Irene gave up on the cabinets, and pulled herself to her feet, brushing off her skirt. ‘What is it?’
Kai sniffed. ‘I’m not sure. Spicy. Salty. Somewhere round here . . .’ He wandered along the bookcases, sniffing again.
She followed him, fascinated by this new approach to finding secret doors.
‘Got it!’ Kai leaned in and pointed at the small cabinet at the end of the shelves. Half a dozen volumes of The Perfumed Garden Summarized for the Young were piled on top of it, but the actual door of the cabinet was accessible, if locked.
‘Let me see.’ Irene went down on her knees again to check it. ‘Hm. Looks like a normal cabinet. Anything odd about the lock?’
‘Not that I can see,’ Kai replied, joining her at ground level. ‘Do you want to open it or shall I?’
‘Oh, allow me.’ Irene leaned in, and ordered the lock open in the Language.
The cabinet door didn’t open.
‘That’s interesting,’ she said.
‘How can it not open?’ Kai asked.
‘The easiest explanation is that it’s sealed by some other method, on top of the lock,’ Irene explained. ‘Something that’s not obvious, so I wouldn’t know it’s there to tell it to open. Or then again . . . you were saying you could smell something. On which side of the cabinet is the smell strongest?’
Kai gave her a look suggesting that he wasn’t here to sniff on her behalf, but complied after a moment. ‘This side,’ he said, tapping the right-hand panel of the cabinet.
‘Right.’ Irene shuffled round to get a better look at it, then prodded carefully at the corners and the inlaid design. ‘Hm. Yes. Thought so. When is a door not a door?’
Kai just looked at her.
‘When,’ Irene said triumphantly, ‘it’s a fake. Here.’ She pressed the upper corners simultaneously, and the whole side of the cabinet swung open on a hidden hinge. ‘There. Now . . .’ She would have said more, but a powerful stink of vinegar hit her, and she rocked back on her knees, fanning the air in front of her nose.
‘That’s rather raw,’ Kai said. ‘Is it a Library way of preserving documents?’
‘Not one that I’ve ever heard of.’ Irene regained her self-control, and drew out the contents of the cabinet. It was a single Canopic jar in the ancient Egyptian style. ‘So let’s see what’s in here.’
‘Should we?’ Kai asked.
‘Kai,’ Irene said gently. ‘If Dominic really wanted to keep this secret from us, he wouldn’t have hidden it and then been late for work, knowing we’d snoop around.’
‘Just purely for information,’ Kai said, ‘are all Librarians like this over private stuff?’
Irene didn’t dignify his question with an answer. Besides, he’d learn better. A Librarian’s mission to seek out books for the Library developed, after a few years, into an urge to find out everything that was going on around one. It wasn’t even a personal curiosity. It was a simple, impersonal, uncontrollable need to know. One came to terms with it. She lifted off the Canopic jar’s stylized jackal-head lid. ‘There’s something in here,’ she reported.
Kai forgot moral scruples and leaned in closer. ‘What is it?’
‘Some sort of leather.’ Irene rolled back her sleeves and pulled it out. It was larger than it looked, thin delicate stuff with long trailing attachments. She shook it out to get an idea of its full length and shape, then froze, horrified. Behind her she could sense Kai’s stillness and shock.
It was a complete human skin, all in one piece, with a single slit down the front from chin to groin.
It was Dominic Aubrey’s skin.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kai drew back with an indrawn hiss, raising his hands in front of him like claws. The skin lay there on the floor, limp and wet, staining the polished boards with vinegar.
Irene swallowed, holding on to the smell of the vinegar to keep her own nausea at bay. Dominic Aubrey’s features looked so different like this. The flattened face was recognizable, but lacking shape, spirit and the congenial warmth that had animated it just the day before.
‘Is it some sort of fake?’ Kai demanded.
Irene flipped it over. The Library mark ran across its back in a complex tracery of flourishes. It was unmistakeable; the Language couldn’t be faked, even if someone tried to copy it. She felt the mark across her own shoulders twitch in a kind of sympathy. ‘No,’ she said, numbly. ‘It’s real. But it’s not possible for someone to shed their skin like this . . . I mean, it may just be possible to remove your skin, if you consider some wilder fictional texts, but you couldn’t remove the Library’s mark and survive.’
