The Burning Page

by Genevieve Cogman

  Five doors later, they found a room with a computer in it. Irene threw herself down and turned it on, and felt a surge of relief as the screen lit up. Kai leaned over her shoulder, resting his weight on her chair, and watched as she logged in.

  An immediate message spread across the screen, before Irene could even check her email.

  All non-essential power usage has been cut back, in order to conserve energy for essential needs. All Librarians who require immediate transport for book retrieval have been allotted the use of transfer cabinets, command word ‘Emergency’. Abuse of this privilege will be noted.

  But she’d only been gone a few hours. Had the situation become that much worse in her absence?

  ‘I thought they trusted you to be adults,’ Kai commented.

  Irene bit her lip and focused on the current situation, choking down her rampant and probably entirely justified paranoia. She could think of plenty of reasons why the elder Librarians might monitor Librarian movement. Such as watching for suspicious travel, or attempts to escape, or even outright treason . . . ‘Maybe it’s like being a parent,’ she said, bringing up a Library map. ‘You never really see your children as adults.’

  ‘You’re exaggerating,’ Kai said, with the easy confidence of someone who hadn’t tested the issue yet.

  Just you wait till you try to convince your father that you’re grown up and know what you’re doing. But Irene was distracted from her planned retort by the Library map unfurling across the screen. ‘Aha,’ she said. ‘The nearest cabinet is . . .’ She checked the map. ‘About half a mile from here. Could be worse.’

  ‘Do we actually have any plans yet?’ Kai asked.

  ‘Oh, the usual.’ Irene typed as she spoke, writing Coppelia a quick email covering Alberich’s messages and Zayanna’s rumours, as clinically and unemotionally as she could. ‘We get there, we review the situation, then we decide how to get in and we snatch the book. We may be lucky: if there are enough books stored in the Hermitage, or at least in some bits of it, then I might be able to force a gate to the Library from there. That would speed up our getaway.’

  ‘I’m hearing a lot of mays and mights in that,’ Kai said.

  ‘That’s because I’m desperately trying to find any good points at all in the current situation,’ Irene admitted. ‘As opposed to thinking of it as . . . well, an unplanned theft from a royal palace at very short notice. You know I don’t like short notice.’ She hit the Send button. ‘Still, at least we won’t have long-term identities to protect.’

  ‘What do we pose as when we get there?’ Kai asked.

  ‘I’m thinking religious pilgrims, at least until we can get a feel for the place and find something better. Our background information’s years out of date.’ She began typing again, a quick appeal to Bradamant to visit Vale and pick up any information that he’d collected. Despite their enmity, Bradamant’s curiosity should spur her into action. ‘The Library portal to that world opens into the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, in Poland. At least we’ll be on the same continent, when it comes to travelling to St Petersburg. It could be worse. We could be having to get there from Africa or Australia, or similar.’

  ‘And no Librarian-in-Residence?’ Kai asked.

  ‘There was one, but she died twenty years before that report was written.’ Irene hit Send again. ‘Natural causes – it’s at the back of the report; she was in a traffic accident. Hit by a crashing flying sleigh. The sleigh was flying, that is, and then it crashed.’ The thought gave her a little unwanted shudder. Living outside the Library was never safe. Flying sleighs could come out of nowhere and hit you, however careful you were.

  Her email pinged. Bradamant had replied.

  Can we talk?

  Kai was leaning over Irene’s shoulder again. ‘What does she want?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Well, I did just ask her a favour,’ Irene pointed out, trying to repress her own doubts.

  Currently on transit on way to mission, she typed in. Can it be quick?

  It took barely ten seconds for Bradamant to reply – just enough time for Irene to run a status check on her parents and to be reassured that they were still out on assignment. And still hopefully alive.

  I only want a few words. Will you be stopping by your quarters?

  ‘You’ve been the one saying we’re in a hurry,’ Kai said.

  ‘Yes,’ Irene agreed reluctantly. ‘But we do need to stop by my rooms, so I can get some emergency cash and whatever.’

  Yes. Meet you there in fifteen minutes?

