The Invisible Library

by Cogman, Genevieve

‘How?’ Irene enquired. She’d decided a while back that Socratic questioning was a good idea, because (a) it got students thinking for themselves, (b) sometimes they came up with ideas she hadn’t thought of, and (c) it gave her more time to think while they were trying to find answers.

  ‘We can go to the British Library – oh, wait. It won’t be open at this time of night.’

  ‘It won’t,’ Irene agreed, ‘which is going to be annoying if we need to sneak back in there at some point to get back to the Library. And he didn’t give us a home address.’ It should have been in those papers he’d given them. It wasn’t. Which, a niggling voice at the back of her mind pointed out, had been careless of Dominic. Almost to the point of outright dereliction of duty in such a dangerous location. She might have needed his help urgently.

  ‘We can use the Language to contact him,’ Kai said triumphantly.

  Irene considered that. ‘I can make a construct and send it to warn him, but it will need to travel and find him.’

  ‘Magic,’ Kai said.

  ‘Not my field,’ Irene replied. ‘Are you any good at it?’

  ‘I can command some spirits,’ Kai said modestly. ‘But I haven’t had time to introduce myself to any local ones. I wouldn’t want to try that unless we have no other choice.’

  Irene nodded. ‘And Dominic did say they could be dangerous. So we’ll go to the British Library in the morning and talk to Dominic in person, then. The Library will have updated him in any case, just as they did me. It’s not as if we’re leaving him in danger. This isn’t a bad horror film.’ She smiled, hopefully reassuringly.

  ‘Oh,’ Kai said. He glanced at the small case by the door with the documents in it. ‘So,’ he said, with a little too much casualness, ‘can you show me some of the Language words in there?’

  ‘I could, but it wouldn’t do you any good.’ Irene put down the cup. ‘It won’t be any different from how it is inside the Library. It still won’t look like anything other than normal speech to you.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  Irene blinked at the change of subject. ‘Did what hurt?’

  ‘Getting the Library mark.’ Kai threw himself back down on the bed. It creaked under him. ‘If that’s the only way to understand the Language.’

  ‘Yes, and yes.’ Since Kai evidently wasn’t going to bring it over to her, Irene got up and walked across to fetch the case. ‘Look, you should get some sleep. There’s no point us both staying up all night.’

  Kai rolled onto his front, resting his chin on his hands, and looked up at her. ‘Irene,’ he said, and there was something low and stroking in his voice. ‘When you say sleep, do you really mean just sleep?’

  Irene looked at him, the case in her hands, and raised her eyebrows pointedly. ‘Yes. I do really mean just sleep.’

  ‘But you, me – we’re sharing rather a small space, don’t you think?’ He stretched, and she noticed his trousers clung appealingly tightly. ‘You’re not feeling some kind of loco parentis responsibility towards a novice, are you? Is that what it is?’

  ‘No,’ Irene said briefly. ‘But it’s irrelevant in any case.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Look,’ she cut him off, before he got any ideas about standing up and taking her in his arms or anything like that. ‘Kai, I like you, you’re extremely handsome, and I hope we’ll stay good friends, but you are not my type.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  She walked back, sat down, and opened the case, starting to thumb through the papers inside.

  ‘What is your type?’ Kai asked hopefully.

  Irene looked up to see that he’d removed his cravat, unbuttoned his shirt, and was showing a triangle of muscular, smooth, pale chest. She could imagine what he would feel like under her fingers.

  She swallowed. ‘Do we really have to do this?’

  ‘I’m not just trying to flatter you,’ Kai said. There was a thread of annoyance in his voice now. ‘But I like you, I think you’re clever and witty and charming and I have a lot of respect for you. And believe me when I say I am marvellous in bed.’

  ‘I do believe you,’ Irene said, looking for a way out of this. ‘I’m sure that we would spend a very nice evening. But I wouldn’t get any study done then.’

  ‘After the study,’ Kai said hopefully.

