The Mortal Word

by Genevieve Cogman

  Vale nodded in grudging agreement. “Very well, then. We’ll start with the scene of the crime.”

  Bradamant hesitated. “I’d been assuming you’d want to speak to the leading Librarians at the conference first, so that you could get an overall top-down viewpoint, and a briefing on the personalities involved?”

  Vale jerked his head in negation. “While I will certainly require interviews with everyone concerned, the most important thing is to see the victim and his circumstances. Has the body been left untouched?”

  “As much as possible,” Bradamant said. “He’s currently at the Paris Morgue.” She saw the judgemental look in Vale’s eye and sighed. “It happened in the middle of a busy hotel, and we had to cope with the human staff as well as the conference participants. We couldn’t just lock the place and tell everyone they couldn’t go in!”

  “It would have been much more helpful if you had,” Vale said flatly. “Kindly take us there as fast as possible.”

  Bradamant looked as if she would have liked to argue the point, then nodded understandingly. “Of course,” she said. “Just a moment.”

  She reached into the folds of her wrap and drew out a piece of paper: Irene was close enough to see words written in the Language, but not close enough to read them. Bradamant laid the paper against the sealed Library door, and said, “Open.”

  Something chimed, like a bell tolling very far away. The chains fell loose, and the seal crumbled from the door. Bradamant grabbed the heavy iron handle and dragged the door open with effort.

  Irene was the first through, with Vale a step behind her.

  The room on the other side was elegant and gracious, even in the moonlight that slanted in through the long rectangular windows. It breathed with the scent of old books and wax polish: the dark volumes that filled the shelves promised countless secrets, and Irene itched just to reach out and touch them.

  Vale paused a moment, gathering himself, then gave a sharp nod as Bradamant closed the door behind them, as though steadying himself in this new reality. “You said this exit point was in the Bibliothèque nationale? Will there be watchmen?”

  “I paid the watchman off earlier,” Bradamant said. “He shouldn’t be an issue. And we’re at the older branch of the Bibliothèque nationale, off rue Vivienne, north of the Louvre and the river Seine. These days they call it the Richelieu Library.”

  Vale nodded again. “And the site of the crime?”

  “Le Meurice. That’s the hotel where most of the Librarians are staying, and where we’re holding the meetings. It’s quite close to here—south towards the river and then west along the rue de Rivoli.”

  “Where’s everyone else staying, if they’re not staying there?” Irene asked.

  “The dragons are at the Ritz, and the Fae are at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre,” Bradamant said.

  Vale frowned. “Didn’t they turn that place into a department store?”

  “Maybe in your world,” Bradamant said, “but not here. Now, please come along—if you want to get a look at the crime scene before Paris starts waking up and all the factions expect you to visit them first.”

  “I am hardly the one delaying us,” Vale said, somewhat unfairly. “Lead the way.”

  Walking through a library—any library—as they made their way to the exterior had its usual comforting, balancing effect on Irene. It was a reassurance that such places existed and that they would continue, even if she herself was as temporary as any other human.

  However, she couldn’t help noticing that the weather was several degrees colder than Vale’s world had been. She expected cold weather in winter, but this was bitter, even indoors. She rubbed her hands together.

  Bradamant noticed the gesture. “I should warn you,” she said. “Ao Ji has wintry tendencies. That is, when he loses his temper, it gets cold. He wasn’t in the best of moods before—there was a blizzard on the night of the murder—and when the body was actually discovered, well . . . The other dragons may have said that he was exercising severe self-control, but it didn’t feel like it to me.”

  “I hope His Majesty will manage to control his temper while being questioned, or you’ll have wasted my time,” Vale commented.

  Bradamant winced. She speeded up, her heels rapping on the floor as she led the way out of the library.

  “Why are you trying to annoy her?” Irene said softly as they followed.

  “Annoy her?” Vale raised an eyebrow. “I am merely stating my priorities. I cannot conduct an investigation if half the suspects stand on their royal privilege and refuse to answer my questions.”

  “I know that,” Irene agreed, “and you know that, and Bradamant knows that too. And we both know each other well enough by now to know that you didn’t have to phrase that last comment in the way you did. You’ve met Kai’s other uncle. You know what his anger is like. So why did you provoke her?”

  “Because you are far too trusting, Winters,” Vale said. “I want to know what Madam Bradamant isn’t telling us and hasn’t told us yet.”

  Irene chewed that over mentally for a few paces. “Bradamant isn’t stupid,” she argued, her voice still quiet. “She wouldn’t deliberately hide information from you if she knew you’d need it. She realizes just how important—how dangerous—this whole situation is.”

  “What if she’d been ordered to?” Vale demanded.

  He had a point there. Irene sighed. “I don’t have an answer to that. But I do believe the Library wants an answer to what’s happened. Why else would they call you in?”

  “An answer, certainly,” Vale agreed. “But the truth? That might be a very dangerous commodity.”