‘Alberich,’ Kai said.
Irene didn’t need to ask him what he meant. ‘Certainly possible,’ she agreed. ‘Even likely. But there’s the Fae to consider as well, and there may be other factions at work. Right. We have to report this.’
Kai sighed deeply in relief. ‘I was afraid you were going to say that we had to investigate it ourselves.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Irene said briskly. ‘We may collect fiction, but we are not required to imitate the stupider parts of it.’ And let’s hope we don’t just get told to investigate this mess without backup anyway. ‘First things first. We’ll hide this thing again, then I’ll open the door to the Library.’
The handle of the outer door began to turn.
Irene barely had time to think But I know I locked it! She hastily shoved skin and jar behind one of the display tables and rose to shield it further with her skirts.
Kai managed two paces towards the door before it swung fully open.
A tall young woman stood there, clutching some books to her chest. She looked at the two of them.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Irene said quickly. ‘Mr Aubrey isn’t here yet. Can we help you?’
The woman stared at the two of them. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said slowly. ‘Who are you?’ Her brown hair was looped untidily on the back of her head and smeared with dust, and there were traces of dust and ash on her grey skirt and jacket.
‘Vermin preventative defence,’ Irene invented quickly. ‘We’re working through all the rooms, looking for signs of infestation. Tell me, Miss – ’ She paused invitingly.
‘Todd,’ the woman said. ‘Rebecca Todd. He told me to come in this morning about the Lamia manuscript.’ She shifted her grip on her books.
‘He should be in soon,’ Irene said. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t ask you to wait inside because we need to deploy some hazardous chemicals while we’re testing for silverfish. Would you mind waiting outside in the corridor? We’ll be out in a minute.’
‘Of course,’ Miss Todd said readily. ‘If Mr Aubrey does arrive while you’re still testing, I’ll let him know.’
‘Thank you,’ Irene said with a smile. She waited until Miss Todd was safely out of the room before breathing a sigh of relief.
‘Silverfish?’ Kai muttered.
‘Hush,’ Irene said. ‘We’ll be out of here before she knows it.’ She knelt down again, avoiding the growing puddle of vinegar, and hastily stuffed the skin back into the jar. ‘Ugh. I need to wash my hands. Actually, I’ll take this with us. Perhaps Coppelia or one of the others will know what it means.’ She passed the jar to Kai. ‘You hold this.’
‘Must I?’ he said, taking it distastefully.
‘I need to open the door.’ Irene walked across to the Library door. She remembered seeing the chain last time, but she rather thought it wasn’t in use then, perhaps freed by their own journey through the door. It was clearly for show rather than substance, presumably to discourage outsiders from using it. And, of course, anyone like Irene could just use the Language.
‘Chain, open,’ she said, laying her hand on the padlock.
It didn’t explode. It burst open. It unfurled like a chrysanthemum and then fastened onto her palm, spreading across her skin in a slick of white-hot metal. But there was more to it than heat. Through the acute pain, Irene sensed active malice and deliber
ate will. Behind it all, as she almost lost consciousness, she caught a dazzle of brightness that ultimately faded to darkness.
‘Irene,’ Kai was saying, but she had fallen to her knees, and didn’t have the space in her head to register his words or his expression. Or anything except the blazing pain crackling from her hand to shoot up her arm. ‘Irene!’
The mark across her back flared to life, automatically resisting the invasive chaotic forces linked to the padlock. Order and chaos now battled for authority over her body. And it was too late to recognize this as a trap laid for someone who’d use the Language, even though it was so clearly that in hindsight.
She could smell something burning. That would be her dress. Fabric was so flammable.
‘Get me loose,’ she gasped. If only she could break the physical link that held her to the padlock, or the forces powering it, that might be enough to let her regain control and finish cleansing herself.
Kai closed a hand round her wrist and pulled. He didn’t try touching the padlock.
