The Mortal Word

by Genevieve Cogman

  “If it takes place,” Ao Ji said flatly. “So far I have seen nothing but attempts by the Fae to sabotage it and murder those of us who came in good faith. If the Library expects fair dealing from them, then they are deluded. You would do better to spend your time hunting down old books. That is where your talents lie, after all.”

  “The Library is acting as mediators because we are human, Your Majesty,” Irene said. Looking at the dragon opposite her—his features perfect and inhuman, his manner as distant as one would expect from a creature near to immortal—she felt her own weakness, her own mortality. But there was nobody else here to make this argument. “We are mortal. And as a human, as a mortal being, I have an interest in general peace and stability. It is vital to me that this treaty takes place. Not just because of my parents, held as hostages to guarantee good behaviour. Not just because of the Library. But because of everyone who may suffer if this falls apart. I’ve seen what happens when dragons and Fae go to war. Everyone suffers.”

  “Your attitude is virtuous,” Ao Ji acknowledged. “But you are failing to consider the larger picture.”

  “Would you explain, sire?”

  “You said you had entered the lair of the creature who calls herself the Blood Countess. You witnessed her depravity, her sadism. Surely you must realize that by giving half the worlds over to beings like that, you are condemning them to be her victims? You are arguing that both sides are equal, Librarian. Be honest and admit that they are not.”

  “And you’re arguing that one of the worst people from one side is a typical representative of that side, Your Majesty,” Irene countered. “After dining in the same room as the Princess, how can you say that she has the same nature as the Countess?”

  “She has as much regard for you humans as the Countess does,” Ao Ji said dismissively. “Or as little, to be specific. You are merely toys to amuse her.”

  Irene thought of the time she’d witnessed two dragons fighting in the sky over New York. They hadn’t been remotely concerned about the safety or the welfare of the humans beneath them. The city could have been torn apart, and they wouldn’t have cared. “And you, Your Majesty? What are humans to you?”

  Ao Ji looked at her from a thousand years away. “We would practise good governance,” he said, “and you are sorely in need of it. Look at this city, this Paris. How many wars have passed through it in the last hundred years? How many tyrants? The so-called bohemian class live in waste and self-indulgence. The artists waste their time in folly. The poor scratch for a living and celebrate their criminal gangs. The literary classes slip into decadence and spread its philosophies. This is a city where a place like that Theatre of the Grand Guignol can be founded and admired.” The theatre’s name brought an expression of disgust to his face. “No wonder the Countess found safe haven there; it is an abscess, a mark of everything that is worst about this place. Surely you can see that this is not acceptable. It would be laxness on our part to allow it to continue.”

  He was speaking to her as if she was a student who needed instruction and he was the teacher whose words were obviously right. He was choosing to spend the time to enlighten her because he considered her worthwhile, and he wanted her to understand. When he paused, he seemed to be expecting agreement as the only possible response.

  And he had also confirmed what Irene had suspected. No doubt he could explain how he’d known about the Grand Guignol—but his mention of the theatre had felt somehow personal. There had been a direct venom in his voice, a specific and deeply felt abhorrence. He knew about the place. He must know about the Countess, even if he’d tried to claim otherwise.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, “humanity is indeed weak, and we mortals are creatures of the moment. Yet humanity has created works of art, works of literature, philosophical structures, and stories that last. The Fae do not create—they merely imitate. And from what I have seen, the dragons collect what humans have made.”

  “And you Librarians steal their books,” Ao Ji noted. “This is hardly a good argument for either your ethics or your inspiration. Apparently you would give a starving child a storybook—when what she needs is bread and peace. We would enforce that peace.”

  He hesitated for just a moment on the we would: Irene wondered if he’d been about to say I will, and make it a declaration of personal intent rather than a vaguer hope for the future. But of course that would be quite inappropriate from someone who was supposed to be prepared to sign a peace treaty. Even if it would be a far more accurate statement of his views.

