The Invisible Library

by Cogman, Genevieve

  Kai edged a little closer. ‘Have you found out anything yet?’ he muttered.

  Irene considered the facts she’d picked up so far. ‘I think Silver’s waiting for something. Or someone. He seemed on edge. But he’s being distracted by the glitterati.’ She could see him at the other side of the ballroom, talking to a voluptuous pair of women in black who hung on each other’s shoulders, clearly already half-drunk. ‘I’ve been talking to a couple of other people. Apparently it’s odd that Silver hasn’t invited any other vampires tonight. I’m wondering if Wyndham’s attack might have been anti-vampire rather than anti-Fae, and I’d like to ask Vale a few more questions about his family and if they have any links to vampires. Oh, and Vale thinks there’s going to be an attack on the Liechtenstein Embassy by an anti-Fae society called the Iron Brotherhood, and – oh, Kai, please not the sour cream.’

  ‘You need it for a proper contrast with the blinis,’ Kai said firmly.

  ‘Have you found out anything?’ Irene asked.

  ‘Nothing definite,’ Kai said slowly. ‘And – well, I haven’t actually been trying to talk to any of the other Fae here. I don’t think they’d tell us anything useful.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Irene agreed neutrally. ‘But have you found out anything from anyone else?’

  ‘That lady in the corner.’ Kai flicked a glance to their left. The woman in question was elderly, rouged, half buried under a vast white wig, and dressed in a construction of black and white striped satin that was viciously corseted and heavily underwired. ‘She’s very well informed. And she actually is part of the literary world, not just a poseur like Wyndham was.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Irene asked.

  ‘Miss Olga Retrograde,’ Kai said. ‘The elder Miss Olga Retrograde. She said so several times.’

  Irene wondered what the younger Miss Retrograde looked like, as she moved towards her. ‘You’d better introduce us. What is she?’

  ‘A retired lady of pleasure,’ Kai said, rather flatly.

  ‘Well, at least she won’t assume I’m looking for a job,’ Irene said cheerfully. ‘Oh, Kai, don’t look at me like that – ’

  The crowd drifted apart, and Irene could finally see who had just entered the room.

  It was Bradamant.

  She was as perfect as a black and white photograph, her slender neck rising out of the deep grey silk folds of her bodice like a swan, the train of her dress undulating in smooth liquid elegance.

  Kai frowned as Irene broke off mid-sentence, then followed her gaze. ‘What?’ he hissed. ‘Her? Here? How?’

  ‘Four very good questions,’ Irene said through gritted teeth. ‘My god, she’s wearing a Worth gown. That has to be a Worth gown.’

  Kai turned to stare at Irene. ‘What’s the gown got to do with it?’ he asked. ‘Is it particularly effective in concealing weapons or something?’

  ‘No,’ Irene spat. ‘It’s just one of the best dresses from one of the best dressmakers of the period, or whatever the equivalent is in this alternate. Dear heavens, not only does she come in here to try to steal my mission from under me, she has the nerve to do it while wearing something which screams here-I-am-everyone-look-at-me. I mean, do I go round collecting outfits from alternates just so I can be the best-dressed person at a party?’

  ‘Irene,’ Kai said, ‘you’re holding my arm a bit tightly.’

  Irene had to stop herself grinding her teeth. ‘A Librarian is supposed to be about subtlety,’ she muttered. ‘Getting the job done. Not being noticed—oh, sorry.’ She removed her hand from Kai’s forearm and watched Kai affrontedly smooth out the wrinkles on his jacket sleeve. ‘Um.’ She could feel herself flushing. ‘I apologize.’ What she wanted to do was scream How dare she! until the chandeliers tinkled. But she couldn’t.

  ‘Perhaps she has important information and wanted to talk to you,’ Kai said.

  ‘But how would she know we were here? Or – wait.’ Irene frowned. ‘Dominic Aubrey could have told her – did she enter this alternate before he died?’

  ‘Or did she have something to do with it?’ Kai said slowly, completing Irene’s own thought.

  Irene was silent for a long moment, turning possibilities over in her head. ‘Unthinkable,’ she finally said. ‘I won’t believe that of her.’