  * * *

  • • •

  There was a cab waiting in the road outside the Richelieu Library’s back entrance. It had clearly been there for hours: the driver was warming his hands in his armpits and cursing the weather, and the horses breathed great clouds of steam out into the cold air. Rime sparkled on the cobblestones and windowsills in the moonlight. The streets were quiet and empty: maybe because this was one of the more policed areas of Paris, or possibly because the usual nightlife had been driven inside by the cold. With the streets empty and snowy, Paris had a sort of agelessness, even if parts of its architecture might date it to within decades or centuries, such as the wide Napoleonic boulevards. But without the actual humans filling the streets, it could be the Paris of any timeline. It could be immortal.

  Vale stared out of the window as the buildings jolted by, his face set in forbidding lines that discouraged conversation.

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t stop off at the morgue first, to see the victim. We could both contrive to get us in,” Irene suggested to Bradamant. “And it’s on our way too. If we’ve examined the body, it should make it easier for them to brief us on the situation.”

  Bradamant shrugged. “I agree with what you’re saying, and I understand why Vale wants to see the body and the scene of the crime before he does anything else. It’s just that the instructions I was given were to bring Vale and you directly for a briefing—before anything else.” She pulled her coat more tightly closed, shivering. “You of all people should understand what it’s like to be juggling multiple sets of instructions.”

  “Will they still be awake at this hour of the morning?”

  Bradamant snorted. “How could they possibly sleep, at a time like this?”

  The cab turned into the rue de Rivoli. Irene could smell the Tuileries Garden to their left and the river Seine beyond, a distant waft of growing things and salt and sewage. “Have any of the dragons said whether the river here has a spirit?” she asked.

  “No,” Bradamant said, “but if it has, it’s keeping a very low profile.”

  A few minutes later, the cab came to a halt in front of the pale frontage of a large hotel, washed white by the moonlight and the street lamps. This was a side street
rather than the wide rue de Rivoli, and as such it had shadows and side alleys. Above the covered entrance, Irene could read the hotel’s name carved in stone. Rectangular windows dotted the frontage, as regular as postage stamps, fringed by long iron-railed balconies and retreating up to a roof six or seven storeys above. It looked very graceful, but it didn’t look particularly secure. Again, there were no humans around—guests, passers-by, or otherwise. The only living thing that Irene could see was a cat, curled up in a crevice and only visible when the light caught its eyes.

  As Bradamant walked round to pay the driver, Irene took the opportunity to ask Vale, “What’s bothering you?”

  “What indeed.” Vale poked at an innocent paving stone with his stick. It was an electrifiable cane, Irene knew, not just an affectation. “Besides the threat to the innocents of this world? The possibility of a war? The likelihood of it expanding further than I can conceive? What could possibly be bothering me, Winters?”

  “All of which you’ve dealt with before,” Irene said mildly. “The stakes are high, but they’re hardly new. Between the two of us, Vale, what is bothering you?”

  Vale looked down the empty street. Another cab came rattling along it, the horses stepping briskly, the shades of the cab windows drawn against observers. “Petty things like that,” he said, indicating the cab with his stick. “In my world, it would be ether-powered. Here? They still have horses. They do not have zeppelins. But they do have automobiles. From what Madam Bradamant has said, they have mass communication to a degree which my world cannot even conceive. There may be other differences, ones which I can’t imagine, because I simply don’t know enough. How am I supposed to work when I am unaware of the basic functioning mechanisms of a place like this? In London—my own London—I know every street, every alley, every building, every custom. In the Paris of my own world, I would at least have a basic understanding of the city. But here . . .” He trailed off. “I am a stranger. I am possibly an incompetent stranger, and I may be more of a danger than a benefit to this investigation.”

  “I’m not going to argue all of those points with you,” Irene said slowly. “Some of them are valid. But the Library will have researched this world before it tried to hold a peace conference here—they must have dossiers about the sort of thing you’d need to know. That may be one of the reasons they wanted to speak with you before you started the investigation. And in terms of the personalities involved, you’ve had as much involvement with dragons and Fae as most Librarians. If not more. And ultimately . . .” She frowned. “Whoever did this, they still had to obey the laws of physics. That hasn’t changed. A stabbing is still a stabbing.”

  “Trite but accurate,” Vale said. His momentary doubt was gone, sheathed under a smooth surface of professionalism as Bradamant approached. “So let us get the formalities over as soon as possible, and proceed to the scene of the crime.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The hotel was half-asleep at this hour of the morning. While a couple of wakeful clerks manned the main desk in the marble-tiled foyer, the corridors were empty and silent, and the large dining rooms and function rooms they passed were closed and still. Irene knew that behind the scenes the hotel laundries would be busy, the kitchens would be preparing for a new day, and the servants would still be awake and ready to spring into action at the touch of a bell. But here in the public areas of the hotel, one could believe that the entire building was comatose. It was quiet enough that their footsteps, as they walked through it, seemed an offence against some rule.

  “The room where he was found is on the ground floor,” Bradamant explained as she led the way, “on the side facing the rue de Rivoli. It does have accessible windows, but they were all locked shut.”

  “Which wouldn’t stop a Librarian from ordering the locks open or shut,” Vale commented.

  Bradamant sighed. “Yes, and everyone knew that. Which didn’t help. Though I think that someone with wires or threads could do some sort of trick, which could lock it from the other side? I don’t know. Irene here was always the one who preferred crime fiction.”

