The short stairway led into a sequence of long cellars that were lined with racks of bottles and heavy barrels. Despite the best attempts at ventilation, there was a tang to the air: the memory of wine and brandy, port and liquors, and echoes of all the alcohol that had sweated out of barrels or through corks.
Irene sniffed again. She could feel it now. It had been drowned out by all the Library’s own safety wardings and by the great presences at the banquet above, but now that she was down here and in close proximity to it, she could tell it was present. It wasn’t a scent or a touch or a physical sense, but she was aware of it, and her Library brand tingled in response. Something—someone—that belonged to chaos was down here in the cellars with her.
And if whoever it was had noticed the lights being turned on and heard Irene’s steps on the stairs, then that person knew that they were about to have company.
The place was silent. Nothing moved. Nothing dripped.
Now, if I were a threat, what would I be . . . ? The first answer that came to mind was a bomb. And if a bomber was trying to catch the maximum number of dinner guests, then the bomb would be located beneath the Salon Tuileries. Irene mentally oriented herself and headed for that part of the cellars.
Then the lights went out.
Irene weighed her options: turn the lights on again with the Language and force a confrontation, or try to navigate this place in pitch darkness with an enemy hunting for her?
Something brushed against her leg from behind.
Irene bit back a gasp of shock, jumping forward. That settled it. Open confrontation was preferable to trying to dodge someone who could clearly see in the dark. “Lights, turn on!” she commanded.
The lights came on again, but they were dimmer now, like half-burned torches, throwing shadows at every angle. There was no sign of whatever had brushed against her leg. Silence filled the air: hungry, expectant silence.
Two clocks ticked down in Irene’s head. One of them was the time until her reinforcements arrived. The other was the time until the theoretical bomb went off—or whatever else might be down here.
If the Countess—or whoever the enemy was—had been directing the rats, then she’d seen Irene outside. Acting innocent would do Irene no good. She might as well gamble for high stakes.
Before she could let herself realize how bad an idea it was, she called out, “Blood Countess? Milady? I request an audience.”
There was still no sound, but the lights began to flicker off one by one behind Irene and to either side, leaving only a single corridor of illumination ahead of her. The invitation was clear.
Irene followed the lit path, collecting a bottle of brandy from one of the racks that she passed. She felt more comfortable with a solid object in her hand that could serve as a weapon. The lights went out once she had passed them, and darkness drew in behind her. A barely audible scuff on the floor made her glance to her left: a dust-smeared tabby cat slid out from behind a rack of bottles to pad beside her. More cats emerged from the shadows, squirming out from under barrels or spilling down from the higher racks. They moved around her in a silent escort, herding her forward, brushing against her dress and glancing up at her with unreadable bright eyes.
Irene came to the archway of the final cellar and paused there, looking into the room ahead of her. A draught tugged at her dress and curled around her shoulders, making her shiver. Realization cut in: there must be an opening of some sort in the wall of this cellar, if the air was moving. It might be a gap into the sewers or into some other building’s cellar next door or across the street. But from this angle, all she could see was more stacks of bottles . . .
Then light flared redly at the end of the room, and Irene saw the woman standing there.
Her hair might have been gold under sunlight, but in this dim light, under the glowing bulbs, it was burnished copper, braided up and surmounted with a crimson coif. She was in the stiff formal clothing of the sixteenth century, with a huge white lace ruff and puffed white sleeves, crimson full skirts, and laced bodice. The only parts of her skin that showed were her hands and face. She was very beautiful. Nobody could possibly have disagreed. But something about the extreme pallor and purity of her skin was unhealthy; it made Irene think of lilies and fungi grown on graves and nourished on corpses. Like Irene, the woman was surrounded by an entourage of cats. They pressed against her legs, their mouths open in silent purring, as if she were as intoxicating as catnip.
