The Mortal Word

by Genevieve Cogman

  “Yes, and that’s what she’s so annoyed about.”

  Irene blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I know, dearie, I know. You’re about to tell me my lady has a teeny tiny little bit of a bad reputation, but that’s what makes it so irritating.” Dorotya slurped more beer. “You see, when she was brought to trial, that time before, perhaps she had done a few of the things they said she had. But a lot of it she hadn’t. They made it all up, they did. Lots of lies to discredit my lovely lady, to get her out of power and lock her up for the rest of her life. You can’t trust people in power, dearie. They’ll say whatever they want, all the witnesses will be paid to agree, and then you’re behind bars till the end of your days. Or worse.”

  Irene turned this over in her mind. Statements that the Countess had been falsely accused didn’t quite square with the threats that Dorotya had been making earlier. But perhaps that was the problem with Fae who had conflicting stories in their archetype. The Countess could be both a bloodthirsty monster and a falsely accused martyr. At the same time.

  “So if I understand correctly, your mistress has a particular dislike of being accused of crimes she genuinely hasn’t committed?” she suggested. “Even if she might, for instance, have been trying to do something fairly similar last night involving bombs, chlorine gas, and poisoned apples?”

  She did wonder if the other drinkers were paying attention to their conversation—not to mention the man holding the garrotte—since neither Irene nor Dorotya was keeping her voice down, but nobody was coming over to interfere. At least that meant a lack of interruptions.

  “It’s the principle of the thing, dearie,” Dorotya said firmly. “Perhaps she was having a bit of amusement with bombs last night, but that doesn’t mean she was stabbing people in the back two nights before. Even a little wet-behind-the-ears girlie like yourself ought to know that. So I said to her, I said, mistress, why don’t you let me go and ask some of those clever young people a few questions? And if they say they don’t know anything, well . . .”

  “You let them go unharmed, as a token of goodwill?” Irene said, not very hopefully.

  “I was thinking more that we help you change your mind, dearie. Hand.” The last word was snapped to one of the men behind Irene. He grabbed Irene’s right arm at the wrist and elbow and forced it flat on the table palm down.

  Irene didn’t try to struggle. The cord around her throat tightened there like a warning. “And next?” she asked politely.

  “You should be a little more worried, lambkin. Next we try a little trick that the boys here like to play while they’re drinking. They take a knife, and they bring it down between their fingers, one, two, three, only sometimes they miss. Don’t you Librarians like to be able to write?”

  “We do,” Irene admitted, “but that’s not all we can do.”

  Dorotya waved an admonitory finger at her. “Now, don’t get any ideas about saying something with that magic trick of yours, dearie. The moment you open your mouth, Jehan behind you is going to twist that rope so tight . . .”

  Irene closed her eyes for a moment, praying for patience. “We may have a problem here, then. How do you expect me to be able to talk if you’re strangling me?”

  Dorotya paused. “Well, sweetheart, I was thinking that I’d recognize your mystical powers—”

  “I’m afraid not,” Irene said apologetically. “It all sounds like normal speech. Just ask your mistress if you don’t believe me.”

  The cat, which had been sitting there and listening all the time, gave a single sharp mew that might have been agreement.

  “Well, this is most annoying,” Dorotya muttered. “I don’t suppose you could write your confession down for me, dearie?”

  “I’m right-handed,” Irene said, with a nod towards the hand in question, which was still being held immobile on the table. She knew that she should probably be more afraid. There was something about this whole situation that was not only faintly ridiculous, it was simply human. “I’m sorry. I know it’s inconvenient.”

  “And how would you know, you smart-mouthed jumped-up little hanger-on?” Dorotya spat.

  So much for friendliness and dearie. “Well, I was questioning another Librarian less than a month ago,” Irene admitted. “We had him tied down on the bed, but even so it wasn’t easy.”

  There were multiple male sniggers from behind her. Dorotya leered unpleasantly. “There we have it, dearie. You’re definitely an aristocrat.”

