changed?

  She thought back to her brief contact with Dominic Aubrey. His use of the Language was strangely old-fashioned. And then there was Dominic Aubrey’s disappearance and skinning, which left his Library tattoo intact but no sign of his body at all. And how did Alberich operate in this alternate world? Alberich, who had lived for long enough to be a legend even among the Librarians . . . but nobody knew how, and nobody even knew what he looked like.

  An idea was forming, an idea that she mentally flinched from, but one that answered a lot of questions. Stealing someone’s skin and identity was covered in obscure folklore treatises, but it wasn’t something that she ever expected to be real. She didn’t want it to be real.

  Silver had advanced on Vale and was flourishing his cane menacingly. “Wyndham only wanted the book because of information I gave him. Then he thought he could bargain for it. With me! Why, if the Iron Brotherhood hadn’t disposed of him, I might have been forced to do so myself . . . But all is not lost, my dear.”

  So it was the Iron Brotherhood that had killed Wyndham.

  Assuming Silver was correct about it, that tied off one loose end. Good, Irene thought, at least that’s one less unidentified group of assassins running around the place.

  Silver took a step forward, smiling brilliantly. Irene felt the air tingle with suppressed longing again. “Hand over the book and I will be glad to agree to any terms that you might desire.”

  Over by the desk, Ramsbottom seemed poised to tell all. His hand wavered towards the small blue ledger.

  Kai was the one who moved. He sprang forward like a leopard and threw himself into a running dive across the desk, snatching the incriminating ledger out of Ramsbottom’s hands. He tossed the ledger across the room to Irene and it spun through the air in a flutter of pages.

  “Get that!” Silver shrieked.

  Irene caught it.

  “Back, ladies,” Vale snapped, as a swift twist of his hand revealed the sword inside his walking cane. The length of steel glittered in the burning glow of the lamps, and with a sudden crack sparks cascaded down it, flaring up harshly between them. “Lord Silver, restrain your dogs!”

  Kai was pushing Ramsbottom back against the wall, getting between him and Silver’s snarling minions. Good for Kai, keeping the civilians out of it. Silver’s minions were getting hairier by the second. Irene could see the spreading patches of iron-grey and black matted fur on their hands, their lengthening nails, their bulging jaws with sprouting teeth . . .

  “Come on!” Bradamant grabbed Irene’s shoulder, pulling her towards the door.

  Pure animal terror at the thought of being torn apart by half a dozen large wolves voted in favour of escape. Explanations could wait.

  She stumbled out into the corridor behind Bradamant. If they ran to the right, they’d be leading the chase back towards regular museum visitors. And that not only would be morally invidious, but also would probably put them off museums for life.

  Irene tucked the ledger under one arm, picked up her skirts, and sprinted leftwards. She heard a muffled curse as Bradamant followed.

  Two junctions later, she paused at a spot where two corridors crossed. The place was a rabbit warren. The air to the right smelled fresher, which argued a way out to the ground floor, or at least a fire escape of some sort, but the passage to the left was better lit. The passage directly in front had nothing to recommend it.

  “Keep going,” Bradamant ordered, pausing to catch her breath. “The werewolves are right behind us—”

  But the floor was shuddering violently underneath them. It felt like a passing Unde
rground train, but more worryingly close to the surface. Then the floorboards directly ahead buckled upwards in slow motion, and something clawed and dark tore its way up and through. It dragged itself up into the passageway in a vast clashing of gears and clinking of metal. It was all oil-smeared steel except for the head, which was glass-panelled on either side to make two huge flat translucent eyes. It was clearly from the same root design as the metal creature that Kai and Vale had fought two nights ago, but smaller and faster.

  “What’s this?” Bradamant asked calmly, her words oddly distinct against the sound of splintering wood, grinding metal, and distant howling.

  “I think it must be the Iron Brotherhood,” Irene answered. “They probably followed Silver.”

  “Oh, this is simply getting ridiculous,” Bradamant sniffed. “Which way next?”

