The Invisible Library

by Cogman, Genevieve

  ‘Right,’ Irene said, trying to keep her voice calm, deliberately not thinking about the insects crawling up inside her skirts and on her and . . . She swallowed. ‘Right. They keep on coming in here. If there’s a subsonic generator somewhere then it must be either driving them or luring them in here.’

  ‘Heaven and earth,’ Kai swore with violent emphasis. ‘It must have been keyed to our opening the door – look at the timing of it!’

  ‘But if it was linked to the door, how did it—’ Irene started to say, and at the same moment Vale pointed at the door’s hinges. ‘There!’ he snapped. ‘That wire. It follows the skirting and leads to the cupboard in that corner. And they’re swarming more thickly around it . . .’

  Irene could barely see any traces of a wire, but she was prepared to trust Vale’s eyes. The dark-wood cupboard was set back into the corner of the room and the silverfish were writhing around its base. They’d swarmed up to a foot off the floor, and now that she was paying attention, they were perceptibly more heavily concentrated there.

  ‘That’ll do,’ she muttered. Luckily, there was enough detailing on that particular piece of furniture for her to be precise. She’d meant to avoid Language usage in case of booby-traps, but she was prepared to be flexible. Any booby-traps would just have to look after themselves. She raised her voice. ‘Oak-leaf-handle cupboard doors. Unlock and open.’

  The cupboard doors sprang open, swinging wide and ripping out bolts at both top and bottom. Inside the cupboard was an intricate tangle of machinery and wires, barely visible under the silverfish which were pouring over it like scaly water. Lights on it glinted and something was humming.

  ‘That’s it!’ Vale said.

  ‘Kai—’ Irene began.

  ‘Already there,’ Kai said. He leapt from the table towards the cupboard. The silverfish crunched under his shoes as he hit the floor. Then he was already spinning, body turning gracefully as he launched into a high flying kick. His leading foot crashed into the twisted machinery with a resounding thud and tinkle.

  The humming stopped.

  Silverfish all over the room paused, then began to pour away. Some trickled down through imperceptible cracks in the flooring and skirting-boards. Others flowed out through the door again, scattering in all directions as soon as they could. A few still lurked around the machine, all trying to squirm underneath it and only about half of them succeeding. Kai hopped on one foot, trying to extract his other foot from the mangled device. He was swearing in what Irene assumed were words well-brought-up dragons used when they didn’t want to shock lesser creatures.

  ‘I was about to say, please hit it with a chair,’ Irene said as the hissing of moving silverfish died away to leave them in relative quiet. ‘But thank you. Thank you very much. Nice work.’ The book lay safely in Dominic Aubrey’s in-tray, untouched, unharmed. It hadn’t been eaten. So much for Alberich’s final gambit.

  ‘Is that normally how you perform exterminations?’ the woman asked. She wasn’t showing any sign of getting down from the table yet. To be fair, neither was Irene.

  ‘I think they’re in my shoes,’ Kai said in tones of deep disgust.

  Vale cautiously stepped down from his chair. The few remaining silverfish took no interest in him. He walked gingerly over to Irene’s table, and offered her a hand down. ‘Nicely done, Miss Winters.’

  ‘Thank you for noticing the wire,’ Irene replied. She took his hand and eased her way off the table, trying not to show too much leg in the process. She was going to enjoy being back in an alternate world where trousers were regular wear for women. ‘Do you think that means – ’ She was about to continue, that Alberich is elsewhere, and he left this trap, when she noticed the meaningful glance Vale was giving over her shoulder. Oh. Of course. The woman. The sooner they could get her out of here, the better. – ‘Ah, thank you,’ she concluded.

  ‘A trap for us?’ Kai said softly as she joined him.

  ‘Plausible,’ Irene agreed, also keeping her voice down. Vale and the woman were murmuring to each other, so they shouldn’t be overheard. ‘A bit careless, though. It’d be bound to draw attention here, to this room. Unless it was a delaying action.’

  ‘It was a delaying action,’ the woman said.

  Kai and Irene turned to look.

