Vale favoured her with a rare smile. “He didn’t predict that I’d ask you to accompany me, Winters, or that you’d agree.”
“Or that I’d leave Kai and Catherine behind,” Irene said, a cold hand closing round her heart. It had seemed safe enough to leave them alone for a short while, but now . . . “Vale, we have to get back at once. If Lord Guantes is the one who has been attacking us over the last few weeks, you won’t be his only target. And if he’s to be believed, your letter isn’t here anyway. Are we going to have to use that tunnel, or is there a quicker way out of here?”
Any sensible secret base should have an emergency exit, and Vale seemed to have studied its plans. She had to get back to the surface right now. If Lord Guantes had somehow returned from the grave, then Kai was in great danger. After all, Kai had been Lord Guantes’s primary target—and saving him had been the goal of her Venice mission. It felt so long ago now.
Vale frowned. “There is a quicker way out of here, yes. But, Winters, we absolutely have to check for that letter. The British government is depending on me.”
“The British government can cope with one more would-be crime lord in London,” Irene retorted angrily. “Besides, Lord Guantes said it was gone! And I need to protect Kai.”
“Strongrock’s capable of looking after himself for five minutes,” Vale countered. “And Lord Guantes may be lying. I simply can’t take that chance.” His face was set and expressionless. She knew that he’d analysed how much danger Kai might be in, just as she had. “And I need your help, Winters.”
For a moment Irene couldn’t believe what he was asking. Then practicality cut in, harsh and unwelcome. Vale had a responsibility to the British Empire, even if she didn’t—and this wasn’t her world, after all.
She knew that if she were to say no, Vale would accept it and show her the emergency exit. Five minutes might make the difference between safety and danger for Kai. And Catherine too. But Vale was her friend, and her help might make the difference between his life and death. She couldn’t abandon him.
Irene clenched her hands and forced herself to decide. “All right,” she said. “But there’s no time to waste.”
* * *
* * *
Prince Kai, the dragons’ treaty representative, son of His Majesty Ao Guang, King of the Eastern Ocean, once apprentice to Irene Winters and now her lover, but—most importantly—her friend, looked out of the tea shop window. He wished he could somehow erase the street’s heavy grey stone buildings so he could see the ocean beyond. Humans called it the English Channel—if they were English, of course. The French called it La Manche, “the sleeve,” and other nationalities called it something different again. But the sea had its own identity. He could feel its presence, its motion, its long heartbeat. The rolling waves and dragging tides sang in his blood and hummed in his bones, soothing his current irritation until he could almost forget it.
Almost. It was very hard to ignore the irritation in question, as she was sitting directly opposite him.
Catherine scribbled in her notepad without looking up, the top of her pen jerking enthusiastically with every added underlining or exclamation mark. She’d bisected the table between them with a barricade composed of the teapot and cake-stand, an unofficial declaration that she wasn’t interested in conversation. The harsh ether-lights drained the colour from her golden-brown skin and the red from her chestnut hair, and turned her navy coat dull and drab. She was smaller than he was, so the high back and arms of her chair rose around her like walls. She resembled nothing so much as a minor, but still intimidating, enemy force. And she was ensconced on the other side of his table.
There was no point checking his watch again. It had only been five minutes since the last time. He shook out the local newspaper and skimmed through its contents. Cattle-breeding. French politics. English politics. Radiation experiments in the local tomato greenhouses. Tide tables. He sighed inwardly.
The rain slapped against the window and rattled forcefully against the cobbled pavement outside with a noise like gravel. Men and women hurried past, bundled up in heavy knitted guernseys and shawls. The tea shop itself was empty of customers except for the two of them; it was a Tuesday morning, so working men and women were at their jobs. And it was too early for elderly ladies, gossip being their main occupation, to turn up and crowd the tables with nodding bonnets and whispers.
The waitress caught his eye, giving him a smile. Kai gestured at the teapot and obtained a refill.
