“As in there was nothing left of those Fae?” Irene said, hoping against hope that this dragon queen wasn’t as ruthless as some.
Kai avoided her eyes. “As in there was nothing left of those worlds afterwards. It was very conducive to peace and good order.”
They make a wilderness and call it peace. Irene nodded, not wanting to get into a discussion of ends, means, omelettes, and broken eggs. “Go on.”
“Her attitude mostly carries over to her court,” Kai continued. “That is, the senior members of the court are quite lenient about original behaviour by their juniors, just so long as the job actually gets done, and done well. She tolerates members of both the war and the peace factions, though I think that herself she’s more inclined to peace. She is on good terms with my uncle Ao Shun, the King of the Northern Ocean, and my father too. And she has companied with both of them in the past to bear children.” He paused for a moment, hearing his own words. “At separate times, of course,” he added hastily.
“Is she actually on bad terms with anyone?” Irene asked.
“Not as such,” Kai said, considering the question. “But she gets on less well than most with my uncle Ao Ji—you haven’t met him, he’s the Dragon King of the Western Ocean. He is rigid in his opinions.”
Irene could live without meeting any more dragon kings. One had been quite enough. “And are there any significant troubles in her court?”
Kai began to speak, then stopped. For half a minute he was silent. Finally he said, “Irene, we’ve always been good at navigating conversations that might compromise my family’s interests. But that involves me not disclosing this sort of information. It helps us deal with . . .” He gestured vaguely.
“With the fact that I’m a Librarian and you’re a dragon. And, ultimately, neither of us wants to compromise our family or our occupation?” Irene suggested.
Kai nodded. “I don’t want to cross that line.” But his tone suggested that he would very much like an excuse to share his thoughts on whatever it was.
Irene frowned. She considered the previous evening’s events. “There’s something going on that could seriously compromise the Library,” she finally said. “But it could compromise one or more dragons too.”
“If it’s in those dragons’ interests, I could at least give you the broad details,” Kai said, relaxing. “Yes, then, there is significant news. One of Her Majesty’s most senior ministers was assassinated a month ago. Ya Yu’s court is in turmoil.”
“Assassinated?” Irene said sharply. “Not retired?”
“No, definitely assassinated,” Kai said. “It’s a matter of high scandal. I don’t know who’s been accused. Unless it’s the Fae, of course. They could easily be guilty of an action like that.”
“And what are the implications of this assassination, besides the minister’s death?”
“In terms of high politics?” Kai hesitated again. “You understand that I’m not likely to be told about that sort of thing. I may be of royal blood, but I am a youngest son, my mother was not of high rank, and I hold no current position. And even if I did know . . .”
“You’d be expected to keep your mouth shut about it?” Irene guessed.
Kai nodded. “Thank you for understanding. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to tell you that Her Majesty is filling the minister’s position with . . .” He looked for the right words. “Unexpected haste. Usually that sort of thing takes years, especially as it’s such a key position. But this time the new appointment will be announced within five days.”
“And who’s taking the minister’s place?”
“That’s the interesting thing. There are two candidates, who have been set a number of highly challenging tests. The rumour is that the queen’s set them a final private task to show their abilities.”
“What happens to the loser?” Irene asked. Somehow she doubted there was a runners-up prize.
Kai stared over her shoulder, as he did when explaining something he found completely natural, but knew Irene was likely to have issues with. “Well, their family will be embarrassed, so naturally the loser will have to make amends. The most appropriate demonstration of apology would be to commit suicide . . . Of course, self-exile is an option, but I can’t imagine anyone actually doing that.” His tone made it clear that he thought suicide would be far less painful for any dragon than cutting himself off from court, family, and kindred. “But there will certainly be consequences.”
“Damn,” Irene said. She held her cup out for more tea. “I was really hoping I was being paranoid.”
Then she stopped. “We need to get out of here right now.”
Kai could have hesitated, or asked her what she meant, but instead he set down his cup and rose to his feet. “Do we need to take anything with us?”
“Just coats and money,” Irene said, “and we go out the back way, in case the front is watched. I’ll explain in a few minutes, but we can’t risk staying here.”
• • •
Five minutes later they were sitting in a small café down the street, from which they could watch the front door of their lodgings. Irene didn’t let herself relax. If her guess was wrong, then they’d just wasted time and effort, but if she was right . . .
“You said you’d explain,” Kai reminded her.
Irene ran through last night’s events, from Jin Zhi’s arrival onwards, and Kai’s eyes narrowed as he listened.
“Sounds like the descriptions I’ve heard of Jin Zhi,” he finally said. “And yes, she is one of the candidates for Minister Zhao’s position. I’ve never actually met her. It’s a pity I wasn’t there.”
“The whole thing was very carefully timed to make sure you weren’t there,” Irene said sourly. “Which is why we’re sitting here now.”
Kai raised an eyebrow.
