The Burning Page

by Genevieve Cogman

  She came to a dead stop as a roar echoed through the passages. Panicked back-brain instinct urged her to cower and hide, or to look for a nice high tree to climb. ‘What the hell is that?’ she hissed.

  ‘The Empress’ tigers. But I don’t think they’re nearby.’ Kai kept on walking, far more casual about the noise than she was, and Irene had to hurry to catch up.

  ‘You mean those big white Siberian—’

  ‘They’d have to be Bengal tigers,’ Kai said seriously. ‘You only get white tigers from Bengal. My uncle gets quite annoyed about it. His subject kingdoms often send him furs as tribute, but Siberian tigers are always orange, never white. He once said—’

  ‘The operative word is big,’ Irene cut in. ‘How good are tigers at tracking by scent?’

  ‘Well, hounds are better for coursing game,’ Kai began. Then he caught Irene’s glare. ‘Quite good,’ he said meekly. ‘I’ve never tried training them.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’ll go to their knees and worship you, the way that bear did?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Kai said regretfully. Another roar split the air, closer now. ‘They’re cats, after all.’

  Irene wished that the Undying Empress had preferred bears as pets.

  ‘This is about as close as we’re going to get.’ Kai stopped at a bend in the passage and laid his hand against the wall. ‘I can feel the flowing water some yards beyond this. They laid the foundations well.’

  ‘I would apologize to the Empress, but maybe she’ll be glad of the opportunity to redecorate.’ Irene approached the wall and laid her hands next to Kai’s, bracing herself. ‘Stone wall and foundation and earth that lies between me and the river beyond, crumble and give way, and make a passage to the river large enough for us to pass through.’

  It was bad, but not as bad as trying to influence the Empress. What fun, Irene thought grimly through the band of pain pressing on her temple, I now have a whole new standard for how bad things can get. Travel is so educational. She dimly felt Kai’s arm round her waist, supporting her as she leaned against him. I almost think I prefer travelling in worlds on the chaos spectrum; at least I don’t get a headache every five minutes . . .

  ‘Irene!’ Kai was yelling. ‘Tigers!’

  Oh, right, tigers. Tigers were relevant in some way. And tigers were beautiful when there were heavy iron bars between her and them . . .

  There were two big tigers pacing down the corridor towards her and Kai. Panic gave Irene a shot of icy-cold adrenaline and yanked her back to awareness, then retired to gibber in the back of her brain and let her take care of things.

  Kai snapped his fingers and pointed at the ground. ‘Lie down,’ he said firmly.

  One tiger yawned, baring huge white teeth and revealing an implausibly pink tongue. The other simply snarled.

  ‘Cats,’ Kai muttered. ‘Irene, can you just put them to sleep or something? I don’t want to kill them.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’ The tigers were getting closer now. They were walking rather than running. Presumably they were meant to guard Irene and Kai till the human guards arrived.

  ‘They’re such beautiful specimens,’ Kai said. ‘I wish we could take them back for my uncle.’

  Irene winced at the thought of trying to drag a couple of unwilling tigers through the Library. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said firmly. ‘You can come back and negotiate with the local dragons on your own time.’

  Behind her, the stonework groaned and began to shudder. Irene turned and saw it parting like a pair of lips, as though it was opening its mouth to speak.

  But instead of words, water rushed out in a mighty gush that would have plastered Irene against the opposite wall, if Kai hadn’t dragged her out of the way. The tigers fled, turning tail and racing down the corridor, as water came flooding in and gushed knee-high along the passage.

  ‘I’ve got this,’ Kai said calmly. ‘Hold your breath.’ He advanced into the flow of water. It softened as he touched it, curling around him and Irene, the current weakening to the strength of a gentle stream as he walked forward through it. The narrow hole in the wall was just large enough to admit the two of them. Irene followed him into the darkness, feeling the water brush her face and trail her dress and robes out behind her. And Kai’s power somehow channelled air around them, allowing them to breathe. Icy tendrils stroked her forehead and soothed her headache.

