‘Kai,’ Irene said through gritted teeth. ‘Drop the subject. Please.’
‘We’re almost home in any case.’ The air around them was a deepening blue-green and the air was thicker in Irene’s lungs, almost difficult to breathe. ‘Brace yourself.’
Irene took a firmer hold of the tendrils of mane. ‘Where will we come out?’ she asked.
‘Why, where I choose.’ Kai sounded almost surprised that she needed to ask. ‘But I’ll make it high enough that we don’t have to worry about zeppelins.’
‘Good thinking,’ Irene said faintly. She hadn’t even envisaged the possibility, until he’d mentioned it. She wasn’t used to thinking in terms of air traffic. What she was thinking about was the ongoing struggle between the Fae and the dragons. This ability to choose exactly where they emerged in an alternate world would mean that the dragons could appear in any place they liked – if it wasn’t for the fact that high-chaos worlds were antithetical to them. Kai had been semi-conscious most of the time they’d been in a very high-chaos Venice, and he’d implied that he’d have been in an even worse condition if he’d been in his draconic form. Probably something similar applied to powerful Fae who had ambitions of invading high-order worlds. It explained why most of the fighting took place in the middle areas, in worlds that were somewhere between the two opposites.
Kai folded his wings close to his body, jerking his head and shoulders as if he was fighting against an oncoming tide. But before Irene could get more than mildly panicked, he roared, the sound reverberating through the empty space around them like an echo chamber. As the noise shuddered through the air, a rift split open in front of them, shattering light in all directions, and Kai dived through it.
They came out above the clouds. It was a very long way down, and bitterly cold. For some reason, Irene’s fear of falling from a height like this was much greater than it had been of falling off in the space between worlds, where the fall could presumably have gone on for infinity. She pressed herself tightly against Kai’s back. Perhaps it’s because I knew that he’d catch me if I’d fallen there, while here . . . I might just hit the ground.
Kai drifted downwards: as before, the velocity and wind didn’t reach Irene or do more than ruffle her hair, and she could enjoy the view of oncoming clouds and smog. Typical weather for this world, or at least for this London. ‘Can you go to any world?’ she asked, curious.
‘To any world I know, or to any person I know.’ Kai sounded smug again, which wasn’t surprising: Irene’s travel through the Library was rather more specific and limited. ‘I could find you wherever you were.’
‘Even in the Library?’
There was a pause. ‘Well, no. I can’t reach the Library. None of my kindred can. It’s barred to us by our usual way of travel. The only way I can get to it is by being taken there by a Librarian. Like you.’
Well, that explains why the dragons haven’t taken us over for our own good. Irene made some soothing noises of agreement, and wondered exactly why dragons couldn’t reach the Library, and if she had a hope in hell of finding out while acting as mentor to a dragon apprentice. Her superiors could be very paranoid, and it might earn her some much-needed favour.
Kai snaked through the air. ‘Ready to go down?’ he said.
It would have been nice to sit up here above the clouds for a while longer, discussing metaphysics and dragons and other interesting topics, but there was simply too much on her schedule. ‘Let’s do it,’ Irene said.
They came down with a rush, slicing through the clouds and leaving streamers of mist behind them, with a speed that would have left Irene prostrate if it had been natural flight – well, as far as any flight on the back of a giant supernatural pseudo-reptile could be termed natural. She realized, with the technical part of her mind that wasn’t occupied with Oh my god please slow down, that Kai must be going as fast as possible to make it less likely that people would see him. Even in London, a dragon might attract attention and would be hard to mistake for an airship.
She could see the British Library below, and the glass pyramid on top of it. There was a small zeppelin tethered to the roof, floating there ready for action, and Kai had to adjust his flight path to avoid it. Two guards had seen him incoming and came running to intercept him, hands on truncheons.
Plus several points for duty, minus a lot more points for intelligence, for running towards an approaching dragon rather than running away from an approaching dragon. Irene waited till Kai had settled to the ground, then slid off his back. Ideally she would have walked towards the guards, but for some reason her legs didn’t want to work, and she leaned against Kai instead. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, trying to sound charming.