  At that moment the crowd shifted again, and Bradamant turned her head. She looked across the ballroom, and for a moment their eyes met. And in that moment, Irene saw something in Bradamant’s face which she hadn’t expected to see. Shock.

  ‘She didn’t expect us to be here,’ she murmured.

  Bradamant recovered almost instantaneously, and turned away with a contemptuous little twitch of her shoulder to bestow her attention on the man next to her, a skinny white-haired man in his eighties with his chest so encrusted with military medals and orders that it was a wonder he didn’t fall over.

  ‘Why don’t you introduce me to Miss Olga Retrograde,’ Irene said to Kai, composing her face into what should with any luck be a pleasant smile. She’d work out what was going on. And this time she wasn’t going to be Bradamant’s stalking horse, decoy or tool.

  Not this time. Not again.

  ‘Very well,’ Kai said, glancing at Bradamant over Irene’s shoulder. ‘But what is she doing here? I know she said she wanted the mission . . .’ His face lightened as a thought obviously occurred to him. ‘If she’s your senior, then maybe she has clearance now for you to cooperate on the mission. That would make things simpler, with the chaos contamination.’

  ‘Such a thing is possible,’ Irene said slowly, to give herself time to think and to find an answer why this could not, would not be the case. She wasn’t sure that she would be able to physically obey if it were. Her loathing of the other woman was too bone-deep for that. ‘But if it were the case,’ how careful, how conditional, ‘then she would have some sort of token from the Library, and she’d show it to me. She hasn’t even tried to find me yet. So I’m dubious.’

  ‘I trust you,’ Kai said. He touched her hand briefly, reassuringly. ‘I do trust you, Irene. I wish that you could tell me why you don’t trust her.’

  She could have said, It’s private, but something in her felt that he deserved better than that from her. Instead she said, ‘It’s personal, and if you really do want to know, I’ll tell you later. It doesn’t make her any the worse as a Librarian. Just as a person, to me. But later. All right?’

  Kai nodded, and then they were there. ‘Miss Retrograde?’ he said. ‘May I introduce my friend, Miss Winters?’

  Irene gave a small curtsey. ‘Miss Retrograde. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘And you, my dear,’ the elderly woman said. Close up, her face was all rouge, white paint and beauty patches. She deserved an award for thoroughness in concealing wrinkles, if not for artistry in doing so. Her dress might be heavily corseted and old-fashioned, but the fabric was high-quality, and the diamonds on her fingers looked genuine. ‘I understand that you’re not from these parts.’

  Kai must have given her the Canadian cover story. ‘Oh no,’ Irene agreed. ‘But I’m working as a freelance reporter at the moment—’

  ‘Oh no you’re not,’ Miss Retrograde cut in.

  Irene shut her mouth before it could gape open too wide. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she hastily said.

  ‘My dear,’ Miss Retrograde said, ‘I make it my business to know all the members of the fourth estate in London. I wouldn’t have missed an intelligent-looking girl like yourself.’

  Irene would have given Kai a venomous look, along the lines of what have you got me into and why didn’t you tell me more about this, but it would have been too obvious a betrayal. ‘I’m very new on the scene,’ she said quickly.

  ‘I’ve been watching Silver,’ Miss Retrograde said. She leaned forward with a creak of whalebone. Her beady eyes focused in their heavily shadowed sockets. ‘He spoke to you. I’d like to know why.’

  Irene suspected that playing the innocent wasn’t going to work here. She co
uld feel Kai’s arm tense under her hand, waiting (hopefully) for her to tell him which way to jump. ‘I’m afraid that would depend on why you want to know,’ she finally said, letting the humour drain out of her face.

  ‘I could make it worth your while,’ Miss Retrograde said, rubbing the ball of her thumb against one of her diamond rings suggestively.

  Irene tilted an eyebrow. There was some sort of noise in the corridor outside, thumping and crashes, but she didn’t take her eyes off the older woman. If the Iron Brotherhood, or whoever, was attacking, then hopefully someone else would deal with it.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ the woman said pettishly. ‘That was crass, I admit it. Let’s get down to business. Take a seat, young woman. Have your bodyguard – I’m not stupid, young man – have your bodyguard fetch us both some more wine. Then we can discuss matters—’

  And at that moment the alligators burst into the room.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Irene had only ever seen alligators at the zoo before. She remembered them as being lazy, log-like objects, draped over cement ‘rock formations’ or dozing in muddy pools.