The padlock was stuck to her hand. She couldn’t even shift the grip that she had on it; her fingers were locked round what was left of it in a spasm that she couldn’t break. Through the agony, she recognized this as a chaos-fuelled trap. A normal human being, one not sealed to the Library, would already have been warped to something on the verge of possible. Or they would have been accelerated all the way into something that couldn’t exist in this alternate, and outright destroyed. Though a normal human being wouldn’t have triggered the trap . . .
She felt her grip slipping.
For the moment her Library seal was saving her, but it couldn’t last. The two competing forces would burn her out like an understrength fuse if she couldn’t break the connection somehow.
‘Irene!’ Kai yelled in her ear, as if volume would make a difference. ‘Can I get you into the Library? Will that help?’
She jerked her head in a shake. ‘No,’ she gasped. She couldn’t enter the Library in this state. ‘I’m polluted – can’t –’ She tried to think of any teachings covering this, but could only remember it was called the ‘Babelfish Principle’, which was no use. And it was hurting, it was hurting . . .
Then a solution came to her. But if the Library door wasn’t the trap’s power-source, she was so screwed. ‘Break my link to the door . . . break the chain!’
‘Right,’ Kai said as he pulled the chain taut, trying to wrench out the flimsy-looking loop holding it to the wall by brute force. It shifted, but not nearly enough, and he slipped a knife from his sleeve, trying to prise open the links. One parted with a sudden snap, weakened by the forces flowing to the lock. Then the chain whipped free, and he yanked it through what remained of the original padlock.
With the chain gone, the power circuit broke – and the padlock clicked open to fall from Irene’s hand to the floor. Irene knelt there, breathing in deep sobbing gasps, unable to quite look at her hand yet and see what damage had been done.
‘Irene?’ Kai said. ‘What the hell was that? Are you all right? How did you get it loose?’
She looked up at him. Her vision was a little blurry. Maybe that was why he was swaying. ‘It was a trap,’ she tried to explain. ‘Set to react to the Language and bind to the user, using the Library door as an energy source. That was why it stopped functioning when you broke the chain. It was very energy-efficient.’ There was a buzzing in her ears. ‘Kai? Can you hear something? Is it the silverfish?’
‘Irene,’ Kai said. He went down on one knee beside her. ‘Are you all right?’
Irene looked at her hand. It was red all over the fingers and down the palm. ‘Oh,’ she said, in deep comprehension. ‘Kai. I think I’m . . .’ The buzzing was getting louder. ‘I think I have to lie down for a bit.’
‘Irene!’
The world slipped sideways. She felt him catching her as it all went dark.
When the lights came on again, they did so slowly and blearily, through a haze of smoke and a drift of odd smells. She was propped at a strange angle, her skirts carefully draped to hide her ankles. The back of a sofa dug into her shoulders and her head was tilted to one side, hat still pinned to her hair. Someone had pushed a cushion under her cheek. It was horsehair. It prickled.
From under her eyelashes, she could make out a room that had been forced into ruthless order by someone who believed in making large piles of things. Books. Documents. Clothing. Glassware. A dream-catcher in Lissajous lines of wire and ebony spun in the window, turning slowly in a drift of breeze and fog. The walls were also crammed with books, and someone had hung paintings and sketches in front of them, and piled small objects on top of the shelves. The place was crammed with . . . with stuff. She was surprised there was room for her on the sofa.
Her hand ached less now. Someone had slathered it in something wet and wrapped it in bandages, and it lay like a foreign object in her lap. She twitched a finger, stifling a scream, and was pleased to see that it functioned.
‘Irene!’ Kai said from behind her, far too loudly. ‘Are you awake?’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘but please don’t shout.’ She pulled herself upright and managed to knock the horsehair cushion to the ground. ‘Sorry. Where are we?’
‘In my rooms.’ Peregrine Vale stepped forward. ‘Mr Strongrock brought you here an hour ago. Miss Winters, you have been the victim of an appalling assault. Do you feel well enough to speak?’
Irene put her undamaged hand to her head. ‘I’m so sorry. I have a dreadful headache,’ she said, not entirely untruthfully, ‘and I don’t know what’s going on. The last thing I remember is touching this door handle which was booby-trapped . . .’