  Irene rubbed her forehead with the back of one hand. She was getting a headache. ‘Look, I appreciate you being polite about this, I appreciate you being absolutely charming, and I wish I could be more polite about turning you down. But it’s been a long day, and I still have work to do, and you’re not really my type. And before this goes any further, my type is darkly dangerous and fascinating, of dubious morality. And yes, this caused the whole problem in the cat burglar scandal that was mentioned earlier. Which was deeply embarrassing at the time. And still is. Also, let me make myself perfectly clear that if you repeat this I will skin you alive. Right?’

  Kai looked at her with big disappointed eyes. ‘I would have enjoyed partnering you,’ he said. ‘Really. You would, too.’

  ‘Allow me to inform you that I am an exquisite bed partner,’ Irene said, a little sniffily. ‘I have travelled through hundreds of alternates and sampled partners from many different cultures. If I took you to bed, you certainly wouldn’t be complaining.’

  Kai gave her another deep stare from those drowning-dark eyes of his.

  She sighed. ‘But right now, we have a book to find, I have to study, and you need to sleep. Please?’

  Eventually he did, and she could work in peace, with only the occasional side-thought about tempting offers and beautifully contoured muscles.

  A couple of hours later, with Kai soundly asleep, Irene put down her papers and rubbed her sore temples. She’d just memorized a dozen different adverbs for the way that an airship moved, and fifteen adjectives for types of smog. She was due a break.

  Unfortunately, thought came along with it.

  Alberich was known to be allied with some of the Fae; he’d gone to them when he first went renegade. Now he allegedly played on their various factions with the energy of a lunatic musician with a pipe organ. The few fragmented reports that the Library had on him – at least those that were accessible to juniors like herself – suggested that he was after immortality.

  She stared at the papers without really seeing them. Immortality. The Library gave an effective sort of immortality, or at least a continued life until the person involved grew tired of it. As long as a Library initiate bearing its mark was inside the Library, they didn’t age. Out in the multiple worlds, one grew old, but inside the Library ageing just stopped. She’d spent years in the Library herself while she was training. She’d had years of experience that didn’t show anywhere obvious. Except perhaps her eyes sometimes, but she tried not to think about that.

  That was why the Library hierarchy functioned as it did. Junior Librarians operated out in the divergent worlds while they still had the years to spare. Once they grew old, they retreated to work in the Library for as long as they chose, with only the occasional trip outside if necessary. These were people like Coppelia and Kostchei, spending their days in the endless rooms, finally able to get their research done properly. Some Librarians just lived on and on, until they decided that they’d had enough, or went out into the alternate worlds to finish their days somewhere that they liked. The Library paid for it, however expensive or exotic, on the grounds that ‘nothing is too good for those who’ve spent their lives in service to the Library’. Of course, it was similarly aged Librarians who voted for the funding on that sort of thing . . .

  Irene wasn’t going to start thinking about that sort of thing yet. She had years in the field ahead of her yet. Decades. Things to do. People to see.

  But then there was Alberich. He’d left the Library five hundred years ago. There was no way that he could still be alive by the Library’s normal methods. He must have made some sort of bargain with the Fae, creatures defined by their impossibility. Common horror o
r fantasy literature supplied half a dozen unpleasant ideas on how Alberich could still exist, though some of them might not count as living.

  And what did he want to do with that continued existence? The Library could use unique books to connect and bind itself to particular alternate worlds. But what could someone else – someone from outside the Library – do with those linking books? It wasn’t an area within which junior Librarians had been encouraged to speculate. The best answer she could come up with at the moment was something bad.

  After all, what might it imply if Alberich could influence whole worlds simply by owning certain key texts . . . ?

  Irene seriously considered another brandy. This was all growing overly complicated. Bradamant wanting to take over the mission, the Fae involvement, Alberich . . . and then there was Kai.

