The room was cold, now that she wasn’t being distracted by Vale. Kai had been right. She went down on her knees next to the hearth to build up the fire. In her distraction, she almost missed the balled-up sheet of notepaper. It had been caught in the grate and had fallen a few inches short of the embers.
It was probably a private letter. It would be prying into Vale’s personal life to look at it. He was a friend of hers, and he deserved better than this sort of morbid curiosity.
On the other hand, they’d come in to find him drugged out of his mind on morphine.
She picked it up and unfolded it, smoothing it into legibility.
It was expensive notepaper: she could tell that much, even if she didn’t have Vale’s expert knowledge of paper, manufacturers and watermarks. And it was Vale’s handwriting, carelessly untidy, scribbled with the sublime lack of concern of someone who thinks it’s the other person’s job to understand the message:
Singh,
Stop wasting my time with these pitifully simple cases. I am not interested in these petty problems. I would have no qualms in giving these to even the slowest-witted among your colleagues at the Yard.
I thought that you understood. My mind is a machine that is being stressed to breaking point, without any problems to exercise it. And if you can’t help me, then—
The writing broke off there in a spattered trail of ink.
Irene hesitated for a moment, then crumpled the letter and thrust it into the embers. Her hands went through the motions of building up the fire, but her mind was elsewhere. The murder attempts. Zayanna. Now Vale. There was too much to do, and too much to monitor. And what was she going to do if the Library ordered her off on another mission tomorrow?
She carefully diverted herself away from that thought. Because if that did happen, then one way or another, she was going to end up betraying someone.
CHAPTER SIX
Kai had fallen asleep by now too, curled up on the sofa where Vale had been sleeping earlier. They’d agreed to keep watch in turn. After the day’s events, neither of them had felt safe, even with Irene warding the place. Vale had enough books for her to draw the rooms into a temporary sympathy with the Library, which should keep out any immediate Fae attacks.
Sitting with a book in her lap next to the fire, with the lights turned down so that Kai could doze better, Irene half-wished that they had an immediate attack on their hands. It might give them a bit more information. At the moment they knew very little: they were reacting rather than being proactive, running to catch up.
There was a faint mutter from Vale’s bedroom. She put down the book on narcotics and went to investigate.
Vale lay on his bed, his bedspread half-thrown back, eyes closed but mumbling to himself. It was a step up from the drugged slumber of earlier, but it still wasn’t wakefulness. The light from the open door fell in a slice across his bedroom, throwing his face into painful definition: his eyes were sunken in their sockets, and his cheekbones stood out viciously. Surely, Irene thought, surely he hadn’t looked that worn, that desperate, when they’d last seen him a fortnight ago. Surely she would have noticed . . . wouldn’t she?
She closed the bedroom door quietly behind her, so that the noise wouldn’t wake Kai, turned the light on, then walked across to Vale’s bed. She sat next to him and touched his shoulder, shaking him gently. ‘Vale?’ she murmured.
His eyes came open. He was the sort of man who snapped into consciousness all in one moment, rather than Irene’s own more gradual (and pitiful) slow clamber from sleep to wakefulness. He assessed his surroundings in one quick glance, then focused on her. ‘Winters.’
‘I’m not impressed.’ She’d run through dozens of versions of the conversation in her head. None of them really had a happy ending. At least he was addressing her by the relatively familiar Winters, rather than retreating to the more proper Miss Winters.
Vale looked away from her. ‘Not all of us have your strength.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He sighed. ‘One single night’s indulgence, and for that I have you and Strongrock occupying my rooms and preaching abstinence. It seems rather unfair.’
Leaving aside the moral aspects, there was a major logical fallacy in that statement. ‘One single night’s indulgence does not result in a week’s worth of injection marks,’ Irene pointed out. She’d inspected his arm while he was unconscious.
Vale snorted. ‘And now you’ll attempt to play the detective at me, Winters? That isn’t a game that you can win.’
‘It’s not a game at all,’ Irene said. ‘I’m just . . . surprised.’