  “Detective fiction,” Irene corrected her.

  “Whatever. Would it be possible?”

  “It might be,” Vale agreed. “But it would leave traces. You say there had been a blizzard that night. Were there any marks in the snow?”

  “As far as anyone can tell, he was killed while the blizzard was still ongoing. The snow covered up any tracks, I’m afraid.”

  Vale nodded, unsurprised. They’d come to a pause in front of a particular door. “This is the room?”

  “It is,” Bradamant said. “The Salon Pompadour. It’s the hotel’s main banqueting room, and the hotel management are desperate to get it cleaned. To be honest, I think part of the reason they’re willing to hush this up is that they don’t want to admit that there was a murder in that particular room. There are limits to how much scandal and publicity is good for a hotel. But first I need to let Kostchei know you’re here and take you upstairs for a word with the elders.” She was sounding a little plaintive by this point.

  Vale nodded in agreement as he went down on his knees and squinted at the door’s lock. “Hmm.”

  “I’ve got the key,” Bradamant said helpfully. “And about speaking to my superiors—”

  “Give it to Winters,” Vale instructed, bringing out a lens from an inner pocket to examine the lock more closely. “And I will need to know how many keys to this room exist, and who holds them.”

  Bradamant hesitated a moment, then passed Irene the key as if she’d been meaning to do it all along. She looked at Irene and Vale, both focused on the door now, threw up her hands, and exited down the corridor in a swirl of skirts and tapping of heels.

  “If I undertake a case, then I do so on my terms, not those of my client,” Vale noted, not looking up. “And any evidence here must be my priority. This lock shows no signs of interference. No scratches or other marks of a lockpick. Let me see the key.” He brought it to his nose to stare at it. “A straightforward design: any locksmith could duplicate it. Hmm.”

  He rose to his feet and turned the key in the door, swinging it open. No lamps were lit in the room beyond. But enough street-lamp light filtered through the gauze-curtained windows to show the chairs shoved back against the walls and the dark stain on the floor.

  “Stay back, Winters,” Vale instructed before Irene could even consider stepping into the room. “Now, where would this place have its light controls . . . ah yes.” He slid his hand inside and to the right of the door and flipped switches.

  The chandeliers lit up in a burst of white light, throwing the dark stain on the floor into sharp relief. Everything else in the room sparkled—white walls and ceiling, white tablecloth on the long table at the centre, white-painted wood on the fragile-looking chairs, mirrored windows along one side of the room, crystals on the chandeliers, glasses set ready along the table, and gilt everywhere—but the dried blood marred it. It spread across the tiled floor and onto the edge of the Persian carpet in the middle of the room in an irregular blob. It wasn’t quite the size or shape of a human body, but it was uncomfortably suggestive. A portrait of a woman in the court dress of a few centuries ago looked down from the wall, her painted expression unmoved at the scene of violence.

  Irene indicated the portrait. “Before you ask, no, I can’t get her to talk.”

  “A pity,” Vale said. “A witness would have been useful.”

  He stepped into the room, looking around keenly, his eyes moving to the mirrored windows. It was impossible to see outside through them: the street light had come through the circular rose windows set higher in the wall, part of the overall decoration. “Yes. Interesting. Winters, would you be kind enough to do something for me?”

  “Of course,” Irene said.

  “Go and question the staff while I examine this room. Make yourself agreeable. I
need to know who has access to this room, who holds the keys, whether anything strange was seen, what the circumstances of the discovery were—you know my methods.” His mouth quirked in a thin smile. “Besides, it will give your superiors the opportunity to brief you while I am not present.”

  Irene sighed. “I can’t argue with you on that last point. Good luck.”

  “Luck is all very well,” Vale said, moving forward to the bloodstain, “but I would rather have some facts.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Irene turned a corner and very nearly walked into the group of men and women coming in the opposite direction. They moved as silently as sharks, in neat formation behind their leader. And when he saw Irene, he held up a hand, which paused them in their tracks.

  Irene stopped too, taken aback by the near collision, and then hesitated further when she realized the man in the front was a dragon. Like all the dragons in human form she’d met so far, he was easy to identify: there was something about his face and build that went beyond human ideals and into the realm of perfect statuary or art. The others behind him were humans, but oddly matched in their features and heights: two men, two women, all of whom looked similar enough to be brothers and sisters. The men were in evening dress despite the early hour, and the women were in sober dark skirts and matching jackets. They all stood with a casual posture that could easily shift into violence.

  The dragon’s brows drew together as he looked at Irene. “I believe I know you,” he said. “Are you the Librarian who goes by the name of Irene Winters?”

  “I am, sir,” Irene replied. “But you have the advantage of me.”

  He was as gilt and ivory as the hotel decorations—and while Irene had a better memory for books than for faces, she was sure she’d have remembered him. His eyes were an only barely human shade of amber, his hair was as yellow as the gilding, and his skin was pale enough that it nearly matched his white collar and cuffs. “My name is Duan Zheng. I am here to bring you to my lord Ao Ji, King of the Western Ocean, so that he can give you your orders. Is the detective with you too?”