The Invisible Library

by Cogman, Genevieve

  And she couldn’t waste time indulging herself with personal feelings. Even if she wanted to.

  ‘All right?’ she said briskly, pulling herself to her knees. ‘Good. Come on.’

  Vale offered his hand, and pulled her to her feet. ‘Good reflexes, Miss Winters.’

  ‘Good shooting, Mr Vale,’ she replied. ‘Thank you. Now let’s find that book.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There were several guards on the roof who would have liked to discuss their crash-landing and the ensuing gunfire. But Vale simply strode past, and Irene and Kai marched along in his wake. Their commanding poise was spoiled a little by Kai’s sidelong glances whenever he thought her back was turned. What did he expect from her?

  ‘Through here,’ Vale said, pointing at a door in one of the smaller battlements circling the landing area. Beyond that bulged the wide glass curved roof of what must be the Reading Room. Irene hadn’t had time to admire it in this alternate, but she’d seen versions of it in other Londons, and she shuddered to think how close they came to landing on it. Though surely in a world of airships and personal helicopters, the curators must have taken some sort of precautions against things or people crashing through it from above?

  She really hoped so. She’d seen too many glass pyramids and domed roofs and huge chandeliers that were just accidents waiting to happen.

  Vale had a few quick words with the guard, who flung the door open and practically saluted them through. And then they were inside, and out of the wind, and surrounded by comforting walls and walls of books. The rich, delightful smell of old paper, leather and ink permeated the place, washing away the pettier odours of blood and oil and smog.

  Irene felt a desperate surge of nostalgia for her Library. Her life was more than just airship chases, cyborg alligator attacks, and hanging out with this alternate universe’s nearest analogue to Sherlock Holmes. She was a Librarian, and the deepest, most fundamental part of her life involved a love of books. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to shut the rest of the world out, and have nothing to worry about, except the next page of whatever she was reading.

  ‘Which way is Aubrey’s office?’ Vale demanded.

  Irene frowned, trying to remember the route. ‘Third floor,’ she said, ‘along from the south stairs, two rooms east, then one south, then east again, I think that most of the stuff along there was European history.’

  ‘This way,’ Vale said, leading the way down a gallery of drawings and prints. ‘Do you have a strategy?’

  A couple of men looked up disapprovingly from their sketchbooks at the noise. Their faces were full of we are far too polite to say so, but really you shouldn’t be making any noise at all.

  Irene ignored them. ‘Get the book,’ she said to Vale. ‘Secure this building against Alberich. My invoking the Library won’t keep Bradamant out, so she’ll be safe once she gets here. I’ll contact my central authority for direct assistance.’

  Vale raised an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you going to tackle the fellow directly?’

  Irene couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘I’d lose,’ she said.

  ‘This language of yours—’ Vale started.

  ‘I’d find it very hard to believe that other Librarians haven’t tried that against him already,’ Irene snapped before she could help herself. ‘And confrontations with Alberich generally end with him sending parts of their internal organs back to the Library. In neatly wrapped parcels. Someone said that they can tell it’s a parcel from Alberich because he always folds the paper in the same way.’

  ‘Miss Winters, just because this fellow has reached the status of an urban legend . . .’

  ‘He’s more than that,’ Kai said urgently. Their footsteps were loud in the stairwell. ‘You were there last night, Vale. He sealed us in the carriage and put a block on it which even I couldn’t undo.’ There was an unconscious arrogance to his voice. ‘And Aubrey, the Librarian stationed here previously. He would have been more experienced than Irene – no insult, Irene, but—’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Irene said with a shrug, surreptitiously flexing her hands and trying to decide how fully recovered she was. For the moment she was functional, if damaged. ‘You’re quite right. He wouldn’t have been stationed in an alternate like this unless he was competent, and he was older and more experienced than I am.’