  And then they were out into the full force of the river. It swept them up and along, till they surfaced in a bursting wave. Irene was gasping for air now, her arms round Kai’s neck as she let him support her. Her shoes were lost somewhere at the bottom of the Neva, and her clothing was a sodden, unwieldy mass that would probably have drowned her if she wasn’t hanging onto a dragon. The water was bitterly cold. She thought about that, then rephrased to merely bitterly cold, because without Kai’s influence it would be freezing and she’d be passing out from the chill. Thin raindrops scythed down from the overcast sky and stung her face. Street lamps along the embankment cast orange shimmers onto the water, glaring in the darkness.

  But they were outside and free to act.

  ‘Right,’ she said, once she had her breath back. ‘Now for the Library.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Library was still dark when they reached it – if anything, it was darker, with lonely oil-lamps flickering in the silence. It was pouring down outside there too, and the windows of the nearest corridor were smeared with long streaks of raindrops. Irene half-imagined she could hear the ticking of a distant clock, but when she tried to listen there was only silence. The air seemed hot, and she wondered how much of that was real, and how much was her own fear.

  She sat in front of the first computer they found, turning it on and then tapping her fingers on the table as it took its time booting up. She begrudged every passing second. Time was not her friend tonight: there were too many emergencies seething in her mind: Alberich, the Library, her parents, Zayanna, Vale . . .

  The email screen came up. Irene leaned forward to start typing, but an incoming email immediately filled the screen.

  Need talk urgentest, where to meet? Bradamant

  ‘Typed in a hurry,’ Kai deduced, leaning over Irene’s shoulder.

  ‘Check this room’s designation, please,’ Irene replied, ignoring him. She was typing up her own email to Coppelia, in prose not much better than Bradamant’s own.

  ‘A-21, Italian giallo novels, late twentieth century,’ Kai reported.

  A-21 Italian giallo novels late twentieth century, or entrance to Vale’s world, which is easier? Irene sent to Bradamant.

  Entrance Vale’s world, see you there ASAP, the message came back.

  ‘We should hurry,’ Kai said, pacing up and down and ignoring the spare chair. ‘If she has something urgent to tell us . . .’

  ‘Give me a moment,’ Irene said. She was checking current announcements on the network. Unfortunately there weren’t any along the lines of Alberich is dead, everything’s been sorted out, you can all relax and go back to normal. But there were lists of worlds whose gates had been destroyed – a longer list than she’d hoped to see – and there was a list of dead Librarians. She scanned down it, her heart cramping in her chest at the thought that she might recognize a name.

  And she did recognize a couple.

  Kai had stopped pacing and was staring over her shoulder again. ‘I knew Hypatia,’ he said.

  It was one of the names on the list. ‘I don’t think I ever met her,’ Irene said.

  ‘She was a bit older than you. She used to say: It isn’t your job to die for the Library, it’s your job to make other people die for your Library—’ He cut himself off, straightening, and his next words were cold and polished. ‘She gave her life honourably in service to the Library. I shouldn’t demean her sacrifice.’

  Irene closed the window, logging out of the computer. ‘I don’t think there’s anything shameful in repeating a joke she liked. At least you’re remembering her. Isn’t that
better than not remembering her at all?’

  The Library’s shadows hung around her, a silent promise of the future. After all, when Irene herself died, what would be left of her? A handful of unread books in an unused bedroom. A footnote in the memories of a few other Librarians.

  And vital books on the shelves of the Library, which wouldn’t have been there without her.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘the transfer cabinet’s this way.’

  ‘Irene, your parents—’ Kai broke off, his tone uncertain.

  ‘Not on that list,’ Irene said. ‘Still safe. As much as anywhere’s safe at the moment.’

  Bradamant was waiting for them outside the room containing the portal to Vale’s world. She was leaning against the wall under one of the lamps and was scribbling in a notebook. The dim light threw her into shadow, making her look like a slender pen-and-ink sketch in a dark pencil-skirt and jacket. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of them. ‘What happened?’

  Irene looked down at herself. She was mostly dry, but her dip in the river had left her gown and stolen robe hopelessly crumpled. And the marks from her nosebleed all down her bodice proved that cold water didn’t always get rid of bloodstains. ‘The mission went wrong and we ran into Alberich,’ she reported succinctly. ‘We got away.’

