She was sidling back towards where she’d left Catherine when she heard a familiar voice from below, raised to carry. It was Lord Guantes. “Miss Winters? I suggest you come out, wherever you are. This library is now closed.”
CHAPTER 14
There was a certain satisfaction to having one’s worst expectations confirmed. Admittedly this meant that you had to deal with the results, but at least you could tell your colleagues later that you’d told them so.
However, these pleasures had to be deferred in favour of immediate escape. Irene had to assume the worst—that their enemies were waiting both above and below. She could use the Language to force a window open. But climbing out of a third-floor window, above a crowded London street, came with its own risks—such as the difficulty of adapting one’s plan while halfway down the outside of a building.
Apparently Lord Guantes was giving Irene a few minutes to make up her mind. Catherine must also have realized something was wrong. She’d closed her books and was looking nervously from side to side. Irene put a finger to her lips as she approached, and beckoned her to follow.
The two of them made it to the “book lift” without being intercepted. It was an unobtrusive recent addition, and it ran from the top to the bottom of the building. Irene swung the waist-high doors open. There was enough room inside for an athletic young woman, and Catherine certainly weighed less than a pile of some of this library’s books.
“Wait here,” she said quietly. “When you start hearing a commotion, climb inside and shut the door. That’ll keep you hidden. Then I’ll press the button on the ground floor to bring you down safely once the coast is clear. We’ll get out together.”
“How?” Catherine hissed, panic showing in her eyes.
Irene wasn’t sure which of her statements the how referred to, so she decided to leave explanations for later. Especially as her plans were better described as being in the formative, rather than the fully detailed, stage. “If things go wrong and you hear me being dragged off screaming, remember our plans for meeting up,” she said.
“You’ll scream?”
“I’ll make sure I scream very loudly indeed.” Irene gave Catherine a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, to offset any panic her words might induce, and headed back to the stairwell.
“Miss Winters!” Apparently Lord Guantes had grown bored with waiting. “I suggest you show yourself immediately, if you have any regard for the safety of this library’s staff.”
Irene peered through the balustrade’s pillars again. One of the receptionists, his glasses flashing in the light from the overhead lamps, was being shoved forward: two of the men in overcoats held his arms while a third put a gun to his head. The security guard and the other receptionist were watching in horror, oddly silent.
“Very well,” Irene called down, rising to her feet. “Don’t shoot. I’m coming down.”
She could hear footsteps above her now. She’d been right. They had been boxed in. She’d just have to hope she could find an advantage.
“Come on down, then, and don’t keep us waiting,” Lord Guantes ordered. He gestured to his minions: the one with the drawn gun lowered it, but the two holding the receptionist remained in place, a clear message that his safety was conditional on her obedience.
Irene began to descend the stairs, her mind whirring with possible plans. A pity that so many of them ended up in And then he shoots me. “How has your day been so far, Lord Guantes?”
“Improving by the moment, my dear.” He stood looking up at her, all his attention on her. His followers copied his movements like hunting dogs, even the ones guarding the library staff. That could be useful. “If only you were always this obliging.”
“Lord Guantes, I’ve had a stressful day. Under the circumstances I’m willing to grant you an interview, but please don’t push me.”
“You’re talking as if you’re the one holding the balance of power here. Should I point out that I have three hostages, and this place is held by my men?”
A thrill of relief went through Irene. If he’d realized Catherine was here and that he could take her as a hostage too, he’d already be boasting about it. “If I think I’m invulnerable, have you considered why I’m bothering to surrender to you?”
He snorted. “A predictable concern for the lives and well-being of these useless pawns.”
“Excuse me!” one of the receptionists protested.
“Oh, not my opinion.” He faced the woman and smiled, and Irene knew that to her, he would be absolutely believable. Lord Guantes was a master manipulator—it was part of his archetype. “I simply meant that Miss Winters has childish moral views on the sanctity of human life and so on, which makes her easily manipulated.”
“Oh, that’s all right, then,” the hostage said, and the other two nodded in agreement. Even the one who’d had a gun pointed at his head.
Fortunately Irene hadn’t been counting on any help from them. They would currently be rationalising why they were fortunate to be Lord Guantes’ prisoners and threatened with death. “If I may just check something?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Didn’t I see you die just a couple of days ago?”
Lord Guantes looked sincerely confused. “You must be mistaken. I’ve been delaying any meetings with you until I could trap you in an inescapable situation, with overwhelming resources. Plus a few hostages, just in case.”
“How flattering,” Irene replied coolly. Were there multiple Lord Guanteses on the loose? And if so, which was the real one? “And will your wife be joining us?”
“My dear wife is busy with . . . another project,” Lord Guantes said, far too much relish in his voice.
Irene had descended to the first floor by now. Far too close for comfort, and easily within gunshot range. One of the few reasons that she wasn’t trying to run—which every instinct was screaming at her to do—was that Lord Guantes was having too much fun gloating. He was trapped in his criminal archetype. One couldn’t gloat at a corpse. The corpse simply wouldn’t appreciate it properly.