‘You aren’t,’ Vale said. He rolled over to look at her, propping himself up with one elbow. ‘You’re unhappy, but you’re not surprised. I wonder why?’
Unwelcome as the question was, Irene would have liked to take it as a sign of improvement. But he spoke languidly, rather than with his usual keen interrogative tone, and she could see that his pupils were still too wide and unfocused.
‘Are you being forced into it?’ she asked.
Vale stared at her. ‘Do you honestly think so?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But Kai thought it was possible.’
‘Strongrock is a good man and refuses to accept some things as probable. He wouldn’t understand why a man might need drugs to sleep.’
‘Which would be?’
Vale flopped back onto the pillow. ‘Oh come now, Winters. If I choose to take morphine, that is my business and not yours. And you’re clenching your jaw now, in that annoying manner which suggests you’re going to make a personal issue of the matter.’
Damn right I am. ‘You know perfectly well that morphine is an addictive drug.’
‘Of course,’ Vale said. ‘That is, naturally I am aware of this fact. Your point being?’
‘Merely that I am quite sure the criminal classes of London will be overjoyed to learn – no, to see the results – of you sliding into addiction and self-destruction in this manner.’ She kept her voice low, but didn’t try to take the edge off it. ‘Quite besides the feelings of your friends on the subject.’
‘You have an advantage over me, Winters.’ Vale sounded genuinely tired, rather than simply muzzy with the after-effects of the drug.
‘What would that be?’
‘An ability to admit your own failings.’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘Of course women are more prone to discussing their emotions than men. But even so, you have always been willing to acknowledge when you have made a mistake, or when your competency lies in areas other than the current situation. Almost too ready. Your opinion of your own abilities is frequently lower than it should be. Did you have the virtues of humility drummed into you at that boarding school you remember so fondly?’
Irene bristled, trying to work out if that whole little speech amounted to an insult, or if it was honest truth. ‘If you’re trying to annoy me so that I’ll walk out of this room, then I must tell you it’s not going to work.’
Vale sighed. ‘What a pity. But my point remains. You seem to find it quite simple to confess to error.’
‘Not really,’ Irene admitted. ‘I don’t like being wrong any more than anyone else. It’s more that I can’t allow my pride to get in the way of my function as a Librarian. I have a job to do, Vale. If that means letting someone else take over who can do things better, well . . .’
A cab rattled past outside in the darkness, wheels grating on the road. ‘If you truly believed that,’ Vale said, ‘then you would have permitted your colleague Bradamant to take charge of your earlier mission – to find the Grimm book. From what Strongrock told me, you were quite firm in refusing her help.’
Irene flushed. She still wasn’t comfortable discussing the other Librarian. While they had agreed to a degree of truce at their last meeting – at least Irene had proposed one, and Bradamant hadn’t actually said no – they hadn’t seen each other since. And they had years of bad feeling to overcome. Then she realized the purpose behind
Vale’s words. ‘You’re trying to distract me. The sooner you’re honest with me, the sooner I can let you get back to sleep.’
‘Ah, and there lies the problem. Since that little trip of ours to Venice, I have had trouble sleeping.’
If Vale was admitting that he had any sort of problem, then the problem in question was probably already too big to handle. ‘And therefore the morphine?’ Irene asked.
‘And therefore, as you say, the morphine. Though . . . I must admit that I have increased the level of the dose in the last few days.’ Vale looked up at the ceiling. ‘Are you now going to tell me that you have used that Language of yours to remove the drug from my body?’
‘Frankly, I wouldn’t dare,’ Irene said. ‘I could try telling it to come out of your body, but heaven only knows how it would come out or what damage it might do to your bodily tissues. It’s the sort of thing I would reserve for emergencies. Please never give me cause to try.’
‘I wish I could give you that promise, Winters,’ Vale said slowly. ‘But if I am to be functional, then I need to sleep. And if I am to sleep, then I must have morphine.’