The guards looked her up and down. Admittedly her National Guard costume, her harshly braided hair and the fact that she’d been gently smoked (or lightly kippered) didn’t make her look like the most trustworthy person. Time for the other option.
She pushed away from Kai, standing upright, and took a deep breath. Light flared behind her. That must be Kai turning back into a human. Good, it’d make the phrasing easier. ‘You perceive that I and the person behind me are normal but unimportant people, who have a right to be here on the roof, but are not worth your time and interest.’
The use of the Language to affect someone’s perceptions always took energy. She swayed as she felt the drain on her reserves. But it worked. The guards developed the vaguely puzzled look of men trying to remember exactly what had been so important. One of them waved her and Kai towards the door into the main building, with a mumbled, ‘Please enjoy your visit to the British Library.’
Of course the problem with using the Language that way was that it might wear off at any moment. It was only useful up to a point. Kai knew that just as well as Irene, so the moment they were inside the building, he led the way in a rapid trot down the book-lined storage corridor, and they didn’t stop till they were a few turnings away.
‘Are you going to open a direct portal to the Library from one of these rooms, or do you want to go down to the fixed entrance?’ he asked.
Irene ran her hands over her hair and grimaced at the amount of ash that came away. ‘I think we’ll use the fixed entrance,’ she said. ‘I know we’ll probably run into people on the way down there, but at least we know where we’ll come out in the Library, that way. Besides, after last time I stashed a couple of overcoats in the room next to it. It’ll do to cover up these outfits till we can get back to our lodgings.’
‘We could just change clothing in the Library,’ Kai said hopefully. He had much better taste in clothing than Irene did, and frequently exercised it.
‘Time,’ Irene said. ‘I’d rather get back here as soon as we can. We can collect any mail in the Library, but other than that . . .’ She shrugged. ‘We’ve been away from here for nearly a fortnight. As Librarian-in-Residence, it’s my duty to make sure nothing’s happened in our absence.’
‘Li Ming and Vale will both be glad to know we have returned, too,’ Kai agreed. ‘As you say, then.’
Irene led the way down the stairs and passageways at a fast walk, ignoring the looks of surprise, shock and sheer horror. Ladies in this world did not wear trousers. Zeppelin pilots and engineers did, but they weren’t generally ladies, and they wouldn’t go wandering around the British Library in them.
The room containing the permanent entrance to the Library was cordoned off with ropes and signs, declaring hopefully REPAIRS IN PROGRESS. Irene had to admit to a certain responsibility there, involving a small fire and a pack of werewolves, but on the positive side, it did make it easy for the two of them to march in while looking like workmen.
Once inside the room and with the door safely shut, Irene looked around guiltily. This had once been a well-kept office, with glass cases full of interesting things, or at least antique ones, and cupboards and shelves properly full of books. Now – after the silverfish infestation, her duel with Alberich and the fire – it was a wreck. The few remaini
ng display cases were empty and shabby, and the scorched floor and singed walls stood bare and unattractive.
It wasn’t her fault. Not directly, anyway. But she still felt guilty.
With a shake of her head, she stepped forward to put her hand against the far door. In practical terms, it was a simple storage cupboard. But in metaphysical terms, it was a permanent link to the Library, just like the one that had gone up in flames, and only needed a Librarian’s use of the Language to activate it. ‘Open to the Library,’ she said. A queasy worm of nervousness twisted in her stomach at the unwanted but inescapable image of the same thing happening here.
As if to quiet her worries, the door swung open at once, without the slightest hindrance. She took a deep breath, not wanting to sigh in relief too audibly, and ushered Kai through, before stepping through herself and shutting the door behind her.
The room in the Library was familiar to them by now – one of the conveniences of using a fixed transfer point from an alternate world to the Library, rather than forcing a passage through and possibly ending up anywhere at all in the Library. The walls were thick with books, so much so that the black-letter posters warning Moderate Chaos Level, enter with care had to hang in front of them, for lack of clear wall space. As did the promised overcoats. Someone had installed a computer on the central table.
