The Masked City

by Genevieve Cogman

  Lady Guantes didn’t hesitate. ‘A better world for everyone.’

  ‘Really? When you may be about to kick off a war?’

  ‘The whole point is starting a war,’ Lady Guantes said firmly. She didn’t even try to dress up her reasoning as glamorous or attempt to weave a seduction, as one might expect from a Fae, but simply presented her case as the only obvious solution. ‘Our side may not win outright. But by the time we reach a truce, many more spheres will be under our influence. This will be good for the humans. It’ll be good for us. We’re not going to interfere with you - you’re welcome to go on stealing books on the sidelines. And do you really care about the dragons? More than caring about this single dragon, that is?’

  ‘I thought we were both going to be sensible,’ Irene said. ‘You can’t say you’re going to start a war and then suggest that I’m only here because I care about a single dragon. Just how immature do you think I am?’

  Lady Guantes shrugged. ‘True, that sort of narrow motivation is really the sort of thing I’d expect from the more highly focused of my own kind. Let’s consider a wider viewpoint.’ The gun didn’t waver. ‘You Librarians are interested in stealing books for your own purposes. Something to do with stabilizing worlds, I’ve heard. You’re not interested in allying with either us or the dragons, as all you want to do is collect stories. Stay out of our way and you won’t get hurt. You’ve got nothing to gain by meddling in this, Miss Winters.’

  Is she genuinely trying to convince me? And, if she’s playing for time, what’s she waiting for? ‘I have yet to see how it would benefit humans to live in a world such as this Venice,’ Irene replied.

  ‘Ask the people out there,’ Lady Guantes said. ‘They’re happy.’

  ‘They’re …’ For a moment, Irene wondered if she really should be talking about ‘humans’ as if she was somehow different from them. ‘But they’ve just become part of this place’s story. The moment one of your kind interacts with them, the humans lose their volition, their freedom. Their life. In your world, the humans are just background characters.’

  ‘But such happy background characters,’ Lady Guantes objected. ‘Oh, I admit that not all stories have happy endings, but people prefer what they’re used to. If you were to actually ask them, nine out of ten would prefer a storybook existence to a mechanistic universe where happy endings never happen.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Would you believe I actually organized a survey?’ Lady Guantes looked smug. ‘Not in this world, but I think my point holds. People want stories. You should know that, more than anybody. They want their lives to have meaning. They want to be part of something greater than themselves. Even you, Miss Winters, want to be a heroic Librarian - don’t you? And if you’re going to say that people need to have the freedom to be unhappy, something that’s forced on them whether they like it or not, I would question your motivation.’ She paused for a single deadly second. ‘Most people don’t want a brave new world. They want the story that they know.’

  ‘Thank you for explaining that,’ Irene said politely. ‘It really does help to understand your perspective on the situation.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Lady Guantes said. She shifted and glanced behind her, but too quickly for Irene to take advantage of the moment.

  ‘Basically, you’re utterly convinced of your own righteousness,’ Irene went on quickly. If Lady Guantes was waiting for reinforcements, then Irene was running out of time. ‘You’re a smug zealot who’s willing to destroy entire worlds in order to get what you want. And you want to control humanity, and have convinced yourself that they’d be happier that way. And what persuaded you to follow your foolhardy plan - was it Lord Guantes?’ She took a step forward.

  ‘Stay there!’ Lady Guantes ordered, her voice suddenly sharp for the first time. Her hands were rigid with tension through her gloves.

  ‘Why are you so nervous, madam?’ Irene gave her best smile of faint superiority, the one which conveyed - in spite of all evidence to the contrary - that she was totally in control. ‘Are you telling me that you and Lord Guantes aren’t equal partners? Where is he?’

  ‘Negotiating with the Council of Ten,’ Lady Guantes snapped. ‘Don’t come any closer!’

  ‘And you didn’t get invited too?’ Irene probed.