  Irene sighed. “I should introduce you to an acquaintance of mine. You and he would get on splendidly. But in the meantime, can we come to terms in a way that doesn’t involve you cutting my fingers off?”

  “What have you got in mind?” Dorotya asked. The cat leaned forward smoothly, its eyes gleaming in the gaslights.

  “As your lady has said that she wasn’t involved in the murder, I am happy to take her word for it,” Irene lied smoothly. “But if you want me to find out who did do it, then you need to let me go. Having me vanish here isn’t going to be very useful to you.”

  “And you think you can find out who did it?” Dorotya demanded.

  “I can, if you release me,” Irene said. “I’m neutral in this, after all. I’m not a dragon.”

  But the cat snorted and turned its back in a motion that was clear denial.

  Dorotya shrugged. “A pity, dearie. Her ladyship says no. It looks as if we’re going to have to continue this discussion elsewhere. But don’t you worry, a nice well-bred young madam like yourself is always useful—one way or another.”

  Irene would have tried to argue, but she suddenly smelled chloroform. She would have considered remaining a prisoner if she stayed conscious. She could have found out where they were hiding, after all—but being taken along as an unconscious captive involved too much risk.

  Irene had let her left arm drop to her side. Now she moved. She brought her left elbow up behind her, slamming it into the crotch of the man with the garrotte. There was a manly scream. The loop around her throat went loose. She pushed herself backwards, stool going flying, pulling against the man holding her hand to the table. The man who’d been bearing down on her arm hadn’t expected her to pull in that direction: he lost his grip, and with a thump and a few splinters Irene dragged herself loose. She rolled as she hit the floor, clumsy in her dress and cape, scything her legs around, and heard a satisfying crack as her booted foot caught the garrotte wielder’s ankle. He yelped and folded over, hopping away.

  “Grab her,” Dorotya shrieked, leaning forward and waving her tankard. “Incompetents. Get the bitch!”

  Irene pushed up to her feet in a swirl of skirts and a creak of corseting, gauging the situation. The two men she’d assaulted so far were incapacitated but would be threats again very shortly. The third man, to her left, had set down his bottle of chloroform and flexed his hands, clearly about to grab for her. The other occupants of the drinking hole were—unsurprisingly—staying out of it.

  There were too many people here for her to affect their perceptions. But perhaps a hostage would be useful?

  Irene focused on the man moving towards her. He was adequate but not that good; she sidestepped his rush, moving back towards the table as though it was accidental.

  And then she shrugged off her cape and used it to grab the cat, bundling it up in a mass of heavy fabric and fur. It was a risky move—laying unwanted hands on felines was always dangerous, even if they weren’t possessed by ancient Fae countesses. It struggled and flailed in her grip, trying to squirm free or maul anything within range, but she had it—for the moment. Finding a replacement cat to possess would hopefully take time, meaning this one was valuable.

  “All right,” Irene said in the sudden pause. “Everyone stay back, or the cat’s going to regret it.”

  That seized the room’s attention in a way that even the brawl hadn’t managed. The situation had cross
ed the line from private intimidation to a public display. Calls of encouragement to both sides filled the room. A few men began to thump their glasses rhythmically on their tables.

  The cat in Irene’s hands hissed and tried to scratch her, writhing like a snake ridged with razors. She could feel a prickle of chaotic power through her gloves and the cape, as if she was dipping her hands into an electric field, but it wasn’t a problem. Yet.

  “You think that’s a threat, dearie?” Dorotya demanded, levering herself to her feet. “My mistress isn’t worried about one little cat!”

  “How cruel of your mistress,” Irene said. “But since you put it that way . . .”

  “Yes?” Dorotya demanded, craning forward.

  “Catch.”

  Irene threw the cat at Dorotya’s face. Possessed or not, it reacted on instinct, landing claws first. Irene took advantage of the screaming and confusion, ducked the third man’s attempt to grab her again, and ran for the door. Without backup, discretion was the better part of valour.

  None of the room’s other inhabitants tried to stop her. She didn’t blame them—she wouldn’t have involved herself either. Irene made it out into the street and extended an ankle as the third man came rushing out after her. He went face-first onto the snowy cobbles.