  ‘It’s this floor,’ Vale said. They came out of the stairwell into a room blazingly full of painted hieroglyphics, icons and crosses with pointy end bits – Coptic, Irene decided. The light was artificial, presumably to spare the papyri from natural sunlight, but the colours leapt at them in a riot of gold, red and turquoise. ‘Straight ahead, then left. And may I suggest that Mr Aubrey had no warning that Alberich was coming. Presumably if he had done, then he could have secured himself and called for help from the Library, just as you intend to do?’

  She didn’t want to hear this.

  Casual strollers saw them coming and stepped out of the way. A couple of elderly ladies muttered something condemnatory about young people these days, as Irene strained to listen.

  Irene knew that this was displacement behaviour, as the last thing she wanted to do was listen to Vale talking about tackling Alberich. Playing chess matches against masters who were certain to defeat you was one thing: you learnt about chess, and you didn’t die in the process. Getting into a fight with someone who would kill you (messily) failed to teach you anything useful, unless reincarnation was genuine, and you did die in the process. It was hard enough to have to consider how important the book might be to this world. She could only think in small steps. If Alberich wanted the book, that meant it was important, possibly even vital, to this world, and he mustn’t have it . . .

  She was also trying to ignore Kai’s sympathetic glances from behind Vale’s back. Maybe there was a whole genre of literature written by dragons for dragons about how they sensibly stayed out of fights that they couldn’t hope to win, and flew away to do something very important somewhere else. Or maybe it was a bad idea to be distracting herself quite so thoroughly when they were almost at Aubrey’s office.

  ‘We can’t possibly know how Aubrey tried to handle Alberich,’ she finally said. ‘I believe the Aubrey I met was simply Alberich disguised. I never even met the real man. All I know is that I am not going to get into a fight which I can’t win, when there are alternatives.’

  Vale nodded towards the exit. ‘Through that way, then straight on for the next seven rooms, then turn left. Very well. I accept your judgement. Can you fetch help rapidly?’

  Irene was glad she could agree. ‘From what I’ve heard, the main problem is that my superiors rarely know where Alberich is. If they can actually pinpoint him to this world, then they can take steps—’

  Vale cut in, and Irene realized it was a sign of his urgency that he’d actually interrupt. ‘Miss Winters! A little logic, if you please. They already know he is in this world, as they warned you about him.’

  Something in Irene’s stomach went cold. ‘Oh,’ she said. She hadn’t thought that through. ‘Maybe – maybe they just suspected he was here, but had no actual proof . . .’

  Vale didn’t say anything, but then again, he didn’t need to, as Irene could feel the shallowness of her reasoning. Oh, it was fashionable among Librarians of her age to impute dubious motives to their seniors. She’d heard the gossip – they’d use us as bait if they thought it was necessary, they edit the information they give us, they’d sacrifice us to get their hands on a text. But that didn’t mean they believed it. At the bottom of her heart, Irene had faith in her superiors.

  Genuine doubt was worse than fashionable adolescent doubt had ever been.

  ‘And possibly I’ve been misinformed,’ she said, forcing firmness into her voice. ‘Can we at least assess the situation before we start assuming the worst?’

  ‘As you wish,’ Vale said, in tones stating I know perfectly well you aren’t going to stop thinking about it now. ‘But why wouldn’t he be in his office, though
we might wish him elsewhere?’

  ‘The automaton attack at the museum,’ Kai suggested. ‘If that was him, and if he expected to find the book there, wouldn’t he be on the spot to collect it?’

  Vale rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘That assumes that he was responsible for the automaton attack. And it would be rather overly controlling, wouldn’t you say, to be there in person if he could command underlings . . .’

  ‘He did try to drown us in person,’ Kai answered. ‘Isn’t that the sort of thing that people usually have their subordinates do?’

  ‘True, true.’ Vale’s frown lightened. ‘If that should be so, let us by all means take advantage of it. And if not, well, I believe we may have the advantage in that he will not be expecting us. In either case, surprise and speed are our best option.’ He looked around at the vast quantity of rather dull Romano-Celtic objects in the room, noting, ‘And I do believe we are almost there.’

  ‘We should clear the area,’ Kai said firmly.