  The flash of fury in Lady Guantes’ face said it all. The emotion only showed for a moment, but it was there, as corrosive as acid. ‘My presence was not required,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps I should be the one offering you a job.’ Irene shifted her position again, a little closer. She was almost in range now. ‘After all, Silver said …’ She trailed off invitingly.

  ‘What did he say?’ Lady Guantes demanded.

  ‘We discussed you and Lord Guantes. Your power imbalance, that sort of thing.’ Irene spread her hands innocently. ‘He was the one who told me that you were nothing but a tool for your husband—’

  ‘That piece of vermin doesn’t understand, and could never understand!’ Lady Guantes cut her off. A high flush of anger gave her face colour, as Irene finally hit a nerve. ‘He sees everything through his own perspective. He doesn’t understand that, without me, my husband would never have been able to bring this to fruition. My husband understands that and he values me—’

  In one quick movement, Irene slapped the gun barrel aside.

  The gun went off. And the bullet thudded into a row of books somewhere behind Irene and to her right.

  The next few seconds were an undignified scuffle. Lady Guantes might be an excellent formal shot, but Irene had experience in informal fighting-dirty. She was left with the gun, and Lady Guantes was left nursing a wrenched finger and a stamped-on foot. ‘I could scream,’ she panted grimly.

  ‘You could,’ Irene said, ‘but that still leaves …’ She glanced down the corridor. No sign of anyone yet. ‘That leaves me holding you hostage. How important are you to the Ten, Lady Guantes?’

  Lady Guantes was silent. Not that important, apparently. Finally she said, ‘You’re making a mistake, Miss Winters.’

  Pure adrenaline was running through Irene’s veins. ‘I think of it more as disaster management,’ she answered. I could ask her where the Carceri are. But would she tell me, even if she knew? Even if I threatened to shoot her? It’s not worth revealing what I know. ‘Don’t try to follow me for a few minutes. For both our sakes, if you please.’

  Lady Guantes stepped back, signalling surrender. There was a very nasty set to her mouth, and the space between Irene’s shoulder-blades developed a whole new itch as she walked past the Fae. Does she have a knife, and is she about to use it? But there were no knives, no screams of warning and no shots from hidden second guns. However, every step out of the library took minutes off Irene’s life, as she scanned back and forth for pursuit or Fae backup.

  Finally she found her way out onto the piazzetta. Fantastically brilliant sunlight sprayed down on her and the crowd as she mingled with it and, just then, the sound of running feet came from the direction of the Doge’s Palace. It was easy to turn and look, since everyone else was turning to look, and she saw a squad of black-uniformed men trotting through the crowd, as bystanders melted out of their path. Walking briskly next to a man in gold-trimmed uniform, presumably their leader, was Sterrington.

  Irene sighed as she turned away. Well, clearly she hadn’t been quite as convincing last night as she’d thought. She couldn’t even blame Sterrington: after all, she was here to spy too.

  And now I’m trapped, if escaping via the Library isn’t an option … No, she would not let herself despair. She had a job to do, and just because one escape route had been ruled out didn’t mean that others didn’t exist.

  The alley rose into a bridge that crossed a small canal, and she looked down the canal towards the open water of the bay. The wide span of glittering water seemed to stretch out forever, but across it lay the black line of the Train and its impossible railway.

  I need an escape route. The Rider might not help m
e … but what about the Horse?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  At first Irene had expected that people would be shunning the Train and its platform like a plague ship complete with rats. But as she came closer, she saw that a steady stream of visitors was forming a busy crowd around it.

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ she asked the middle-aged woman next to her in the crowd. The woman was clutching a tray of lace kerchiefs to her bosom, and her greying hair was pinned back with merciless precision under a cap of the same lace.

  The woman shrugged. ‘Some new ship from out down by the Sicilies, I heard. They topped it with metal because of the volcanoes.’

  Irene nodded meaninglessly. ‘And all those rich folk on board must have money to spend.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ the woman asked. Now that she was actually looking at Irene, her eyes were uncomfortably shrewd. ‘You don’t sound local.’

