The Mortal Word

by Genevieve Cogman

  “You seriously think you can kill me?” the Countess snarled. Her face was like a mask now, white porcelain over something depraved and rotting beneath.

  “I can certainly try,” Irene retorted. “And I’m sure you know more than I do about what a knife can do to skin. Vale! Silver! Get Kai over here!” She saw Vale and Silver supporting Kai, pushing through the crowd towards them. Nobody was trying to hold them back: her threat to the Countess had cowed the audience for the moment.

  Mu Dan released Irene and backed away. “I can’t call the earth to help me so close to that creature,” she murmured, still in Chinese.

  The Countess laughed like fracturing glass. Around them, the men and cats shifted, like a pride of lions moving into position, waiting for the moment to spring. “This is not the sort of story where anyone comes to help you, maiden. This is my story. This is my domain. You are a victim here!”

  “No,” Irene said softly. Her hand ached as if she was trying to hold on to a live power cable, and her Library brand vibrated in her bones. Chaos was strengthening, but she could see a way to use it. The Countess was blinded by her own narrative and hadn’t seen Mu Dan as anything other than a maiden and a victim. But that was only half the story. “No, you’re wrong, your ladyship, and do you know why? Mu Dan has the power here, she has all the power she needs—because this is the part of the story where the law comes to take you down and imprison you, and she’s a judge-investigator!”

  And the floor trembled. It rippled as if Mu Dan was the single still point, with a wave of motion sweeping out through flagstones and earth, swelling and expanding to shudder against the walls. Humans fell to their knees, crying out in shock, their thrall broken fur the moment; cats pressed themselves against the floor, their fur bristling, as if they could somehow make themselves invisible. Dorotya screamed curses, pulling herself away and scrabbling against the wall.

  The Countess herself reared back and struck at Irene, claw-like fingers extended to rake at her face. Irene lost her balance and, more important, lost her position; she had to fall back, the knife still clasped in her hand, shifting her balance to stay on her feet.

  “Winters!” Vale’s voice cut through the noise, and out of the corner of her eye she saw something spinning through the air towards her. She extended her free hand and, by a miracle, caught it—it was Vale’s cane.

  The aura of chaos in the air was thickening with every breath. “Are you going to try to beat me to death with that?” the Countess taunted her.

  With her words came the impulse to do it; Irene felt the urge to see blood run and hear pleas for mercy. The cane seemed weightless in her hand, and all her hatred for this Fae, for what she was, and for what she’d threatened to do to Irene’s hands, came together in a blinding flash of purpose. This was what Irene had come here for. To see the Countess dead, to gut her, to hear her screaming . . .

  No. No, it wasn’t.

  Irene dropped the knife, letting it clatter to the floor, and swung the cane towards the Countess’s outstretched arm, triggering the switch in the handle that electrified it just as it hit her.

  The Countess went down with a shriek. It didn’t kill her—it didn’t even knock her out, which was a testament to her unnatural nature—but for a moment it inconvenienced her, and that was all Irene needed. She bent down and thrust her hand into the Fae’s bodice, forgetting any ideas of decency or proper conduct. Her fingers brushed hard folded paper, and she pulled it out.

  She didn’t pause to read it. Instead she retreated towards Mu Dan and the others, who had formed a defensive ring. Silver had Mu Dan’s pistol now; he shot one man in the head as he attempted to charge.

  Vale plucked his cane from Irene’s hand as she came within reach, pushing her behind him and next to Mu Dan. “Winters, if you have a way to get us out of here, this would be a good moment.”

  “Take us up!” Irene gasped to Mu Dan, pointing at the ceiling.

  Mu Dan’s stern features creased with effort. The ground beneath them rippled again and then rose into a small hillock under the influence of her power, climbing farther with every second. A couple of the mob threw themselves at it, trying to get to Irene before she was out of reach, but within a moment the slope of the rising earth was too steep.

  Irene looked at the ceiling above. She could only hope she had guessed their location accurately and that they were directly under the stage. She summoned the last of her strength. “Ceiling of this room, and floor of the theatre above us, part to let us through!”

