Irene let out a breath, unaware that she’d stopped breathing. Apparently both Kai and Vale possessed previously unappreciated keen fighting reflexes. Taking down a giant robot centipede seemed comparatively simple in retrospect.
Kai shouted something in a Chinese dialect that Irene didn’t recognize, perhaps a battle cry or a curse, and leapt into the fight. He impaled one alligator, closing its jaws with a single sabre thrust just before the creature could bite into a waiter.
Irene sidled further along the table, and tried to think of a plan. The alligators weren’t showing any interest in the piles of spilled food that littered the floor. And while she wasn’t an expert on reptilian psychology, animals would normally go for an abundance of convenient meals rather than armed dinner guests. Whether in the grip of a feeding frenzy or not. So maybe the buzzing metal things bolted onto their heads were controlling their behaviour – a theory that seemed borne out from observation of Vale’s former aggressor.
The alligator which had been de-metal-objected by Vale had retreated, and was currently wandering around in a dazed way. That was promising. If they could de-weaponize all the alligators, then they’d have . . . well, they’d have a mob of normal alligators. Which wasn’t much, but it would be something. Especially as neither Fae magic nor the Language use was working. Bradamant, however . . .
Irene sprinted along her table, skirts in hand. Bradamant was a table and an alligator-infested stretch of floor away. The table wasn’t a problem. The chunk of floor was – and there were people dying out there.
She just didn’t have time to think about that. It was clear to her left. Clear to her right.
‘Stay up here!’ an elderly gentleman sputtered behind her. ‘Dash it, girl, don’t go committing suicide! Wait just a minute and the police will be here – ’
No. She couldn’t wait. She tried to rationalize why, as really all the screaming, shooting and sounds of ripping flesh were irrelevant to her mission to get the book – to her duty as a Librarian. She could just stay put. But as she tried to shut out all the unimportant noises, she found herself already acting. She swung away from the man and dropped onto the floor, running for the other table.
A man was lying under it, tumbled across a fold of fallen white cloth. He was bleeding freely, which meant that he was still alive.
Irene pulled herself up onto the table, vaguely conscious that her skirt was fouled with blood and salmon. ‘Bradamant!’ she called, pitching her voice to carry above the noise.
‘Yes?’ Bradamant came stalking down the table, brushing aside other men and women by sheer force of personality. Her hair was still perfect, and her gown was only stained at the very edges. ‘I hope you have something useful to say.’
Irene forced down her hostility. ‘I do. I have an idea, but I’m having problems with the Language. I need your help.’
For a moment she wondered if Bradamant was going to put conditions on that help, but the other woman barely hesitated. ‘What do you have in mind?’
Irene pointed up at the chandelier – the elegant, huge, electric-lit chandelier. ‘The things on the alligators’ heads are specific and discrete. Use the Language to call electricity down into them. Even if it doesn’t kill them, it’ll wreck their control systems.’
Bradamant turned her head to follow Irene’s gesture. ‘It might also kill some of the guests if they’re in contact,’ she said neutrally.
Irene hadn’t thought of that. It only took a moment to imagine Vale or Kai with their blades in an alligator. ‘So be precise in your language!’ she snapped. ‘Or do you want me to find the vocabulary for you?’
Bradamant sniffed. ‘I don’t think that I will need your help for that endeavour.’ Her tone suggested Irene’s total incompetence would render any assistance worthless.
Irene should have let her get on with it, but a sudden thought struck her. ‘When did you come through from the Library?’
‘We have no time for this discussion,’ Bradamant declared. ‘Stand back and let me work.’
Irene stepped back and scanned the crowd as Bradamant prepared. Silver was easiest to spot. He’d found an ornate pike and was busy impaling an alligator with it, gullet to tail. Vale and Kai were back to back, surrounded by half a dozen alligators. No one else was being targeted so heavily. She couldn’t recall anything from Dominic Aubrey’s notes about the Iron Brotherhood. They were fairly obviously anti-Fae, what with shoeing their alligators with cold iron and staging the attack here and now. But she wouldn’t have thought that made them anti-Vale. Quite the opposite, really: Vale clearly had no particular liking for the Fae, and his attendance here was adversarial rather than friendly towards Silver. Were the alligators being somehow specifically directed? Or were they simply attacking those people who offered the most resistance?
