The Burning Page

by Genevieve Cogman

  ‘Good evening,’ the woman sitting next to her said brightly in Polish. She was the rich elderly type, with furs that showed their age but had once been very expensive. Her rouged cheeks matched a red nose. ‘How nice to have young company on this overnight flight! What brings you on this trip?’

  Kai smiled in polite incomprehension. Irene was left to carry the conversation and the cover story, which at least took her mind off the sleigh rising into the air and the heights it reached. And the speed. Zeppelins or high-technology shuttles were so much better than this sort of transport. One could shut the windows and didn’t have to see the landscape below spooling past at an impossibly fast rate, from far too high up. She concentrated on making her narrative sound convincing.

  ‘. . . and so my cousin here came to get me after my mother’s heart attack,’ she concluded. It was a tragic tale of family illness and breakdown, complete with a father’s alcoholism and accident. Irene had apparently had to spend all her savings on the fast sleigh home, to be with her dying mother. She’d borrowed from some of the worst tear-jerker family epics she knew, and was quite proud of the result. ‘Of course my cousin’s never been outside Russia in his life, but he knew where I was living . . .’

  Several of her listeners sighed in sympathy. In-flight entertainment consisted of looking over the edge or passing round bottles of vodka and slivovitz, and Irene’s story had drawn more attention than she’d really wanted. She pressed her knuckles against her lips. ‘Please forgive me – I’m just so worried about poor Mamma.’

  Kai might not have been able to understand the Polish, but he could take a cue. He slipped an arm round her shoulders and held her close. ‘Please forgive my cousin,’ he said in Russian. ‘I think she needs to rest.’

  To general nods, Irene let herself relax. It was true that she was exhausted. It had been a long day, and far too full of excitement. Forgotten bruises were making themselves felt, now that there was nothing to do but sit and wait for the flight to end.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ Kai murmured in her ear. ‘I’ll wake you if . . . well, if anyone attacks.’

  Irene quirked a smile. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered and let her head rest on his shoulder, closing her eyes. She tried to clear her mind for sleep, difficult as it was. But Kai was warm against her, even through the thick layers of their clothing, and despite her dislike of heights, next to him she felt safe. He’s a dragon. He’ll catch me if I fall . . .

  When she opened her eyes again, the sky was bright and pale and cloudless, and the air was bitterly cold. They joined a queue of incoming aerial traffic diving in towards a huge hexagonal building sheathed in panes of glass and mother-of-pearl. A huge clock on the side, gleaming with brass and surrounded by astronomical symbols, showed that it was six o’clock in the morning.

  Irene rubbed her eyes and looked up at Kai. ‘Didn’t you get any sleep?’

  ‘Enough.’ He didn’t look rumpled or half-asleep, though; he looked keen and sharp, as though the wintry night air had put a new edge on his energy. ‘Look at the city below. You can see all the landmarks.’

  Irene gritted her teeth and peered over the edge of the sleigh at St Petersburg below them. ‘It’s . . . big,’ she said, not very helpfully. Her understanding of the city’s geography would have been better if she hadn’t been trying not to think about falling out of the sleigh and landing on said geography.

  ‘I think that’s the Winter Palace down there.’ Kai pointed at a building on the waterfront, which sparkled gold and blue in the morning light. ‘Lovely architecture.’

  It was very efficient of Kai to be scouting out the terrain and spotting buildings that were part of the Hermitage complex. Irene should be complimenting him on his good work, rather than fighting motion sickness and vertigo. ‘How nice,’ she muttered.

  Kai gave up on her, and continued leaning over the edge to watch as the sleigh came in to land. The reindeer cantered through one of the archways in the building’s walls and downwards, until they were drawing the sleigh over the ground rather than through air, landing with barely a bump. They touched down inside a huge open hall: it was crowded with other sleighs, shuffling passengers, guards and heavily loaded porters. The sound of hundreds of people shouting at each other was almost physically painful.