‘That’s new,’ Kai said, pointing at it.
‘Convenient, though,’ Irene said. She sat down in front of it as she turned it on, and removed the book from her coat. ‘Could you just check down the corridor? There’s a delivery point there, and you can drop this in and get it off our hands, while I’m sending an urgent notification about the gate. Coppelia or one of the other elders might want to speak to us personally.’
Kai nodded, taking the book. ‘Of course. Irene—’
‘Yes?’
‘What do you think that reaction was?’
‘I don’t know,’ Irene had to admit. ‘It wasn’t some sort of linked-chaos trap. At least, I don’t see how it can have been. There wasn’t anything linked to it that I could see – did you see anything?’
Kai shook his head. He paced thoughtfully, in a way that Irene suspected he’d subconsciously copied from Vale. ‘I saw nothing, and I felt nothing out of the ordinary. If I had done, I would have warned you. It didn’t even feel like a normal intrusion of chaos into that world – forgive my vocabulary, please, it’s the best way I have to describe it. If I were to guess—’
‘Which is an appalling habit, and destructive to the logical faculty – yes, I know,’ Irene couldn’t stop herself from saying.
The corner of Kai’s mouth twitched. On him, the streaks of ash looked merely like artistic dishevelment, the sort of thing a model would wear in a particularly outré fashion show. And on him, the National Guard uniform could have started a fashion. ‘If I were to hypothesize, then, I’d say that the problem was somewhere at the Library end, or between the two points. But I don’t know if that’s actually possible.’
Irene nodded, logging on and starting to draft an email report to her mentor Coppelia. ‘We didn’t come in through that gate, because it would have meant dropping into the middle of hostile territory and an unknown situation. That was why Baudolino brought us in via Sicily, and we had to go overland from there.’ Baudolino was that world’s Librarian-in-Residence, a frail man in his seventies and definitely not up to dodging revolutionary informers and handling a police state. Irene personally thought it was past time for him to retire to the Library, but it would have been tactless to say so. ‘And Baudolino himself can’t have checked up on it recently, or he would have fallen into the same trap – if we can call it that. So . . . I don’t know. I’ll just have to report it and see how that goes. And about delivering the book itself . . .’
‘Going, going, gone,’ Kai said, and the door closed behind him.
It took some editing for Irene to transform her first reaction. Which went something along the lines of We nearly got roasted, so I am raising the alarm, and if someone else knew about it, then why the hell weren’t we warned? This was a life-threatening malfunction! She eventually managed a more tactful I must report that when we attempted to activate the gate, we were the victims of high-energy side-effects, and I’m not sure that the gate is still in existence. But she did end with . . . The lack of information on the gate’s status could easily have caused a total failure of the mission. If Kai and I weren’t fully briefed, due to some issues in communication, then I must raise this as a serious problem for future efficiency and safety. Librarians are a finite resource. And if this is a new problem, then other Librarians need to be warned as soon as possible.
It was more management-speak than she liked, but it should get her meaning across. Irene sighed, putting her chin in her hands. Paranoia suggested that she had already been put on probation, and there was a direct line between that and being sent on dangerous missions with incomplete information. Common sense argued that she shouldn’t attribute to malice what could perfectly well be explained by stupidity, or at least by organizational mistakes. But there wasn’t anything in her waiting emails or in the Current Events bulletin about other gates going up in flames. So what could have happened?
Could it be sabotage? Could someone be attacking the Library? That was a dangerous line of questioning, and not one that she liked to consider.
Paranoia was self-fulfilling, she reminded herself. Mistakes, or even coincidental accidents, were more plausible here. But paranoia wouldn’t be banished quite so easily.
The door creaked open. ‘All done?’ Kai asked.
Irene nodded. ‘And nothing urgent otherwise. Book safely posted?’