“Thank you,” Catherine said, putting down her notepad for a moment. The sentiment wasn’t particularly gracious, but Kai decided he’d take it as a victory. Light glinted off her bronze-rimmed glasses as she poured herself another cup, then—remembering after a moment—one for him. “Anything interesting in the paper?”
“Not particularly.”
“Unsurprising. There’s nothing of interest here,” Catherine muttered.
“That’s not true,” Kai protested. “There are . . . um . . . purebred cows, buildings left over from the Napoleonic Wars, even a thriving witch cult. They’re known as the Gens du Vendredi, or the Friday People . . .”
“Are they on the agenda for today?”
“Probably not,” Kai admitted.
Catherine planted her elbows on the table. “This would have been a quick pickup job if Irene—”
“Miss Winters,” Kai corrected her.
“She told me to call her Irene,” Catherine said smugly. “Anyhow. We could have collected our target book and left already—if she hadn’t gone off with Peregrine Vale. Which she shouldn’t be doing.”
Kai was still rather bitter that he hadn’t been asked along himself but had been left to take charge of Catherine instead. “I’m sure he has reasons for asking her.”
“No, you don’t get it. She’s supposed to be politically neutral in this world, isn’t she? Like you? Yet she’s hanging out with someone whose sister is high up in the British government. Not only that, but they’re visiting a top-secret submarine base together. How can that be neutral?”
That was actually the most politically astute comment Catherine had made since they’d met. Kai had had the dubious pleasure of making her acquaintance just a few weeks ago, and it felt as if she hadn’t stopped glaring at him since. He disagreed with her, of course, on principle. “Vale is a good friend,” he parried. “She has every reason to spend time with him.”
Catherine rolled her eyes. “Yes, and pigs fly, and my uncle’s planning to take vows of celibacy. Come on. Also, I don’t see why I had to come in the first place. I could have stayed in London.”
“Irene wanted you to get some first hand experience of being a Librarian. And when we pick up the Merlin document, that’s exactly what will happen.”
“By standing around while she hands money over? I could understand it if she wanted me to learn something cool. But if not, why not leave me behind to do something useful?”
Kai shrugged. “Irene wanted to give you a thorough grounding in Librarianship. Besides, have you forgotten the recent little . . . unpleasantnesses?” He wasn’t sure that Catherine was a target—nobody had tried to kidnap or kill her, after all—but he and Irene had both been victims of near misses or failed abductions in the last month. Vale had said he was looking into it but had yet to come up with an answer.
Catherine hunched down in her chair, drawing in her narrow shoulders until she seemed even smaller than before. Kai knew that she was in her early twenties, but when she acted like this, she seemed no older than a teenager. “This is so stupid. Can’t we even go hang out in the local library—the Guille-Allès? I could read something and I wouldn’t be getting on your nerves so much.”
“Your uncle doesn’t take well to following instructions either.” Lord Silver, Catherine’s uncle, was London’s biggest libertine and the head of the Liechtenstein spy network. He was generally untrustworthy, dev
ious, and well-dressed in equal measure.
“Just because my uncle’s a miserable excuse for a . . .” Catherine picked through her options and clearly couldn’t find any that satisfied her. “How can I convince you I don’t like him—or trust him—any more than you do?”
Kai felt he should try to be honest. “He’s a Fae, like you. And he’s your family, your blood. Of course you’re going to be closer to him than you are to us.”
“And you think I’d betray you to him,” Catherine said tonelessly.
Kai had carefully avoided saying just that. To her, at least. He should know what it was like, after all. He lived with his lord father’s expectations, and he’d always been aware of his duty. To his family. To his own kind. And to Irene, always.
“Have you been paying any attention to me? Any attention at all?” Catherine demanded, her tone rising. She glanced across at the waitress and lowered her voice to an angry hiss. “Have you noticed what I actually want?”