  Irene had to hurry on to the next stage of her plan before Ao Ji grew bored—or decided that she might be a danger to him.

  “Returning to current events, sire,” she said, “perhaps we shouldn’t look so much at what crimes were committed, but what they were meant to achieve.”

  “Oh?” His expression of curiosity was beyond reproach, but Irene felt the additional coldness in the air. Outside the window, snow reflected a thousand tiny sparkles in the street lights.

  Her mouth was dry. She swallowed. “Your Majesty, these crimes were designed to give you reasons to refuse to sign the treaty—or reasons why you shouldn’t negotiate at all. It would have been natural for you to walk out, after your trusted servant was murdered. And if your nephew had been killed by one of the Fae currently in Paris, then again you would have had an excellent reason to break off negotiations, and even to declare outright war.”

  “You think this was done by someone who was trying to manipulate me?” Ao Ji said slowly. “But who would dare?”

  “There is also the question of the snow,” Irene went on. “Ren Shun’s body was found in the Salon Pompadour, but he wasn’t killed there. He was either brought in through the hotel itself, or through the glass doors leading outside. It wouldn’t have been hard to get hold of a key to those doors. The real danger would have been if someone outside noticed. But with all the snow that night, even the usual Paris nightlife was driven off the streets. The murderer had a free hand to work unobserved.”

  “He took advantage of the weather, then?” Ao Ji asked. “He waited for a night when the storm would be severe enough to conceal his crime?”

  “Along those lines,” Irene said. “And he also took care to dispose of Ren Shun’s servants, in case they knew too much. Our murderer is very direct, Your Majesty. He sweeps the board clean of evidence.”

  Ao Ji nodded slowly. “Have you a name for him?”

  “I can give one.”

  Irene’s heart was hammering so fast with nerves that she thought her hands should be shaking. But they were steady. She reached into an inner pocket and removed a folded paper. “I retrieved this from the Countess, Your Majesty. It is the letter she received which betrayed your nephew and Vale to her. Of course it is not signed.”

  Ao Ji’s eyes were fixed on it. He was as still as an ice statue, as merciless as a mountain eagle. “That anyone should have dared—dared—to threaten my family in that way . . .”

  Irene waited to see if he was going to finish the sentence. She didn’t want to be struck down for interrupting a dragon king mid-threat. When he fell silent again, she lowered her hand to the table between them, putting the paper there and keeping her fingers on it. “Your Majesty, I said that I could give you the name of the killer.”

  “And how do you propose to do that, if the note is unsigned?”

  “I can use the Language.” Irene met his eyes. “I can tell this piece of paper to return to the hand of the one who wrote it. In front of as many witnesses as necessary.”

  Dead silence filled the room.

  And she knew she was right. If he had been innocent and had truly cared for Kai—or for his family blood—as much as he’d suggested, he would have told her to do it. Possibly in private, with only dragons present, but he would have ordered her to identify the guilty party. But this silence? It was an admission of guilt. And he knew that she
knew.

  Which now brought up the question of her own life expectancy, and whether she would survive to leave this room.

  He looked at her. An inhuman anger crawled behind his eyes. “What do you want?” he said.

  “Your Majesty,” she said. The cold was deeper now, brisk enough to make her hands sting. “These negotiations have been a source of tension for all of us, and you have lost a servant whom you trusted. Might it be a wise choice for one of your brothers to take your place as leader of your delegation? Or one of the queens?”

  “I notice you do not speak of justice for those who have died.” He didn’t move, but Irene had the sense of a great raptor or mountain cat poised to spring at a moment’s notice. “Yet my nephew said that you were an idealist . . .”

  “I don’t believe I could obtain such justice.” Irene thought of Ren Shun, of his servants, all cleared away without hesitation—to provide Ao Ji with the motivation he required to break off the peace talks. She wondered if Ao Ji actually felt any regret, or if he had simply decided their sacrifice was . . . necessary. “I’ll settle for what I can get. And what I want is that treaty signed and stable.”

