Bradamant nodded slowly. ‘You might have a point there. All right, I’ll leave it for the moment.’
Little tendrils of paranoia wove themselves together at the back of Irene’s mind. Bradamant was perfectly capable of using Irene as bait, with or without Irene’s permission, if she could get support for it. Or, on a darker note, who was to say that the mysterious woman behind Irene’s kidnapping had been Lady Guantes? What if it had been someone much closer to the Library . . .
‘I’ll check with your friend Vale in a day or two,’ Bradamant said. Her expression was perfectly pleasant, as graceful and enigmatic as an Erté statuette. ‘And if he finds anything urgent, I’ll pass it to Coppelia or you. Will that do?’
‘It will,’ Irene said. She forced away her fears. She might not like Bradamant very much, but she could trust her not to betray the Library – couldn’t she? She smiled in return. ‘Thank you. I appreciate that. And if you have any useful thoughts about how to lure Alberich out, then please tell me. But you’re right, we both need to be getting down to work.’
Bradamant hesitated, glancing between Irene and Kai, then inclined her head in a nod and stepped outside. The door closed behind her with a very soft click.
‘Was she seriously suggesting mutiny?’ Kai demanded.
‘Of course not,’ Irene said quickly. ‘She was trying to put a stop to it. You heard her.’
‘On the surface, yes. But she was also sounding you out, to see how far you’d go along with it.’
‘That’s a hypothesis.’
‘I may be a novice in the Library, Irene, but I was raised in my father’s court.’ Kai didn’t even sound angry. He just sounded depressed. ‘As Bradamant said, she knows the political landscape. But I know how these things work, too. In times of war, anyone might rise to power.’
‘We should be going,’ Irene said, trying to steer the conversation back to safer grounds. ‘Priorities, remember? Collecting a book? Before we were sidetracked by . . .’
‘By Bradamant, who wanted to suggest that your superiors were incompetent and you should take independent action,’ Kai said, showing no sign of being steered.
‘You’re not helping.’
‘I’m not trying to help. You’re bending over backwards to be fair to someone whom you have no reason to trust.’ Kai set his jaw stubbornly.
‘She’s another Librarian, and I trust her.’ Irene rethought that statement. ‘That is, I trust her not to be working with Alberich. Look, Kai, do you want me to run to Coppelia and tell her Bradamant was questioning her authority? Especially when Bradamant can perfectly well deny that she said it, or claim that I misinterpreted her?’
Kai tapped his chest. ‘You have an independent witness.’
‘Bradamant would say that you’d lie to support me.’ She saw Kai’s face darken at the insult. ‘Don’t lose your temper at me – it’s what she’d say, and it’s what enough people would believe.’
‘Then what can we actually do?’ Kai demanded.
‘Keep our eyes open and pay attention. And, in the meantime, go and get our book.’ She opened the door. ‘Coming?’
Kai muttered to himself, but let the subject drop. As they were crowding into the transfer cabinet, he asked, ‘Are you going to check the status of any other Librarians? If people have been killed . . .’
‘I checked on my parents,’ Irene said. ‘They haven’t reported any problems.’ And she could hardly go running off to check on them in person. At least Alberich would have no idea who they were or how to find them.
‘And your other friends?’
There was a pause as Kai worked out that Irene wasn’t going to give him a list of other friends. ‘Surely you know other Librarians,’ he said, sounding disappointed.
‘Of course I do,’ Irene replied. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m going to throw a panic fit and run round looking for a list of casualties. What are you getting at here, Kai?’
He shrugged. ‘Your sisters and brothers in arms are in danger. Irene, you went into danger to save me. Wouldn’t you do that for them too?’
This was getting more emotionally fraught than Irene enjoyed. The cramped quarters didn’t help, as they were now standing extremely close. ‘Well, yes, of course I would, but what exactly do you expect me to do here and now? Should I be panicking because there’s a chance that someone I know is . . .’ Dead. She knew a lot of other Librarians as casual acquaintances, even if she didn’t know them well. Coppelia and Kostchei had said that people had died. She didn’t want to speculate. It would be too hard to stop. ‘. . . in danger,’ she substituted. ‘I – we – have a job to do. Gate of B-1165.’