  Irene was halfway through saying polite goodbyes to the other passengers when she noticed the bears. They were crouched in pairs by the exit gates, each with a handler next to it: iron collars circled their necks, and chains ran from their hind legs to pegs set into the ground. ‘Kai,’ she murmured, nodding to them.

  Kai’s eyes narrowed as he considered them. ‘I’m not sure if they’re crowd control, guards or what,’ he said, strolling towards the exit with her. Unlike most of the other passengers, they had only a minimum of luggage. ‘How shall we play it?’

  ‘Act normal,’ Irene said. ‘At least nobody else seems to like them, either.’ People going through the exit gates were flinching away from the bears, or treating them with lofty disdain and then twitching at their slightest growl. Nobody was actually being stopped, though. Perhaps they were just a threat? Or some sort of ceremonial guard? But who posted ceremonial guards at an airport-equivalent?

  They joined a queue shuffling towards the nearest exit. Irene ran through a mental list of possible contraband. She wasn’t carrying a gun, or any drugs or explosives, something that she slightly regretted – after all, they might be useful on this mission. But for the moment she couldn’t think of anything illegal concealed on her or Kai. Of course, it might depend on what this regime considered illegal . . .

  Then the nearest bear growled. It wasn’t the casual little noise that it and the other bears had been giving earlier when they shifted position or licked their muzzles, but an on-point, attention-all-guards noise. It rose from its crouch, the chains on its hind legs creaking, and leaned towards one of the people in the queue.

  Its handler stepped forward. ‘Good evening, friend citizen,’ he said briskly. ‘Are you carrying any illegal magical components, as defined under section four of the law against importation of hazardous or treasonous materials?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the accused man said flatly. His face was still rosy from the windburn that all the sleigh passengers had suffered from, but Irene thought that he’d lost a little colour. Other people were backing away from him – or, rather, from him and the bear. ‘There must be some mistake.’

  The handler raised a silver whistle to his mouth and blew a shrill blast. The sound carried through the noise of the crowd, and Irene could see several men in long dark coats hurrying towards them. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind going with these guards to have your luggage checked, then,’ the handler said. ‘Please be aware that this is your duty under the law, and any resistance will be considered an illegal act.’

  Everyone else was looking at each other and muttering nervously. That made it safe for Irene to lean over to Kai and whisper, ‘They’ve got bears sniffing for sources of magic?’

  ‘It looks that way.’ They shuffled a step closer to the exit. The bear had gone back down on its haunches again, looking as tame and unthreatening as one might reasonably expect from a large grizzly bear. In other words, not very.

  ‘Interesting.’ They were second from the front of the line now. The man ahead was being waved through.

  ‘Business or pleasure?’ the handler said, with the bare minimum of interest.

  ‘Family,’ Irene said. She decided to go for the earnest-but-confused approach. ‘I’m visiting my mother. I mean, that’s not really pleasure, but I suppose it’s not business either—’

  ‘Yes, very good,’ the handler said wearily. ‘Please go through the exit ahead of you.’

  With an inner sigh of relief, Irene walked past him, with Kai in her wake.

  And then the bear leaned forward and sniffed at Kai.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There were gasps as the crowd pulled back from Irene and Kai. And from the bear, of course. It was d
ifficult to ignore the bear. For a moment Irene considered feigning innocence and signalling to Kai to make a run for it, then meeting up with him later. Common sense told her that she’d probably be arrested as an accomplice. Besides, she was reluctant to leave him on his own in a strange place. He might get into trouble. Into even more trouble.

  The handler frowned. ‘Are you carrying any illegal magical components, as defined under section four of the law against importation of hazardous or treasonous materials?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Kai said. He eyed the bear sidelong. ‘There must be some mistake.’

  The bear gave vent to a long, rolling eructation. It lowered its head and tried to nuzzle against Kai, straining at its chains. There was nothing aggressive about it now.