  Both she and Vale were now wedged against the table, and Vale had an odd rigidity to his posture. His eyes were furious, but his body was entirely still, hands raised as if he’d just been helping the woman down and hadn’t got round to lowering them. The woman had a knife to his throat. It didn’t look elegant, but it did look brutally efficient. And maybe sharp enough to remove someone’s skin.

  ‘Door, close,’ the woman said. The room and cupboard doors both slammed shut. ‘There. Now we should have a few minutes uninterrupted.’

  Irene could feel her heart thudding painfully in her chest. ‘You’re Alberich?’ she said tentatively.

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘Our fourth meeting. And I hope that you are paying attention this time. Because if you do not do exactly as I tell you, then your friend will die.’ She paused. ‘That is, he will die first, and with you watching.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘We’re listening,’ Irene said. She kept her hands still, avoiding anything that could be taken as provocation to slit Vale’s throat. ‘Please go on.’

  She hadn’t realized that a change of skin could be quite so all-encompassing. She (no, he) spoke with a woman’s voice, and it was quite different from the voice she’d heard from inside their ill-fated cab. It was also different again from Aubrey’s voice. Was he transplanting the vocal cords too? No, probably just a consequence of the entire magic transferral of skin, however that worked. It would be so helpful if she could see anything unusual in his (or her) appearance. But there was nothing at all.

  ‘I’m willing to make concessions,’ Alberich said. ‘You aren’t all necessarily going to die. Be sensible about this, and we can all walk away.’

  Irene did her best to smile in response. Somehow I don’t believe you. ‘I’m interested in staying alive,’ she said. ‘So’s Kai. Aren’t you, Kai?’

  ‘Let Vale go and we can talk,’ Kai snarled. There was something in his voice which Irene hadn’t heard before. For want of a better word, it sounded like possessiveness. A draconic emotion?

  ‘Silence, boy,’ Alberich said. He very deliberately moved the knife in a fraction of an inch, and a trickle of blood ran down Vale’s neck to mark his white collar. ‘Stay where you are, don’t try to jump me, and let your superior do the talking. Well. Do you have the book, Irene?’

  Surely he’d noticed the book in the in-tray? If he hadn’t, then she wasn’t going to draw his attention to it. ‘I can get hold of it,’ she offered. ‘Is that the price?’

  ‘I want more than that.’ There was a glitter behind his eyes, and that she would recognize if she ever saw it again. A rapacious hunger, an endless emptiness that would never be filled, with all the madness that went with it. ‘I have a number of questions. You can even sit down, if you like.’

  ‘We’d really rather stand,’ Irene said quickly.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ His lips curved in a smile that was somehow more a man’s than a woman’s. ‘Shall I go through the usual literary conventions? First I tell you that you’ve been told slanders about me, and you nod understandingly while not believing a word of it. Then I promise that you can go free if you hand over the book and you lie and give me a forged copy. Then I kill you.’ He shrugged. The knife stayed in place. ‘Or shall we break from the usual tropes and actually do something different? Something that might mean you survive this?’

  Irene thought about how many other Librarians must have been in this position. There was a reason why he was an urban legend.

  Though if they all get killed, who comes back to tell the stories, an irritating part of her mind pointed out. She ignored it.

  ‘I don’t see how you can use both the Language and Fae magic,’ she blurted ou
t, her mouth running on automatic while she tried to think. It wasn’t hard to sound vaguely admiring, even if he’d see right through it.

  ‘I’ll give you that one for free,’ Alberich said generously, and Irene mentally lowered the odds on him letting them live even further. ‘Once a person can use the Language, that can’t be taken away. I’ve learned to use chaos since then. It involves a certain amount of personal redefinition. Difficult, but not impossible. One doesn’t have to die. Something to take into account in your future career, perhaps? There are far more opportunities open to you than you might think.’

  Opportunities . . . What opportunities did she have right now? Kai might be able to use amazing dragon powers to stop Alberich entering an area, but that wasn’t much use when he was already inside it. And she might be able to force Alberich out of an area using Language, but again that wasn’t much help if he could simply wait outside its boundaries . . .

  Boundaries. A half-plausible thought moved through the back of her mind. She wished she’d had more time to ask Kai about his capabilities. When he warded an area, did the warding simply follow the track that he left? Or was it a more metaphysical sort of thing, with the boundaries of his warding being linked to whatever he intended to ward?

