‘Ah yes, this so-called Fae–dragon–Librarian truce,’ Felix interrupted. ‘It’s a nice story, but do you really expect us to believe in it?’
For a moment Irene stared at him. She’d been through hell and back to get the truce signed. ‘Mr Nemo himself confirmed it existed!’
Her disbelief must have shown in her voice, but Felix just shrugged. ‘I know you Librarians. You’re all good liars. And it’s not as if Mr Nemo actually gave his word that he’d heard of it.’
‘I also know nothing of such a truce,’ Ernst rumbled. ‘It is good story. It gives you decent alibi. Now, how about we get to real story and facts?’
‘Tell me, Irene, which finger do you use least?’ Felix asked. ‘We don’t have to kill you, but we may need to apply some encouragement . . .’
Irene felt a cold sense of dread. She’d made a really, really bad mistake. She’d grown used to dealing with Fae who accepted that the truce existed, and she’d felt a measure of safety negotiating under its protection. She’d been spoiled, assuming these Fae would also treat her as a neutral, rather than an enemy or a competitor. Now she – and Kai – might be about to pay the price.
‘Be reasonable. Please. I can answer your questions without all this.’ She knew her fear was showing in her voice. Maybe that would help convince them.
‘Yes, but how can we trust you?’ Felix shook his head sadly and somehow less theatrically than usual. He seemed more human now he’d moved away from his archetype of shadowy thief. Worryingly, this felt like a very personal grudge instead. ‘How can we trust any of you Librarians?’
You Librarians, Irene thought. ‘You’ve met some of us before,’ she hazarded. ‘And it didn’t go well?’
‘That’s putting it mildly,’ Felix said with quiet savagery. ‘You people are unprincipled monomaniacs.’
‘I’m not denying that,’ Irene admitted. ‘But if you know about the Language . . .’
‘I do indeed, which is why Ernst is going to squeeze your throat until your head pops off if you try anything.’
‘Then you know we can’t lie in it?’ Irene met his eyes. ‘It’s like you Fae – if you bind yourself by your word, then you have to keep it. If I give you my word, in the Language, then I have to speak the truth. I don’t know what this other Librarian did to you, but I’m not them. I want this theft to succeed. I have something important at stake too.’
She felt nervous sweat trickling down her back as Felix and Ernst exchanged glances.
‘Ernst?’ Felix finally said. ‘I’m not sure I trust my judgement here. What do you think?’
Ernst shrugged. Irene could feel the vibrations of his movement through his hand round her throat. ‘It is true, that if they swear in their Language, they must keep their word?’
‘Yes,’ Felix said sourly, ‘but they’re good at working round that.’
‘Then she should swear she’s not going to betray us. That she will be as honest with us as she is with that dragon boy of hers. That seems fair enough.’
‘That’s unfair,’ Irene said quickly. Her fear was still very real, but if she made the wrong promise the Language could tear her apart. ‘I’m prepared to pledge “one for all and all for one” – with one caveat – but you must do the same.’
Ernst’s hand tightened. ‘Caveat? You demand an exception, just for you?’
Irene coughed and made frantic gestures till he relaxed his grip. ‘The Library,’ she gasped. ‘If they tell me, back off and pull out, then I won’t have a choice. But if I do, I’ll swear not to interfere with your work on the job.’
Everyone in the main reading room would have their heads down over their work, oblivious to her plight, she thought despairingly. It was like a theatrical farce, but deadly serious. Even if she screamed, nobody would reach her in time to help.
And, she wondered with a shiver, what else had she missed? She made a mental vow that she wouldn’t be so careless again.
‘Let’s do this by stages, less room for error,’ Felix said slowly. ‘Give us your word that you haven’t betrayed us – and that this side trip of yours to your Library was as you claimed. Then maybe we can negotiate what happens next on a more equal basis.’
‘All right.’ Irene swallowed, and chose her words. ‘I swear by my name and power that I have not betrayed you and I do not intend to betray you. I also swear that a truce has been signed between all dragon monarchs and a number of powerful Fae, and the Library is also a signatory.’