  She looked across at his sleeping form. He didn’t snore. Kai breathed gently and regularly, like an advertisement for particularly comfortable pillows. And he’d managed to fall asleep in just the sort of position that might require her to smooth his brow or wake him with a kiss. As for that earlier shift of persona from street punk to semi-aristocrat – he’d handled that detective like a gentleman born. And his current interest in wardrobe, seduction and general adventure really didn’t fit the young man who’d introduced himself to her as Coppelia’s latest student. There was something off. Coppelia had to have noticed it herself.

  Irene realized that she was tapping her finger against the papers. She deliberately stopped herself. Habits were dangerous; they could get you killed.

  Had Bradamant’s interest in Kai been suspicious?

  Irene had her own history with Bradamant, which she certainly wasn’t going to discuss in front of Kai, or behind Kai, or in any place where Kai might end up hearing about it. The woman was a poisonous snake. No, that was unfair to snakes. Irene had been Bradamant’s student once, and she knew exactly what it meant. Get used as a live decoy, somehow miss any of the credit but catch all the blame. Then spend years putting your research credentials back together again, after the blot on your record caused by rejecting an older Librarian’s offer to take you out on another mission.

  With an effort, she stopped herself tapping on the papers again.

  It was just three in the morning; she could hear distant church bells and clock chimes, drifting through the fog outside. Another hour of study, then she’d sleep and Kai could keep watch. She was paranoid enough to want someone keeping watch, however unlikely it was that Alberich or anyone else could find them here.

  Paranoia was one of the few habits that was worth keeping.

  At eight o’clock the next morning, the doors of the combined British Museum and British Library opened. Irene and Kai joined the crowd of people heading in. Luckily nobody was in the mood for talking at that hour of the morning. People kept their gazes fixed on their boots, stared blankly ahead, or buried themselves ferociously in notebooks.

  The Department of Classical Manuscripts was open, but Dominic Aubrey’s office was closed. The door was locked, bolted, and possibly even barred on the inside, for all that Irene could tell. She didn’t remember noticing a bar when she’d been inside, but she might have missed it.

  ‘Shall I pick the lock?’ Kai asked as they (not for the first time) straightened from peering at it and did their best to imitate hopeful students, just in time to smile at passing staff.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Irene said. ‘He may have put some sort of wards up against physical or sorcerous lockpicking, but he can’t ward against the Language.’ She paused. ‘Stand back.’

  ‘Oh?’ Kai said, doing as she’d told him.

  ‘Well, wards are one thing, but traps and alarms are something else.’ She ignored Kai’s expression of sudden dismay (really, he should be grateful, he was getting an excellent education) and quickly went down on one knee. There she informed the door in the Language that all seals and bars on it were undone, all locks and bolts opened, and all wards gone.

  It swung open quietly when she set her hand on the handle. She beckoned Kai in quickly after her, and closed the door behind him.

  The room was just as it had been yesterday. Early morning sunlight came in dimly through the windows, muffled by the fog beyond, and gleamed on the gold leaf and glass cases. The Library door itself was secured by means of a chain and padlock, the chain running through both the door handle and a metal link set into the wall. It would be useless to prevent anyone coming from the other side, as the power of the Library would prevail, but it was efficient enough to stop people trying it from this side.

  ‘Irene,’ Kai said uneasily.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If the door out was bolted from this side, and if the door to the Library was padlocked from this side too, how did anyone leave the room?’

  ‘A good point,’ Irene said. Encourage useful habits of thought. ‘There must be a secret door here somewhere. Or he left through sorcery.’

  ‘So can you use the Language to find the secret door?’

  Irene sat down on the chair behind the desk. It was clearly Dominic Aubrey’s personal chair. It yielded with the ease of long use with a single graceful creak, and smelled of snuff and coffee. ‘Not exactly. Field exam; tell me why.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not fair . . .’ Kai started, then looked at her expression and shut his mouth to think. ‘Okay,’ he said a moment later. ‘Sorry. I think I’ve got it. Everything within range of the Language reacts to it unless the command or sentence specifies otherwise, right. So if you just tell everything within range to unlock . . .’