  Kai looked at Irene for a moment, then sighed and reached over to scratch its head, his fingers sinking into its fur. ‘Good girl,’ he said gently. ‘Good girl.’

  The security men in the long black coats had reached the scene. ‘Will you step away from the bear, friend citizen,’ one of them demanded. ‘Please place your hands above your head, and don’t make any threatening moves.’

  This was not the surreptitious entry to St Petersburg that Irene had been planning. She edged over to the handler. ‘What if it hurts him?’ she demanded, letting an edge of panicked concern sharpen her voice. ‘It’s a bear! What if it bites his head off, if he stops stroking it?’

  ‘Our bears are all very highly trained, friend citizen,’ the handler reassured her, watching the bear nervously. ‘There’s absolutely no way it would harm anyone. If your friend just steps away from it, I’m sure it won’t do anything to him.’

  But the idea had been planted and had taken root. The security men looked at each other. ‘Perhaps you’d better not try to move till we can get one of the controllers over here, friend citizen,’ one of them said. ‘See if you can keep it calm.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ The woman striding into the growing circle of empty space had a long black coat like the men, but there were green stripes on her shoulders and cuffs. Her long hair was braided back cruelly tight, and instead of the skirts the other women wore, she was in trousers and heavy boots, like the men. She glared around suspiciously. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘That’s the problem, mistress controller,’ the lead security guard said, pointing at the bear that was cuddling up against Kai.

  The woman peered short-sightedly. Then she walked up to the bear and laid a hand on its head, murmuring so softly that Irene couldn’t hear what she was saying. Kai took a step back, but the tilt of his head suggested that he was listening.

  ‘Galina says that he smells of the sap in the tree as it goes thundering towards heaven,’ the woman announced, frowning. ‘She says that she salutes the lord of the powers of the earth and the sky, ruler of seas and shaker of mountains. I want her on immediate medical leave. And I want him questioned.’ She pointed at Kai.

  ‘On what charges, mistress controller?’ the guard asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Public nuisance, maybe,’ the woman said. ‘I’m sure he’s done something. Take him into custody, and anyone with him.’ She rubbed the bear’s shoulder affectionately.

  The security guard did his best to look confident. ‘If you’ll just come along with me, friend citizen,’ he said to Kai. ‘And the lady who’s with you. I’m sure we’ll have this all sorted out in a few minutes.’

  Damn, they remembered I exist. Irene stepped forward to Kai’s side, giving him a little nod. ‘Please let’s do as they say, cousin,’ she murmured.

  Kai reluctantly let the bear be – it was fawning on the woman now, anyhow – and he and Irene followed the security guards to a side door. Irene was assessing the guards’ visible weaponry as they led the way. Heavy truncheons, like the guards in the museum. Coils of thin rope on their belts, at the opposite side – some sort of magical restraint? They wore silver whistles like the handler’s at their necks, so that was probably a quick way to give the alarm. All most inconvenient. And just because Irene didn’t see any missile weapons, that didn’t mean the guards didn’t have them.

  They were ushered into a back corridor that was very different from the opulent sleigh-port exterior or the grand central hall. It was utilitarian, efficient and lacking any external windows that one could escape through. The doors spaced along it were open frameworks of heavy steel bars. ‘Just along here,’ the guard said, the reassurance in his words diluted by the nervousness of his voice. ‘If you friend citizens will wait in this room, someone will be along to see you in a moment.’

  He gestured Irene and Kai into a sparsely-furnished room – bare and cell-like, with white-tiled walls and floor, and only a single chair – and then tapped his hand against the side of the doorway and mumbled a few words. A shimmering glow of light sprang up across the open doorway, hissing like magnesium in water.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Irene demanded.

  ‘Just to keep you here till the investigators arrive,’ the second guard said. ‘We’ll be back in a moment, friend citizens.’ He slammed the metal bars into place and locked the gate in position. The guards strode off quickly, with the air of men who were about to pass a dangerous problem on to someone else.