She looked up and Felix’s face was set in hard lines. ‘And your side trip . . .’ he prompted.
‘My main motivation in returning to the Library was to check I wouldn’t break the truce because of this theft.’
Her words echoed in the shadowy passageway with a resonance that went beyond the physical and hummed in her bones. The Fae felt it, too. Ernst released her throat and pulled his hand away as though it had been stung, and Felix twitched, glancing up and down the corridor nervously.
Irene wanted very badly to rub her throat, but that might have looked like weakness. ‘All right?’ she said. ‘Convinced?’
‘Main motivation?’ Felix queried.
That was the problem with using the Language to swear truthfully: she had to be truthful. ‘I also asked if they had any information on this world which they could share. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling dangerously under-informed.’
‘So there is a truce,’ Ernst mused. ‘Maybe I will get work from dragon employers now. That would be amusing. But your problem makes more sense now. If your Library catches you breaking treaty they have signed, then they throw you out or have you publicly executed, or something like that?’
‘At the very least,’ Irene agreed. She could feel that the balance of power had shifted. Even if Felix wasn’t quite convinced, Ernst seemed prepared to believe her. She took a step forward. ‘So shall we discuss what you’re both after?’
‘From Mr Nemo?’ Felix asked.
Now that was deliberately obtuse. Irene could spot it half a mile away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘From me. If you’d wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. Which means you want something. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to be honest about what we want here?’
Felix hesitated, then nodded. ‘All right. You tell me, Irene – just how many oddities have you spotted in this job, already?’
‘You mean things which would be complete deal-breakers if there wasn’t some bait I really wanted on the hook?’
‘Yes,’ Felix murmured. ‘Just like that. I don’t normally work with other people. Or if I do, I’m the one who picks them. No offence, Ernst.’
‘None taken,’ Ernst answered gloomily. ‘How nice to have such freedom!’
‘And I’m not convinced people can hack into computer networks that easily.’ It seemed Felix didn’t trust Indigo any more than he trusted Irene. ‘I’d like a sample or two of what our dragon “colleague” can do before I rely on her to back me up.’
‘And Mr Nemo didn’t mention supernatural creatures – or that dragons visited this world,’ Irene said. ‘A minor point which would have been useful to know.’ For a moment she thought of pointing a finger of suspicion in Indigo’s direction, but rejected it. That sort of accusation could be impossible to take back. And she didn’t know enough about Indigo to know whether it was justified or not.
She didn’t know enough about any of them.
‘You say dragons, plural,’ Ernst noted. ‘In the van, dragon boy said he could sense them here. You have more proof?’
‘There was a photo of the museum from about two years ago. I saw a dragon in the background. He was in human form. I know it’s not current, but . . .’ Irene shrugged. ‘I need more information. We need more information.’
Felix had opened his mouth to answer, when suddenly the raucous clamour of alarm bells split the air – a sound which would have been bad enough in the large reading room, but which was actively painful in the enclosed corridor.
Crashes and thuds came from the
room beyond, and the sound of stampeding feet.
Then the noise cut off. Abruptly the gun was in Felix’s hand again, pointed squarely at Irene’s forehead. ‘You have betrayed us,’ he snarled, his tone barely controlled.
‘Before you jumped me, I didn’t even know you were here!’ Irene retorted. ‘If that was a fire alarm, we should get out of here too!’ There was no noise coming from the reading room now.
There was a crackle and a click as a loudspeaker came on. ‘Attention, attention,’ a man’s voice said in German, harsh and echoing, as the broadcast repeated in other rooms within earshot. ‘This is CENSOR. We have a report of a vampire infestation in progress. Everyone is to leave this building immediately and submit to identity checks and blood tests, as required under CENSOR charter. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Any attempt to avoid testing is illegal. Please form an orderly queue and be prepared for your belongings to be searched.’ A pause. ‘Attention, attention . . .’
The barrel of Felix’s pistol was still pointed right between Irene’s eyes. She swallowed. ‘Felix. Pull yourself together.’ Why did I use the word pull? It goes far too well with ‘trigger’. ‘I haven’t had time to invite CENSOR to stage a raid. You both know that. I’m on your side – and I’ve sworn it, too. But we need to get out of here now.’