  “Your dedication is worthy of a more noble cause. Any treaty will be temporary. When the eventual war does come, it will end in flames and your Library will fall with it.” The sound of future destruction echoed in his voice. “Give me your allegiance now, and you can save yourself. I will take you into my own household—or my nephew’s, if you prefer. You will have stability and safety.”

  “Ren Shun was in your household,” Irene countered. She felt a distant anger for the sake of someone who had, by all accounts, been a good man and a faithful servant. “That didn’t save him.”

  “He was a loyal servant who obeyed my will,” Ao Ji growled. “He understood the necessity.”

  “Did he?” Irene wondered aloud. “The knife wound in his back was from behind. Your Majesty.”

  The anger in his face was clear now: snow rasped against the window, a driving river of bitterness that swept down from the heavens to scour the streets. “And what of the evidence against the Library—your own people? What of the words Ren Shun heard, about a book being even more important than the negotiations, and the evidence found on his body?”

  Irene folded her free hand in her lap, her fingers numb from the cold. “The paper in Ren Shun’s pocket does name a particular book, and gives a Library designation for where it can be found. But the only edition of that book which is of interest doesn’t actually come from that world designation. The note was written and placed there by someone who wanted to incriminate the Library, and who knew how we classify worlds, but didn’t know which world to name. And as for what Ren Shun heard—that securing a book was more important than the negotiations? Your Majesty, you are the only person who has told us about that. You wished to incriminate the Library.” Ao Ji must have arranged for the Myths to be left in the Richelieu Library—ready to be conveniently found as proof. And if Prutkov hadn’t removed the book from the Enfer section, the scheme could have succeeded. Irene might almost have been grateful for that, despite Prutkov’s lack of ethics—or at least, him not telling her about it.

  “State your case,” Ao Ji said. He held himself like a monarch prepared to give dispassionate judgement, but there was far too much controlled fury in his voice and eyes.

  Irene had no time left for fear. The numbing cold lapped round her like winter’s deepest heart. “Your Majesty did not wish this treaty to take place. You hoped to find a reason to call it off, but none presented itself. But your fellow monarchs would not accept it, if you simply refused to agree. You had already arranged the death of Minister Zhao in another court, but that hadn’t stopped it. So you killed Ren Shun, under cover of the blizzard that you yourself called, in order to claim Fae treachery. You either killed his servants or had them killed too, for fear they might know too much. And in case even that didn’t give you sufficient leverage, you tried to incriminate the Library too—by suggesting that we were in league with the Fae, or with some other faction, because we wanted a book more than peace. Or we wanted power. Or possibly both. And today, you tried to send your nephew to his death at the hands of a Fae—again, just so you’d have a reason to break off the negotiations.

  “You are partial to my nephew,” Ao Ji said. “You are moved by sentiment.”

  Irene lifted her chin and stared him down. “I care about him, yes. I care about a great many people. I care about my parents, who are hostages for the sake of these negotiations. I care about the Library. I care about all Paris outside these walls! Your Majesty, with the utmost respect, I request that someone else take your place. I don’t wish to give the Fae unfair advantage by revealing all this—and disgracing you. I don’t want to weaken your faction’s side. But I will have that peace treaty.”

  Ao Ji rose. Irene tried to stand in turn, but the cold pinned her in her chair; it had come on her inch by inch, and now it held her there, unable to muster the strength or warmth to move. “Enough,” he said. He reached into his jacket and removed a flat silver flask. “You know what this is, I think?”

  “I would guess that it is a potion which will prevent me from speaking,” Irene said. Her voice shook. She’d been forced to drink such a thing once before. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

  “Yes. You will be silent when we leave this room. I will say that you insulted me. My account of events will be believed, and I will have my servants take you into our custody. You will be kept safe. I honour your filial respect for your parents: that moves me to spare you.” He looked down at her from the distance of a thousand years of coldness. “But there will be no peace. I cannot allow that. And as for the note you think you have . . .”