She was impressive, and Irene would have been more impressed if the day hadn’t been an utter cavalcade of people doing their damnedest to impress her. Between dragon kings and Fae nobility, she was worn-out, and her capacity for awe and terror was nearly exhausted. Nearly, but not quite; she had enough left to be sensibly afraid.
“Madam,” she said, and dipped a curtsey. The important thing was to play for time. Or perhaps—maybe—even manage to negotiate a truce? It was probably wishful thinking, but she’d never know if she didn’t try. “Do I have the honour to address Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed?”
The woman seemed vaguely amused. “You do. But if you already knew who I was, then why did you come sauntering down here so very bravely?”
“To speak to you, of course,” Irene lied. “And I just followed the cats.”
“They say I once cast a spell to summon a cloud filled with ninety cats to torment my enemies.” The Countess gestured at the animals surrounding her. “That may be an exaggeration. But I’ve always found them to be my friends.”
Irene raised the bottle in her hand. “May I offer you a drink, perhaps?”
“I never drink . . . brandy.” The Countess pursed her lips, mildly irritated at herself. “Dear me, how hard it is to avoid cliché! But I’m certainly not going to accept any food or gifts that you offer me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“You know perfectly well.” The air smelled of blood and dust. “I am here to bring ruin upon this pitiful attempt at peace.”
“What I don’t understand,” Irene said, walking closer, “is why.” Her throat was dry with fear. She could feel just how powerful this Fae woman was: every step towards her was like walking into a cobra’s reach, safe only so long as the snake chose not to strike.
The Countess shook her head, and her hair fell free of its coif and braids, flying out around her face like a lion’s mane. Her face remained unmoved, as perfect as a mask. “Do you know what it is like to be part of a cycle?” she asked.
Irene blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I am Elizabeth Báthory.” The Countess ran her hands through her hair, smoothing it back. Her dress was changing, shifting to a younger woman’s clothing, less ornate and with a smaller ruff. For a moment her skin seemed natural rather than cold alabaster. “I am her as she was when she was young and innocent, marrying an older man who went off to the wars. I am her when she grew older and had to rule the estate with a rod of iron. I could tolerate no disloyalty, no dissent. I was cruel because rulers were cruel, maiden. I am the Elizabeth who was falsely accused and who died in darkness, immured in my own castle, with day upon day to learn to hate the world beyond those walls. And I am also the Elizabeth who was truthfully accused, and who bathed in the blood of virgins to be young again, and who grew old and withered without that blood. I am the witch-queen and the torturer, the owner of the iron maiden of Nuremberg. I am all these things at once. Do you understand me?”
Irene wasn’t entirely sure she understood, but she was developing some nervous theories about what happened to Fae who had to embody contrasting parts of one archetype at the same time. Insanity might be the least of it. “Madam,” she said, “I appreciate all this, but I do not see why you should want war rather than peace.”
The Countess’s eyes were deep dark brown, the same shade as old dried blood on white cloth. “There is no truth to peace,” she said. “Peace is at best a brief interlud
e between hostilities. The treaties which might be signed here are no more than lies. The field of battle is more honest. What you are trying to build here won’t last, and you will be blamed for it when it falls apart. Name yourself.”
“No,” Irene said. She had to force herself to refuse; the Countess’s words came with an impulse to obey, with a tang of fear and promised pain. She took a step closer. The drift of cats around her feet merged with the mass surrounding the Countess.
“You are walking into my hands,” the Countess said. “Are you waiting for your friends to arrive and save you? They will be lost in these cellars for a century if I will it so.” This time her smile was edged and pointed, full of a lust for the suffering of others. This was a woman who could bleed her victims to death and bathe in their blood. “You speak like a heroine. We shall see if you can suffer like one.”
Her words held such a promise of pain that for a moment Irene was trapped, frozen where she stood. Then an unexpected recognition cut through the fear and gave her words. “I thought we were trying to avoid cliché.”
The Countess raised a mocking eyebrow.