  “Door, seal to your frame,” Irene ordered, then turned to the man as he picked himself up out of the slush. “Can we negotiate?”

  The man pulled out a flick-knife and snapped it open.

  Thumps came from the door as those inside tried to break it down. “Ah well,” Irene said, stepping away. Time for a trick that worked better on a single person than a roomful. “You perceive I’m actually the person who hired you for this job.” She switched back from the Language to English, feeling the start of a headache as the man lowered his knife and looked confused. “Don’t worry, everything’s under control. Now, where were you planning to take the target?”

  The man’s face furrowed in a frown. “I don’t know, do I? You only just picked us up round the corner. Hadn’t told us yet, had you?”

  Damn. He doesn’t know a thing. “Had you heard of me, before I hired you?” Irene tried.

  The man looked shiftier now. “Heard you’d been telling fortunes down at the Cabaret de L’Enfer,” he admitted. “And you’d been hiring other men to get work done.” Illegal work, clearly. “Jean said he’d been asking around, but nobody knew nothing else about you.”

  Irene was about to ask another question, but someone whistled, and the man promptly turned and ran, scuttling down the nearest alleyway like a weasel. The few onlookers on the street abruptly found business elsewhere. The banging on the tavern door also stopped, and she could hear the sound of running feet from inside. Running away. They would all be bolting out of the back or down into the sewers. That had been an alarm—the local equivalent of here come the police—and now her possible source of information was slipping through her fingers. She’d never catch up with Dorotya now.

  But on the other hand, she was alive and safe and knew more than she had half an hour ago.

  Irene straightened her hat and cuffs and began to retrace her route, regretting the loss of her cape. She was still considering the implications of what she’d learned when she saw Mu Dan and another woman—one of Hsien’s security people—standing on a street corner, having an obvious debate about which way to go next.

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said as she approached.

  “Where have you been?” Mu Dan demanded. She looked as if she was suppressing stronger language.

  Perhaps, Irene decided, a bit of apology was in order. “I’m sorry to have left without waiting for you, but I didn’t have any choice. I was approached by an agent of the Countess. She wouldn’t have talked if you’d been there as well.”

  “And you’re sure you’re all right?” Mu Dan asked. “Not contaminated in any way?”

  “I’m fine.” Irene looked up at the sky. It was still clear, but the late afternoon sun had little warmth to it. “To be brief, the person was an old woman, a Fae linked to the Countess—probably some sort of procurer and servant from her story. She wanted information.”

  “What did she think we knew that she didn’t?” Mu Dan asked. Her voice was cooler now; she’d recovered from her first flare of temper.

  “That is a very good question. She wanted to know who killed Ren Shun.”

  The security woman stood next to them, eyeing the ebb and flow of passing traffic, with the disinterested air of an agent who knew that it wasn’t her place to listen. Though of course she would. Hsien—and anyone he reported to—would know all about this when they returned to the hotel.

  “But . . .” Mu Dan was clearly retracing Irene’s own train of thought. Unfortunately, the railway tracks led to the same destination: if the Countess didn’t know who did it, and she didn’t do it herself, then who did? Which resulted in a derailment of the entire current theory and a major explosion of possibilities and unfortunate implications.

  “Yes,” Irene said, “exactly. It’s entirely possible that this whole approach was a deliberate ploy to misinform me, and I was allowed to escape. I concede that. But it’s difficult to see why the Countess’s agents would bother lying about Ren Shun’s murder, given that she had no qualms about admitting she tried to blow up the hotel last night. Dorotya didn’t hide it.”

  “We still have no evidence that she didn’t kill Lord Ren Shun,” Mu Dan muttered, but her heart wasn’t in it. “And we’ve lost track of Lord Silver too. I left Vale with Mei Feng so she could fill him in about Minister Zhao’s murder. But Lord Silver hasn’t been seen since this morning.”

  That was unwelcome news. “It’s not just a case of him being over-enthusiastic about his investigations and not having got back to the hotel with a report yet?”