Felix’s hand didn’t shake, but his eyes were unsettlingly wild. ‘I knew it,’ he crooned, half to himself. ‘I knew I couldn’t trust you. Well, this time’s going to be different—’
Ernst had moved in total silence. His hand came down hard across the back of Felix’s neck, and the other Fae crumpled like a rag. His pistol went spinning across the floor till Irene stopped it with her foot.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Whose side are you on?’
‘Side of common sense,’ Ernst said calmly. ‘Only a fool fights in a burning house – or with the police outside.’ He bent down and picked up Felix, swinging him over one shoulder. ‘We need the quickest way out of here without meeting police. Or CENSOR people.’
Irene considered. She’d visited this library once, although it was in another world long ago. ‘Up’s no use. We’d be trapped as they worked through the building. And no, I can’t take you into the Library itself from here – I can’t bring Fae inside.’
‘Down?’
‘If they’re hunting for vampires, they’ll probably be checking the cellars. No, we need a side door somewhere. Or an excuse to mingle with the crowd.’
‘More difficult with a burden,’ Ernst remarked, patting the unconscious Felix meaningfully, though his tone was carefully neutral.
Irene considered his statement. ‘Is that a subtle moral test to see if I’d leave him behind?’ she said. ‘Or are you just being pragmatic? Either way, you’re the one who’s going to be carrying him.’
‘Had to check,’ Ernst said with a shrug, though she noticed he hadn’t committed to either explanation. ‘So how do we get out of here – with him? We may have a problem.’
‘We do have a problem. And we don’t have identity papers, apart from our passports.’ Irene had a nasty suspicion that passports alone might not suffice. She might pass, but who knew whether CENSOR’s checks could detect Fae?
The view outside, from a dusty second-storey window, didn’t inspire peace of mind. The street was swarming with a mixture of police and people in CENSOR uniforms. Crowds of civilians were being organized into neat queues, pointing towards checkpoints which looked like a combination of airport X-ray device and MRI scanner. Blood samples were being taken with neat efficiency – the sort that involved a syringe to the elbow. Nobody objected. Everybody was standing where they’d been told to stand, as if this was routine, and were eyeing the people around them with controlled nervousness. But people were still spilling out of the Library into the street. That was good; it meant that there was still time for them to mingle with the crowd. If they could solve the Felix problem.
All the CENSOR people had shoulder-cams, just like the one they’d seen earlier, and carried walkie-talkies at their belts. This city runs on fear, Irene thought, and CENSOR seems to have its hand on the throttle . . . She frowned.
‘You have idea?’ Ernst queried.
‘Yes,’ Irene said slowly. ‘We’ll need an exit where the CENSOR people can intercept us – without too many other people listening . . .’
They were among the last to leave through the exit Irene had picked – one of the side doors out of the building. Both CENSOR guards stationed here had pistols slung across their backs, and short truncheons (or whatever the technical term was for a short heavy club) holstered at their belts. They looked much more military than a regular police force, and extremely dangerous.
Irene had positioned herself and Ernst at the back of a group. Rather than carrying the still-unconscious Felix over his shoulder, Ernst now supported him with an arm around his waist. He moved with artificial slowness, as though the other man actually weighed him down.
As the last stragglers filed through the exit, Ernst let Felix slide to the ground as though he could no longer support the other man. Irene gasped, bent over him, then beckoned to the guards. ‘Excuse me,’ she said in faultless German. ‘Can you help us? My friend is ill.’
The two CENSOR guards were well trained enough not to come running into what might be a trap. However, they did take a couple of steps into the building, out of view of their colleagues. Which was all Irene needed.
‘You perceive that we are your colleagues, reliable and trusted,’ she said.
The atmosphere lightened. Although the two men didn’t suddenly take off their weapons and start shaking hands, they relaxed noticeably. ‘Anything to report?’ one asked, while the other bent over to check Felix’s pulse.
‘Yes, and it’s urgent. Can you give me a channel directly to whoever’s in charge of this operation?’