Irene turned back to Bradamant as the other Librarian called out a crisp string of orders in the Language. Fortunately the people around her were too preoccupied by the alligators to pay much attention.
The chandelier trembled where it hung, then shattered, prisms chiming and blowing apart in puffs of crystal dust. Electricity forked down in visible arcs of lightning, targeting the alligators’ electronic attachments. The reptiles spasmed and thrashed, tails sweeping in wide curves as their jaws opened and closed on empty air.
Irene watched in relief as Vale and Kai dodged the alligators that had been surrounding them. ‘Nicely done,’ she said to Bradamant.
Bradamant sniffed, somehow managing to suggest that the words Of course were simply beneath her. ‘I can’t see why you didn’t do it yourself,’ she said.
‘Chaos contamination,’ Irene replied reluctantly. The alligators were slowing their thrashing now, their wild spasms becoming mere squirming wriggles. ‘The door to the Library was sabotaged on this side. We think it must have been Alberich—’
‘Wait.’ Bradamant grabbed her shoulder. Some of the high colour drained from her face. ‘Alberich is here?’
‘Yes,’ Irene said bluntly. ‘Didn’t you get notified?’
The expression on Bradamant’s face spoke for itself. Belatedly, Irene put two and two together. ‘You’re here without authorization, aren’t you? You came here even though this is a quarantined world and it was my mission—’
‘And I just saved you and your student from getting eaten by alligators,’ Bradamant snapped. ‘You owe me. I want the precise details about Alberich being here. Now.’
‘So why did you come here anyhow?’ Irene asked, ignoring the demand, as she checked there was still enough chaos to cover their conversation. She and Bradamant weren’t the only people to be staying up on the tables. A lot of other people were waiting to be absolutely sure that the alligators were dead before they came down to ground level again. ‘To this party, that is. Not just to this alternate.’
Bradamant was silent for a moment. There might even have been a trace of shame in her eyes, but Irene wasn’t sure if it was shame at having stolen another Librarian’s mission, or just embarrassment at being caught. Finally she said, ‘I needed to investigate the Iron Brotherhood.’
‘Congratulations,’ Irene said, and jerked her head in the direction of the alligators. ‘You found them. Were they supposed to meet you here, or was it just a happy coincidence?’
‘You’re very insolent tonight,’ Bradamant said softly, dangerously.
‘Oh, don’t you think that I have reason?’ Irene had enough control to keep her voice down, but not enough to keep back her words. ‘If you have anything, anything to do with this piece of bloody lunacy—’
‘I’d have thought that Alberich was more important than collateral civilian casualties,’ Bradamant said. Her eyes glittered. ‘Shouldn’t you be briefing me on that rather than wasting time on those people?’
‘Did you have anything to do with this?’ Irene repeated.
‘No,’ Bradamant said. ‘If that helps you answer my question.’
Irene glanced at the dying alligators again. She didn’t
trust Bradamant, but she couldn’t refuse to warn her. ‘Yesterday I was told to beware of Alberich, a direct communication from the Library. This morning Kai and I went to talk with Dominic Aubrey, at our Library entrance point. We didn’t find him there, but we found his skin rolled up in a jar of vinegar, and a chaos trap on the door to the Library itself.’
Bradamant blinked slowly. ‘Dominic Aubrey is dead? Actually dead?’
‘Yes,’ Irene said. ‘Well, probably. Given the alternatives. When did you get here? Did you see him when you came through? If we can pin down when Alberich killed him and trapped the door—’
‘Irene!’ Kai and Vale had converged on them unexpectedly. Vale had several cuts, but Kai was elegantly unruffled. He offered his hands to Irene. ‘If you’d like a hand down – and Bradamant, of course . . .’
‘Of course,’ Bradamant said in suddenly sweetened tones. She stepped past Irene, hips swinging, and placed her hands in Kai’s, letting him assist her down.
Kai threw a martyred glance over Bradamant’s shoulder at Irene. It said, more clearly than words, I couldn’t possibly leave her to fall into the remains of the herring, could I?