The transfer cabinet jolted into motion, sliding sideways through darkness and cutting off any rejoinder Kai might have made. As it dropped like a lift, Irene was forced to recognize the thing that annoyed her most about Bradamant’s proposal. It was that Irene desperately wanted to do it. She wanted to strike back against Alberich, to save the Library. Putting herself in danger to get the job done was hardly new. But her common sense revolted against the idea of putting herself in danger if it wasn’t actually going to accomplish anything. Bradamant didn’t have a plan beyond using themselves as bait. She just had wishful thinking.
If only they had some way of locating Alberich . . .
The cabinet slammed to a stop, and Irene and Kai staggered out into a windowless room, with barely enough light to avoid tripping over piles of books. There were no warning signs here about current dangers, no threatening posters, and no special seals on the door out of the Library.
‘Ready?’ she said.
‘Ready,’ Kai agreed, adjusting his cuffs.
Irene took hold of the heavy brass handle and shoved the door open, then stepped through into another world. She had to push aside a plush red rope cordoning off their door. There was an Out of order sign in Polish dangling from its handle. Beyond, the room was full of display cases and tapestries. Another place that had once been a true library and now was nothing but a museum.
Kai grabbed her wrist, his grip hard enough to hurt. ‘Irene,’ he said, his voice shocked. ‘Some of my kindred are in this world.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Irene stared at Kai in surprise, and was about to ask for more details when the door at the other end of the room boomed open, thudding against the wall. She and Kai both turned to see who it was.
The man standing in the doorway was presumably a museum guard, though the cudgel hanging from his belt looked too well-used for Irene’s peace of mind. His clothing was stark black with red accents, with a high-necked jacket over breeches and boots. A brutal scar marred one side of his face. Two other guards filled the space behind him: the bulk of their shoulders made Irene seriously wonder about their normal duties. Museum guards weren’t usually this well organized, beefy, or clearly ready for violence.
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ the lead guard demanded.
It was a reasonable question, and it was one that Irene had been asked quite a number of times in her career. Unfortunately, I’m Irene and I’m here to steal books was rarely the answer that interrogators wanted to hear. More immediately, she couldn’t think of any good answer that would adequately explain her presence in an apparently heavily guarded area. She might as well go directly to the next usual step.
‘You perceive that I and this man are people who have a right to be here and who should be allowed to leave,’ she said firmly in the Language. The effort took her by surprise. It felt as if she was having to push the words uphill. The universe didn’t seem to want to accept the Language’s effect. Was this how it felt to work in such high-order worlds? She’d generally been employed in more middle-of-the-road ones before, or even chaotic ones.
Nevertheless, the Language worked. The guards all looked a bit confused, but the arrogant intimidation drained from their posture. ‘Apologies,’ the first one said, saluting. ‘We hadn’t realized, ma’am.’
‘Carry on,’ Irene said with a
casual nod, sauntering towards the door. She swayed a little, still light-headed from the effort, but Kai steadied her. The guards melted out of her way like butter before a hot knife, their eyes lowered in respect.
She and Kai were halfway down the corridor when there came a furious yell of, ‘Stop them!’
‘Faster than usual,’ Irene muttered, as the two of them sprinted round the corner. The guards had the advantage of knowing the terrain, but fortunately the place was a tangle of rooms. Very elegant, beautiful rooms, as far as Irene could tell while running through them, and full of interesting-looking books. More to the point, these were rooms where one could lose pursuers.
She took stock of the situation while hiding behind a display stand with Kai. The guards thundered past, yelling something that Irene’s Polish wasn’t good enough to translate.
She waited till they were out of earshot, then said, ‘We may need to rethink our usual strategy.’
‘Why?’ Kai asked.
‘Because normally that effect lasts for longer.’