  He reached down and slid it from under her fingers. “That will no longer be an issue.”

  “Your Majesty,” Irene said. “I beg you to change your mind before it is too late.”

  “It is already too late,” Ao Ji said. He unfolded the paper, casually inspecting it.

  When he spoke again, there was true anger in his voice. “What is this?”

  “A blank piece of paper,” Irene said. “Hotel stationery all looks very similar, doesn’t it?” She tried to work her hands together, to make her fingers move. She couldn’t. “But you thought it was the note. Which means you knew what it would look like. Your Majesty.”

  “What game is this?” His voice was not loud, but it made the windowpanes shiver in their sockets.

  The door opened. Irene managed to turn her head. Li Ming and Mei Feng were standing there, their faces frozen in simultaneous disapproval and judgement, and other figures waited behind them. She could finally breathe again, move again, her body thrumming with released tension. It had worked.

  And all I had to do was destroy Kai’s uncle. All I had to do was prove to Kai—someone who thinks family ties are everything, the most important loyalty that could possibly exist—that his uncle tried to kill him.

  There is nothing I could say that will ever make him forgive me for this.

  “Your Majesty,” Li Ming said. “We must speak urgently in private.”

  “Explain yourself,” Ao Ji said, still looking at Irene.

  Irene touched the collar of her coat, her fingers numb but functional now. “Your Majesty, I was wearing a wire when I came in here. Everything we said in this room has been heard by these nobles, and by others. It’s all very well to say that your account of events will be believed—but they’ve just heard the truth.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Ao Ji’s face was blank, as impassive as a clouded sky: he might have been trying to process what had just happened, or he might simply be choosing not to share his thoughts. He turned away, his shoulders and back stiff and unbending.

  Li Ming touched Irene’s shoulder, and the cold that had lapped around her faded. “Please leave us, Miss Winters,” he said. “There are matt
ers we must discuss in private.”

  Irene staggered to her feet. She knew that without her present numbness she would be shaking with released tension. But the part of her mind that reckoned political calculus decided Li Ming’s please was a positive sign. She jerked her head in a nod and began to move towards the door.

  Then Ao Ji turned again, raising his hand, and a roaring wave of whiteness swept through the room.

  Irene tried to blink. She couldn’t open her eyes. She was on the floor. She had fallen, somewhere between that moment of force and the terrible cold, and now. And she couldn’t get up. Her brain wasn’t processing things properly. It seemed to be stuttering, like a record jolting back over the same few notes again and again. She could hear wind and footsteps, and a distant shouting, but she couldn’t make herself focus on it. And she was so numb. Her cheek was pressed against the carpet, but she could barely feel the tickle of the fibres against her skin. There was some sort of weight across her back, a faint warmth against the surrounding cold, but even that was uncertain.

  The sound of the wind rose. She forced her eyes open, but for a moment she couldn’t interpret what she was seeing. Where there should have been wall and window and paintings, there was now an empty hole, a gap leading out into the open air and whirling snow. Between her and the outside storm was a tall figure wrapped in snow, his back to her, light catching on his hands as though they were sheathed in ice.

  He glanced back in Irene’s direction. Self-preservation seized her like a vice, and she let her eyes flicker closed, slowing her breathing to the minimum possible. It wasn’t hard. It was easy to relax into the cold, to lie there still and unmoving, to barely even think . . .

  Light seared her closed eyes. There was a sound like thunder, and then silence again.

  The noise of people shoving through the door was almost tame by comparison. There were too many voices. It was difficult to work out who was shouting what. She tried to open her eyes again, but it was harder this time. She was farther away from the room, farther away from everything. She was conscious of hands grabbing her, turning her over, someone’s fingers warm against the pulse in her neck, but everything seemed too much trouble for it to be worth waking up. Even the voices were unclear now, running into each other and blending into confusion.