Irene sighed. She set her chin, sat down on the edge of the table and swung off it to stand on the floor. Her gown was already ruined, anyhow. ‘I’m glad to see that both you gentlemen are safe and well,’ she said flatly. She could feel Vale’s measuring stare on her, Kai and Bradamant, and tried to ignore it. There was no reason whatever for her to have any feelings on the subject at all.
The doors slammed open. A squad of men in vaguely military uniforms came barrelling through, rifles shouldered. They were led by a dark-skinned man with turban and moustache, his uniform differentiated by a wide green sash. They pointed their guns at the alligators, and began to riddle them with bullets, ignoring the fact that the poor reptiles were now barely moving.
‘Ah,’ Silver said from behind Irene’s shoulder, ‘the police at last. Inspector Singh is as vigorous as ever.’ He took Irene’s hand between his. ‘My dearest girl, you are wounded.’
Irene was conscious of both Kai and Vale staring at Silver in a distinctly freezing way. She wished that she could just have had even five minutes to get some answers out of them and Bradamant before Silver had turned up. ‘A scratch,’ she said quickly, gingerly trying to slide her hand out of his grasp. ‘Sir, no doubt Inspector Singh will want to speak to you . . .’
‘And you must introduce me to your beautiful friend,’ Silver said, his eyes on Bradamant, his grip on Irene’s hand painfully firm.
Irene glanced at Bradamant. Bradamant gave a small nod of agreement, her lips curling in a sweet smile.
‘Lord Silver,’ Irene said formally, ‘this is my friend Bradamant; I had no idea that she would be at this party, but of course I am delighted to see her.’ And I hope she falls over and plants her face in a dish of salmon roe. ‘Bradamant, this is Lord Silver, one of the Liechtenstein Fae, who is visiting England—’
‘ – and who would have come much sooner,’ Silver cut in smoothly, dropping Irene’s hand and stepping forward to take Bradamant’s elegant fingers in his, ‘had I known that such beauty was to be found. How could I have missed a gem like you? Sweet lady, do me the favour to say that I may have the honour of your closer acquaintance?’
Irene could recognize an opportunity when it sat up and begged in front of her. She began to quietly edge away, as Silver raised Bradamant’s hand to his lips.
Silver’s nostrils flared. He sniffed at Bradamant’s hand, eyes brightening to an utterly inhuman shade of yellow. ‘I know that smell!’ he spat. ‘Belphegor! I have you at last!’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘What?’ Bradamant said, but her attitude was wrong. It was one of denial, not blank incomprehension.
‘What?’ Vale said, in a very different tone of voice, taking a step forward.
‘Impossible!’ Irene said, without too much hope of being believed.
‘I’d be accusing you too, little mouse,’ Silver said, ‘but you were there when we opened the safe, and I know you were as surprised as I was. You should be glad that I’ve identified one of our enemies. This woman is Belphegor. She is responsible for stealing a highly valuable book from Lord Wyndham, and maybe for his death. I recognized her scent from the card she left in his safe. Johnson! My horsewhip!’
A thin, pale-faced man in grey stepped up, and offered a coiled horsewhip to Silver.
‘This is all a terrible mistake,’ Bradamant said firmly. ‘I demand that you release me.’
Silver looked at her with dangerous sharpness, lips curling to show unnaturally white teeth. ‘Belphegor, you have no idea what you have blundered into. Give me your word to restore the book to me, and I will consider letting you go. For the moment, at least.’
‘Hst!’ Irene said loudly. ‘The police are approaching. We don’t want them to hear about this –’
Everyone twitched and turned to see the inspector in the green sash marching towards them. His demeanour fairly shouted determination, and there was something worryingly satisfied about his smile.
‘Inspector Singh,’ Vale murmured in Irene’s ear. ‘Over from the Indian Empire for the last two months, on a formal officer exchange between police forces. He didn’t like the Fae there and he doesn’t like them here. He’ll take any opportunity to pry.’
‘Do we object to that?’ Irene murmured back, just as quietly. Bradamant was trying to wrench her wrist loose from Silver, clearly not quite willing to use the Language in front of him, but he was effortlessly maintaining his grip.