‘I assumed it was just bad luck.’
‘No. I think it was the high-order nature of this world. It was harder to get it to work, too.’
‘Oh.’ Kai frowned. ‘Normally I’d have loved to take you to a high-order world, but this might make things inconvenient. I never expected to be actually stealing a book with you on one of them. And why did those guards come in just then? They seemed very prepared for action. I thought that sort of thing only happened on high-chaos worlds.’
‘Life has a tendency to be awkward,’ Irene said with deep bitterness. ‘All right. Let’s try and find the exit before they come back.’
Some very cautious exploration brought them to the more public areas of the building, and they were able to slip into the general comings and goings without attracting attention. Most of the visitors seemed to be students or scholars, and very few of them looked well off. Battered overcoats and an air of genteel poverty were the norm.
The guard at the door demanded to see Irene’s pass, but was willing to take a gold coin and her apology for having ‘forgotten’ it instead. Probably there would be trouble, once he and the guards who’d been chasing her compared notes, but Irene planned to be well out of the city by that time.
She and Kai found a cafe several streets away, collecting newspapers as they went, and settled down in a corner with a pot of tea and a plate of fried cakes stuffed with plum jam. For half an hour or so they were silent, except for occasional requests to pass a newspaper. Irene took the Polish papers, as she had at least a basic grasp of the language, while Kai read the international ones, since his Polish was non-existent.
Finally Irene put down the last paper and signalled for a new pot of tea. ‘This is going to be inconvenient,’ she said. ‘I don’t like trying to steal books in the middle of secessions and revolutions.’
‘Maybe not as inconvenient as it might have been.’ Kai tapped the French newspaper Le Monde. ‘According to this one, the troubles are in the outlying countries, not Russia itself. Once we’re in St Petersburg we’ll be safe.’ He thought about that. ‘Well, safer than we are here, at least.’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’ Irene stacked the papers thoughtfully. ‘They’re using terms like “terrorism” and “foreign agents” and “fifth column”. I’ve found that when that starts happening, homeland citizens get suspicious of any oddly-behaving foreigners. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.’
‘Do you think it’ll have made the security around the Hermitage any heavier?’ Kai asked. ‘Given how out of date the rest of our information is . . .’
‘No way of knowing, unfortunately. That’s the problem with not having a Librarian-in-Residence.’ She remembered his earlier comment. ‘By the way, what did you mean when you said there were dragons here?’
‘Not here in Poland,’ Kai said, a little too quickly.
‘No, in this world,’ Irene said.
‘I can tell they’re in this world. I don’t know where, without trying to find them. I’m just not sure that trying to find them would be a good idea.’
‘Why not?’ Irene asked, genuinely surprised. She’d thought Kai would be only too pleased to spend time with other dragons.
‘Well. You know.’ It was never a good sign when Kai went monosyllabic. He fiddled with the cakes. ‘Questions.’
‘Kai, we’ve talked about keeping dangerous secrets before,’ Irene said patiently. To be more precise, she’d talked and he’d listened. ‘Is this something I should know about?’
‘I’m worried about my father.’ Kai’s voice was quiet and uncertain. ‘I’ve already caused him inconvenience by being kidnapped and needing rescue. I don’t want him to be embarrassed by any further shameful behaviour on my part. What I do in private is one thing, but . . . Well, I know you understand what court intrigues can be like, Irene. Nobody’s going to actually challenge my father, but there are other things they can do.’
‘Delayed taxes and tributes?’ Irene guessed. ‘Orders getting accidentally lost en route? Polite semi-public insubordination? Negotiating with other monarchs?’ She’d learned earlier that there were four dragon kings, and Kai’s father was one of them. However, Kai himself was one son among many, by far the youngest and lowest down the scale of inheritance. ‘Long-term consequences on the grounds that misconduct in the son can imply weakness in the father?’