‘No problem,’ the first man said, pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt. He hit a selection of buttons, muttered a code and finished with, ‘Eisen, reporting in now,’ before passing it to Irene.
Irene had tried this once before, so she knew it was possible, but she wasn’t sure how many she had to convince. With the Language, the more people involved, the harder it became . . .
‘You perceive I am a trusted authority,’ she said into the walkie-talkie, ‘and that I am telling you that this whole affair is a hoax. It’s an attempt to distract you from the real vampire infestation, at the Spanish Riding School. You perceive that you need to take action and get there – now.’
Blinding pain ripped through her skull, and blood began to leak from her nose. She swayed, holding herself upright by force of will, and tried to blot her nosebleed as inconspicuously as possible. Frantic babbling came from the walkie-talkie: she hit the switch that she’d seen the CENSOR guard press, and it cut off. ‘Cameras, deactivate,’ she added, feeling faint.
Ernst had strolled behind the guards, his motions so casual that he hadn’t registered as a threat. This was despite him being over six feet tall, with the sort of build and musculature that made him the archetype of an enforcer. Before the CENSOR guards could ask what was going on, he picked them up by their necks and banged their heads together.
‘I used to think it was artistic licence, when I read about that,’ Irene mumbled. This was a bad headache. There must have been at least half a dozen people on the far end of the connection. She fumbled for aspirin in her bag, and dry-swallowed a couple.
‘And I used to think sensible women took out the cameras before doing criminal things.’ Ernst kicked open a random door, grabbed each guard by an ankle, and dragged them both through it. He then shoved the door shut.
‘If I’d tried that before using the Language on them, they might have shot me first.’ Her nosebleed had mostly stopped. Irene stuffed bloodied paper tissues back into her bag: she didn’t want to risk leaving blood samples around.
Ernst peered around the edge of the doorway. ‘Mm. They are dismantling the checkpoints now and the queue
s are almost gone. I think the police and CENSOR are both on their way out too. Can you walk?’
‘I can.’ Not well, but she could manage it. ‘We’d better confuse our trail on the way back – and hope that Indigo really is that good at hacking computer records.’
‘What went wrong?’ Kai asked, as soon as she walked through the door.
‘I wish I knew,’ Irene said sourly. ‘We’d better not have any vampire infestations under this building. How did you know we had problems?’
‘You’ve changed your clothing, restyled your hair, altered your make-up and put on a pair of glasses,’ Kai pointed out. ‘Were you followed?’
‘I hope not.’ Irene glanced around. Computers had been unpacked and were arranged on desks in a complex configuration. Indigo was in the middle of a nest of keyboards and monitors, swapping in successive memory sticks before bursting into fusillades of typing. She hadn’t bothered to look up.
Kai waited for further details with a rather too obvious patience. He might as well have shouted: Hero nobly and patiently waits for the inconsiderate heroine to explain what’s going on. But she wasn’t about to trigger his protective instincts by actually telling him. That could split the team apart – just after she’d managed temporarily to glue over the wobbly patches. She rubbed her forehead. Her metaphors were getting mangled, it was that bad. Instead she said, ‘Are Ernst and Felix back yet?’
Ernst strolled in from the tiny office bathroom next door, dripping wet and with a towel round his waist. His hair had changed colour to a muted brown, which contrasted obviously with the blond mat of hair covering his chest. Apparently he didn’t think it necessary to dye that. ‘I’m here. Felix went to research the museum. I told dragon boy we’d split up to avoid attention after dodging the CENSOR people. Knew you’d be okay.’
It was difficult, sometimes, to decide whether to be more irritated by colleagues assuming she could handle anything, or by colleagues fretting over her safety. Irene gave up and sat down. ‘Good.’ Her headache had gone down too. Sometimes she wondered if she should be taking so many aspirin. But the risks of sudden death tended to take priority. ‘Kai, the CENSOR situation has left us with a problem. It’s now near-certain that they’ve caught all three of us on camera. I’m hoping Indigo can sort that out.’
The Secret Chapter Page 11