“Well, to do a good job, obviously.” Kai backtracked, trying to work out what he’d said wrong. “To be a Librarian like Irene, to help keep the truce . . .”
“What I want,” Catherine said quietly but emphatically, “is access to the Library. I want to get in among those books. If Irene can do that for me, for all I care, my uncle can fornicate until syphilis makes his private parts drop off.”
Kai didn’t like Lord Silver, but his own niece shouldn’t be using that sort of language about family. Family was important. “Control your tongue!” he ordered. “That is not acceptable.”
“You aren’t my boss,” Catherine flared back. “Where do you get off acting like you’re superior—just because you’re in bed with her?”
Kai felt the bones grind in his hands as he curled them into fists, the prick of fingernails that yearned to become claws. Anger sang in him as the ocean had done earlier, pride and fury urging him to treat this child—his junior, his younger sister in apprenticeship, his lesser—with the proper discipline for such an insult.
She flinched.
Moment by moment, counting his heartbeats, he made himself relax. “Could you pour me some more tea, please?” he asked.
Her hand shook a little as she poured. “I’m not getting paid enough for this,” she muttered.
“I didn’t know you were getting paid at all.”
“I have an allowance.” Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. “From my uncle, which means nothing, before you judge me on that too. I thought you knew.”
“I know he and Irene had an argument about it. But I don’t know the details.” Kai had sadly not been witness to that.
Catherine visibly perked up at the notion that he didn’t know everything, then sighed. “I don’t want money, anyhow. I want books.”
“But money gets you books,” Kai pointed out.
“Not the sort of rare one-per-world books the Librarians hunt down. That takes connections. The sort you don’t seem to want me to make, as I’m Fae and not a dragon . . . Whereas I suppose you’re letting Irene run mad in your father’s library?”
“You may infer what you wish from this, but I have invited Irene to visit my lord father’s palace and library,” Kai said with dignity. “But she refused. She said if my lord father hosted her, he’d have to host a Fae representative too—in the spirit of the treaty. That it could cause a diplomatic incident if he wasn’t willing to do so.”
Catherine shook her head in wonder. “I’m glad one of you has some sense. Though as she’s sleeping with the dragons’ treaty representative, maybe I’ll take that back. Unless to keep things fair, in the spirit of the treaty, she’s also sleeping with the Fae representative . . .”
“What do you mean by that?” Kai snarled, leaning forward.
“Excuse me, sir, madam.” The waitress had approached while they were distracted.
Kai held up an admonitory hand. “A moment, please. Catherine, I demand an apology.”
“Excuse me!” The waitress had raised her voice. As Kai and Catherine both turned to glare at her, she said, “There’s something you should know, sir, madam.”
“And what is that?” Kai snapped.
“You’ve both been poisoned.” She folded her hands primly in front of her. “But please don’t let me interrupt you. I can wait.”
CHAPTER 3
Irene had not expected to walk through a door in a submarine base somewhere under Guernsey and emerge somewhere entirely different.
She and Vale had managed a successful sweep through the remainder of the base. The other men they’d found had all been under the influence of cerebral controllers. They’d therefore lacked the intelligence to stage more than very basic ambushes, but they’d still fought savagely. As a result, Vale and Irene had had to deactivate all the controllers—which had proved fatal for their victims.
She’d seen Vale’s face grow more tense with each new confirmed fatality, the leashed anger showing in his shoulders and the quick jerk of his head. He and Irene were being deliberately manipulated into killing these men—however necessary this was. They too were victims, being used as mere tools and then discarded.
You didn’t have to be a Fae to be that amoral, but Irene couldn’t deny that it would help—especially if this was somehow Lord Guantes, returned to gleeful life.
In the criss-cross of passages, the route to the submarine dock wasn’t obvious. And yet the longer they’d searched, the more certain Vale seemed that he’d find his letter on the submarine moored there. It was Vale who’d eventually halted and raised a hand for her to wait, then prodded at what looked like a cupboard door with the tip of his cane. The resulting shock knocked him across the room.