‘It was some sort of electric shock,’ Kai said helpfully. He went down on one knee next to her, looking up into her face. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to try to get somewhere safe while we worked out what to do next, Irene. The only person who I was sure we could trust was the Earl of Leeds here—’
‘Please,’ Vale interrupted, ‘call me Vale. The title is unimportant. What is important now is locating and arresting the fiends who set this lethal trap.’
‘Well, I . . .’ Irene tried to think what to say next. ‘I . . .’
Vale held up a commanding hand. ‘Say no more. I am aware that Mr Strongrock here is your subordinate.’
‘Oh,’ Irene said.
‘It was blatantly obvious,’ Vale went on. ‘Your signals to him in the restaurant, your ability to handle yourself in combat, and his unwillingness to speak while you were unconscious – these all made it quite clear that you were in command of the mission. Miss Winters, I realize that you have your own agenda, but I ask you – I appeal to you – to trust me. I believe that our aims are congruent. I think we can help each other.’
‘Then Kai’s told you . . .’ Irene let the sentence trail off meaningfully. This wasn’t what she’d wanted. The man was a near-total stranger to her. However impressive his skills were, and while he fitted the character type of nobleman, so he should understand the principles of noblesse oblige well enough, there was still risk. There was always a risk. She was supposed to be manipulator, not manipulated.
Her hand hurt. It was distracting her.
‘He has told me nothing,’ Vale said, and Kai nodded in agreement. ‘He turned up in a cab on my doorstep with you unconscious in his arms, and he asked for shelter until you were awake again.’
Irene pushed straggling tendrils of hair back from her forehead. She didn’t have to feign pain or confusion. ‘I don’t think that we’re the only ones keeping secrets here, Mr Vale. The attack on you last night was too deliberately timed to be coincidence.’ It was a guess on her part, but it hit a mark; his eyelids twitched very slightly. She looked up at him. ‘I think there’s more to all this – the murder, the theft of the book, Belphegor – than just a simple crime of greed. When we met last night, you referred to “thefts of occult material”. This isn’t the only book that’s gone missing, is it?’
Vale
threw himself down into another armchair. ‘You’re correct, Miss Winters. Oh, sit down, sit down, Strongrock. To be frank, I need people that I can trust. The Fair Folk have contacts at every level of society. My enemies have even more. You two are strangers in London, and though you have no apparent links to the Fae, you have nobody to vouch for you or speak in your favour. I may have reasons to believe that you are reliable . . .’ He frowned. ‘No. Leave that for the moment. I will explain my part in this affair, and then perhaps you will explain yours.’
Irene looked down at her hand. She wished she could rip off the bandages and see just how bad it was – surely not a permanent injury? It was that infernal urge that came with any injury, wanting to see how it ‘looked’ every minute of the day, as if she’d actually be able to see it getting better or worse. And if it did get worse, if she’d damaged herself for life? She couldn’t stand the thought of being crippled . . . but investigating would have broken the flow of Vale’s confidences, and she needed his information. ‘Please,’ she said softly, looking up from her hand and trying to stop herself fiddling with the bandages. ‘Please, do go on.’
Vale interlaced his fingers. ‘When I introduced myself as the Earl of Leeds, it was accurate enough, but it is not a title that I care to use often. The dark associations of the city of Leeds and its Earls go back to King Edward’s reign in the fourteenth century. I broke from my family under – under somewhat unpleasant conditions, and have no wish for further connection with them. My father is dead, and I cannot be disinherited, but equally I have no interest in the family lands, properties and secrets.’
‘Is that why you live in London?’ Kai asked. Irene stole a glance at him. He was leaning forward with an expression of keen interest, but there were lines of clear disapproval in his face. His mouth was pursed in what was very nearly a censorious frown.
Vale nodded. ‘My family have no interest in seeing me, nor I them. They hope that I will not marry, and that the title will pass to my brother Aquila. However, a week ago I received a letter from my – ’ he hesitated a moment – ‘my mother.’ The words came with difficulty. ‘She wished to advise me of a theft which had taken place, and to ask me, as detective if not as son . . .’ He fell silent for a moment, staring at his fingers as if they were somehow stained. ‘To ask me if I would investigate the matter for her.’
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