  The insectoid robot head swivelled to focus on Irene and Bradamant. It took a jointed pace down the corridor towards them, the claws attached to each segment of the body dragging it along and leaving horrible gashes in the wood. Its top scraped the ceiling, bringing down cobwebs that had probably been centuries in the making, leaving a long swathe of scoured white plaster in its wake.

  “Go right,” Irene shouted to Bradamant on no particular evidence, and ran in that direction. She was already calling vocabulary to her mind—words for gears, joints, pedals, steel, glass, struts, and nuts and bolts. But there was always the chance that the construct would decide to chase Silver and the werewolves rather than them, and it seemed a shame to wreck it if so.

  “It won’t work, you know,” Bradamant said, catching up and outpacing her. “Do you seriously think that thing won’t chase us?”

  “It’s worth a try,” Irene gasped. She turned and looked back over her shoulder.

  The iron automaton came jolting forward in a screeching rattle of steps, then halted as it reached the junction. With a whirr the head turned to edge itself into the passage that Bradamant and Irene were running down. Its shoulders began to creak after it, manoeuvring so it could bear down the passage after them like an oncoming train.

  Irene and Bradamant looked at each other.

  “I’ll do the gears if you do the joints,” Irene said.

  “Right,” Bradamant said. “Give it a moment so that it can block the junction.”

  The robot managed to half negotiate the turn. Its claws dug into the floor as inner springs rewound themselves. The huge lenses set into the head reflected the two women, mirror-like. If they were in fact windows, it was impossible to see who might be lurking behind them.

  “Gears, lock up!” Irene shouted, pitching her voice to carry as far as possible. “In head, in claws, in body, and in every part which can hear me—gears, seize solid and stand firm!”

  The robot came to a standstill in a horrific mechanical screaming of blocked joints and gears. Even the distant howling of the werewolves was drowned out. Wires and cables tensed and broke. One claw rotated backwards, caught itself in the floor at an angle, and snapped. And a fragment of steel went flying, pinging off the wall with a high-toned ring of metal, audible even over the noise of the machine destroying itself.

  Both women turned and ran down the corridor away from the thing, past closed offices and storerooms. The air was full of fresh dust, the smell of oil, and burnt metal. A part of Irene’s mind wondered if it’d make tomorrow’s front pages. Probably. She didn’t like making headlines. A good Librarian was supposed to read headlines, not make them.

  “There!” Bradamant pointed unnecessarily to a stairway ahead of them. They plunged down it at a run, Bradamant swinging wide on the banister at the curve and almost hip checking Irene. The door at its base opened onto the ground floor, revealing a room full of shells and corals. Several family groups turned to look at them disapprovingly.

  Irene smiled her iciest smile, brushed some of the dust off her skirts, and took a firmer grip on the precious ledger. Behind her, Bradamant whispered something to the door lock. Irene couldn’t quite make it out, but it had the cadence of the Language.

  Hopefully they had a couple of minutes before any werewolves, Fae, Iron Brotherhood, or other book hunters caught up with them. Irene spotted a small office on the other side of the room and caught Bradamant’s eye. “Over there,” she suggested, jerking her chin towards it.

  “Absolutely,” Bradamant agreed.

  The two of them walked decorously across the room, skirting glass cases full of dried sea anemones, brittle polyps, and other brightly coloured objects that probably had been happier when they were underwater. With a polite nod to an elderly man shuffling along behind a walking frame, Irene quietly tried the handle of the office door.

  “Is it shut, dear?” Bradamant enquired softly.

  “Oh no,” Irene said, keeping her voice down. “In fact, this door is open.” The Language rolled in her mouth, and the latch loosened under her hand, turning obediently to let the pair of them in.

  “Not bad,” Bradamant said, closing the door behind them. She looked around for a key, saw none, and muttered, “Door lock, shut.” The lock clicked to again.

  Irene glanced round the room. It was clearly the office of someone important: the desk and chairs were newer than the ones downstairs, the pieces of artwork and diagrams hanging on the walls had frames, and there wasn’t any dust.