  Probably not. Irene had learned her spoken Italian from an Austrian who’d learned the language in Rome. The best she could hope for in terms of Italian accent was ‘unidentifiable’. ‘My brother Roberto and I used to live in Rome,’ she invented.

  ‘Rome.’ The other woman turned up her nose a little. ‘Well, I suppose people have to live somewhere.’

  Irene quickly lost her in the press of the crowd, to her relief. That was the problem with asking questions - people asked them back.

  It was easy to mingle with the people moving forward to ogle the Train, and a simple matter to file out onto the platform and join the vendors supplying the crowd of curious townsfolk there. It really did seem to be a bit of a tourist attraction. And the Train itself stood quiet and ominous, the sun gleaming brilliantly on its dark steel body and flashing off the windows.

  Irene pushed herself forward, insinuating herself through the mob. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to a man with a tray full of pastries. ‘Pardon me.’ She circled round an elderly gentleman offering a set of supposedly holy relics, and found herself pressed up against one of the Train’s doors.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to nobody in particular, and tried the handle. It turned smoothly, and she stepped up inside the Train with a sigh of relief, quickly closing the door behind her.

  It had changed. Now the corridor was all smooth ebony panelling and dark pewter metalwork, and the windows were shaded glass - so dark-toned that it was barely possible to see outside. And all sounds from outside were cut off. The flood of people ebbed and surged silently outside, their faces and hands like pale froth on the surface of a shadowy sea.

  Irene took a deep breath. It was time to do something thoroughly reckless. ‘My name is Irene,’ she said in the Language. ‘I am a servant of the Library. I would like to speak with the Horse.’

  Her words echoed in the carriage corridor like whip cracks and left a tense silence behind.

  Come on, come on - at least be curious enough to find out what’s going on …

  With a sound like an exhalation, the door at the far end of the corridor slid open, moving smoothly in its grooves. It was probably the closest thing to an invitation that she was going to get.

  Irene began walking down the carriage towards it, but couldn’t reach it. The carriage was longer than it should be - not seemingly longer, but actually longer, stretching out without any clear markers of distance or space. She always seemed the same distance from the door, but never made any progress.

  All right. Perhaps this was a test. Was it like every other Fae she’d had to deal with here, wanting to interact with her on its own terms? Through a fictional lens? As a story? But this time she was going to tell the story.

  ‘I know how these tales go,’ she said, still walking, slipping back out of the Language and into English again. ‘The woman buys nine pairs of iron shoes, and nine iron loaves, and nine iron staves, and she walks the length and breadth of the earth until the shoes are all worn through, and the staves are as thin as matchsticks, and she has eaten up every last scrap of the loaves, and only then does she find what she is looking for. But this is a different story.’

  The door was abruptly ten paces closer. Still out of reach. But closer.

  ‘Once, in a long-distant state, there was a horse that galloped across land and sea … ‘ Irene began. She remembered the story well enough from Aunt Isra’s gathering. It was a standard myth, and that was part of its power. She kept on walking as she recited the story, and the door still stayed the same distance away: too far for her to reach, but close enough to tantalize.

  Finally she came to the end. ‘From world to world he rides, from the gates of story to the shores of dream, until the world is changed and the horse is freed.’ She let the words hang in the air for a moment. ‘Until the horse is freed, the story says, which means that there must come a point when the horse is freed. And it must mean that the horse can be freed.’

  The door jumped forward again in another blink of perspective. It was right in front of Irene now, almost close enough for her to walk through, but every step kept it one pace ahead of her.

  Cold sweat trickled down her back. It’s listening to me. I’d better be able to give it what I’m promising, or this particular narrative is going to get very messy, very fast.

  ‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘in this story the heroine doesn’t necessarily know exactly how to free the horse. But the horse can usually point her in the right direction. Removing a collar, for instance, or undoing a bridle. And of course there’s usually a reason why the heroine wants to free the horse. You only get a kind-hearted heroine who unties the horse just because it looks unhappy in certain stories. I don’t think this is one of those stories.’