  Irene was assuming Bradamant had access to a transfer cabinet as well. If not, she decided, then there wasn’t time for Irene herself to go out of her way for a conversation.

  See you there, the answer came.

  Damn. Now she didn’t have an excuse to avoid the conversation. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, turning the computer off. ‘It’d be embarrassing to be late.’

  The transfer cabinet was cramped for two people. Irene braced herself against Kai rather than against the walls, as she pronounced the command word in the Language, then gave her quarters as the destination. The cabinet slid sideways and then down, like a barrel going over a waterfall, jolting the two of them, and Irene muttered an apology as she felt her foot bang into Kai’s ankle. He steadied her, the two of them together in the darkness, his arms around her, and Irene briefly let herself relax.

  So Alberich’s trying to kill me. So Lady Guantes is trying to kill me. So maybe other people are trying to kill me, too. At least there’s one person upon whom I can rely. Whom I can trust.

  A moment later they stopped, and the doors swung open. They were in the residential area that included Irene’s quarters, in a central passageway that opened onto a dozen small suites of rooms. Like the rest of the Library so far, it was barely illuminated now, with only a strip of lighting glowing dimly along the floor. Irene was grateful that the shadows hid her flushed cheeks.

  ‘Which one’s yours?’ Kai asked.

  ‘Third along on the left,’ Irene said. ‘I haven’t been here for a while: sorry about the mess.’ She tapped the code number into the combination lock on the door, trying to remember if she’d left anything particularly embarrassing lying around.

  As it turned out, the most embarrassing thing was the dust.

  ‘It’s been months since I was here,’ Irene muttered. Kai was staring down the corridor, making a deliberate show of not looking into her rooms, but clearly very curious. ‘Oh, come in – I’ve got nothing to hide, and it’ll take me a few moments to find the gold.’ She led the way into her room, flicking on the light switch. Fortunately, it worked.

  As usual with Irene’s rooms – and with most Librarians’ – there were stacks of books piled against the already-stuffed bookcases, forming a danger to navigation. The only actual decorations were framed photographs of her parents, and of some of her friends from school. The desk was still piled with translation notes from the last time she’d been here, when she’d had a couple of weeks without assignments. She’d been trying to improve her written Korean from appalling to merely bad. The side door to her bedroom was shut, sparing her any comments from Kai on her wardrobe. She began going through the desk drawers, trying to remember where she’d left her emergency stash of gold sovereigns. Even if it was foreign currency, basic gold was usually good anywhere.

  ‘Thanks for waiting,’ Bradamant said.

  Irene looked up quickly and saw Bradamant standing in the doorway, elegant as always in a fitted grey jacket and shin-length skirt. A cameo brooch at her collar caught the light and glittered. It was the sort of outfit that a female millionaire entrepreneur would have worn in the nineteen-forties, in a world that had female millionaire entrepreneurs. Every inch of her screamed personal tailoring and extreme expense.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Irene answered. She had to remind herself that she’d decided on a new policy of mutual coexistence, rather than automatically taking offence at everything Bradamant said. ‘I hope you didn’t hav
e to come out of your way to get down here?’

  ‘Well, the whole point was to speak with you.’ Bradamant stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind her. ‘As you said some time back, we shouldn’t be wasting our time sniping at each other. Especially in an emergency.’

  Kai had shuffled to one side and was taking a polite interest in the nearest bookcase, ostensibly not part of the conversation, even though Irene knew he’d be listening.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Irene agreed. ‘So why did you want to speak with me?’

  ‘Well.’ Bradamant hesitated, picking her words. ‘We are among the very few Librarians who’ve actually met Alberich.’

  ‘We are among those fortunate few survivors, yes,’ Irene said.

  ‘Has he tried to communicate with you?’

  The words hung in the air. I’ve already told Coppelia – it’s not as if there’s anything treasonous about it, Irene thought. There’s no reason to be ashamed of it, or afraid to admit it. But actually saying it out loud took an effort. ‘Yes,’ she finally managed. ‘It happened since the meeting this morning, and it was definitely him. You?’