‘Why can’t you sleep?’ Irene asked bluntly.
Vale was silent for a long moment. Finally he said, ‘I dream.’
The logical next question would have been: What do you dream about? Irene had never trained as a psychologist. Or a psychiatrist. She wasn’t actually sure what the difference was, or which sort had more letters after their name. The closest she’d come to it was on-the-job training in persuading people to talk to her. Usually to get them to tell her where books were. She wasn’t any sort of therapist. If Vale had been traumatized by his visit to that other dark Venice, like Kai with his understandable post-kidnapping PTSD, then where did she start?
Silence seemed to be the right course of action. Vale finally spoke again. ‘I dream of moving amid a world of masks, where we are all actors, Winters, and where we are all on the strings of greater puppeteers. I dream of a thousand, thousand worlds, all of them spinning at odds to each other, all of them gradually being lost to a random ocean of utter illogic and randomness, like flotsam in a whirlpool. I dream that nothing makes sense.’
‘Dreams can be chaotic—’ Irene started.
‘Of course they can,’ Vale said with exhausted patience. ‘But these are not just dreams where things from my daily life are jumbled together randomly. I dare say such dreams are common enough. These are dreams that exalt disorder and illogic, Winters. Nothing makes sense. The only thing that eases them is to throw myself into work, and even that is scarce – there are no problems large enough to challenge me, no mysteries complex enough to intrigue me.’ He was sitting upright now, grasping her wrist hard enough to hurt. ‘You must understand me, Winters. I cannot endure these dreams.’
Irene looked down at her wrist meaningfully. Vale followed her gaze and let go of her, carefully unfolding his fingers. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I should not have done that.’
‘I asked the question,’ Irene said. And the answer made far too much sense. They’d visited a high-chaos world. Vale had been warned not to go to that version of Venice – Lord Silver had been quite clear about risks, even if he hadn’t made it clear what those risks were. And now there was this threat – not to Vale’s body, which would have been comparatively minor, in Vale’s own estimation, but to his mind . . .
‘It hardly takes a great logician to connect this to recent events,’ Vale said, echoing her thoughts. ‘But I will be damned if I go to Lord Silver for help. If I can endure these dreams until the influence of that world weakens, then I can reduce the morphine afterwards.’
There were so many possible logical holes in that statement that Irene could have used it as a tea-strainer. But she could see from Vale’s face that he himself was aware of them, and it would have been no more than cruelty to have pointed them out, without something better to offer. Finally she said, ‘I could take you to the Library.’
Vale blinked. Just once. His eyelids flickered, but his gaze was set on her face. ‘You have never shown any interest in taking me there, in the past.’
‘You’ve always avoided actually suggesting it.’ Probably because you knew I’d say no. It’s not a tourist hangout.
‘Do you honestly think it will help?’ He left out the question What would your superiors say?, which was a relief, as Irene was trying not to think about that.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘But we do know that Fae can’t enter the Library. If I escort you in there, it might purge your system – I take it we’re going with the explanation that you have been affected by over-exposure to high levels of chaos?’
Vale gave her one of his best neither you nor I are idiots, so do not descend to idiocy looks. ‘It would seem the most obvious explanation. Though when you were infected with chaos in the past, you weren’t even able to enter the Library, as I recall. Do you think I will be able to?’
Irene pursed her lips. ‘Well, if we try and find that you can’t, then at least we’ll be one step closer to identifying the problem.’
‘And locating a solution?’
‘Let’s take this one step at a time,’ she said firmly.
‘Could you use your Language to force this infestation out of me?’ Vale suggested. ‘You did it to yourself, as I recall, when you fell victim to chaos exposure.’
