And if it did all go wrong and she was ordered away from this world, then what?
She slipped the dress down from her shoulders, holding it modestly against her breasts, exposing her shoulders and back. She was aware that the straps of her brassiere partly obscured the markings across her back, but most of it should be visible. ‘Can you see it?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Vale sat up behind her. Irene didn’t look round, but she could hear the creaking of the bed and the rustle of the pushed-aside bedspread. ‘It does look like a relatively normal tattoo, composed of scrollwork or Chinese characters . . . Why can’t I understand it? I thought Strongrock said that everything in the Language would look like a man’s native language, if he tried to read it.’
‘Library marks are an exception to the rule,’ Irene said. She tried to relax and keep her breathing even, and not think about how close behind her he must be, how easy it would be to turn round and kiss him.
‘Is it hazardous to the touch?’
‘I don’t think so. Nobody’s ever died of it.’ She realized that might cast a dubious light on her behaviour and quickly added, ‘That I know of.’
‘If I may . . .’
Her throat tightened. ‘Of course,’ she said.
She felt the faint brush of his fingers against her skin, gliding along the lines of her tattoo. His fingers were feverishly hot – or was that just her? – and as he leaned in closer, she could hear his breathing come faster.
‘It feels like normal skin and scarring,’ he said. It was the blandest of possible remarks. It didn’t match the way his fingers trailed across her back. Maybe Kai had actually had a point when he suggested she should approach Vale. She’d always thought that any attraction on her side had been one-sided. She might have been wrong about that. Which meant . . .
Irene took a deep breath. Now or never. She swivelled round, her left hand holding her dress up in place. Vale was only a few inches behind her, his hand still raised. His cheeks were flushed, and no, she wasn’t imagining it – there was the heat of desire in his eyes, in the way his lips were parted to speak.
She didn’t give him the chance to ask her to turn back round. She slid her free arm around his neck, pulling him to her, and flung herself into a kiss. Part of her tried to compare this to Zayanna’s earlier tactics, but she shot that thought down before it could get in the way. She was semi-undressed in Vale’s bedroom. In this place and time, it was not an innocent situation, and both of them knew it.
And Vale responded. His lips parted against hers, and his arms came round to hold her as firmly as she was holding him. He made a small sound deep in his throat, sliding deeper into the kiss with the assurance of a man who has had his share of experience, as hungry for her as she was for him, as tired, as desperate . . .
Slowly the kiss eased. His hands shifted to cup her face. ‘Winters,’ he said. ‘Irene, I—’
‘Don’t say anything,’ Irene urged. ‘Please. I want this, too.’
‘You can’t know what you’re saying.’ Was it just the reaction of a man who would always think that women were less competent, less able to know their own desires? Irene had thought better of him. ‘I shouldn’t have . . .’
‘I kissed you.’ She tried to put genuine feeling into her voice, rather than retreating to her usual calm surface of sarcasm and distance. ‘Vale – should I call you Peregrine?’
‘Dear God, no!’ he said. ‘Irene, I can’t let you make this decision like this. Your pity for me shouldn’t sway you into degrading yourself—’
‘I would not be degrading myself,’ Irene said through gritted teeth. The heat of that kiss was wearing off under this sudden bath of cold indecision and self-loathing. ‘I have respected and admired you for months. I find you a very handsome man. If I choose to pursue you, then by all means tell me no, but please don’t imply that I am somehow donating myself to you out of charity. It is nothing like that.’
‘You are far too attractive and deserving a woman to throw herself away on a man like myself.’ Vale was starting to sound terse. Perhaps it signalled a growing annoyance that she wouldn’t simply withdraw and leave him to his self-indulgent bitterness.
‘I’m an unprincipled adventuress working as a book thief,’ Irene snapped back.
‘You’re barely twenty-five.’
‘I’m in my late thirties.’
Vale dropped his hands to her shoulders, seizing her as if he would like to shake her. ‘Have you no sense, Irene? I’m going insane. I’m no fit bedmate for any woman.’
‘And I have just said I do not intend to let that happen!’ Irene hissed, keeping her voice down, so as not to bring Kai in on them both. Though it would have been a pleasure to shout. ‘If you consider my judgement to be worth so little, then by all means throw me out of your bedroom, but allow me to point out that I would very much have liked to stay! What do I have to do, to convince you that I’m an adult and I know my own mind?’
Vale took a deep, shuddering breath and then pushed her away from him, releasing her shoulders. ‘Get out of here, Winters. I don’t blame you. I couldn’t possibly blame you. This is my own fault for playing the fool, for leading you on . . .’
Irene didn’t quite trust herself to speak at once. She pulled away and turned her back to him, doing her dress up again in quick, angry movements. ‘I am certainly not going to try to force you,’ she said. ‘We are both mature adults, after all. And if you want to wallow in your self-pity, far be it from me to stop you.’
Vale didn’t answer. The bed creaked as he lay back down on it.
Irene rose to her feet. ‘Get some sleep,’ she said coldly. She still wanted him. Even losing her temper didn’t stop that. And for that moment, she knew that Vale had wanted her, too. Her eyes pricked with furious tears. The stupid, irritating, self-pitying, overly noble idiot . . . ‘We can talk later. When you aren’t so tired.’