  “We’d better not take too long,” she said, walking over to the desk. She sat down and flipped the ledger open. “Someone might come in at any moment.”

  “My dear Irene,” Bradamant said, raising her hands to adjust her hat and her hair, “I may not be able to handle a set of werewolves and an angry Fae, but I can certainly handle one museum official. Especially as he is overweight.”

  “Overweight?”

  Bradamant’s smirk was obvious in her voice. “I don’t need to be a great detective like your Vale to look at the chair you’re sitting in and see that it’s usually sat in by an extremely fat man.”

  “Oh,” Irene said, a little stung. Just because she had her own particular tastes in fiction didn’t mean that she liked to be sneered at about them. She flipped through the pages, looking for entries dating two days ago. It arrived five days ago, then three days after that he would have sent it on . . . “Ah!” she said, finding the date. “Mm. He’s had a lot of packages going through. Professor Betony must get a lot of mail.” She ran her finger down the page, looking for a mention of Wyndham’s name. “Got it. Package from Lord Wyndham, redispatched to—”

  “To Dominic Aubrey, British Library!” Bradamant said in shock, reading over her shoulder.

  “Of course!” Irene slapped her hand against the desk. “You said it yourself: Dominic was indiscreet in what he told Wyndham! And Wyndham was afraid of Silver striking at him or trying to steal the book.” Well, technically a cold-iron safe would keep a book safe from any thieves, not just Fae ones, but Silver had known to look there for the book. “If Wyndham wanted to hide the book from Silver, and if he knew more or less about Dominic, or at least if he knew for certain that Dominic was an enemy of Fae in general, and Silver in particular . . . Wyndham must have sent this package before his death, once he had the copy of the book made, the one that you stole.” She was aware that she was getting incoherent, and she took a deep breath. “He must have expected to get the book back from Dominic later.” Suddenly her earlier fears about Dominic returned to her. “But that means—”

  A bright pain knifed into the side of her neck, as sharp and vivid as a wasp’s sting. She would have exclaimed in shock, but the words were somehow fuzzy in her mouth and her lips were numb. She was sagging back into the wide seat, thoughts clear but body numb and loose, unable to form a single deliberate word.

  “But that means,” Bradamant said, wiping the end of her hat-pin on the shoulder of Irene’s coat before sliding it back into her own hat, “that I don’t need you any more.”

  CHAPTER 18

/>   “What’reyoudoin’?” Irene slurred. She could barely form the words in English, let alone in the Language.

  “Making sure that this mission will be a success,” Bradamant answered. “I haven’t broken my word. I promised you that if I found the book, I’d bring it to you before returning to the Library. I will still do so once I’ve collected it from Dominic Aubrey’s office. But that will be at my own convenience and in a way that I choose. In the meantime, I don’t want you interfering any longer.”

  “Stpd,” Irene mumbled. Stupid. She needed to tell Bradamant what she suspected about Alberich, but Bradamant’s attack on her had just made that impossible.

  “Don’t worry,” Bradamant said. She stroked a fragment of strayed hair back under her hat. “It’s a curare derivative. You should be back on your feet in half an hour or so. It probably won’t affect your breathing or your heart.” She smiled maliciously. “Or perhaps it will. It’s not as if I’ve tested it that often, after all. Cheer up, Irene dear! Soon you’ll be free of all these annoying worries about the Library and your actual job, and you can concentrate on your friends here instead. Perhaps you’ll get another mission more commensurate with your talents. Gathering toilet paper, for example.”

  Irene glared up at her, struggling to form words. You stupid idiot, don’t you realize that I was about to tell you something important?

  This would have been the perfect time to develop telepathy, except that as far as she knew, it was purely fictional.

  Bradamant leaned across to retrieve the ledger. “I’m not blind, you know,” she said. “I have been aware of you watching me. Your little sneers at the fact that I enjoy nice clothing. I’ve seen you turn up your little nose at my interest in completing the mission and my willingness to lie to get the job done. Your general . . . dislike of me? Yes, dislike is a good word. We wouldn’t call it quite scorn now, but you don’t like me at all.”