“That’s from The Mysteries of Udolpho,” Irene pointed out. “If you’re going to threaten me, please be original about it.”
The air seemed to congeal around Irene, as tight as a noose around her throat. “Don’t mock me,” the Countess said very softly, each word a sharpened knife. The colour drained from her skin, and her clothing darkened to black: now she was as pale as ice in a morgue, in a dead-black dress that blended with the shadows. “Little Librarian, down here with me in the darkness, all alone . . . have you no respect? Have you no humility? Have you no fear? I promise you, I give you my word, that I will be more original than you can possibly imagine.”
It is probably not a good idea to taunt the Blood Countess, Irene reminded herself, lowering her eyes. “Forgive me,” she murmured. “I am a Librarian. Books are our business.”
But something additional had caught her attention. While the Countess was changing her aspect and appearance as the Cardinal had earlier, or like another powerful Fae Irene had once seen, there was something translucent about her. She was just a fraction . . . unreal. The scent of blood that suffused the cellar was centred on her, but it wasn’t coming from her. She wore no perfume. It was as if she was a hologram, or a projection.
And there were no doors in the wall behind her; Irene could see that, even in the dim light. Apart from the entrance that Irene had used, this cellar had no openings large enough to admit a human being.
But now that Irene was actually looking, she could see that there was a small recent opening in the wall to one side, at floor level, barely a foot high. The scatter of bricks around it suggested that it had been broken open from the other side. It was far too small for a woman.
But it was big enough for a cat.
And the cats pressing around Irene’s legs, rubbing against her, eyes catching the light as they stared at her, were real enough.
“It’s true that it has been a while since I played with a Librarian,” the Countess mused. “It will be interesting to see if you still break as easily.”
Irene’s half-formed plan jumped from maybe to immediate. The Countess sounded like a woman unwilling to waste any more time before getting to the disembowelling stage of the conversation. “Now I’m the one who wants the drink,” Irene said. She raised her bottle. “Cork of the bottle of brandy in my hand, come out.”
The cork popped out as though the bottle of brandy had been a shaken bottle of champagne, bouncing off the ceiling to land somewhere in a corner.
“You will find that isn’t as good a painkiller as you might hope,” the Countess said. She’d tensed for a moment as Irene used the Language, then relaxed again, as the words had become clear.
“We shall see,” Irene said. She raised the bottle. “But the thing that I’m wondering at the moment is . . .”
“Yes?” the Countess enquired.
Irene tipped the brandy out over the felines, swinging the bottle so that the alcohol sprayed out in an arc. “Brandy, cleanse these cats of chaos influence!” she ordered.
The cats shrieked as the liquid hit them. It would have been more efficient—more symbolic—to use pure water as an agent, but under the circumstances Irene could only hope that brandy would work. It was a logical chain of reasoning; the cats were the only things that could have gotten in and out of here, and the cats were somehow acting as an agent for the Countess to project her will into this place. So theoretically, if Irene could somehow break that link, then the Countess would no longer be able to access the hotel. It was all perfectly solid logic, and Irene desperately hoped that it was correct.
The sound of the cats screaming was almost worse than human voices in pain. Their desperate noises weren’t human; they were creatures that didn’t understand what had been done to them, or why Irene’s actions hurt them so much. They rolled on the floor, snarling and scratching at each other, and something rose from their bodies—something like lightning, or fox-fire, or the first flare of light in an incandescent bulb. It flowed towards the Countess and through her, flaring in her eyes.
Irene found herself staggering, wanting to collapse to her knees, as the huge drain of her words in the Language hit her. She was deliberately opposing herself to an ancient and powerful force of chaos that very much wanted to keep things as they were. The Countess flickered in and out of existence like the juddering images in a roll of film, trying to maintain her presence.