  ‘Well, of course you got away, or you wouldn’t be here now,’ Bradamant said impatiently. ‘What about Alberich?’

  ‘He escaped too.’ Irene reminded herself that she was actively trying to be on better terms with Bradamant these days; plus Bradamant had a right to know, plus professional courtesy, et cetera. So she described recent events.

  Bradamant nodded calmly as she listened, but her knuckles were white on the edge of her notebook. But when Irene described her recognition of Alberich, Bradamant nearly bent the book in half. ‘Why didn’t you just kill him?’ she demanded.

  ‘I did think about it,’ Irene admitted. ‘I just didn’t have the opportunity.’

  ‘Surely you could have tried a bit harder.’ Even in the dim light, Bradamant was white with fury. ‘Grabbed a crossbow off a guard, used a gun or dropped the ceiling on him.’

  ‘You tried shooting him in the head before. Remember?’ Irene recalled it perfectly well, and from the expression on Bradamant’s face, so did she. ‘Three shots. In the forehead. And all it did was stagger him for a moment. As it was, I provoked the most powerful mages in the empire to do their best, and all that did was make him retreat. I’m not sure what would kill him.’

  ‘Dragons?’ Bradamant suggested. This time she was looking at Kai.

  ‘There wasn’t time to call for assistance,’ Kai objected.

  ‘Let’s leave the blame till later,’ Irene said wearily. Was Kai now regretting that he’d wanted to avoid the local dragons? She might ask him later, but not in front of Bradamant. ‘This next bit’s more urgent.’ She ran through their conversation, and her deductions.

  Bradamant was nodding by the end of it. ‘It makes sense. It has to be one of the people in that room. Someone in the Library could have found out where you were going . . .’ She had the grace to blush a little, perhaps remembering her past actions. ‘But in that case, they’d have known what book you were after. And as you’ve pointed out, that brings us down to the people in Vale’s rooms who saw the folder.’

  ‘And it’s the Fae, obviously,’ Kai said. ‘I don’t understand why the two of you are even considering anyone else.’

  ‘Simple logic makes Zayanna the most likely,’ Irene said, ‘but there’s the possibility that someone else was being manipulated. Or that we were being observed.’

  ‘Vale’s room being spied upon?’ Kai snorted. ‘You just don’t want to admit that the Fae—’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Bradamant cut in. She stared at Kai until he fell silent. ‘Thank you. Look, Irene, you need to do something about your friend Vale. When you have a spare minute, which admittedly isn’t now. I went to see him.’

  ‘Had he discovered anything?’ Irene demanded.

  ‘Yes, and that’s what I wanted to tell you. I’ve passed it on to our elders, too, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Irene agreed, irritated that Bradamant felt the need to point that out. Irene wasn’t her junior any longer and didn’t need that sort of reminder. ‘So?’

  ‘Vale says that Silver says that apparently Alberich’s been hiring. That is, word’s out amongst the Fae that Alberich has been looking for junior Fae to do . . . jobs. Exactly what the jobs are, Silver didn’t know, but . . .’ Bradamant shrugged. ‘I can think of half a dozen things, from distracting and assassinating Librarians, all the way to his big anti-Library plot. Silver also said that some who’d expressed an interest had then dropped out of circulation. Apparently once you’re in on Alberich’s plan, you don’t talk to anyone else about it.’

  ‘That’s interesting. I wonder what he’s offering them.’

  ‘Power,’ Bradamant said. ‘And the chance to be part of a good narrative.’

  ‘Yes, that would work,’ Irene agreed. One way for Fae to gain more power was to obey all the stereotypes of a fictional character. Conforming to patterns in this way strengthened the chaos within them, acting against the universe’s natural inclination towards randomness. Destroying the Library would make a marvellous story, she thought sourly. Her mind flickered back to Bradamant’s earlier words. ‘And yes, I know Vale’s not in good shape. He contracted chaos contamination during our Venice mission. And I really need to get him to a high-order world, when we have time.’

  Bradamant looked aside, avoiding Irene’s eyes. ‘There is another option, you know.’

  ‘What?’ Irene demanded. If there was a way to help Vale, something that she could do without betraying her other obligations . . .

  ‘Force him through the full process,’ Bradamant said coldly. ‘Increase the level of contamination till he’s full Fae.’