‘On its way.’ Kai inspected the spare overcoats, pursing his lips. ‘Buying the cheapest second-hand goods is a false economy,’ he finally said.
‘I’m not thinking about that now,’ Irene said firmly, pulling on her overcoat. ‘I’m thinking of getting back to our lodgings and having a hot bath.’
‘You have a point.’ Kai swung his coat over his shoulders. ‘At your will, madam.’
Their exit back into Vale’s world, and out of the British Library, went unnoticed. It was verging on evening by now, and those people still in the British Library were more concerned with work or study than with watching passers-by. Irene was beginning to nurture hopes of a quiet evening without any further problems. Hot water first, of course, then a clean dress. Then perhaps dinner, or calling on Vale and seeing if he was available for dinner, and then—
Kai grabbed her arm, dragging her back to reality. ‘Who’s that?’ he hissed.
They had just left the British Library. A woman was standing on the far side of the road, watching the main doors. Everything about her was vastly inappropriate for the time and location. Her dark curls were twisted up into a knot and fell to brush her bare right shoulder. She wore a drape of thick black fur, which stretched from one wrist to the other, hanging in thick folds behind her. Beneath it a dress of black silk clung to her body and legs, so tight that it looked as if it had been sewn in place. The smoggy sunset light turned her skin an even darker gold than usual, and her eyes were as vivid as cut obsidian. She held a leash in her right hand, which restrained a black greyhound. As Irene and Kai paused, it lifted its head from sniffing at the ground and gave a little bark, as much as to say Here you are – I found them.
‘Zayanna,’ Irene said. If her voice was numb with surprise, she hoped that it passed for a controlled assessment of the situation. The other woman wasn’t actually an enemy. Well, probably not. She’d even been an ally of sorts, the last time they met. And she was Fae, but that was a different sort of problem.
The woman spread her arms in a delighted gesture. The greyhound yelped as the leash tugged at his neck, and she quickly lowered her right hand. She hurried across the road towards them, delicate on her high heels. ‘Irene! Darling! Have you any idea how difficult it’s been to find you?’
‘I didn’t realize you were looking for me,�
�� Irene said, her social circuits cutting in automatically. Ignoring Kai’s hiss of ‘Is that a Fae?’ she held out her hand in welcome. ‘If I’d known—’
‘Oh, there’s no way you could have known, darling,’ Zayanna said. Ignoring Irene’s hand, she embraced her, wrapping her arms around Irene and nestling her head against her shoulder. ‘I have to appeal to you for asylum, darling. You don’t mind, do you?’
CHAPTER FOUR
Irene was conscious that she had gone board-like and unresponsive in Zayanna’s embrace. One arm came up automatically and patted the other woman on the shoulder. ‘There, there,’ she said. She was aware that it lacked a certain something. ‘Perhaps we should discuss this off the main street?’
‘Perhaps not,’ Kai said dangerously. ‘Woman, get off Irene and stop trying to seduce her.’
Zayanna raised her head to look at Kai, and the dog growled, apparently echoing its mistress’ feelings. ‘This isn’t seduction. This is just—’
‘Throwing yourself on me in the middle of the street,’ Irene said, conscious of the number of people who were obviously watching, and the even larger number who were pretending not to watch, but were watching anyhow.
‘She’s so good with words,’ Zayanna confided to Kai. ‘And she’s so popular. You should keep her locked up, sweetheart. Actually, no, that’s not a good idea, because she can’t have daring adventures if you keep her locked up. But you know, it’s the thought that counts.’
‘The thought has crossed my mind on occasion,’ Kai muttered. ‘Irene, who is this woman, and is there anything that you would like me to do?’ The subtext of such as getting her off you came across very clearly.
We need to talk in private. But I’m not bringing her into my home. Even if I do owe her something for her non-interference in Venice. She’d needed all the help she could get when Kai was kidnapped. ‘Tea,’ Irene said quickly. ‘Restaurant. That is, we will go to a nearby restaurant and have tea, and Zayanna can tell us what the problem is.’
The Burning Page Page 3