  The ceiling above their heads split apart in a ripple of layers—rafters, timbers, stones, pipes, cement, and mortar flaking away, earth tumbling down . . .

  Light came with it, harshly bright after the dim redness of the Countess’s lair. Irene raised her arm to shield her head as the five of them rose through the floor of the theatre and into the room above. It wasn’t the stage; it was the theatre’s cellars. But there must be a cellar beneath the stage for storage and for sudden exits via trapdoors above. Lines of light showed through the ceiling—the stage floor—marking the outlines of those trapdoors and planking. But Mu Dan’s mound of earth wasn’t slowing; it was still rising towards the stage floor above, filling the gap that they’d come through in the floor and cutting off the screams and screeching, but still not stopping.

  “Stage floor, open for us!” Irene gasped, an instant before they hit it.

  The wood peeled back. The stage lights shone down. They emerged into a domestic scene—some sort of family household, probably the setting of one of the social comedy russe plays. Except, of course, that the play had not previously involved a group of battered strangers emerging from the bowels of the earth.

  Silver stepped forward and bowed to the stunned audience. “Gas leak,” he said. “The theatre must be evacuated at once.”

  They escaped in the screaming and confusion.

  CHAPTER 24

  The carriage was uncomfortably crowded with five people in it, but nobody had even suggested splitting up to take a second one. Kai had come round from the chloroform he’d been dosed with and now merely had a sick headache. He was complaining about it every couple of minutes. Irene knew from experience that he rarely had any trivial illnesses and was very bad at coping when he did.

  She hadn’t told him about the note yet. She hadn’t told him that he’d been betrayed.

  They had all been sharing information. Silver was going over the details of his own capture in heroic detail, but basically it came down to the fact that he’d traced the cake to the theatre, walked in there, and had a gun shoved in his ribs. That had been this morning. “The afternoon was lacking in interest and information,” he finished. “Until the detective and the prince showed up.”

  “Hardly voluntarily,” Vale noted. “We were captured in the streets around the theatre while we were investigating.”

  “I don’t understand why you couldn’t just make them free you,” Mu Dan said. She was somewhere between exhausted and jittering with nerves, making her an awkward coach-seat companion. “You are one of them, after all.”

  “My talents lie in a different direction,” Silver said haughtily. “You may ask Miss Winters for further details. And the Countess already had firm control over everyone she’d allowed down there.”

  “She was also more powerful than you are,” Vale said. He had sunk into a brooding reverie and was staring out of the carriage window. Flakes of snow were beginning to fall, and the night sky was thickly blanketed with cloud.

  “She was more powerful than any of us,” Silver snapped back. “I still don’t understand how Miss Winters managed to do whatever it was she did. And why none of us could see her power until we were past her doorstep and into her parlour.”

  “When I reached the threshold of her hiding-place, I had the chance to examine it,” Irene explained. “I found some sort of ward script which had been created by Alberich,
probably a long time ago, in order to conceal chaotic power. I took a chance that something which had been created in the Language could be repurposed with the Language.” She wondered whether she should mention that she still had the ward in her pocket. Along with the Cardinal’s letter to the Countess, and the note betraying Kai . . . she was turning into a walking storehouse of dangerous documents. “It worked. Fortunately. Really, I was quite impressed. Alberich was a master craftsman. I wonder if I could manage anything that powerful . . .”

  “What would you have done if it hadn’t worked?” Kai asked.

  “Kai, that sort of question never helps,” Irene said firmly.

  In spite of the cold air outside, the five people crammed into it kept the carriage warm. But it wasn’t the temperature that made Irene shiver and chafe her hands together. She knew that she had been avoiding this and that she had no time left to do so. “Right. Next item on the agenda. Kai, you were unconscious and you missed this. Someone sent the Countess a message saying that you and Vale were coming. I think that was how she managed to ambush you. I have the note here—at least, I hope I do.” She reached into the inner pocket where she’d stashed it. “Unless the Countess is in the habit of hiding multiple billets-doux in her bodice and I grabbed the wrong one.”