She suspected that his wife would have shot Irene as soon as she came into range, but then Lady Guantes had always been the more sensible of the pair. What a good thing she wasn’t here. “Might I ask what project?”
Lord Guantes stroked his beard. He was in a dark suit and overcoat, like the other men, but his were an order of magnitude more expensive and better cut, and black gloves sheathed his hands. “You may ask. But I think I’d prefer it if you asked while on your knees.”
She’d reached the ground floor now and was standing level with him. “I confess I’m puzzled. You found me here—and I still don’t know how you managed that. Did you pay library staff across London to watch out for me?”
“Come now, my dear. That would be rather too expensive for one little Librarian.” The fact that he knew something that she didn’t visibly soothed him. “My wife had a token which allowed her to locate you, that’s all—and I borrowed it.”
“I didn’t realize something like that could work on Librarians.” The Library brand on Irene’s back blocked or defused magic specifically directed at her. It should have stopped anyone from scrying her location.
“I think we can say that this specifically works on Librarians.” His mouth curled in an unpleasant smirk. “Now that you’re safely down here—Reuben, anything to be found above?”
Irene followed his gaze upward. Half a dozen men were leaning over the balcony on different floors. “No trace, sir,” one of them answered. “She was the only one up here.”
“Yet you came with company.” Lord Guantes inspected Irene thoughtfully. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Irene asked innocently.
He snapped his fingers. A couple of the men stepped forward to take her arms, pinioning her. “The woman who entered here with you. I assume it was Lord Silver’s niece. Where is s
he?”
Irene resigned herself to the inevitable. “Safe.”
He backhanded her across the face. Irene’s vision blurred, and she swallowed blood. “Miss Winters,” he said, his voice all calm persuasion and reasonableness. “That was to make a point about your current helplessness. I could have my men beat the answer out of you—but I think I’ll get quicker results if I shoot these hostages. Now, let’s try again. Where is Lord Silver’s niece?”
Irene tried to look desperate. “If you’re after her and I tell you, you’ll have no reason to keep me alive.”
That smirk twitched across his face again—an expression that said not only I know something you don’t know, but also I know something which is really going to upset you when you find out. “Oh, I have a very specific, very definite reason to keep you alive, Miss Winters. But it would spoil things if I told you too soon. So in the interests of saving these other library staff, where is Lord Silver’s niece?”
The man with the gun raised it to the hostage’s head.
Irene took a deep breath and sagged, doing her best to look defeated. “I took her into the Library.”
“You what?”
“That’s not very grammatical,” Irene said, and earned another slap for it. No, she thought, waiting for the ringing in her ears to die down. This isn’t the “real” Lord Guantes. The one I knew in Venice years ago, the one I killed, would have tried to overpower me by will alone. This physicality would have been completely beneath him. And the one I surprised recently, he seemed physically weak. It’s as if they’re all imperfect copies of the original, flawed in one way or another, physically or mentally . . .
“What you’ve suggested is completely impossible,” Lord Guantes declared, breaking in on her speculations. “Fae can’t enter the Library.”
“Maybe not through force,” Irene said. She managed a smirk of her own. “But with the willing cooperation of a Librarian, who knows what could be possible?”
Lord Guantes frowned, perhaps weighing the chance that Irene was lying against the fact that Catherine simply wasn’t to be found.
“Which is why I’m here,” Irene said brightly. “Waiting for you to catch up . . . I thought we should talk.”
Lord Guantes stared at her, then converted the blank look into a patrician sneer. “How this goes, Miss Winters, is as follows. I will ask questions, and you will answer them.”
“As you wish,” Irene said with a shrug. “I’d thought you might want to know more about how I granted a Fae access to the Library, to compensate for the fact that I killed you. Then we can forget this whole confrontation, no harm done.”
“You thought you’d killed me,” he corrected her. “A serious wound, but as you can see, I’m perfectly alive.”
“So it seems,” Irene agreed. “But the Lord Guantes I used to know—he would have been interested in the possibilities here. Admittedly we didn’t have much of an acquaintance; our only real conversation was when you were trying to break my will and turn me into your slave . . .” She was gambling desperately, and her hand was weak. “Even the Cardinal can’t get Fae agents into the Library. What if you could?”
“Very well. Explain your methodology.”
“Reveal all my secrets—just like that?”
“Unless you want me to shoot the hostages, yes, just like that.”
“But if I tell you how it’s done now, then my leverage is entirely gone,” Irene argued. “And then you’re free to do whatever you want with me. Kill me, sell me into slavery, shove me off a cliff . . .”
“Really, Miss Winters, are you trying to give me ideas?”
“I’m only making a point. I might leave something important out, if I think you’re just going to kill me—or your hostages—anyway. It makes revenge look like rather a short-sighted option. I thought you were a long-term thinker.”
She could see the calculation in his eyes. “Is this a serious offer to negotiate, then?” he asked.
“My options are . . . being chased by you for the rest of my life, which will probably be short and messy, or coming to some sort of arrangement that will satisfy you. Or killing you, of course.” The more she could play to his archetype as schemer and manipulator, the more likely he’d be to believe what she was saying.
