‘Do you really?’ her father asked. It was a sincere question. ‘Would it actually make any difference if I were to tell you that . . . we stole you from a palace and you’re actually a princess?’
Irene put aside the image of herself in archetypal dress and coronet. ‘No,’ she finally said. ‘No, it won’t really make any difference what you tell me. I just want you to want to tell me. I’m sorry, that probably doesn’t make sense.’
‘Stop apologizing,’ her mother said. ‘You’re an adult now, Ray. Irene. You shouldn’t be apologizing all the time.’
‘You forgot to say that we were proud of her,’ her father noted quietly.
‘Oh.’ Irene’s mother looked embarrassed. ‘Darling, we are extremely proud of everything you’ve done, and we want you to understand that before we leave. You do understand that?’
‘Um, thank you,’ Irene said. It was something she’d always wanted to hear from them, but now that her mother was finally saying it, she couldn’t think of any better response. ‘I’m glad. But you’re still not answering my question.’
Her father began to speak, then fell silent as Kai opened the door. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘but may I borrow Irene for a moment?’
‘Of course,’ her father said, waving her towards the door. ‘We aren’t going anywhere – though Irene probably should . . .’
Irene bit back the urge to ask Kai to leave them for just a moment. Instead she joined him in the corridor, closing the door behind her.
There was a glint of anger in his dark blue eyes, a flash of dragon-red. ‘Someone else has entered this house,’ he said. ‘Our rooms have been searched.’
‘Oh, hells,’ Irene said. She realized what must have happened, and flushed. ‘Just to check – was it a serious search, or did whoever it was just turn the place over casually?’
‘The second,’ Kai said. He frowned. ‘But they left my belongings alone.’
‘That would be my parents,’ Irene admitted, feeling embarrassed as well as angry.
‘They searched your room? Why?’
‘Probably not in detail,’ Irene said, trying to reassure him. ‘They’d just want to know what I was up to.’
Kai looked at her. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. ‘Irene, we’ve never talked that much about your parents. Is there something you want to tell me?’
Irene wished there was a corner to retreat into. ‘I have a complicated relationship with my parents. It’s a good relationship, but . . .’ But now she had to hurry back to the Library – and they’d finally been about to answer her questions about adoption. Why did everything have to happen at once?
‘You hardly ever see them!’
‘Yes, that’s why it’s a good relationship.’ Somewhere in between her parents wanting to know about everything she did and her not wanting to tell them, they’d started checking her rooms while she wasn’t there. Not her rooms at the Library, of course. Those were locked. Those were hers.
Was it that surprising that a daughter of spies had developed trust issues, she thought wryly.
‘They do it because they worry about me,’ she finally said. ‘And they don’t actually search in depth . . . look, this is sounding worse by the minute. Possibly our relationship does have a few problems. All families have issues. I don’t ask about what goes on in your family, do I?’
She saw him recoil as she retaliated, and was meanly satisfied for a moment. ‘I’ve been called to the Library,’ she said, trying to smooth over the bad feeling. ‘But . . . I need to ask my parents something urgent before I go. Maybe we can discuss this later?’
The door opened before Kai could answer – or disagree – and her father leaned round it. ‘Is anything the matter?’
‘We’re just discussing the brandy,’ Irene said, before Kai could interject.
‘There won’t be time for brandy,’ her father said. ‘The thought is appreciated, but you really need to go, so we’ll leave you to it.’
Irene couldn’t let them get away. ‘I need to talk to them,’ she said again. ‘And I apologize for them intruding like that. Because they won’t.’
‘I think we need to have a serious talk about a few things,’ Kai said, quietly. ‘Once your parents have left.’
Irene re-entered the lounge and shut the door behind her with a thud. ‘I warded this place,’ she said. ‘I thought it was safe from enemies. I did not expect to have to defend my privacy from other Librarians.’