  Kai froze, abruptly more of a statue than a living being. She could feel the tautness of his muscles where he was crammed against her. “Who sent it?”

  “Let’s have a look.” She unfolded the paper, holding it out so everyone could see in the flickering light of passing street lamps.

  Vale leaned forward till his nose was practically touching the paper, clearly only just resisting the urge to rip it out of Irene’s hands and scrutinise it in more detail. “Good notepaper,” he said, “though not watermarked, I think—hold it up a moment, Winters? No, not watermarked, and all three of the hotels have their own watermarked stationery. So we cannot trace it that way. The seal is simply plain wax, with no use of a seal-ring or any other form of identification. The handwriting is formalised and calligraphic, no doubt because the original writer’s hand is recognizable. Black ink, no further detail possible at the moment without analysis. The text gives little away. ‘The detective and the dragon prince who are investigating the murder are heading to the Grand Guignol to look for culprits there. I hope you will find them entertaining. From one of your kin who wishes you well.’ Not signed, of course.”

  “Would we believe the signature if it was?” Kai’s hand closed on Irene’s arm. “Irene, what is the purpose of this betrayal? Even if we’d vanished at the theatre, someone would have discovered we were going there—Mu Dan, or you, or my uncle. Why didn’t whoever it was just tell her to abandon her hide-out and leave? We’d never have found her.”

  Irene glanced over to Vale and saw that he was frowning, his deep-set eyes in shadow. “You ask some very interesting questions,” he said. “We need answers.”

  But Irene thought she might already know what those answers were. And if she was right . . . then she had good reason to be afraid. A message like this—so detailed, so specific—was intended to get Kai and Vale killed. More murders. “The end result is what we should be looking at,” she said.

  “Since I am neither a detective nor a judge-investigator—much to my relief—you may need to explain more fully,” Silver said.

  Mu Dan was nodding. “Irene’s right. I realize that you don’t want to get involved in the politics of this, Your Highness, but if you were killed in the middle of this investigation, and by a Fae, even if the delegation claims not to be involved with her—”

  “Isn’t involved with her,” Silver said. “She was going to kill me too, in case you didn’t notice.”

  Irene suppressed a sigh. “Mu Dan’s just being technical. Just as she was when nobody except me had actually witnessed the Countess last night. Even if you witnessed her bomb.”

  “I think we can all testify to her presence now,” Vale agreed.

  Kai looked between them. “You’re avoiding the point,” he said. “You don’t think she killed Ren Shun, do you, Irene? The person who did it was the same person who betrayed us. They’re still trying to disrupt the truce and trigger a war.”

  Irene wondered how many of the others in the carriage were following the same train of thought she was. Vale, probably. Silver, possibly, but he was the last person who could actually suggest the name that she was thinking. Mu Dan wouldn’t cast her suspicions in that direction—even if she was a judge-investigator. And Kai himself . . .

  “Kai,” she said, “can you tell me how you and Vale came to suspect the Grand Guignol? That’s one bit of information I haven’t caught up with yet.”

  Kai went through the details, with Vale confirming them: a disregarded report from Ren Shun, found while going through his papers at Ao Ji’s request—and contributory evidence that Vale had discovered. “But you and Mu Dan weren’t at Le Meurice when we looked for you, before going out,” he finished, a little too self-justifyingly.

  Irene felt a twinge of guilt. “I was lured out by Dorotya, a Fae who works for the Countess. She wanted information. And Mu Dan was looking for me. Sorry.” She hurried on before Kai could start giving his opinion on her wandering off alone. “But this betrayal does support the theory that the Countess isn’t guilty of the murder—whatever else she may have done or be going to do. I hope that the gendarmes can deal with her nest, now that it’s been exposed.”