  Irene nodded. ‘Then I’ll end up opening the cases, the drawers, the cabinets along the wall there, the padlock on the Library door, and quite possibly my handbag and your wallet and the windows while we’re at it. It’s a reasonable suggestion, but it won’t do unless we have absolutely no other choice. Now tell me why I’m not going to use sorcery.’

  Kai thought, then shrugged. ‘Because Dominic may have put wards on any secret door which will blow up when you use sorcery to detect them?’

  ‘Actually, no.’ Irene leaned her elbows on the desk. ‘It’s because I’m bad at sorcery.’

  ‘What? But anyone can do sorcery!’

  She lifted her eyebrows.

  ‘Seriously,’ Kai said. ‘You must be joking. Sorcery’s one of the simplest skills around. Even my – my youngest brother could command the simpler spirits and invoke the elements. You’re not telling me that . . .’ He ran out of words mid-sentence, with the uneasy look of someone who’d spotted that he’d said the wrong thing.

  Irene had noticed it too. ‘Your youngest brother,’ she repeated softly.

  ‘Irene, I—’

  ‘If I’d had a family, you told me before.’ She remembered the conversation in the Library, as forgetting was the last thing a fully-trained Librarian should do. Memories were as important as books, and almost as important as proper indexing. ‘Kai, you’ve been lying to me about some things, and hiding others. I know it, and you know it.’ She wished that she could run her hands through her hair in the way that he was doing now, but she was the older Librarian, and he was her apprentice, and she couldn’t afford to show weakness. She had to be in control. She liked him, and she didn’t actually like many people, and she didn’t want to accuse him. She didn’t want to . . . drive him away. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  He drew himself up and stood in front of her, suddenly appearing very tall and yet somehow fragile. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘You can,’ Irene corrected him. ‘But it seems you won’t.’

  ‘Irene.’ He swallowed. ‘I swear to you that it has nothing to do with the current situation. By my name and my honour and my descent, I swear it.’

  Saying as far as you know was the obvious response, but it would have made light of his obvious struggle and sincerity. And he was sincere, Irene was certain of that.

  Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that he was right, or that he wasn’t an idiot.

  S
he sighed. ‘I accept your word, and won’t ask for more unless the current situation dictates otherwise. But I will have to tell Coppelia about this, Kai. I can’t keep it secret.’

  ‘I’d expect that,’ Kai said. He raised his eyes to look nobly at the opposite wall. ‘I would have known that you would report it, seeing as—’

  ‘Assuming she doesn’t already know,’ Irene said thoughtfully.

  Kai twitched. ‘She can’t,’ he said, in a tone that was more desperate hope than genuine conviction.

  ‘If I can spot something being odd in two days, then she can probably notice it in five years.’ Irene stood up and patted Kai on the shoulder. ‘Relax. Now let’s find this secret door. I’ll check the cabinets on this wall, you check the shelves on that wall.’

  She could hear Kai muttering behind her as she walked across to check the ranks of cabinets. They were full of carefully pinned-down pages, shards of pottery, pens, quills, typewriters, and other bits and pieces that obviously hadn’t been dusted for at least a couple of years. The locks on the cabinets were good, but the wood was dry and fragile. Any serious thief (such as herself, on more than one occasion) would simply have broken the frame or cut out the glass rather than trying to pick the lock.

  Kai sneezed.

  ‘Found anything?’ she called across, not bothering to turn and look.

  ‘Only dust,’ he said, and sneezed again.

  Irene went down on her hands and knees to check the bottom edge of the cabinets, looking for traces that they’d been moved. If this didn’t get her anywhere, then she’d forget about confidentiality and go through the drawers of Dominic’s desk. She didn’t seriously expect him to keep anything incriminating or important there, but it might at least give them his home address. Failing that, she and Kai could check with the British Library administration. Failing that—

  Kai sneezed again.

  ‘If there’s that much dust,’ she called across, ‘then any secret doors should be fairly obvious.’

  ‘It’s not just dust,’ Kai said. He took a step. Paused. Took another step. ‘There’s something in this room which smells odd.’