‘Um. There could be consequences.’ Irene could think of a number of undefined but vaguely unpleasant ways that such a thing could go wrong. It could be worse – both to soul and to body – than sweating morphine, and that was just the first thing she could imagine. Heaven only knew how many other ways something like that could go wrong. ‘The official line was that chaos infection would eventually be purged from our bodies naturally. And it’s known that as a world shifts from chaos to order or back again, so do the people of that world. So if we can keep you steady long enough for it to equalize to your natural balance . . .’ She was conscious that this wasn’t being very specific, or even remotely reassuring. It might not even be accurate. She certainly wouldn’t have wanted to hear it herself. ‘We can save it as a last resort,’ she said.
‘Tell me, Winters, do you think . . .’ Vale trailed off for a moment. ‘Do you think I am particularly vulnerable to this contagion?’
Irene hesitated. She hoped it would be taken for careful consideration. Chaos likes to turn people into walking arche-types, main characters in search of a part. You’re a great detective. And you already fulfil all the criteria for a certain fictional Great Detective. She could easily see Vale being dragged deeper into stereotype and falling victim to chaos. But would it actually help to say that? He thoroughly detested the Fae, both as individuals and as a race. Comparing him to them would not help his mood or make him sleep any better.
Vale apparently took her silence for agreement. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t talk about it, Winters, but you and I both know that my family is . . . unreliable. I broke with them because of their more dubious practices. Black magic. Poisoning. But there’s worse. Winters, there is . . .’ He swallowed. ‘There is hereditary insanity in my family. I thought I had escaped it. But now . . .’
‘Rubbish!’ Irene was surprised by the firmness of her tone. ‘This would probably have happened to any unprotected human who went there. You saw how the locals reacted.’ They were puppets on strings, toys to be jerked around at the whims of Venice’s Fae masters, backstage props and chorus to the ongoing drama. ‘Kai and I were lucky enough to be protected. It’s that simple.’
‘Ah, yes. Your protection.’ Vale didn’t look wholly comforted, but he did look slightly less despairing than he had a moment ago. ‘How did you obtain it?’
‘I took vows to the Library,’ Irene said briefly. ‘A mark was set on me.’
‘Details, Winters,’ Vale prompted. ‘Details.’
‘We don’t talk about it.’ She hunched her shoulders defensively. Now it was her turn to look away from him. She remembered bits and pieces
of the night she took her vows to the Library. The questioning by a panel of older Librarians. The nerve-racking, stomach-clenching panic that she wouldn’t be found worthy. And then a dark room, somewhere in the bowels of the Library, somewhere she had never found again. She had been alone in the silence there, and a sudden crashing flare of light had brought her to her knees and carved a pattern across her shoulder-blades . . .
‘It would distract me. . .’ Vale said. Outside, another cab creaked past.
‘I can show you the brand, if you want.’ It was harder to say the words than she had expected. She wasn’t particularly body-shy, but the Library mark was something she automatically kept hidden and private. But it would still be easier to show it than to talk about that night.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the flare of interest in Vale’s face. ‘If it wouldn’t be too inconvenient,’ he said, in an encouraging tone.
Irene turned away from him and reached behind her back to unbutton her dress. Her thoughts were complicated. Part of her mind was screaming that she was alone in a bedroom with Vale and was about to bare her back to him, and was this really a good idea? What would it do to their carefully managed friendship? Another part of her mind thought it was an excellent idea, and was sotto voce suggesting directions that the two of them could take from there. And the rest of her mind was trying to convince her it was really just to distract Vale from his nightmares, and that if she ignored all the other thoughts and emotions, then they would simply evaporate.
She undid the buttons at the back of her neck, grateful that she was wearing a dress which buttoned down the back rather than the front. And this wouldn’t require her to strip to the waist to show Vale her shoulders. That might be taking things a bit too fast.
But she was still utterly conscious of his presence, lying on the bed behind her in the quiet, dimly lit room, and of his eyes on her. When she’d been younger, she’d idolized great detectives and dreamed her own dreams. It had been part of the reason that she’d chosen her name. She knew – she accepted – that the man behind her was his own person and not some sort of fake-Holmes. But that didn’t stop her caring for him, for who he was. If she had to take him to the Library, then she would. She was already in enough trouble. What was one more breach of regulations?
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