Irene swayed but held herself upright. I have too many people depending on me to let her win. It was a promise to herself, a self-set binding on her own will that was as real as anything the Language could do. The thought of everyone sitting up above her, unaware of what was going on, drove her to take a step forward, and she dashed the last of the brandy in the Countess’s face. “Creature of chaos, leave this building!”
The Countess froze, abruptly as flat and two-dimensional as a painting. Her face was a mask of anger, as white and dead as bone.
Darkness closed around Irene as the last of the lights went out.
CHAPTER 15
Irene sank to her knees in exhaustion, dropping the empty bottle. She knew that she was still conscious—at least, she thought she was conscious. How could one tell whether one was conscious or unconscious just by thinking about it?
She pulled herself together, breathing deeply and trying to stop her head from spinning. Being in the darkness like this made it worse: there was nothing visual to hold on to. The cats were still there—she felt warm fur against her hand when she reached out—but they’d stopped that awful shrieking. They were lying sprawled on the ground like worn-out rags, barely moving.
Priorities. What was most important? She needed to close that gap in the wall. “Bricks which come from the hole in the wall, rise back into place and seal it again.”
The sound of bricks grinding against each other ran through her head like an earthquake. She honestly considered throwing up. The only reason that she hadn’t realized how bad her headache was had been the comparative silence. Her nose was bleeding, and she couldn’t even be sure when it had started.
She pinched the bridge of her nose hard. That was what they’d taught her at school in first aid. Or was it supposed to be lying back with an ice pack on your nose and stuff it with cotton wool?
Focus, she told herself harshly. “Lights, on,” she tried.
Nothing happened.
Well, that was a nuisance. The combined influence of the Language and chaotic power must have blown a fuse somewhere, and even the Language couldn’t turn a light on if the light was physically incapable of turning on. She pulled herself upright and slid a foot forward, trying to avoid trampling on semi-conscious cats as she felt around for a wall.
“Winters!” came a call from the distance.
That was Vale’s voice. Irene br
eathed a great sigh of relief, coupled with just a fraction of annoyance that he couldn’t have gotten here five minutes earlier. “Over here!” she called back, then winced and put her hand to her head again.
She could hear multiple people approaching, not just Vale—hurried steps, the swish of skirts. Light broke through the darkness, and Irene shielded her eyes at the sudden glare from hand-held lamps.
“Are you all right, Winters?” Vale demanded.
“Passable,” Irene answered. “The Countess came off worse. But she’s gone from here now. I think. I drove her out.” She looked around the room in the lamplight. No signs of explosives. No big piles of dynamite. Nothing obvious. “Did you pass anything odd on your way in here?”
Mu Dan looked over Vale’s shoulder, scrutinising the room with flared nostrils. “This place stinks of chaos,” she opined. “As well as brandy. And why are there cats everywhere?”
“The Countess was somehow using them to manifest.” Irene picked her way across the living carpet of felines. “Let’s not kill them. Please. I don’t think it was their fault.”
“Can you guarantee that they are safe now?” Mu Dan asked. “We can’t afford to take chances.”
“How interesting.” Silver stepped from behind Vale and raised the lamp that he was holding to inspect the floor. He stirred one cat with the toe of a mirror-polished shoe: much to Irene’s regret, it didn’t lash out at him. “This place has certainly been the focus of power, but otherwise we seem to be a little lacking in evidence.”
“Well, I apologise for not having the lady in iron chains waiting for your inspection—” Irene bit her lip and stopped before she could get any further. There was no time for this. “I came down here because I thought whoever was causing trouble was trying to decoy all our attention outwards—which meant that they didn’t want us looking inwards and down here. I found the Countess in this room, together with a whole mob of cats. You can see the cats. And there was a hole in the wall, a cat-sized one, but I’ve blocked it now. But I’m afraid that she’s planted some sort of bomb here in the cellars, or done something which is going to be . . . bad.” Bad was far too minor a word for the current situation, but it would just have to do. “So we’d better search these cellars. Now.”
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