‘My decision won’t change, Winters,’ Vale said coldly. He rolled over, turning away from her and dragging the bedspread up over his curled body.
Irene closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in his bedroom, and was quite pleased with herself that she didn’t slam it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The fog had gone the next morning, and the day was as clear as it ever became in this London and this alternate world. Passing zeppelins above drew thin trails across the morning sky, which faded into feathery patterns of cloud, and newspaper-sellers shouted their wares on the street corners. They formed small islands of temporary stillness in the hurrying crowds. Even in this pleasant weather, all of London had somewhere to go and some place to be, and nobody had the time to dawdle.
Irene herself was hurrying. She needed to find out if there was any reply to her report on the malfunctioning Traverse. She also wanted to add supplementary material, possibly in capital letters, on the subject of spiders and further murder attempts. If she and Kai needed to shelter in the Library, she wanted to do it sooner rather than later. She refused to risk both their lives.
She’d left Kai behind with Vale, with the excuse that this trip to the Library didn’t need both of them, and that someone should stay with Vale in case he was targeted by whoever had sent them spiders. The more honest truth was that she’d wanted some time on her own. What little sleep she’d managed hadn’t been good, and she hadn’t felt very charitable to either of the men – even if Kai had done nothing to deserve it. And they could keep each other safe.
She was heading for the British Library, again, despite her misgivings that it might be too obvious a move to any unfriendly eyes. It was a trade-off: she could force a passage to the Library itself from some other large collection of books. But then she couldn’t control where in the Library she would emerge, and she’d only be able to hold the link open for a short time. There were too many urgent things going on for her to risk ending up in a distant corner of the Library. It was best to use the fixed entrance and run the risk of others knowing where it was. Hopefully nobody was plann
ing to kill her this early in the morning.
‘Read all about it!’ the closest newspaper vendor shouted. Irene glanced at his display board. GUERNSEY ZEPPELIN BASE WITCHCRAFT SCANDAL, it read. No, probably not related to her current problems. Not everything was about her.
Then the shockwave hit. It was a surge of force that felt like the Library at first, but wasn’t – oh god, how very much it wasn’t. It seemed reassuringly familiar, but it had an aftertaste of chaos that roiled her guts and made her choke. Sweet to the mouth but bitter to the stomach, half-remembered scripture quoted itself in her mind as she struggled for balance. It was hunting for Irene, or for any Librarian, like a bat screaming sonar waves into the darkness and waiting for a response. The Library brand across Irene’s back blazed up so that she could feel each separate line of it, and the force of its weight made her stagger.
Nobody around her was reacting to it. Why should they? They weren’t Librarians. A couple of people glanced at her as she missed her step, but nobody stopped, or did more than adjust their own trajectory so as not to step on her if she fell over.
Then, like an ocean wave, the blow hammered down around her and left its imprint on the malleable sands of reality, then drained away, withdrawing to wherever it had come from. She’d felt something like this before, when the Library (or, more accurately, a senior Librarian) had been sending her urgent messages, only it hadn’t involved this feeling of chaos. The Library’s message had been classic scattershot technique, targeting any Librarian in the vicinity, then printing the message on the nearest written material. She automatically looked at the newspaper display board again.
‘Dreadful scandal—’ The vendor broke off as he looked at his papers and saw that the print on them had changed. Irene knew it would be the same as the message that currently showed on the display board, and any other printed matter within a few yards of her. It was written in the Language, and anyone who read it would see it in their own native tongue, even if the words made no sense to them.
THE LIBRARY WILL BE DESTROYED, it read. AND YOU WILL BE DESTROYED WITH IT. ALBERICH IS COMING.
Irene throttled the panicked inner voice which wanted to retreat into a corner and start whimpering. There was no time for that. Her feet carried her on automatically, away from the black-and-white message on all the newspapers. What she had just seen made it all the more urgent that she reach the Library and report this.
It had been in the Language. There was only one person outside the Library who was tainted with chaos and who could have used the Language. It was Alberich who had left that message, and he had left it for her to see.
He knew she was in this world. He remembered her. And he was coming.
Irene breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the British Library without being accosted by Zayanna again. She did want to know what was going on with the other woman. It might be relevant. But the Library and its own interests had to take priority, and she needed to report Alberich’s threat. It wasn’t only a threat to her, after all. It was a threat to the Library as a whole. And if it had anything to do with what happened yesterday to the Library gate . . .
She slipped through the British Library unobtrusively, adopting the preoccupied air of a student, and reached the door to the Library itself. As she closed the door behind her, she felt herself relaxing. Here she was safe. Safe from the physical dangers of spiders and guns, the emotional wrinkles of caring about the people around her and, most of all, safe from the threats of the Library’s greatest-ever traitor. Of all places, this was the one location where Alberich could never reach her.
But today, even this sanctuary seemed shadowed. The lights seemed dimmer, and the corners seemed darker. The very air seemed to whisper in the distance – like a ghost breathing, or the faint echo of a clock’s tick.