  The creatures invading the room moved with disturbing speed. If they were logs, then they were logs on a river in full flood. Some of them were fifteen feet or so long. Their mouths opened and closed as they scuttled forwards. One of them clamped its jaws on the leg of a waiter and rolled sideways; the man screamed and went down. His leg came off in the alligator’s jaws, wrenched off like a chicken wing, spraying blood across the polished floor. Through the melee, Irene spotted metal contraptions bolted onto their skulls, and metal screwed onto their claws, before the press of the crowd became too great.

  Guests and waiters were screaming and running for the other doors, as alligators continued to spill through the main entrance. A few of the guests were firing previously concealed weapons, a mixture of pistols and ray-guns, but most were simply trying to escape. The smell of blood was sharp and coppery on the air, rising above the blend of perfume and food.

  ‘Have no fear!’ Silver shouted, leaping onto a convenient table, bestriding a centrepiece of oysters. ‘The powers of my kind shall scourge these creatures back to the slime from which they crawled – ’

  Amazing grammar in a crisis, Irene couldn’t help noticing.

  – ‘Behold!’ Silver raised his hand. Fire flared round his fingers dramatically, then leapt to strike the alligators in burning orange whips.

  It fizzled. There was no other word for it. The flames drooped and went out as if they’d been doused with cold water, leaving the alligators to rumble forward undeterred.

  ‘Damnation!’ Silver swore. ‘They have been armoured in cold iron! Johnson! My elephant gun!’

  Much as Irene would have enjoyed watching whatever happened next, fleeing the room before she was trampled by the crowd or eaten by alligators seemed a better idea. ‘Quick!’ she snapped at Kai. ‘Help Miss Retrograde—’

  ‘The elder Miss Retrograde, if you please, young lady,’ the older woman said, rising to her feet. ‘I knew I should have brought my pistol with me.’ They were jostled and bumped, but there was still just enough space to move freely as long as they kept next to the walls.

  ‘Does this happen often at these balls?’ Kai asked. He seemed half fascinated by the chaos, half appalled by it. There were enough screaming, fleeing waiters and partygoers that the alligators weren’t going to reach them for at least a few minutes. Hopefully Bradamant could take care of herself.

  The elder Miss Retrograde clicked her tongue. ‘People should know what to expect at a party thrown by Lord Silver,’ she said. ‘Now – what is going on over there?’

  The headlong escape was curdling in its tracks, as people came running back into the room. Over the hubbub, Irene could hear yelling about the outer doors being locked.

  ‘This smells planned,’ Kai remarked.

  ‘It is,’ Irene said. ‘The Iron Brotherhood?’

  ‘It has their stink,’ the elder Miss Retrograde sniffed. ‘Did you notice the cold iron on the alligators’ claws? The easiest way to deflect Fae sorcery. I’m afraid we can’t expect anything from Lord Silver tonight.’

  ‘Won’t his subordinates be trying to rescue him?’ Kai asked. He cast a thoughtful glance at the weapons hanging on the wall.

  The elder Miss Retrograde twitched a ruffled shoulder. ‘A couple of them may, but I can almost guarantee that the rest will be thinking about promotion, so will take care not to rescue anyone until it’s too late. Are either of you two young people skilled with alligators? Do they teach alligator training in Canada?’

  ‘Let me try something,’ Irene said, stepping forward.

  An alligator turned its head and upper body. One rolling eye focused on her.

  Irene swallowed. This was not a time to give in to the roiling fear which churned in her stomach. This was not a time to consider that all she knew about alligators came from reading Rudyard Kipling. (Or had those been crocodiles?) This was the time to remember she was a Librarian, and that she had a responsibility to protect Kai.

  She suppressed the urge to cross her fingers, raised her hand and pointed it at the nearest alligator, and commanded it in the Language to lock its legs and stay still.

  It nearly worked.

  The words were clear in her mouth, but something in the air, or still lingering in her body, twisted them and wrenched them out of focus. She felt the marks on her hand reopen under the bandages, and saw traces of scarlet start to seep up through her glove.