‘If you’re sleeping with a dragon prince, then that’s something that concerns us,’ her father said mildly. As always, his surface calm was smooth and firm. An Olympic ice-skating team could have used it as a rink. ‘I think any parent would be worried about that.’
Irene felt the flush creeping into her cheeks again, but this time it was anger as much as embarrassment. ‘And if Kai mentions to his father that Librarians have been going through his belongings? What then?’
‘We left his stuff alone,’ her mother said. She was shrugging her coat on and doing up the fussy little gilt buttons. ‘Irene, you are about as communicative as granite underneath a glacier. So far in the last year, you’ve faced off against Fae, dragon kings and Alberich himself. You were worried about us? Try to understand that we were worried about you.’
‘But I wouldn’t go through your belongings!’ Irene retorted.
‘You would if you had the chance,’ her mother said.
Irene would have liked to deny that, but . . . if it was the only way of making sure they were safe, she wouldn’t hesitate. And if it was a choice between their safety and her ethics, her ethics would lose. They might be dysfunctional, but they were still a family. Even if she had to know more about her origins. ‘Before you walk out on me – please answer the question this time. How did you adopt me?’
It was her father who answered, his words slow and unwilling. ‘Other Librarians knew that we wanted a child. We couldn’t have one. There was no medical reason . . .’
Alberich had already told Irene it was impossible for two Librarians to have a child, but she wasn’t allowing them to get off topic again. So she simply nodded, willing him to continue.
‘Another Librarian was pregnant. It wasn’t her fault or her choice – we don’t know the full details, we didn’t ask. She was going to bear a child that she didn’t want. She offered the child to us. It was that simple.’
‘Who was the Librarian?’ Irene asked. She stepped forward, her hands clenched on the back of a chair. ‘Who was she?’
‘Nobody you know,’ her mother said, voice raw. ‘And I heard that she died since.’
Irene felt a distant shock as the facts were laid out. Anger, rather than grief, surged in her at the way this last link to her ‘true heritage’ had been snatched away, if she could call it that . . . for if she’d never known her biological mother, how could she feel genuine grief for her death? And yet shouldn’t she feel something for her?
She didn’t even know if her parents were telling the truth.
‘And that’s all?’ she finally said.
‘What do you want to hear?’ her mother demanded. ‘Something more romantic? Everyone tried to do the best they could. Do you blame us for it? Were we that bad as parents?’
‘No,’ Irene said. She didn’t hesitate. ‘No, you weren’t bad parents. You never were.’ It might have been a lie; neither she nor they had ever been perfect. But it was what she wanted to say, what she wanted to believe. They were only human, after all.
Slowly her mother lowered her head. ‘Then do you forgive us?’
Again the words came without thinking. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. You are my parents. That’s all there is.’
‘You need to get going – Coppelia will be waiting.’ Her father picked up his hat. He paused to give Irene a hug, but it felt more perfunctory than their first embrace, as though the conversation had drawn an invisible line between them. Was it their past history as spies making them this emotionally unavailable – and was s
he in danger of repeating their mistakes? ‘Urgent Library business won’t go away just because you have personal issues, Irene. You should know that by now. We should talk later . . .’
Running off to war like a coward! The words drifted through Irene’s mind, a relic of some long-forgotten film, but she bit them back. ‘Absolutely,’ she agreed. ‘We should.’
Her mother looked at them. ‘Get in touch when you’ve had time to think things over, Irene. You know how to reach us.’
‘When you have the leisure for it,’ Irene said, unable to stop the sarcasm from leaking into her voice. She tried to remember they’d volunteered to see her, to check she was safe, but it was hard.
‘If you want leisure, then you shouldn’t have become a Librarian,’ her mother retorted.
‘Fine,’ Irene muttered, feeling her teenage years surge back on her in an unstoppable tidal wave. Shoulders hunched defensively, she exchanged a brief hug with her mother before dragging the door open. ‘Just . . . take care.’
