The Burning Page

by Genevieve Cogman

  Oh yes. And I was going to be more careful about travelling through a portal known to my enemies, wasn’t I?

  Whoops.

  She sagged forward into sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When Irene woke, she was in darkness.

  She lay unmoving with her eyes closed, waiting for any reaction, trying to get a sense of where she was. She was lying on a hard floor, brick or stone. But it was warm and dry, rather than cold and leeching the heat out of her. She wasn’t bound or restrained in any way, but the folder she’d been given by Coppelia had been taken.

  There were no sounds of anyone else breathing. She cautiously let one eye flutter open.

  Near-total darkness, but faint lights in the distance. Irene sat up, her head spinning. Her hand ached from the needle, but not enough to stop her using it. She was in an arched cavity set into the wall of a long brick tunnel. The lights burning in the distance in both directions were lamps. The corridor was thick with dust, too: she didn’t have to see it, she could feel it where her fingers touched the floor, and she had to work not to cough.

  What the hell was going on? If someone was going to kidnap her, why just leave her like a sack of potatoes, without even tying her up or taking away the knife in her boot?

  Paranoia whispered reminders about Alberich and the other missing Librarians, but a more immediate and practical concern was Kai. Irene herself might just have been knocked out and dumped down here in order to get her out of the way while something worse happened to him.

  She pushed herself to her feet and shook some of the dust off her skirt. Now that her eyes were getting used to the semi-darkness, she could see there was a faint trail down the centre of the passage, where the dust was less thick than at the edges. There were occasional footprints – some looked like heavy boots, but others were bare feet. Vale would no doubt have been able to identify the shoe; or, in the case of the bare feet, comment on the originator’s height, weight and posture. All Irene could deduce was that this was a frequent route for whoever came down here.

  And the next big question was: who was that?

  The tunnel shook. A deep shuddering, grinding roar vibrated through the walls, making Irene jump and steady herself. For a moment she just wanted to run for it, in any direction whatsoever as long as it was away.

  She controlled herself. Panic wouldn’t help. The rumbling was dying away now, in a long clatter of motion that seemed somehow familiar. She began to head to her right, choosing the direction at random, keeping her pace as quiet as possible as she listened for pursuers.

  The silence was complete again and the dust had begun to settle, when a wolf’s howl came echoing down the passage. It would have been frightening enough on the moors by moonlight. In this confined space, in the near-dark, given her total lack of knowledge about where she was, it made Irene’s spine curdle and her legs twitch as she restrained herself from running. It wasn’t even a normal wolf’s howl, if one could use such a term. It had the full-bodied weight and impact that came from a larger-than-normal set of lungs.

  There was a werewolf down here with her. No, make that at least one werewolf. She might as well assume the worst. And her kidnappers might be lurking as well. Or possibly her kidnappers were werewolves. It was like one of those Venn diagrams where all the possible Bad Things intersected to provide a Worst Possible Thing at the centre. But what she’d smelled when they kidnapped her was suggestive.

  Irene picked up her pace to a jog as she headed for the light. While it wasn’t quite a terrified run, it was faster than her earlier prowl.

  The light was a dimming ether-bulb mounted out of her reach on the wall. As she approached it, it gave enough light for her to see what was written on the wall beneath it.

  LONDON UNDERGROUND SAFETY TUNNEL N-112.

  A trembling roar came through the walls again, but this time Irene knew what it was. It was a Tube train, passing by out of her sight and out of her reach, while she was locked in these tunnels with the werewolves that laired in them.

  She’d heard about this part of London. Vale had warned her and Kai not to wander down there, if they had any other options. The tabloids regularly published INNOCENT STREET URCHINS MAULED BY BLOODTHIRSTY BEASTS headlines – no, wait, that had been the incident with the imported giant rats, not the werewolves.

  She realized that her brain was doing its usual thing in a panic situation, which was thinking about anything else, in the hope it would distract from the immediate danger. She needed to be practical. She needed to find a weapon. A weapon larger and more efficient than the knife in her boot.