‘That might depend on what we have to offer him,’ Vale said. His eyes were on Bradamant.
While Irene could think of several ways for her, Kai and Bradamant to get out of the current situation, very few of them involved keeping Vale as a reliable contact, much less Silver. Having the law hunt them as criminals would only make things more complicated. And she needed to know what Silver knew about the book, and why he wanted it. ‘If Singh doesn’t like Fae,’ she pointed out, ‘then he won’t accept Lord Silver’s identification of her as Belphegor. We may be able to get more information out of her later if we help her now.’
‘She is your friend, you said,’ Vale murmured. His gaze was cold.
‘She wasn’t supposed to be here!’ Irene nearly spat in frustration. ‘And I knew nothing about her being this criminal.’
The inspector stopped, and inclined his head slightly to Silver. It wasn’t a bow. It was very definitely not a bow. It was barely a nod. ‘Good evening, sir.’ He had a perceptible accent, but an Oxford one rather than Punjabi or any of the other Indian accents that Irene recognized. ‘I understand that you’ve had some sort of minor problem this evening.’
‘A minor problem?’ Silver hissed. He whirled to point at the dead alligators and the human corpses, still grasping Bradamant’s wrist in his other hand. ‘You call that a minor problem?’
‘To you, sir,’ Inspector Singh said coldly. ‘I am sure that it was far more serious to the unfortunate people caught up in this, and my men are handling the casualties. I would be grateful if you could inform me exactly what took place.’
As Silver filled him in, in melodramatic but fundamentally accurate detail, Irene took a silent breath of relief. He hadn’t seen who controlled the electricity that took out the alligator threat. She noticed Bradamant relaxing a fraction as well.
‘. . . That is all,’ Silver concluded. ‘You may inform me when you have any further details.’ He turned his back on the inspector.
‘Actually, sir,’ Inspector Singh said, ‘we are aware of the identity of your aggressors.’
Everyone stared at him.
‘The Iron Brotherhood.’ He turned another page in his notebook, and deliberately made a note before proceeding. ‘Of course, sir, we are most interested in why they should try to attack your party in such a way.’
‘Oh,’ Bradamant said, ‘I think I can answer that.’
Everyone looked at her.
She lowered her head demurely, batted her eyelashes, and took a cute little gasp of breath that made her bosom heave in a way that was neither cute nor little. ‘They were after a book which they thought was being kept here. In fact, I believe that this attack was a distraction—’
Silver’s eyes went wide. He flung Bradamant into Inspector Singh’s arms with a muffled curse (she bounced), and ran for the door, Johnson two paces behind him.
‘Well,’ Inspector Singh said, setting Bradamant back on her feet. ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to come down to the station with me, madam. We have a few questions.’
Bradamant rubbed the hand which Silver had mangled, the imprints of his fingers scarlet against her pale skin. ‘May I just have a word aside with my friend Irene, Inspector? If you would be so kind?’
‘Of course, madam,’ Inspector Singh said, without taking so much as one step back.
Bradamant clasped Irene’s non-bandaged hand between her own before Irene could react. Very rapidly, in the Language, but pitched low, she said, ‘I bind myself by my name, by my oath, and by my word that if I find the book I will bring it to you before returning to the Library, and that I will consult with you tomorrow morning, if I am free to do so, about what to do next.’ She dropped back to English, but kept her voice low. ‘But for the moment I need you to do something about that Fae.’
Inspector Singh stiffened, staring at the two of them from under heavy dark brows. Well, of course: to him it must have sounded as if Bradamant was talking in his native language and dialect. Irene tried to suppress an urge to feel smug about Bradamant having to explain that, along with everything else.
‘Of course,’ she said in English. ‘I will see you then. Please be careful.’
However, Bradamant had bound herself in the Language. She couldn’t break that. She might be able to evade the precise spirit of the oath. Indeed, Irene could think of several ways to get around it, the first one being that ‘bring you the book’ was not the same as ‘give you the book’. But even so, that still brought the book a lot closer than it was right now. And, to be completely frank, she was almost too exhausted to care. The oath would do for the moment.
The Invisible Library Page 15