“Jin Zhi let me walk away with the details of the book because she knew you were visiting your family,” Irene said quietly. “And therefore she knew I couldn’t discuss how explosive this situation really was. If her spies were watching you that closely, she would think—as I did—that you’d be there for a few days longer. Now, tell me, what’s likely to happen if she finds that you came back early—and that we’re having an informative little conversation like this?”
Kai’s eyes narrowed. “She can’t afford to take any further risks—the stakes of the competition are so high. You know too much, and you might be a threat. Which suggests there’s more going on than she said.”
Irene nodded. “I may be overreacting, but she probably knows our address, and I don’t want to take any risks.” She yawned.
Kai looked at her thoughtfully. “How much sleep did you get last night?”
“Not enough.” After she’d left Jin Zhi, Irene had quietly slipped out of the hotel’s back entrance and found somewhere else to spend the night. And she’d had to get up early to catch a zeppelin down to London; it was faster than the train, and she’d wanted to save time.
There had been nightmares too, about burning books and destroyed Libraries. Perfectly reasonable nightmares, based on the events of not long ago. But she wasn’t going to discuss them.
“I dislike the fact that she treated you like a servant,” Kai commented. His voice had an undertone to it that promised reprisals.
“Leave it for the moment,” Irene said wearily. “I’m not going to waste my time feeling insulted. And don’t you think we’ve got more serious problems to consider? Much more serious problems?”
“You’re a Librarian-in-Residence,” Kai said firmly. “And you’re a Librarian, anyhow. That gives you a diplomatic ranking that any proper court would recognize. She behaved as if your honour was for sale. That sort of attitude is politically unwise. I don’t like what it says about her.”
“Let’s get back to what Jin Zhi said, then,” Irene said. “Assuming it was Jin Zhi and not just another gold dragon
posing as her in order to confuse the issue. If she’s telling the truth and her rival’s enlisted another Librarian—who is her rival, by the way?”
“Qing Song,” Kai said. “I only know the basics about both of them. Neither has any particular scandals to their name. I could try to find out more . . . if you don’t mind it being known that I’m asking questions.”
“When you say ‘basics,’ how far does that go?” Irene asked.
“The key word I kept on hearing about Jin Zhi was gracious,” Kai said slowly. “Always courteous, always reasonable. Very much like the person you met, when she was being pleasant to you. Generous to her servants, amiable to her allies, polite even to her adversaries. Only loses her temper on rare occasions. Very good at playing the piano,” he added as an afterthought. “But . . . unobjectionable. A convenient candidate. No real enemies.”
“She sounds too good to be true.”
Kai shrugged. “It can happen.”
“Or just good at covering her tracks?” Irene asked.
Kai frowned. “That’s a good point. Li Ming’s cousin had said she’s much less public than most of her rank about her activities and relationships. There might be something that she doesn’t want people to know.”
“Other than contacting Librarians on her own?”
“Yes, normally one would have a servant do that,” Kai agreed. “Still, she’s certainly competent. She passed all the other challenges the queen set. If she is doing something behind the scenes, that doesn’t necessarily make her flawed.”
Irene nodded. “And Qing Song?” Half of her attention was outside. Nobody had tried to approach their lodgings or do anything she could interpret as suspicious, but her instincts were still on the alert, from years of experience. She and Kai needed to stay out of sight.
“Oh, he has the experience,” Kai said. “Three times now he and his servants have stopped Fae infiltration of worlds under his control. Though, to be technically accurate, one of those worlds was under a cousin’s lordship. There was some criticism there. The cousin should have dealt with it himself, or should at least have asked for help before Qing Song stepped in.” He thought about it. “A stern personality, Li Ming said, but not unjust. A firm hand in rulership and in punishment. Someone with strong expectations of the world around him, who might react badly if those expectations weren’t met. A lord who expects other dragons to respect his territory and property.”
Irene frowned. “Was that a warning from Li Ming? It sounds like one.” If Ao Shun wanted a warning dropped unobtrusively in his nephew’s ear, Li Ming would be the logical conduit.
“I didn’t think so at the time.” Kai paused, considering. “But why should it be? Why would he even think I’d go anywhere near Qing Song? He knows I’m with you at the moment.”
“And he knows I’m a Librarian,” Irene said. “I wonder how many other people have heard that Qing Song might be employing a Librarian?” Her stomach knotted in foreboding. If these rumours had already spread, then the situation might have passed the point where it could be disproved. And people were more than ready to believe gossip. There was no time to lose. She had to find out if this was true—and if it was, then she had to stop it. Or the Library was in grave danger.
“All right. Let’s consider this,” she finally said. “I’ve been approached by someone who was definitely a dragon, no doubt about that, and who claimed to be Jin Zhi, and who claimed that her rival—Qing Song, you say—was being helped by another Librarian to get this book. The approach was made at a time when you definitely wouldn’t be there.”