‘And you, Ray darling,’ her mother said briskly, trotting out into the hallway and heading remorselessly for the front door.
‘Ah, did I miss something?’ Kai enquired.
‘Everything,’ Irene sighed, repressing the urge to snap. ‘Kai, I’m really not good company at the moment, and I have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
For a moment he looked as though he was about to object, but instead he hugged her. ‘I’ll be here when you get back,’ he said.
As usual, the Library was haunted by the susurration of night-owl Librarians going about their work. The vast weight of books overhanging Irene rose above her until the ceiling was lost in darkness. A few Librarians were sorting books, high up on the steel steps that criss-crossed the shelves like complicated filigree. Irene could hear their shoes ticking against the metal and the occasional thud of books being extracted. The sound was oddly soothing.
She hurried along the walkway beneath the rows of shelving, conscious of time passing by. Normally she would have expected Coppelia to issue a transfer shift request, which would allow Irene to travel near-instantaneously across the Library to Coppelia’s office. Especially as this was supposed to be urgent. But apparently it wasn’t urgent enough to justify the energy expenditure, and instead she was left to make her own way. At what was now three – no, four o’clock – in the morning. And Coppelia’s office had shifted to a position deeper within the Library, which meant a longer walk.
The only upside was that it gave Irene time to calm down after meeting her parents. It also gave her a chance to consider the assassination attempt against Kai. She and Kai desperately needed a Fae counterpart on the treaty commission, someone who could keep the Fae in check – if that was even possible.
She turned left and sped through a tunnel. Here, the walls were lined with books in Russian, stacked two copies deep, their gilt titles flashing as lamps above swayed in some unseen wind. Irene noted them as she would note any nearby book – Prisoners of Asteroid, A Planet for Tyrants, Alisa Selezneva and her Lens – but most of her mind was busy.
The longer Fae committees spent trying to find the most politically suitable candidate, the more they were risking the treaty – leaving her and Kai open to rogue Fae threats. It had been a month now. Perhaps, as Library representative, it was her duty to report the vacillating committees to their leaders. If the Cardinal and the Princess, among others, wanted this treaty to last then they needed to do their bit.
And she’d saved Lord Silver’s party, which meant that he owed her a favour too . . .
She turned right three more times, climbed a set of steps so high and narrow as to be practically a ladder, and ducked through a pair of rapidly revolving doors. Finally she reached Coppelia’s office.
Strictly speaking, there was neither day nor night in the Library. While the windows in some rooms looked out on an outside world, there was no logic to the time of day beyond the glass panes. Sometimes a Librarian might go from one room to another and find that the view had changed from a stormy mountainside to a sunlit landscape. Or they might see a cityscape under a cloudy night sky, with a foreboding moon beyond.
However, owing to the necessity of actually communicating with each other, many of the Library’s inhabitants woke and slept at roughly similar hours. While they could certainly stay up all night researching, like the Librarians she’d just passed, studying or simply reading, this didn’t absolve them from the next day’s work.
Only senior Librarians were able to set their own hours. Or sleep in. So even though it was the middle of the Library’s ‘night’, Coppelia, Irene’s mentor, was still awake. She was wrapped in one of her favourite thick blue velvet robes, like a particularly luxurious nun who was going to do any repenting at a much later date, with a pair of scarves twisted around her throat. Her desk, unusually, was almost clear.
Here in Coppelia’s study Irene could finally relax. The night outside the window (for this room looked out onto a city in darkness) was peaceful and quiet. A desk lamp burned between the two of them, illuminating the polished surface of Coppelia’s wooden hand and striking gleams of light from the gilded icons on the walls.
‘My parents said that it was urgent,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘Though I’m assuming there are degrees of urgency, since you didn’t authorize a rapid transit.’