  ‘Let’s reduce the potential hostages,’ she said briskly, ignoring Kai’s intake of breath from behind her. If this was going to work, she needed him outside and free to act. ‘I’m the one you want. As you said, I’m Kai’s superior. Having him stand here and maybe lose his temper won’t help either of us.’ She tried to look gullible. Impressionable. As if she believed Alberich when he said she might survive this. ‘You’ve already got one hostage, and you know I’m concerned about his well-being. If I wasn’t, we’d already be attacking or running away. Let’s clear the ground. Let Kai here go as a start to the negotiations.’

  Alberich surveyed her thoughtfully, and again there was that flash of hunger in his eyes. ‘It’s true that my questions concern you, not him,’ he said slowly. ‘And he’s no initiate. I needn’t fear him trying to open a door to the Library behind my back. Very well. I’ll be reasonable. In return for a similar concession from you.’

  Irene remembered to breathe. ‘Such as?’ she said.

  ‘Your birth name,’ Alberich said quickly, and she realized this had been his plan all along.

  Magic had never been Irene’s field of expertise. It still wasn’t. But she didn’t need to be an expert to know that Alberich’s Fae magic, with knowledge of her true name, could be very bad news for her.

  ‘Hah!’ Kai said. She suspected he was sneering.

  Irene nodded to Alberich, then turned to Kai. As she had thought, he was sneering. ‘Kai,’ she said. ‘I want you to do something very straightforward for me. I want you to go outside and stay outside. I don’t want you setting one foot inside this library.’ How to convey to him I want you to set up that warding you talked about and do it as fast as possible? ‘I’ll handle this.’

  Kai blinked at her, totally blindsided. ‘But—’ he started.

  ‘But me no buts,’ Irene snapped. ‘It’s as Alberich said. You’re not a Librarian and there’s nothing you can do in this situation. You don’t have the Language and you can’t fight him. I’m not going to endanger yet another person. Now are you going to obey my orders and get out,’ she could hear her voice rising, ‘or am I going to have to worry about you as well as Vale here?’

  Kai gave her a long stare. It felt like a reproach. It was a reproach. She didn’t want to do this to him, but Alberich wasn’t stupid. The slightest hint of collusion would get Vale killed, and she could only hope that Kai understood that. ‘You know perfectly well there’s nothing I can do if I’m outside these walls,’ he said. Could he have grasped what she wanted? ‘I’m supposed to be your colleague, not your brain-damaged dependent! At least let me stay nearby.’

  ‘It’s all one to me,’ Alberich said blandly.

  Irene jerked her thumb at the door. ‘These are your orders, Kai. Out, and stay outside, and I don’t want to see your face until we’re done.’ She glanced up at the window for a moment. ‘And don’t get any ideas about flying around on the zeppelins.’

  Kai’s eyes narrowed fractionally, and she could only hope that he’d grasped the idea. ‘Don’t think I’m happy about this,’ he said, shoulders slumping to the very angle of their first meeting. It had looked better in a leather jacket.

  Irene nodded and turned back to Alberich. ‘The door, please.’

  ‘Your name, please,’ he said, with the same intonation that she had just used.

  ‘I give you my word that I will give you my birth name the moment Kai stands safely outside that closed door,’ Irene said in the Language.

  ‘Neat,’ Alberich commented. ‘You think quickly. Room door, open.’

  The door swung open, squashing silverfish in its wake, and thudded against the wall. There was nobody in the room beyond – at least, there was nobody alive. Just the huddled mounds of the few unfortunate bodies caught in the silverfish attack. Irene hoped queasily that they were just unconscious, overcome by ultrasonic waves or something like that. She couldn’t handle more deaths.

  ‘If you hurt her,’ Kai said softly, ‘I swear by my father and his brothers, and by the bones of my grandfathers, that you shall pay for this.’

  Alberich regarded him thoughtfully. ‘What a curious way of putting it. I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before . . . oh, never mind, I daresay I can dissect you later if it’s absolutely necessary. Out of here now, before I change my mind.’