Kai nodded. “The timing’s too exact for it to be an accident.”
Irene considered the possible political fall-out. “Now, this could all be an attempt to slander Qing Song. Or it could be a bid to get Jin Zhi in trouble, by having someone posing as her. Or it could be someone else wanting to drag the Library into this. Or a Librarian could really be colluding with a dragon. In which case, it might only be a matter of time till the word gets out that Librarians are running errands for dragons and assisting with high-stakes political manoeuvres. At which point other dragons and Fae both start hunting us down—as tools or enemies. And that is a point I don’t want to reach.” Saying it made it all the more dreadfully plausible. She looked at Kai. “You know dragon court politics better than I do. Would you say any of these options are particularly likely? Or unlikely?”
“I don’t know enough to say.” Kai leaned forward, steepling his fingers in a gesture that Irene recognized as one that he’d borrowed from Vale. “Any of them are possible.”
“And am I compromising you by discussing this with you?” Irene wanted to be absolutely clear on this. Dragging Kai in might make things even worse.
“No, I think it’s fine—for the moment,” Kai said slowly. “I don’t have any personal ties to that court. I’m not telling you anything that isn’t reasonably common knowledge. And my own father doesn’t have a horse in the race himself.”
Irene nodded. “Then we come back to the question of whether this collusion is real, and whether Qing Song does in fact have a Librarian helping him.”
“It could be a personal friendship,” Kai said. “Like ours.”
“If that was so, then the Librarian shouldn’t have let it go this far,” Irene said quietly, “and they shouldn’t have let themselves be found out. You and I have managed to get by, Kai, because technically you’re helping me, and I’m not playing dragon politics. If Qing Song is in cahoots with this Librarian—call them X—and it becomes publicly known, that way danger lies. And if X gives Qing Song the book that lets him get Minister Zhao’s position, then Librarians become tools for hire. They become servants. And they become generally known as allies of the dragons, which means they’re automatically enemies of the Fae. Not to mention that if we support one dragon family or faction, then we make enemies of the others. The Library survives in the middle. We are not on anyone’s side. If X exists and has done what Jin Zhi says they have, then X has just put Librarians in danger across all the alternate worlds.”
And if I’m not careful, I might do the same. Because how long could she go on like this with Kai before someone accused them—wrongly—of exactly the same thing?
Kai reached across to take her hand. “You worry too much about possible implications,” he said.
She looked up to see understanding in his eyes. He was getting to know her far too well. “It’s part of my job to worry,” she said, trying to make a joke of it. Trying to reassure herself as much as she was trying to reassure him. “I am supposed to be your mentor, after all. Management positions always come with ulcers attached. But this is serious. If it’s real, then it’s much more dangerous than just one Librarian doing a favour for one dragon.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s not borrow trouble till it’s actually here. What do you think we should do next?”
Irene pulled herself together. She had a metaphorical hand grenade in her lap, and she needed to work out what to do with it. “Do we have a time limit?” she asked. “You said earlier that the announcement of the new minister would be within five days. Does that mean they have five days left to find the book, or less than that?”
Kai pursed his lips, thinking. “Call it three days. Four at the maximum.”
“And if neither of them brings the book to the queen?”
Kai shrugged. “I don’t know, but the queen will be displeased, even if she awards the position to the one she considers less incompetent. Both of them will have disgraced their families. This sort of post won’t be vacant again for centuries. Both the candidates have put their reputation and their families’ good names at stake in order to compete for this position. I think you can expect both of them to be willing to try anything to avoid losing.” His eyes darkened at the thought of what that anything might involve.
Irene was about to reply when one of the cabs rattli
ng down the street outside drew to a stop outside their lodgings. “Well, damn,” she said softly. “I’d been hoping I was wrong.”
Kai followed her glance. “It might be someone else,” he said.
“It might,” Irene agreed. The two of them watched as the cab-driver swung down and held the cab-door open for the occupants to emerge. Jin Zhi was quite recognizable, even from across the street and through the café window, though the two men with her—the two large men—were strangers. “But it isn’t.”
“We could confront her,” Kai suggested.
“She might take it badly. And there are so many breakable things around here.” Like most of London, for a start. Irene had never witnessed a fight between dragons, and she didn’t want to start now. “Right now I need a lot more information, and that means visiting the Library.”
“And leaving through the café’s backdoor before she sees us?”
“I like backdoors,” Irene said.
CHAPTER 4
Kai was brooding as Irene led the way to a small local library. “Perhaps I should visit my contacts while you’re checking inside the Library,” he finally offered. “It’d save time. We could meet up afterwards and compare notes.”
“It might take too long for us to reconnect,” Irene said. “I did consider it, but what if you ended up being delayed for days, and I had no way of finding you? Or what if I was held up in the Library, since you can’t access it without me?”
“I suppose you’re right,” Kai said reluctantly. “I wish I knew why it works that way.”
The Lost Plot Page 4