Coppelia coughed and took a sip from her steaming mug. Irene was unable to identify the drink, except to note that it smelled herbal and unpleasant. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We have a week, perhaps two, before the world under threat moves into a very dangerous phase indeed. But we can’t be sure how long we have – or how long it will take you to get the book needed to stabilize it.’
‘Is it a straightforward retrieval mission?’ Retrieval was a much friendlier word than theft. Some of Irene’s jobs were even legal. Though admittedly not many.
Coppelia took her time before answering, long enough for all Irene’s mental alarm bells to go off. ‘It’s a little different from your usual sort of job. In a way, it’s taking advantage of the current political climate.’
‘Dancing round the subject isn’t going to make me more enthusiastic about it.’
‘It’s human behaviour. Like being polite to your elders,’ Coppelia said pointedly.
Irene considered her tutor’s words. Carefully, she said, ‘I apologize if I’m a little touchy at the moment. I’ve just come from speaking with my parents – and, well, you know that we have some issues.’
‘Very good. Apology accepted,’ Coppelia said. ‘Now, where were we? Yes, the new job. You’re looking for a copy of the Egyptian text The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. It’s a Middle Kingdom work, which puts it somewhere between 2000 and 1700 BC. Very roughly. Do you know it?’
‘The name’s vaguely familiar. I think my father probably mentioned it at some point, given his area of expertise.’ Her father was one of the Library’s specialists in hieroglyphs and Egyptian texts, but Irene herself had never really been interested in the language or the literature. ‘Are you sure I’m the best person for this job?’
‘In terms of your scholarly areas of expertise, no,’ Coppelia said, ‘but in practical terms, yes. There are a few wrinkles . . .’
Of course there are. ‘Please go on.’
‘The version we are seeking is from Gamma-017,’ Coppelia said.
Irene sat bolt upright in her chair. ‘That’s where I was at school!’
‘Yes, that Swiss boarding school with the language specialization. You’ve told me about it often enough. For reasons we haven’t yet managed to confirm, they’ve had an extreme swing towards chaos over the last week. We urgently need a copy of that book to restabilize the world.’
‘My past seems to be coming home to roost,’ Irene said drily, thinking of her parental visit. ‘Is this the practical reason why I’m getting this job? Because I know the world from personal experience? I’m assuming there isn’t already a Librarian-in-Residence.’
Ther
e hadn’t been one when she was at boarding school there, after all; and there were never enough Librarians-in-Residence. In fact – and the thought wasn’t a comforting one – there weren’t enough Librarians, full stop. She’d been told that by someone she’d come to distrust, but Coppelia had confirmed it later. They really were that thin on the ground. And they couldn’t afford to let it be known. If the Fae or the dragons should suspect that the Library was weak – well, peace was all fine and good, but weak neighbours were an open invitation to exert political pressure. Or worse.
‘No,’ Coppelia said. She coughed again and drank some more of her tea. ‘That wasn’t the reason you were selected. This particular copy of The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor that we’re after is insanely rare, which is why it’s so vital in terms of its ability to stabilize the world. There’s a chapter in the Gamma-017 version which doesn’t occur in any other world’s editions. All copies of this version have been lost – except for this one copy that made it off-world. It’s possible that with time and effort we might be able to locate another copy on Gamma-017, but we simply don’t have time. Our best projections are that in ten days the world will move into the conglomerative stage of chaos – where it will be irreversibly trapped in that state.’
Flashes of memory twitched through Irene’s mind, like the turning pages of a book. People she’d known when she was a child, and then a teenager – teachers, friends, even enemies – and places that she remembered. Worlds swallowed up by chaos became places where stories came true. But the human beings who lived in those worlds might as well be dolls, moving through the steps of those stories. Their personalities became nothing but changing masks to suit the whims of the great Fae who ruled them.
She would not let that happen to people she had known and cared about.
‘Well, you clearly see an alternative to eternal chaos,’ she said, her voice brisk and very nearly cheerful. ‘So what happened to this one copy that went off-world?’
The Secret Chapter Page 3