  The alligator’s legs locked: that much worked. It squinted at her with a reptilian look of cold hatred as it skidded on the polished floor, and came sliding right at her, gliding like a doom-laden missile with huge (and getting huger by the minute) jaws.

  There was something hypnotic about those jaws. She should have been fleeing, but the sight held her until she thought that she could count every one of the approaching teeth.

  ‘Hell,’ Kai said, and caught her by the waist, tossing her up onto the nearby table. Irene managed to catch herself with her good hand, pulling her skirts away from a steaming tureen of soup as the alligator went sliding by under the table. The white tablecloth rippled as the alligator went under one side and came out on the other, continuing its skid along the highly polished floor until it crashed nose-first into the wall. It lay there, opening and closing its mouth and rolling from side to side, tail thrashing, apparently unable to flex its legs.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not working properly,’ Irene informed Kai.

  ‘Well, that much is obvious!’ Kai offered the elder Miss Retrograde his arm. ‘Madam, if you’d kindly get up on the table—’

  ‘And what are you going to do, young man?’ the woman demanded.

  Irene could tell what Kai wanted to do. It was evident in the set of his shoulders, the tension of his face. One of the most important aspects of command is not giving orders that won’t be obeyed, she reminded herself. ‘Get a sword down from the wall, Kai,’ she said. ‘Find Vale, help him if he needs it. Do what you can to sort this out. I’ll take care of myself.’

  Kai raised his head, and there was a dangerous gladness in his eyes. ‘Do you really mean that?’ he asked.

  ‘I am perfectly capable of staying out of the way of a few alligators,’ Irene said coolly. Especially if she stayed up on the table, but it would spoil the statement to add that. ‘I don’t think they can climb.’

  ‘I hope not.’ The elder Miss Retrograde rapped Kai on the shoulder. ‘I’ll take that assistance, young man. You two can tell me why you’re pretending to be Canadian later.’

  Kai put one hand under the elder Miss Retrograde’s elbow, bent to put the other under her shoe, and boosted her up on the table with barely a sign of effort. ‘Later,’ he promised, and ran. He was heading for a low-hanging banner, which dangled temptingly near a pair of ornate sabres hanging eight feet up.

  Elsewhere around the room, Irene could see other men and women climbing on the tables, some of which had gi
ven way in the process. It was sheer luck that there had only been a few people left in their corner of the room, and so the tables were comparatively unoccupied. This was apparently not one of those alternate worlds where the British Empire mandated a tradition of women and children first. It was a case of survival of the fittest, and alligators take the hindmost.

  From her vantage point she looked around, finally sighting Bradamant. She was athletically swinging herself onto a free table and tossing a platter of mussels into the jaws of the pursuing alligator in one smooth motion. The alligator paused, grunting and shaking its head, as Bradamant smoothed her skirts and looked around.

  Irene’s and Bradamant’s eyes met. For a moment they looked at each other across the room, then Bradamant turned away, with a jerk of her head and a little smile. She scanned the crowd, clearly looking for someone else. Irene swallowed bile. Was she still so preoccupied by Bradamant that she had to look for where she was first, and be sure that she was safe? Interest in a fellow Librarian’s welfare only went so far.

  And where was Vale? With a pang of guilt she scanned the crowd for him too, finally managing to catch sight of him. He’d been backed into a corner by two alligators, and was defending himself with a silver tray as best he could. Of course, he would have had to leave his swordstick at the door. It didn’t look good.

  ‘Kai!’ Irene turned to find him. He’d managed to climb up the banner, almost high enough to reach the sabres. ‘Help Vale! Over there!’

  Judging by his frown, Kai could see Vale struggling even better than she could. He clamped the banner between his legs, reached up with both hands, and grabbed the hilts of both sabres: then he simply let go. The sabres came free from their brackets with a shriek of metal, and Kai fell the eight feet to the ground, twisting smoothly in mid-air to land on both feet.

  ‘Vale!’ he shouted, loud enough to be heard over the screaming mob. ‘Here!’ People backed away from him at his shout, and he tossed one of the blades in a high arc through the air; it spun above the crowd in a shimmer of steel. Vale snatched it out of the air, the throw perfectly weighted to slap the hilt into his hand. Then he sheared the metal contraption off a lunging alligator’s skull with one vicious slice.