  The door stayed at the same distance from her.

  ‘So, the story … ‘ Irene stopped walking. Without the sound of her footsteps, the corridor was even more ominously silent. ‘The young woman was in a strange land, and she looked around for help, for …’ It should have been her true love - that would have been one of the standard modes for a story of this type - but that wasn’t true of her and Kai. Even if there was wishful thinking on that subject. But that didn’t matter. She couldn’t risk a lie. Not if she was speaking in the Language.

  ‘The king’s son had been stolen, and she had come across land and sea to find him, in borrowed shoes and a borrowed dress, with no true friend at her side.’ The words stung in her mouth, true in their way, yet also just a story. It was like eating sherbet and feeling it pop in her mouth and rattle in her skull and ears. Her head was buzzing with it. ‘And she said, “I shall rescue him from the prison where they have kept him, and together we shall flee from his enemies and stop a war.” But she was sore afraid, for the whole city would rise to pursue them, once the king’s son was free from his prison.’

  It was harder now. Irene had never tried this before, never thought of trying it before. But the Language was a tool, and her will was behind it, and this place was fragile, weak, easy to force. She wasn’t telling any lies. She was just telling the truth in a different way. ‘And as she walked down to the sea, she saw a chained and bridled horse, and said, “Would that I were as swift as you, so that we could escape!” And then the horse spoke to her, saying …’

  It was as if she’d been playing a violin solo before, and now the rest of the orchestra came in on the beat, in a sudden weight of music that pushed down on her and shuddered through her body. She flung out her arms to either side to brace herself on the walls of the passage, struggling for breath as the crushing pressure seemed to catch at her chest, forcing her to breathe in its rhythm. The air in the passage shivered like the surface of a drum.

  ‘FREE ME FROM MY BRIDLE AND REINS,’ the voice shuddered around her, so loudly that she could barely make out the separate words, ‘AND I SHALL BEAR YOU OVER LAND AND SEA TO YOUR OWN HOME.’

  Irene was opening her mouth to say yes without even thinking about it, carried along by the flow of the story, but then she dug in her mental heels and struggled to form different words. She had to set up this bargain to
get what she needed. Once it was struck, there would be no chance to go back and renegotiate. Although the Train was still and unmoving, the sound of spinning wheels and clanging engines echoed in her ears, as if it was straining to haul some distant weight. ‘Most noble horse,’ she finally forced out. ‘I thank you for your offer. I beg that you allow me to go and find the prince and, when I return with him, I will free you. And you will bear us both back to the land from which we came.’

  She’d been afraid of chaos contamination before. She’d been touched by it in the past, had it running in her veins, and it had nearly crippled her before she’d forced it out. What would it do to her, if she made a bargain with this creature?

  ‘YES …’ the voice breathed around her, in a vast exhalation that physically tore at her hair and clothing, dragging her forward so she could no longer keep her balance, but went stumbling through the doorway before her into the next carriage. Her back, her wrists and the pendant round her neck all seemed to be burning. Her Library brand, Silver’s bracelets and the pendant from Kai’s uncle - each objects of power in their own way - were struggling with the new bond she had willingly undertaken. She wasn’t in a train carriage, she was falling into darkness, and she was burning …

  I have to limit this. Irene was on her knees, but she couldn’t quite remember why, and she was shaking so hard that it was physically painful. ‘And then we will part and go our own ways,’ she rasped, her voice strange even to her own ears, ‘free of all obligation, and with no further bonds between us!’

  The pressure lifted a little, and any release was a blessed relief: Irene’s perceptions became functional again. She was almost in pain, but not quite.

  She stole a glance down to her wrists, where the gold chains of the bracelets showed under the cuffs of her dress. No physical burns. The sensible part of her mind hadn’t really expected any, but she had to be sure.

  There was now a mask lying on the carriage floor in front of her. It was one of the white full-face masks, with the eyes outlined in black and gold, and lips painted on in red.