  Irene had no idea where they might be, in relation to London above them. Going onwards would presumably take her to a door, or a ladder, or some other way of getting out of these tunnels. There had to be some sort of maintenance exit, didn’t there? Common sense dictated that there must be a way out. There had to be a way in, for her to be here in the first place.

  It was tempting to use the Language to bring down a chunk of ceiling or wall and block the tunnel, or even squash some werewolves. But that might be bad for whatever part of London was above them. Also, once a ceiling collapse had been started, it could be very difficult – even impossible – to stop it. She knew that from personal experience.

  Staying here wouldn’t help. She set off down the corridor again, the light throwing her shadow in front of her. Ahead was darkness, but she thought she could see another flicker in the distance: presumably another ether-lamp.

  Another howl shuddered through the air behind her: it was closer, and imagination added a gloating edge to it. Look at the poor little fleeing prey, it seemed to say, picking up her skirts and scuttling for cover. But there’s nowhere to run in these corridors, little rabbit, little mouse – there’s no way to escape . . .

  Irene found herself smiling unpleasantly. She was not amused. She hoped that very shortly she would be able to explain to these werewolves just how unamused she was.

  The passage, fully dark now, came to a crossroads, and Irene halted. She could see dim pinpricks of light in each of the possible directions, so that wasn’t any help.

  Sniffing the air, she caught a very faint stink of sewage from the right-hand opening. The London Underground shouldn’t have any open links to sewers, even in the maintenance tunnels. Which meant either some sort of rebuilding in progress or damaged walls. Which meant . . . a possibility.

  She headed to the right at an increased pace, her nose wrinkling as the whiffs of sewage became stronger. The next light was still a good distance away, an unfulfilled twinkle in the shadows. Presumably maintenance workers – if any actually came down here – brought their own lanterns.

  The tunnel shuddered above her, and dust fell from the ceiling, crusting on the shoulders of her ruined coat. That must be another Tube train, at a right angle to the previous one. She tried to imagine a mental map of the London Tube layout in order to make a guess at her current position, but there were too many possibilities.

  Two more howls, one answering another, and both of them close behind her. The penetrating waft of sewage was a stink that went through her nose and drilled all the way to her lungs, but that didn’t seem to be slowing down the werewolves.

  In the near-darkness Irene didn’t see the pile of bricks against the wall. She tripped over an outlier, stubbing her toe and measuring her full length on the floor. Irene swore with her nose in the dust. Rolling over, she squinted at the pile. Several dozen loose bricks and a few half-bricks too, intended for the now-obvious hole in the wall, which reached up towards the ceiling. Perfect.

  Instead of getting up, she clasped her ankle melodramatically. It’d be much easier if they came within range. ‘No!’ she whimpered, trying to put some genuine pain into it. ‘My ankle!’

  Another howl guttered away into a deep, throaty laugh. Movement whispered in the dark junction that Irene had just left. She strained her eyes, but couldn’t see any shapes clearly.

  Lesson One of Practical Inter
rogation: people will gloat and tell you things if they think you’re helpless. ‘Who’s there?’ Irene begged. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

  Shadowy forms differentiated themselves from the greater darkness behind, and eyes glinted red in the ether-light. There were four of them: two were fully wolves, moving with the smoothness of natural animals as they prowled towards Irene, while the other two were half-man, half-wolf. They were hunched and clawed, with huge paws that scraped on the brick floor, and jaws that hung open and panted.

  None of them answered.

  They were less than twenty yards away now. And werewolves could move very fast.

  Lesson Two of Practical Interrogation: know when to cut your losses.

  ‘Loose bricks,’ Irene ordered in the Language, ‘hit those werewolves.’

  The bricks hummed through the air like fast-bowled cricket balls, slamming into the oncoming creatures with audible cracks and crunches. Irene found herself wincing at the screams and whines, in spite of her awareness that the werewolves had probably been about to kill her. At least this probably wouldn’t kill them. It took silver, fire, decapitation or practically chopping one to bits to kill a werewolf.