  ‘We can’t without raising the alarm,’ Irene pointed out. If Alberich were in the immediate area, he’d react to something like fire alarms going off, security guards clearing the area, or any sort of disturbance involving people running round shrieking. And people always ended up running round shrieking. It was a law of nature or something. She wondered if she could use the Language to pre-warn them as to whether or not Alberich was in his office. Nothing came to mind. ‘I think we’ll just have to knock on the door and play innocent.’

  ‘Hm. I believe it might work,’ Vale agreed. ‘He has no reason to believe you have penetrated his imposture. I will hold back and be ready with my gun.’

  Irene tried to think of how this plan might go wrong. Alberich couldn’t have laid any sort of kill-everyone-who-touches-the-door spell on his office door (assuming that such a spell existed, something about which she had no clue whatsoever). That would be too likely to slaughter innocent British Library staff and visiting children. So that was positive. What he might have done – what she would have done if she knew how – would be to set a ward against Language use. Again, she had no idea whether or not it was possible, but she would assume for the moment that it was. So she should avoid the Language for the moment.

  This bit of paranoid planning had helped her stroll through a number of Dark Ages exhibits without looking as panicked as she felt. Now, at last, their goal was through some last cases, then directly on the left.

  Irene took a deep breath. She gathered her determination, smiled blandly at Kai and Vale, then strolled forward. She tried to ignore the grandfather with a complaining brat to her right and the students over by the archway ahead. Possible witnesses also included the woman squinting near-sightedly at a display card, who did look vaguely familiar – maybe she’d seen her before when she came here last time – oh dear, she was procrastinating again, wasn’t she?

  Why couldn’t this be the sort of story where she kicked the door down and burst in with a loaded gun? Probably because it was a heavy door, she was in long skirts, and she didn’t have a loaded gun.

  Plastering her best look of sincere concern and gullibility on her face, she knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  She knocked again. A couple of the bystanders glanced across, then turned back to whatever they’d been doing.

  Still no answer.

  ‘Cover me,’ Kai said in a low voice. He stepped forward, fishing a thin metal probe out of an inner pocket. He tapped it against the doorknob as Irene shielded him from view. She glanced around but nobody was paying them any attention – except for Vale, who was hanging back and ostensibly ignoring them.

  The tapping having drawn no visible reaction, Kai tried the handle. It didn’t move, so he bent over and began picking the lock. Clearly his time as a juvenile criminal hadn’t been a total fiction.

  Irene spread out her skirts, and turned to watch the room, a smile pinned to her face. No, nothing going on here, absolutely normal, my friend here likes to stare into locks and wiggle bits of metal round in them, he does it every day and twice on Sundays . . .

  A moment later Kai was tapping her on the shoulder, with a cool look of superiority.

  Irene gave him a nod and tried the door. It didn’t explode.

  This is good. I’m already ahead of the game.

  She turned the handle and walked into the room. A quick glance around showed that it looked just as they had left it the last time. No sign of anyone. Nobody hiding under tables. Nobody hiding behind the door. No Alberich.

  She breathed out a sigh of relief which she hadn’t realized that she’d been holding, and stepped aside so that Kai could come in. Vale followed a few seconds later, closing the door behind him.

  Irene cast around, looking for anything that resembled an in-tray. Score! There was a blatantly obvious one on Aubrey’s desk. She remembered it having been tidy when they first arrived, but it was now crowded with papers and oddments. She quickly sorted through it, and the packet with the Natural History Museum’s address on the back (return to sender) was the seventh item. It was an unobtrusive package in plain brown paper.

  ‘Paper knife,’ she said, extending one hand.

  Vale slapped a knife handle into her palm. It was elegant, made in ivory or whalebone, and had no doubt contributed to the extinction of at least one endangered species. It was also nice and sharp.

  Irene sliced through the twine and unfolded the wrappings. Inside was a book and an envelope. The book’s title was Kinder und Hausmärchen. Children’s and Household Tales, she translated automatically, and breathed a sigh of relief. She flipped the book open to check the publication date: 1812. Better and better. Now what was the definite proof that Bradamant had mentioned?