  ‘No,’ Bradamant said. She sounded more irritated about it than thankful. ‘Probably because I’m stuck here.’

  ‘Not on assignment? I assumed that all the able-bodied—’

  ‘Kostchei’s keeping me here.’ Bradamant folded her arms crisply. ‘He says he needs someone on hand for emergency pickups.’

  Saying ‘Not because of what happened during your last assignment?’ would have been unforgivable. But the thought ran through Irene’s mind, and she hastily suppressed it before it could show on her face. ‘I suppose it makes sense,’ she said neutrally.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense to keep me here, when we could actually be tracking Alberich down,’ Bradamant snapped. ‘We both know he’s the sort who holds a grudge. It’d be much more useful if we were bait in a trap!’

  ‘I beg leave to argue about it being in any way useful for Irene to get herself killed,’ Kai commented, from where he was leaning against the bookcase.

  ‘Oh, you could be there too – he could come after you as well,’ Bradamant said. ‘I’m not trying to keep you out of it. I’m sure you’d be very useful.’ She gave him a polished smile, discreet and a little sly. ‘And I’m sure your family wouldn’t object to having Alberich out of the way.’

  ‘Does everyone know about my family?’ Kai muttered.

  ‘Not everyone,’ Bradamant said quickly. ‘But you actually warded an area against chaos when we last confronted Alberich, so you’re from an important family. Not all dragons could do that.’ She turned back to Irene, before Kai could agree or disagree. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘Can we take this by stages?’ Irene asked. The basic idea of let’s all trap Alberich sounded good in itself, but the specificity of let’s go and play bait for an insane murderer left her less enthusiastic. ‘Have you run this past Kostchei yet?’

  ‘No,’ Bradamant admitted. ‘I thought I’d discuss it with you first.’

  ‘Do you think he wouldn’t approve, then?’

  Bradamant shrugged. ‘It’d depend how feasible we could make it. If we could come up with a plan that might work . . .’

  Irene still wasn’t convinced this was a good idea. ‘When Alberich contacted me, he funnelled raw chaotic power into my location, once he’d established where I was.’ She ran through the details of the morning’s encounter, in response to Bradamant’s raised eyebrow. Though she did leave out the bits where she’d been drugged and kidnapped by werewolves and lost her Library documents. No point in confusing the issue. ‘I concede that this means we could get a two-way link,’ she finished. ‘I’m just not sure that it would be to our advantage, rather than to his.’

  ‘That’s a bit defeatist, isn’t it?’ Kai said quietly.

  ‘You didn’t get nearly fried by raw chaos this morning—’ Irene started.

  ‘No,’ Kai said. ‘Because I wasn’t there, because you went off to the Library on your own. You would have thought that by now we’d know better.’

  Irene took a deep breath. ‘All right. Point taken, Kai. Bradamant, can you give me a moment to think about this? I need to change my dress anyhow.’ She looked down at her wrecked clothing. Days like this were hell on her clothing budget. ‘Give me five minutes and I’ll be with you.’

  Both Kai and Bradamant nodded, and Irene slipped quickly into her bedroom. She ran through her options as she dropped her ruined dress and coat on the floor and speedily changed into something long-skirted, modest, bland and unobtrusive. She had a lot of those in her wardrobe.

  Two main questions were nagging at her. Was it just her distrust of Bradamant that was making her discount her colleague’s idea? And, ultimately, could it actually work?

  As she walked back into her study, Bradamant was just saying, ‘Nobody’s disputing her talent . . .’ She glanced at Irene. ‘We’re talking about you, of course.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Irene agreed. ‘I’m not in the room, you talk about me – some things are a fact of life. I’m sure Kai and I will be talking about you, as soon as you’ve left.’

  Bradamant smiled icily. ‘So? Your thoughts?’

  Irene tucked the pouch of gold sovereigns into an inner pocket. ‘It’s a plausible idea,’ she admitted. ‘If Kostchei and Coppelia, or whoever, agree to it, then I’ll help with it. But I’m not going to go running off solo with you now. Or even if we take Kai with us.’

  Kai opened his mouth, then shut it again, apparently mollified by the idea that he’d be invited along too.