  But it would hurt them.

  She scrambled to her feet, picking up a loose half-brick on the way, and walked towards the four downed werewolves. They were lying on the ground now, in puddles of their own blood. One of the lupine-form werewolves was clearly unconscious. The other was curled up, licking frantically at a shattered paw, and cringed away as Irene approached. The two more human-formed ones were both conscious – one of them lay sprawled on the ground, with visible hollows in his ribcage, while the other was nursing a shattered right arm and shoulder.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Irene said, keeping her voice calm and practical. ‘Tell me what’s going on, and why you kidnapped me.’

  The werewolf with the broken arm tried to snarl. Brick shards had ploughed across one side of his face, but the gashes were already closing up, leaving his fur and teeth matted with blood. ‘You’d better start running, woman, while you’ve still got a chance—’

  ‘Ten out of ten for bravado,’ Irene said, then realized how much she sounded like Coppelia. The thought made her frown. ‘Look, do you want me to kill you? We both know that if I throw enough bricks at you—’

  The half-turned werewolf lunged at her. Irene had been ready for that and stepped back, avoiding a slash from his clawed left hand. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Werewolves, assume human form.’

  Using the Language on living beings was always awkward. They tended to resist it, you needed incredibly precise terminology, it had to be something physically possible and you needed to be careful not to accidentally include yourself in any imperatives. Junior Librarians were encouraged to avoid it, unless they really knew what they were doing – or, of course, for the classic reason that I’ll die otherwise. Here, Irene could be reasonably sure that as she wasn’t a werewolf, she wouldn’t be affected. Which made life simpler. For her, at least.

  The werewolf who had attacked her jerked away, claws melting back into his hand as it shortened to a normal human one. His toothed muzzle resolved into an unshaven face, his naked skin pale in the darkness. Fresh blood ran from the wounds on his shoulder and arm. The others were seized by the Language as well, their bodies painfully contorting as Irene’s words forced them back into human form. The three conscious ones screamed: the unconscious one simply lay there, his body flopping and jerking on the floor as it shifted into that of a young man.

  Even in the near-darkness, they had one obvious thing in common. They were young men, no more than student age, and while they were mostly muscular and well built, none of them had the sheer muscle and lithe power that she’d seen before, in other adult werewolves. Irene recognized their faces now, and remembered that she’d thought they were students when they’d met her at the British Library.

  Perhaps this was the time to access her inner Coppelia, or even her inner Kostchei. ‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’ she demanded, stepping forward.

  The werewolf cringed back, his eyes still catching the light more than a normal human’s eyes would, but wide and disconcerted. ‘What did you just do?’ he demanded, his voice rising in panic. ‘What did you do to us?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Irene said briskly. ‘It’s not permanent. But I want you to think, for one little moment, about exactly how much it would hurt to have more bricks hit you while you’re like this. Use that mind of yours, such as it is, to imagine what it would feel like to have a brick go smashing through your skull and turning your brain into grey goo.’ She took another step forward. ‘Now are you going to behave? Or do I need to make my point again?’

  He cowered back in front of her, turning his head to one side and baring his neck. ‘I submit!’

  Irene was tempted to toss the half-brick up and down in her hand, but common sense pointed out that it was heavy and she’d either hurt her hand or drop the brick, which would spoil the intimidating effect. ‘Some answers, then. Who hired you? What can you tell me about them? And where’s the folder I was carrying?’

  Her victim shuffled back to join the other conscious werewolves, who were huddling together, their hands running over their fellows’ bodies as though they could restore their normal hairy forms by pure force of will. And I don’t know how much longer the Language will keep them that way, so let’s not give them time to think . . .

  ‘It was a woman,’ the first werewolf stammered.

  ‘Yes?’ Irene said encouragingly. ‘And?’

  ‘Well, she was a woman,’ he said, giving a perfect description of approximately fifty per cent of the world’s population. ‘Nicely dressed.’