The computer terminal was already booted up. Someone must have been using it recently and left it on. Irene thrust aside her nervousness, sat down and called up her email, already starting to phrase her report on Alberich’s warning.
The blinking message at the top of the screen caught her attention: READ THIS NOW.
It couldn’t be spam. Nobody could spam the Library network. She clicked on it.
An emergency meeting has been called. All Librarians will attend. Transfer shifts have been established at all junctions within the Library to permit attendance. The command word is necessity. Your presence is required immediately.
‘Well, this is new,’ Irene said out loud. Her voice echoed in the quiet room. She was already logging off and pushing her chair back, not bothering to check the rest of her email. Whatever this was, it was urgent, and she cursed the fact that she’d been distracted and delayed by Vale, the newspaper and the whole mess.
She couldn’t remember ever having been summoned to an emergency meeting like this before. She couldn’t recall ever hearing about an emergency meeting like this before.
In Library terminology, ‘junction’ meant an intersection of passages where there was also a delivery chute to the central distributing area. They were plentiful throughout the Library, making it easy to drop off new books and get back to your assigned world. Transfer shifts were rarer. They were temporary creations arranged by a senior Librarian, which near-instantaneously transported a target from one point in the Library to another. They were also rather uncomfortable. If transfer shifts had been established throughout the Library to a central point, then this suggested a huge expenditure of energy.
The nearest junction was a few corridors away. An ominous light leaked in through the diamond-paned windows, and the sky outside crawled with clouds above an empty sea of high-peaked roofs. The floor in this section of the Library was black marble, smooth underfoot, with shadowy reflections of the crammed bookshelves, the high windows, and Irene herself as she hurried along.
A transfer-shift cupboard stood waiting at the junction. It looked like a battered normal cupboard, approximately six feet high and just large enough to hold two people – or, more usually, one person and a stack of books. The front had been engraved with a pattern of ravens and writing desks, and when Irene touched the wood, it hummed with restrained energy.
She stepped inside and closed the cupboard door. ‘Necessity,’ she said in the darkness.
The cupboard jolted sideways, and Irene was flung against the wall before she could brace herself. She’d travelled by transfer shifts a few times before, but this was rougher than usual. The pressure held her pinned against the wall like an aeroplane passenger during a particularly vertical take-off. Unseen winds dragged at her hair, and the air was scented with ozone and dust.
With a thump it stopped.
Irene took a moment to recover her balance, then opened the cupboard door and stepped out.
The room she was standing in was all polished plastic and metal railings. It didn’t look genuinely high-tech, but more like some fictional image of the future based on inadequate information, and it contained too many ramps and balconies. The ceiling was several storeys above her head, roofed with concentric panes of glass that looked out at the same ominous sky as before. Other wooden cabinets resembling the one she’d emerged from stood along the walls, incongruous in the pseudo-futuristic ambience.
A knot of people had gathered in front of the large metal door in the far wall. The door was closed. The people were arguing. Clearly they were Librarians. (Not that anyone else could have been here, but the arguing made it certain.)
Irene approached the group. Their assortment of clothing was as varied as their ages, races and genders. The only real constant was something you’d only see if assessing a wide variety of Librarians for comparison. It was a certain quality of age and experience to the eyes, which went beyond the merely physical, and which was why Irene never looked too closely into her own eyes in a mirror.
‘Is this the emergency meeting?’ she asked the nearest person, a middle-aged woman in a high-waisted gauze dress, with gloves sheathing her arms from finger to armpit. ‘Or are
we just waiting for it?’
‘Just waiting,’ the woman said. Her accent was vaguely German. ‘Apparently they’re doing it in half-hourly sessions. Next one is in five minutes.’
‘Do you know what’s going on?’
The woman shook her head. ‘No, nor does anyone out here, though Gwydion over there—’ She gestured at a sallow man with greying hair and black robes. ‘He said there was a problem with the permanent Library gate in one world that he visited.’
Irene felt something congeal in her stomach. ‘Yes,’ she said, keeping her voice casual. ‘I had a problem myself with a Traverse yesterday.’
Other Librarians were turning to look at her. ‘Share,’ said a young-looking woman with short pink hair, in fluorescent leathers that emphasized her figure. ‘You got something on this?’
‘I was trying to pass through a gate back to the Library,’ Irene said. ‘When I opened it, in the usual way, there was some sort of chaos interference and it went up in flames. I couldn’t put it out with the Language, and I had to leave by another route.’
Gwydion had wandered over and was nodding. ‘Much as yours is my own tale, save that I came to find the portal aflame, without knowledge of whence came the fire or how it fixed upon it. Darkly the taint of chaos lay upon it, fierce the abhorrence which it held to the Library’s nature. If aught can be said to make this matter clear, then may our elders do so.’
‘Well, my gate was just fine,’ said the pink-haired woman. ‘Though it was from an order-slanted world. You two – were those worlds chaos ones? You think this could be some new kind of infestation?’
Gwydion was nodding slowly, but Irene had to shake her head. ‘No, the one I came from was more order-aspected. The gate where I’m usually stationed was working properly, though. And that place is indeed more chaos-aspected.’
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