  “It could be. You know him better than I do.” Mu Dan’s tone wasn’t quite suggestive, but it was definitely sour. “Or he might be out there making some deals of his own.”

  “So might I have been,” Irene pointed out. “If Silver’s in trouble—”

  “You’re far too trusting,” Mu Dan cut in. “You trust beyond all reasonable limits. What does it take to get through to you that he’s a Fae? How many times has he tried to seduce or blackmail you in the past? You let yourself walk into a Fae ambush just now—you admitted it—why? Because you thought they’d be polite and willing to talk? Do you have any idea how many times I’ve dug up Fae infiltrations in the past—and had to watch the strongest penalties be enforced on those involved?”

  “The world is changing,” Irene said quietly. “We’re working to make that change happen—so perhaps someday you can trust a Fae. I’m aware of what’s at stake, but if we succeed, then we’re going to have to change as well. If you want to actually create peace, then we have to trust each other. No magical bindings, no blackmail, no family authority, just each other’s given word. I’m not saying that we have to trust blindly. But automatic mistrust is a luxury we can no longer afford.”

  “His Majesty Ao Ji is never going to trust a Fae,” Mu Dan countered.

  “Then how can he ever sign a peace treaty with them? What is he doing here?”

  Mu Dan was silent for a moment, thrusting her hands into the folds of her cape. “We’re wasting time,” she said. “And there’s more I haven’t told you. I found out what happened to Ren Shun’s agents. They’re all dead.”

  Irene blinked at the enormity of the statement. “What, all of them?” she said, realizing as she spoke how stupid a question it was.

  But Mu Dan didn’t snap at her. Perhaps she shared Irene’s sense of shock. “I was given their names and descriptions, and I was able to match them to unidentified bodies in the morgue. Most of them, at least. Two were killed by head shots which damaged their faces, but I’m reasonably certain of the identification. Two more were stabbed, three were found with br
oken necks, and five were drowned.”

  Irene tried to make sense of this information. “Was someone trying to wipe out all of Ren Shun’s agents, just in case they knew something incriminating? But in that case, how did the murderer know who they all were?” She tried to imagine how one would go about rolling up an entire network like that. Lure them all to the same place, and then kill them en masse? Follow them to their separate hideouts and dispose of them there? “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “No,” Mu Dan agreed. Her lips were pressed tightly together, her face calmly ferocious. “No, it doesn’t. So where do we go now?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Li Ming and Ren Shun were brothers?” Irene asked.

  Mu Dan blinked, taken aback. “You didn’t know? But it’s only on their father’s side, and they serve—served—in different courts. And Li Ming was raised by his mother until he declared himself male, so they were never close as children. I’m sorry. It didn’t cross my mind to mention it.”

  Irene would have liked to ask more about dragon family structures, but this wasn’t the moment. Mu Dan’s answer seemed honest enough. So where indeed were they to go now?

  “I think I need to take some questions to the source,” Irene said reluctantly. “I don’t like to leave Paris now, but it shouldn’t take long. I need to go to the Library.”

  INTERLUDE

  Vale and Kai

  “I trust you understand why I have requested this interview, under the circumstances,” Vale said.

  Mei Feng nodded. “You have demonstrated that there may be a connection between Minister Zhao’s murder and this latest one—and we all want to bring Lord Ren Shun’s assassin to justice.” If it was distressing to face questions on her murdered colleague, Minister Zhao, she didn’t show it. She was sitting opposite him, as calm as any politician he’d ever questioned. There was little to learn from her appearance: her hair and make-up demonstrated the attention of careful servants, and her clothing, while slightly out of place for his own London, was appropriate for a lady of wealth and rank in this Paris and this time. She was in dark purple silk, with a light green scarf at her throat and emeralds of a matching shade in her bracelets and earrings. Winters had remarked previously that this was a sign of allegiance among the dragons. And that it indicated the woman’s immediate superior was a light green shade in her “natural” shape. Winters had also said she believed Mei Feng’s personal affinity to be for wind, and any unnatural movements of air might indicate strong emotion.