  She turned to the index. There were eighty-eight stories listed. The eighty-seventh was titled, in German, The Story of the Stone from the Tower of Babel.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘It’s the one,’ she said.

  ‘Yes!’ Kai said exultantly, and slammed his palm down on the desk. ‘We’ve got it!’

  ‘What does the letter say?’ Vale asked.

  Irene put the book down again for the moment and opened the envelope. Thoughts of letter bombs came a few seconds too late. With a sigh, she shook the letter gently onto the desk. No bombs. Good.

  Kai leaned across to read over her shoulder, then paused, tilting his head.

  A fraction of a second later, Irene heard it as well. Screams. Screams, and a horrid sort of rustling with a nightmarish familiarity to it.

  She thrust the letter into her jacket. There would be time to read it later.

  The door slammed open with a heavy boom, and a woman ran in, looking round desperately. She had been amongst the browsers outside, but now looked panicked and in a state of disarray. ‘Where’s the way out?’ she gasped.

  Behind her, through the open door, Irene could see more people running in all directions, but ultimately all in the direction of away. There was a spreading tide of something silver oozing across the floor in a horrible stop-motion way. It would reach a row of cases, and then it was suddenly crawling round the foundations of the next row. The noise it was making, a fierce hungry rustling and skritching, echoed in the large room, underpinning the shouting. Further back, the silver flood was oozing over ominously shaped lumps on the floor, covering them so densely that she couldn’t see the colour of clothing, hair or skin.

  ‘Silverfish!’ the woman screamed at them. ‘Get out of here now!’

  The oncoming menace had nearly reached the chamber door.

  Irene was an intelligent, self-possessed, practical woman. (Or at least, that was how she would describe herself on a performance review to any senior Librarian.) She yelped in panic and scrambled on top of the desk, pulling her skirts up and crouching there in horror. She desperately tried to remember if the Language had vocabulary for silverfish or instantly lethal insecticide and, if so, what it was.

  Kai swept across the room in a motion almost as smooth as t
he approaching silverfish. He picked up the screaming woman, and tossed her up onto the table beside Irene before joining them. Vale leapt onto a chair.

  ‘You said you were here to do something about the silverfish!’ the woman screamed at Kai. ‘Why didn’t you get rid of them?’

  Irene remembered her now. She’d been here when they were looking for Aubrey and found his skin instead. They’d fobbed her off with a story about insect infestation. Marvellous. She hated dramatic irony. ‘Can they eat wood?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re the exterminators, you tell me,’ the woman snapped.

  ‘Silverfish eat anything starch-based,’ Vale informed them from his chair. ‘Glue, book bindings, papers, carpet, clothing, tapestries . . . I imagine theoretically they could eat wood.’

  ‘If they don’t crawl up here first,’ Kai said, leaning over the edge of the table to look down at the floor. The silverfish weren’t actually trying to crawl vertically up the table legs yet, but Irene wasn’t going to wait for empirical evidence. More and more of them were now flooding into the room, crawling over each other on the floor in a thick seething mass of unhealthy silver.

  Something at the back of Irene’s mind was trying to get her attention. It wasn’t the silverfish. It wasn’t the woman next to her. It was the way that she could see a newspaper on top of a display case, and it was moving. Without the aid of silverfish, it was actually shifting itself, millimetre by millimetre, across the top of the glass, in a light rustling drift . . .

  ‘Vale!’ she gasped. ‘Could this be triggered by subsonic frequencies? Do you have knowledge of such things?’ She gestured at the swarming creatures covering the floor.

  Vale caught her meaning. ‘Possible,’ he said. He frowned at the silverfish as though they weren’t starting to crawl up the legs of his chair. ‘Though any frequency that could provoke those creatures would surely also have some sort of effect on humans. Causing panic, perhaps—’

  ‘Oh, I’m definitely panicking,’ the woman said, with a little half-hysterical catch in her voice. ‘And they’re still coming in here, they keep on coming – ’