  Irene looked around the cell. No obvious peepholes or ways of listening, but she couldn’t be sure. ‘So much for a quiet arrival,’ she muttered.

  Kai spread his hands. ‘I really am sorry. I had no idea the bear would do something like that. But what do we do now?’

  ‘Wait for the investigators and explain everything to them,’ Irene said mildly. She tugged at her earlobe significantly. We may be listened to. ‘I’m sure that once they find out what’s going on, they’ll let us go. Didn’t that lady say the bear needed a medical check-up?’

  Kai wandered across and poked the screen across the doorway with a careful finger. It spat thick sparks in all directions and he drew back. ‘That’s a surprisingly powerful magical field,’ he said, picking his words. ‘I suspect that even if someone simply tried to jump through it, it might knock them out – and give them bad electrical burns.’

  ‘The government seems to have a firm hold on the use of magic round here,’ Irene said. She was trying to orient herself geographically. Even though she hadn’t enjoyed the view when they came in, she’d seen that the sleigh-port was surrounded by the city, rather than being out in the countryside. If they could escape into St Petersburg, they could hopefully lose any pursuit. They just had to get out of here. Preferably before more guards came back.

  There was no point wasting any more time. ‘Can you guide me to the nearest outside wall? Bearing in mind where we are, in reference to the river?’

  Kai nodded. He knew what she was about to do.

  The Language wasn’t magic. It was something else again, an entirely different sort of power. Irene couldn’t use it to work with magic, and she couldn’t use magic herself: it varied from world to world, and she’d never been trained in it. Her parents had always told her that a flexible mind and good use of the Language were more valuable than studying the minutiae of a given world’s magic, and she’d generally agreed. It was only at times like this, when locked up behind a magical force-field, that she felt their argument might have been a bit one-sided.

  However, what the Language could do was stop magic working. It was wholesale and unconditional, which sometimes made it a poor tool for delicate thefts. But for breakouts like this, it was perfect.

  ‘Magical barrier, deactivate,’ she said. Her words ground in the air like millstones, heavy with a current of power, and the shield fizzled and vanished. She was sweating as though she’d been running uphill. ‘Steel bar door, unlock and open.’

  The lock clicked and the door swung open, hitting the wall with a thump that rattled the tiles. Kai was already moving, dragging Irene along with him as she panted for breath. This place made using the Language hard. Everything was too settled, too real, too orderly. If she’d had the breath, she would have
complained to anyone who’d listen.

  They ran down the corridor, away from the central hall and in the direction of the outer walls. A guard turned the corner ahead of them and stood there, shocked, raising a hand for them to stop. Kai let go of Irene, caught the man’s extended wrist and spun, slamming him into the wall, before catching Irene’s shoulder again and pulling her on. He barely missed a step.

  ‘Halt!’ several voices were yelling from behind them. Well, if they had any doubts about us, we’ve now convinced them.

  They turned a corner. It was a dead end. Offices lined the walls on either side, but the end of the corridor was solid stonework, without even the luxury of a window.

  ‘You’re sure it’s outside, on the other side of this?’ Irene demanded ungrammatically. Well, she was in a rush.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Kai said. He glanced over his shoulder towards the noise of approaching booted feet. ‘Though I don’t know how thick the wall is.’

  ‘Let’s just hope the support structure holds,’ Irene said. She stepped forward and set her hands against the cold stone surface. ‘Stone wall directly in front of me, measured by my height and my hands,’ she said, trying to define it as specifically as possible, ‘crumble to dust all the way through to the outside.’

  For a moment Irene thought it wouldn’t work. Doors were made to open and did it all the time, but stone was not friable by nature. It seemed to shiver under her hands, as though it was trying to throw off her command as easily as a human could refuse an order.

  No. She was not going to let it disobey. She bent her will on it, focusing, summoning her determination, gritting her teeth as she stared at it. And slowly – far too slowly – the surface grew rough and pitted as she watched, and dust began to cascade down over her hands.