  Irene didn’t say anything, in case Alberich did change his mind. She gestured Kai towards the door, and wondered how long it would take him to set up a barrier. And also how long she had before Alberich was finished with her.

  Kai hunched his shoulders angrily and stalked out of the office.

  ‘Close, room door,’ Alberich said, and it slammed shut with another squelch of splattered silverfish, leaving the three of them alone together.

  Irene felt the compulsion of her own oath like a noose around her neck. ‘My parents gave me the name of Ray,’ she said, quickly choosing her words, before it could force out even more detail. The phrasing was more convoluted than it might have been, but it was true enough. ‘I don’t know their birth names, so I can’t give you a family name.’

  ‘Ray.’ Alberich looked as if he was about to laugh. ‘And did they call you their little ray of sunshine?’

  Actually, yes, they had. Irene raised her brows. ‘Is that relevant?’

  ‘Not particularly, but I have always been a curious man.’ His hand didn’t move, and the knife at Vale’s throat stayed steady. ‘Why don’t you know their birth names?’

  There was no way she was telling him they were Librarians too. And now she’d answered, she wasn’t bound and could lie as much as she wanted. ‘They always kept secrets from me,’ she invented. ‘I’m answering your question as best I can.’

  Alberich narrowed his eyes, and she suspected with a chill that he didn’t believe her. ‘Relevant questions, then. What precisely has been going on?’

  She hadn’t expected that one. ‘Er, in what sort of detail?’

  ‘There have been far too many people interfering in what might otherwise have been a perfectly straightforward extraction. Believe me, Ray –’

  She knew he saw her twitch when he used her name. She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t heard anyone use it to her for years. It was a childhood name and she wasn’t a child any longer.

  – ‘I didn’t ask for any of this,’ he went on smoothly. ‘I would much rather have simply taken the book and left. No mess. No fuss. So I’m asking you, in a perfectly reasonable way, to stand up straight, stop stammering, and give me a full report. Imagine I’m one of your superiors.’

  He could have been one of her superiors too. It was easy to imagine. They were diverse enough – such as Coppelia with her clockwork limbs or Kostchei with his thousand-yard gaze. But all had the same air of au
thority that Alberich was displaying. Other than that and the rumours, she knew nothing about him. She didn’t even know what he looked like. And he terrified her.

  ‘Under the circumstances—’ Vale put in.

  ‘Remember that I can and will freeze your vocal cords too,’ Alberich said. ‘And your lungs. Unless you want to explain events yourself? In which case, Ray here becomes worthless . . .’

  ‘I believe Miss Winters can handle this,’ Vale said. ‘I will only interrupt if I have something important to add.’

  He was probably used to coping while people held knives at his throat, Irene reflected savagely. ‘Allow me,’ she put in. ‘I believe that the main factor here was that Wyndham knew too much.’

  ‘Quite a claim, given how much Vale seems to know of Library business,’ Alberich said pleasantly.

  Irene decided to ignore that as she wondered how long Kai would take. And would she know when he’d finished? She needed to spin this out as long as possible, weave all her guesswork into a convincing narrative, and pray that Alberich would accept it. ‘Wyndham had connections with the Fae,’ she started confidently, ‘but he also knew that Dominic Aubrey was a Librarian and, as such, opposed to the Fae. Wyndham knew the book was significant to Silver and thought that he could use it as a bargaining chip to gain something in return. Or he might have been taking some sort of complicated revenge. It was one of those Fae relationships. He decided to make sure that the book was somewhere safe while he negotiated. So he sent it under cover of another parcel to the Natural History Museum.’ Could she persuade Alberich to go there to look for it? ‘And then he was murdered.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Alberich said. ‘I arranged his killing. My agents didn’t find the book while they were there, but that would be because Belphegor got there first. The Iron Brotherhood were extremely useful. Vampire-killing assassins, automata to send after you, and other things too. It seemed the easiest way for me to get hold of the book. I didn’t feel like dealing with Silver or the other local Fae. Some of my allies have issues with certain factions. But I won’t bore you with the details. I entered this alternate, took control of the Iron Brotherhood, found the locally stationed Librarian, questioned him, and assumed his skin. Simple enough. Speaking of that, do you still have it?’