The cane lay to one side, smoking. Vale glanced at it regretfully, then back to the door, and his brows drew together in a frown. “That door shouldn’t be there.”
“It’s in the wrong location?”
“In a way . . . That door is not on the base’s plans. There should be nothing but solid rock at that point. And look—more of the cerebral controllers’ scrapes on the floor, spreading out from this point.”
Irene carefully moved her hand towards the door, halting before touching it. The air around it prickled with chaos. As Irene approached, she could feel the Library brand on her back flare in response, rather like a guard recognizing an enemy. The door itself looked like any of the other cupboards on the base: metal, set into the wall, and painted dark grey. There was nothing to mark it as significant—except for Vale’s knowledge that it shouldn’t have been there, his dramatic propulsion across the room, and her own recognition of chaotic power.
“That gives us two problems,” she said. “Finding the letter—and this. There’s chaos behind it.” Leaving this door uninvestigated was an open invitation for someone to come through and shoot them from behind.
Irene glanced sideways at Vale, saw the uncertainty on his face, and made a decision. “You said we’d find eleven men here—and we’ve dealt with all of them. I’ll check this out while you retrieve the letter.”
There was a flicker of relief in his eyes. “I’ll call if I need you, Winters.”
He ran down the corridor, leaving Irene to stare at the mysterious door. Objects infused with chaotic power often didn’t react well to Librarians—and Vale’s broken cane served as an additional warning. Fortunately, with the Language she didn’t need to touch it. When she looked at it more closely, close enough to feel her nose prickle, she could see that there was something written on it under the grey paint, barely visible, totally illegible but undisputably there.
She picked her words carefully, not wanting to force open every locker and exit within the sound of her voice. If any others contained dynamite, that could see them both drowned. “Any bombs within the sound of my voice, deactivate. Door in front of me, unlock and open!”
It shuddered in its frame. Irene gritted her teeth
at the drain on her strength, knotting her hands into fists as the tumblers in a lock audibly clicked open. The door opened towards her, but slowly, as if an invisible hand was dragging it open and it was fighting to resist. Irene peered through the gap.
A shadowed corridor—formed of wood and stone, not slate and metal—that was dimly lit by distant windows lay beyond. It definitely wasn’t beneath the sea. She had no idea where it was.
Did Vale think that I was just going to stand here and look at it? Well, too late now.
Irene rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, forcing herself to ignore her growing headache, and stepped through. The door pulled itself shut behind her, closing with a muffled thud.
She sniffed the air. Dust. Paper. Old cigar smoke. The floor was white marble, but even in the dim light she could see the dust that had settled into the cracks. The walls and ceiling were panelled with dark wood; paler rectangles on the walls showed where paintings must have once hung.
But all this was secondary to the tingling that spread across her back like poison ivy, radiating from her Library brand. She felt a sense of dread, suddenly realizing that she’d left Guernsey far behind. And not for a moderate-chaos world like Vale’s. This was definitely a high-chaos world, so she probably couldn’t reach the Library from here. And if she couldn’t retrace her steps, she’d be trapped here . . .
Beyond the window, a futuristic city sprawled out to the horizon, sown thickly with electronic lights under a shrouded twilight sky. The approaching darkness and glow from the lights obscured the buildings, reducing them to shadowy spikes or low shapeless masses. Some other distant structures seemed to curl gracefully upwards and outwards like living organisms, but they were too far away to see clearly. Irene spotted, tiny in the distance, the twinned lights of what might be vehicles—crawling at ground level, or drifting through the air.
Irene suppressed a curse. She’d hoped to identify the city, if not the world, by its architecture, but that was hopeless in the encroaching darkness. As for the climate and temperature, it was neither arctic nor tropical, but beyond that she couldn’t guess—or deduce—anything.
The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library Novel) Page 3