  ‘I am not in the market for half-answers,’ Irene snapped. ‘What did she sound like? Upper-class, or regional accent? What sort of nice clothes was she wearing?’ An idea about what werewolves might notice flickered through her mind. ‘And what did she smell like?’

  ‘She was wearing far too many veils for good taste,’ one of the other werewolves said wearily. He cradled a broken hand against his chest. Freed of the snout and fur of his wolf form, he was well-shaven and skinny, and his accent was middle-class London. ‘Nice scent. Spicy. Obvious she didn’t want to be recognized. Veils on her face and hair, expensive coat, gloves . . .’

  ‘Gloves?’ Irene said. A chill seemed to whisper in the air.

  Recently, during the business of Kai’s kidnapping, she’d killed one Fae, and his wife had made a definite promise of vengeance. Both of them had used a gloves motif. Of course this could be pure coincidence – any woman in London might wear gloves.

  But it might not.

  ‘Did she give you any concrete instructions about what to do with me?’ Irene asked.

  All of them shook their heads. ‘She just said, catch her when she’s coming out of the British Library, here’s a description of her, prick her with this needle and it’ll knock her out. Then take her down to the tunnels and chase her a while, before you, um . . .’ The first one paused mid-narrative. ‘Frighten her and let her go,’ he suggested hopefully.

  Irene sighed. ‘Please don’t treat me like an idiot. It’s been a long day and it’s going to get longer, and I am not in a good mood. Where’s the poisoned needle?’ Vale could probably analyse it.

  ‘Davey’s got it,’ werewolf number three piped up.

  ‘And Davey is . . .?’ Irene enquired.

  ‘Not here,’ werewolf number three said, clearly wishing he wasn’t there, either. As Irene’s glare intensified, he added hastily, ‘Davey went to the throne room. And he took your folder, too.’

  Irene considered her options. The fact that she’d been left down here unconscious, to be chased and mauled to death, argued strongly against Lady Guantes. The woman was not a powerful Fae, but she was practical. (The two facts were connected.) She was the sort of enemy who’d hire a sniper with a powerful rifle to wait outside your workplace, and you’d never even know there was
a bullet coming. Even if she had wanted Irene to be kidnapped and killed by werewolves, she’d have given them some sort of warning about not letting Irene say anything. So if this was Lady Guantes, then it wasn’t intended to be a murder.

  But what if it was meant as a distraction? To keep her down here while something happened to Kai or Vale? The thought lay in Irene’s mind like a curdled piece of shadow, suggesting a hundred worse possibilities. She had to get out of here and check they were safe.

  But she also had to get that folder back.

  ‘All right,’ she said, lowering her voice to a tone of gentle calm. For some reason, the werewolves cowered even more. ‘We are all going to the throne room. You’ll lead me there.’

  ‘We can’t do that—’ the first one started. The words caught in his throat as Irene raised her half-brick. ‘Tom here’s unconscious! We can’t just leave him.’

  ‘You can carry him,’ Irene said patiently. ‘There are three of you, and one of him. It won’t kill you.’ But I might, the words went unsaid.

  ‘We’re not supposed to bring outsiders there,’ the second one tried, unconvincingly.

  ‘Then you’ll just have to apologize when we get there,’ Irene said. Perhaps it was time for the carrot rather than the stick. ‘Look, gentlemen. You were clearly drastically misinformed about me. I’m not particularly angry with you. I’m angry with the person who hired you.’ Mostly true. She was more angry with the person who’d hired them. Getting angry with the hired thugs themselves was a waste of time and energy. ‘Take me to your throne room, let me get my folder and that needle, and you won’t have to worry about me ever again. Isn’t that the best possible outcome for all of us?’ A train rumbled by in the background, providing echoing thunder to back up her words.

  She was trying to be patient and project an aura of unhurried superiority, but her impatience nagged at her. Was it safe to be running further into the depths of werewolf territory like this, while anything could be happening to Vale and Kai? Granted, Kai was a bit more careful these days, even if he didn’t have Irene’s own level of sensible paranoia. In addition, Vale was with him, and the two of them should be safer together . . . But anything could go wrong.