“Nicely put,” he agreed. “Very well. I’m prepared to discuss the matter, in exchange for allowing you to live.”
Irene found it hard not to roll her eyes at that offer. “Allowing you to live” still left open so many unpleasant possibilities. “In the interests of bargaining in good faith,” she said, “I’d like you to let the hostages go.”
He considered a moment, then smiled. It wasn’t reassuring. “Of course. Joseph, Peter, release Miss Winters. And see these good people to the door and let them out. I’m sure they’ll be happy to head home to relax.”
The two men who’d been holding Irene let her go. Irene rubbed her arms, frowning slightly. She hadn’t expected Lord Guantes to give in so easily.
Lord Guantes waited until the library employees were safely out of the door, still bemused and smiling, before he turned back to Irene. “It just struck me, my dear, that I have a whole building full of hostages here. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll start burning some of these books. Or should I cut them to pieces? Do tell me which would be more spiritually painful to you.”
Irene didn’t need to feign her expression of chagrin at his words. “You’ve made your point, Lord Guantes. I’ll cooperate.” Still, she’d achieved a partial victory: the innocents were out of range. Now she just had to somehow deal with him and all his henchmen.
Something about that thought nagged at her. She glanced around as innocently as she could, getting a good look at her surroundings and the enemy forces. Yes, all the minions were of the same type: anonymous, muscular, and male. Which meant that she and Catherine were now the only women in this library.
“If I may check one point before we begin,” she said. “Am I correct in thinking that you’re the mysterious Professor, London’s new emperor of crime, puller of a thousand strings and master of its underworld?”
As she’d expected, his vanity made him preen under her praise. “I’d ask how you found out, but I suspect I know. Your detective friend.”
“And you’re behind the recent assassination attempts on us?”
“Define us.”
“Myself. Prince Kai. Vale. Sterrington.”
He smirked again, and her hand twitched at the urge to slap that expression off his face. “Miss Winters, I assure you that I haven’t attempted to assassinate you. Now, let’s get down to business. You will provide information—even if you don’t reveal everything now—if you want to see these books left in one piece. I will judge if it is of sufficient quality to stay my hand.”
So if he hadn’t attempted to assassinate her, “just” the others, then what did he have in mind for her? That was useful information—if somewhat unsettling.
“I don’t know how much you know about the Language,” Irene began, trying to sound as didactic as possible. “You’re aware that it’s only usable by Librarians?”
“To an extent,” Lord Guantes said thoughtfully. “After all, it’s possible for you Librarians to write something down using the Language and then give it to someone else to use.”
“How do you know that?”
His smile was positively edged. “Now, how do you think I tracked you?”
For a moment Irene froze, her blood turned to ice. That meant a Librarian had betrayed her. As she saw Lord Guantes’s smirk widen at her reaction—visible, however much she tried to conceal it—she fought down her fear. He could just be lying, trying to break her morale. He hadn’t sworn to tell the truth, after all.
But if it was true . . .
She swallowed and forced herself to continue. “Very well, then. This is why I’m here—and it concerns th
e Language. I’ve found a way to use it to modify an existing door to the Library, to allow Fae passage.” She chose her words carefully, to imply there was a permanent door to the Library inside this very building.
“And you did that today?”
Irene simply nodded. He seemed to be buying it.
“Is this why you think you’re bargaining from a position of power? Are you going to threaten to bring Librarian reinforcements out through this door, to attack me?” He looked quite serious, to her surprise—and relief.
Irene didn’t need to feign her snort of laughter. “Oh, come on, Lord Guantes. You must know Librarians by now. Can you really see us doing that? I’m not in any sort of position of strength. I’m surrounded by armed men and you’re in front of me.” Yet so long as he believed in her lie, so long as he thought she had something he wanted, she might not have strength, but she had control.
“One point in your story puzzles me,” he said slowly, and Irene’s throat tightened. She’d thought he’d accepted her story. “If you took Catherine into the Library, why did you bother to come back here? You knew that I was hunting you. Why put yourself at risk?”
Irene sought frantically for a good answer. And then it came to her. “It’s Kai,” she said, feigning reluctance. “Prince Kai. He went to get help. If he returns and I’m not here to get him into the Library too . . .”
“Ah, of course. You’re quite right about the danger he faces—he’s on my list. But it’s just you and me now. And just think of how good it will feel to tell me everything. I expect you are tired of all this running . . .” He took a step towards her, meeting her eyes. She felt the swell of his power, like the shadow of a tidal wave massing above her.
Once before, he’d twisted her will and nearly broken it. But she was stronger now. She just had to keep this charade going a little longer, to find out which Librarian he’d subverted to track her, what was behind all this, and how much further its roots went . . .
A heavy book tumbled down from above, crashing into Lord Guantes. It struck him on the head, and he didn’t stand a chance; he collapsed to the floor, out like a light. It wasn’t just the weight, it was the impact as well—force equalling mass multiplied by acceleration, and all delivered without a whisper of warning.
The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library Novel) Page 16