  But Bradamant frowned. ‘If you think this is a good idea, then I can’t see why you’re not more enthusiastic.’

  ‘I don’t see that it’s being unenthusiastic to wait for our superiors’ opinion first,’ Irene said. ‘Actually, I don’t see why you want me to be enthusiastic anyhow. Even if this is a good idea, it’s not going to be remotely safe or easy.’

  ‘Always such a cynic,’ Bradamant said. Her smile was a little brittle. ‘Irene, tell me . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you think our superiors actually have the right idea here?’

  ‘Right idea in what sense?’ Irene asked cautiously.

  ‘In the sense that they’re fighting a strictly defensive strategy,’ Bradamant said. She was picking her words just as carefully as Irene. Neither of us wants to be the first one to say something that could be reported and held against us. ‘I’m . . . concerned.’

  ‘We don’t necessarily know everything they’re planning,’ Irene said, but the words rang hollow in her own ears, and she remembered her earlier complaint to Coppelia.

  ‘And you know what the corollary to that is.’

  ‘That what they’re planning is too horrendously dangerous to tell us?’ Irene suggested.

  ‘No,’ Bradamant said. She lowered her voice. ‘That there are spies among us.’

  ‘That doesn’t work,’ Kai said firmly, cutting through the sudden silence. ‘Seriously, it doesn’t work. If there were Librarians who were working for Alberich and who could access the Library, then couldn’t they just open a door for him and invite him in? Even if he can’t enter because he’s chaos-contaminated, they could be actively sabotaging the Library, passing him information – whatever. There wouldn’t be any need for all these threats and ultimatums.’

  If Irene had been the praying type, she would have said a prayer of thanks for that simple common-sense point. It short-circuited her paranoia. ‘Right,’ she agreed.

  ‘I’m sure there are other things that spies could be doing for him,’ Bradamant suggested. But that line of argument was clearly weak, even to her own ears, and she gave up with a shrug, looking disappointed.

  ‘And what do you actually want us to do, anyhow? You and me, that is. Are we supposed to stand around and yell, “Alberich, we’re here, come and get us?” until something happens?’

  ‘There’s no need to be like that about it,’ Bradamant
snapped. ‘I was only putting forward a suggestion. And there’s something you aren’t taking into consideration.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw you talking with Penemue.’

  ‘Then you probably saw her cutting me dead, once she realized I wasn’t going to be immediately useful to her,’ Irene answered. ‘Has she been talking to you, too?’

  ‘She’s tried.’ Bradamant looked smug. ‘Give me some credit here, Irene. I probably know more about what’s going on in the political landscape here than you do. I knew more about it even before I got stuck here for the last few months. And to give Penemue credit, she isn’t just doing this because she sees herself as the new representative of the working classes. She honestly thinks some reform is needed.’

  ‘Fair’s fair,’ Irene said. ‘I accept that she’s not wholly selfish. But I have the impression that you’ve got reservations about her too.’

  ‘Her current timing isn’t impressing me.’ Bradamant folded her arms. ‘I’m not going to argue the Library’s power structure with you, because we’d probably end up debating aristocracy versus oligarchy versus democracy. And, frankly, we both have more urgent things to do. But I think we can both agree that long-term change is at least worth discussing?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Irene agreed cautiously. ‘But the Penemue thing – I get that she’s looking to rock the boat, and going on the attack makes sense from her point of view, as a counter to official policy. Are you suggesting that if we don’t consider this option of us playing bait, then she’ll bring it up herself?’

  ‘It could happen,’ Bradamant said. ‘So I’m wondering if the two of us should be proactive about it and take that political option out of her hands.’

  Irene considered, then shook her head. ‘No. Our superiors know about our previous encounter with Alberich. If we’ve had the idea of playing bait, they’ve certainly had the idea of using us as bait.’ It wasn’t a comforting thought, but it had the feeling of truth to it. ‘Us trying to run off and do this on our own isn’t going to help anyone’s political position. It might even make it worse for the authorities, if Penemue tries to push the idea that they’re losing control of their own juniors.’