  They were nearly at Le Meurice now. At least here, together, inside this carriage, they could speak in confidence. Irene had to decide what she was going to say. Her eyes strayed to Kai’s taut face again. She’d gotten him into this, and she might be about to hurt him in the worst way possible . . .

  But reality slapped her in the face. The worlds are at risk, this peace treaty’s on the brink of failing, my parents may be put to death, and I’m wasting my time worrying about hurting his feelings?

  “I went to the Library,” she continued. “Prutkov’s unreliable. And our security people are investigating him. But also—and this is important—remember the book that was mentioned on the note in Ren Shun’s pocket? Herodotus’s Myths? We’ve found a copy of it—it was saved from the Richelieu Library, the Enfer section, before the place was bombed. But we don’t think the edition we’ve found is from the world referenced in that note—Beta-001. We have that edition in the Library itself—and there’s nothing interesting about it at all.”

  “Your point?” Silver asked, looking perplexed.

  “Someone wrote Ren Shun’s note and planted it to incriminate the Library. Someone who knew how we classify worlds but didn’t know the right classification to quote. Which wasn’t Beta-001.”

  “Winters,” Vale said sharply, a warning note in his voice. She met his eyes and saw certainty in them. He knew what she was thinking. He’d probably worked it all out already. “Be careful about making accusations without proof. Whether it refers to current affairs—or to the murder of Minister Zhao.”

  “They’re linked?” Kai asked.

  “I am certain of it,” Vale said. “And while I am not sure who was directly responsible for the minister’s poisoning, I believe I know the hand behind them.”

  “Then we need proof,” Irene said. She worked her cold hands together in her lap. “Back at the Library, I told Melusine that if we try to build this peace treaty on a lie, it will eventually fall apart. I haven’t changed my mind about that.”

  The carriage drew up outside Le Meurice, and the driver hammered on the top of the cab. “Here we are, messieurs, mesdames!”

  Kai didn’t move. “Could the rest of you leave the carriage?” he asked. “I’d like a private word with Irene.”

  A moment later, the two of them were alone in the carriage, the driver audibly sighing above and the horses stamping their feet in the cold. More snow came twisting down past the windows, and the wind whistled down the broad
avenue.

  “You’ve never insulted my intelligence,” Kai said abruptly. “If anything, you’ve expected me to keep up with you and been disappointed when I haven’t. Yet tonight you’re avoiding my questions. And it’s because you think someone in the dragon delegation is responsible.”

  “It would be pointless to ask which questions, wouldn’t it?” Irene replied. “That would just be avoiding them further . . . I’m sorry, Kai.” She didn’t have to say what for, as she’d never kept secrets from him before. And she was relieved he hadn’t followed her chain of logic through to the end—and to which dragon was responsible.

  “It’s clear Vale agrees with you too, about the culprit. But he’s letting you handle it. I suppose he doesn’t want to deal with the emotional consequences of telling me that I was betrayed by someone I know.”

  “Kai, I don’t want to deal with the emotional consequences.” She met his eyes. “I don’t want consequences, full stop. Give me a way out of this and I’ll take it.” She found, to her surprise, that she was entirely sincere. If he could think of an answer to the current situation—to naming the potential murderer—then she would be glad to accept it. “I’m not proud.”

  “The Countess did it,” Kai proposed. “We’ve got all the proof we need that she’s here. Somehow she lured Ren Shun out. She suborned some of his spies, perhaps, and that’s why they were murdered too . . .”

  It was so very tempting. It was the sort of lie that made more sense than the truth. “But if we put that forward as an answer and it’s not true, and the treaty gets that much closer to being signed, will there be any more murders? Any more attempts to stop it?”

  “You’re implying that a dragon’s behind it and was trying to frame the Fae. But a motive could just as easily be found for your own people,” Kai said, changing tack. “You’ve admitted Prutkov’s unreliable. He told you that he was in favour of the treaty, but he could have been lying. The Library could be even more of a power broker if we dragons and the Fae remain at war. You say you know he did lie to you—but how can you know how much he lied about? Where better to sabotage negotiations than from an apparently neutral position?”