‘You do understand,’ Kai said with relief. ‘My uncle’s loyal to him, of course, and Li Ming’s loyal to my uncle, so it doesn’t matter if they know about my affiliation with the Library. But I don’t know which other dragons are actually here. It might even be representatives from one of the queens’ courts. I don’t want to be accused of intruding on someone else’s territory.’
Irene knew she should be getting on with the job, but Kai so rarely discussed dragon politics that she couldn’t resist the urge to ask a few more questions. ‘Are the queens enemies of the kings?’
‘Oh no,’ Kai said, sounding a little shocked that he might have given that impression. ‘But they’re established in the more secure worlds, the ones that you call high-order. The kings go there to visit them on state occasions, or for mating contracts.’
‘Were you brought up in your mother’s court, or your father’s?’ Irene asked.
‘My father’s. Male children are given to the father, and female ones to the mother. At least, with royal matings. Dragons of lower rank may have different arrangements.’ He caught the look in her eye. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t think that I grew up without any female dragons around. My royal father has many female courtiers and servants, and female lords under his command. It’s just that the royal households themselves are of the same gender.’
‘Why?’
Kai shrugged. ‘That’s how it is.’
Irene would have liked more detail, but the current urgent situation was more important. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘To get back to matters at hand, are any dragons who are here likely to interfere with us stealing a book?’
‘Not interfere as such,’ Kai said carefully. ‘But they would certainly be curious.’
‘In that case, we’ll be discreet and hope they don’t notice.’ She saw the relief in his eyes. ‘Next step: we need to get to St Petersburg, possibly with a stop to obtain clothing first.’
She nodded at the people passing by outside. While many of them wore some sort of dark coat over their clothing, as Kai and Irene did, these were distinctively heavy wool or felt coats, often with fur cuffs and collars. The clothing beneath the coats comprised long skirts for women, but with a bodice and blouse rather than a dress. These were banded with bright colours. The men wore heavy boots and thick trousers, with shirts and waistcoats. Both genders wore hats: Irene and Kai were unusual in being bareheaded.
‘Not too cheap, I hope,’ Kai said. Even though he could make a scruffy shirt and trousers look like the latest catwalk fashion, that didn’t mean he wanted to. He shopped with all the exquisite taste of a prince
who’d been raised in personally tailored silks and furs.
Irene was something of a disappointment to him there, and she knew it. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want us spending too much of our spare cash before we get there. Fashions may be different in St Petersburg—’
‘I told you we should have bought Vogue,’ Kai put in.
‘That’s high fashion, not regular fashion,’ Irene said firmly. ‘It wouldn’t have been any use. Come on. We should get started.’ She commandeered the last cake, then signalled the waiter over, combining a tip with a request for directions to a local clothing shop.
She was grateful that Kai didn’t make any comments about urgency, or this errand taking up too much time. Running into a heavily guarded royal property without the right disguise would get them killed. And working out the details kept her stable. Whereas if she let herself start thinking the entire Library may be destroyed, her mind went into a terrified hamster-wheel spin. It was too large a concept to imagine.
In some versions of Krakow there would have been a huge central railway station, but here there was a grand travel-hub building with sleighs being constantly flown in and out. They were drawn by reindeer and horses that galloped through the air. It was a more obtrusive use of magic than Irene had seen elsewhere in the city – which, come to think of it, seemed generally worn down. The place desperately needed some renovation, which suggested a financial depression. The whole situation was probably linked to the general uncertainty in this world’s Russian Empire and to the rigid state control of magic. Irene noted it as background detail, considering how it would impact on their mission, in the same way that she would have studied the grammar and vocabulary of a new language.
Fortunately the guards at the gates didn’t ask for passports, but the tickets were expensive enough that Irene winced for her dwindling finances. A pageboy who cast sideways glances at their cheap clothing led her and Kai to a sleek black-and-silver sleigh with six large reindeer fastened to it. He opened the small side door and bowed them inside. It was crowded: there was barely room for them to squeeze into a corner, and everyone else was better dressed than they were. She spotted bright clusters of ribbons on sleeves and at throats, or smooth sable gloves and high-heeled red leather boots.
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