  Irene stared at her. ‘Are you insane?’

  ‘He’d never agree to it,’ Kai said, as sharply as Irene had.

  ‘Where do you think Fae come from?’ Bradamant retorted. ‘And do you want to keep him alive and sane? At least this way he’ll be stable. It wouldn’t be difficult. Get him to interact with other Fae, or become more of a stereotype. He’s a detective. Make him detect.’ She must have seen the disgust in Irene’s face, for she took a step back. Her expression settled into a bland smile, one familiar to Irene from all the years they’d known and disliked each other. ‘I’m trying to help you. Don’t blame me if there aren’t any good options.’

  ‘You clearly know more about this sort of thing than I do,’ Irene said, before she could stop herself.

  ‘I have my own contacts,’ Bradamant said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘None of your business.’ The statement was delivered flatly, leaving no openings for argument.

  Irene took a deep breath and forced herself back from the edge of anger. She was going to be an adult, even if everyone around her felt the need to be children. She’d save her fury for the person who actually deserved it. ‘All right. Thank you for your input, but I don’t think Vale himself would tolerate it.’ She glanced to Kai, who nodded in agreement. ‘And thank you for passing on this information. I’ve put the basic facts in an email to Coppelia—’

  ‘She won’t be reading it till she gets back,’ Bradamant said. ‘She’s out of the Library at the moment. So’s Kostchei. So are many other elders.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Irene was genuinely astonished. By the time anyone was promoted to Senior Librarian, they were generally old enough and injured enough to merit honourable retirement. Elder Librarians didn’t leave the Library, didn’t return to alternate worlds where time resumed its normal flow and where they might be in danger. It just wasn’t done. She’d only seen Coppelia do it once before, and that time it had been a matter of stopping a war. If many of the elders were now taking this step . . .

  Bradamant nodded, her expression sour. ‘They’re collecting information. From their con
tacts. It’s all very well to know Alberich’s working with the Fae, but if we can’t find him, it’s useless.’

  ‘I hope Penemue’s out on assignment, too.’

  ‘That’s rather harsh,’ Bradamant said. ‘Yes, she is. Just because she plays politics doesn’t mean she doesn’t do her job.’

  ‘Has she been talking to you?’ Irene accused.

  ‘I talk to a lot of people.’ The shadows were very deep around Bradamant. ‘Things aren’t necessarily as black and white as you’d like to think. And not everyone gets good assignments.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call our last few months’ jobs good assignments,’ Irene said bitterly.

  ‘Technically you’re being punished, remember?’ Bradamant sighed. ‘Some people pull worse jobs for less reason. Just because you haven’t noticed that doesn’t mean there isn’t resentment. And no, this isn’t the time to quarrel about it. But there’s a reason why other Librarians are talking to Penemue.’

  ‘What’s she saying at the moment?’

  Bradamant hesitated, then lowered her voice. ‘The Library is reducing its energy levels to free up more power for transporting things. Penemue is saying that’s an excuse. That the lights are down and the air’s getting stale because the Library’s been weakened. She’s saying it’s not simply a case of burning gates, but that the whole Library is slipping into entropy. And a lot of people have noticed that they can hear a clock ticking.’

  She fell silent for a moment, and all three of them listened. Irene could hear her own pulse, her own breathing. She strained to hear anything else behind the noise of her own life, but she couldn’t be certain. Imagination supplied a whispered ticking in the background, counting down seconds, but . . .

  ‘I know,’ Bradamant said. ‘Once you start listening, you can’t be sure if you’re imagining it or not. And some are starting to murmur that we should consider talking to Alberich. Just possibly. Just maybe. Just as an alternative to be considered.’

  ‘Just never,’ Irene said harshly.

  ‘You’re snapping at the wrong person,’ Bradamant said. ‘And a few Librarians suspect history of being inherently revisionist and written by the winners. They ask me if perhaps I provoked him during our last confrontation. They suggest that he might have had a perfectly good reason to be doing whatever he was doing, and that it was our fault if we were almost killed in the process. Who’d have thought that a few days of panic would make so many colleagues and friends . . .’ She gestured, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence, her mouth twisting sourly.