The Lost Plot

by Genevieve Cogman

  “Why it works which way?” She showed her library card to the man at the front desk and was waved past. The main room was a comparatively tiny place with a very small selection of books, with a few doors off it leading to offices and storage. It had been built quite recently and it clearly showed it, with clock-work shelf extrusions and cheap wrought-iron girders, rather than the wood and stone of older libraries in London.

  “Why I can go to other alternate worlds, assuming they aren’t too high in chaos, and find people I know—but I can’t reach the Library.” Kai glanced around the room. “No witnesses,” he added, in the same quiet tone of voice.

  Irene couldn’t help thinking that if some of the more powerful and less friendly dragons could reach the Library that way, it would have a much harder time maintaining its independence. “And something I’ve been wondering,” she said, “is whether Jin Zhi will be able to find me in future, whatever world I’m in. She did hint at it, but she might have been bluffing.”

  “It’s . . . unlikely,” Kai said. “It’s not usually the sort of thing we can do after a single meeting. Besides, she couldn’t even sense you at the end of the street, drinking coffee.”

  Irene nodded. “So Jin Zhi couldn’t get me looking for the book, so that she could drop in on me once I’d found it.”

  “She might regret it if she did,” Kai said casually. “Interference with another dragon’s, ah . . .” He gave Irene a sideways look, and she could almost see the words property, possessions, and servants being considered and discarded. “Interests. That sort of thing could even be a duelling offence.”

  Irene came to a stop in front of a side door to the building’s cellars and focused her mind on the Language. “Open to the Library,” she said, grasping the handle.

  On the other side there was now a spacious, well-lit room, floored and walled in steel, its shelves overfilled with irregular-looking books. She gestured Kai in, then shut the door behind her, feeling the portal close. Anyone trying to follow them from the alternate world they’d just left would only find the building’s cellars. The Library could be reached solely by Librarians—and a very good thing too.

  “Irish sagas,” Kai said, checking a small sign that dangled from one shelf. “World designation A-529, copied from ogham script.” He looked around at the handbound volumes, and at the stacks of computer printout and handwritten parchment piled on the floor. “That must have been a lot of transcription work for someone.”

  Irene shrugged. “Well, it’s easier than bringing a pile of carved sticks or logs into the Library. When we’re on a job for the Library, we only need a copy of the story in question, not the actual original. For which I’m deeply grateful. All right, next stage: find a computer. Preferably find two computers, so we can both do some research.”

  She led the way into the corridor outside. Paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling shrouded electric light bulbs, diffusing a soft light that caught sparks from the granite walls and floor. There were no windows in this corridor, only a long sequence of doors in either direction. Dust had gathered in the corners, and the air hung still and silent.

  The next few minutes were spent peering into rooms piled with fascinating stacks of books, not finding any computers, and resisting the urge to stay and investigate anyway. This was the sort of thing that made Irene wish she had more free time—or, come to think of it, any free time at all to spend in the Library.

  Since getting the job of Librarian-in-Residence to “her” alternate world, she’d been kept constantly on the go. Not only had there been a queue of missions to collect various books from that world, but she’d also needed to make certain arrangements. Setting up secondary identities, arranging places for visiting Librarians to stay, assembling handouts on current history, secret societies, etiquette, and so on. She’d avoided involving Vale, though a detective’s connections with the underworld would have been invaluable. But as Vale was an ardent supporter of the law, explaining the need for her colleagues to come into his world to covertly “acquire” books would not have gone down well. She just hoped the two sides of her life wouldn’t be in conflict anytime soon.

  “Found one!” Kai called. “No, found several!”

  “Coming!” Irene answered, and hurried to join him.

  The room in question had a whole ring of computers around the central table, and was clearly the research nexus for the area. A pile of research notes in the middle was gathering dust. Irene commandeered some plain paper and a pen, passing it to Kai. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do. Jin Zhi couldn’t tell me the name of the world where the target book is located, in the terminology Librarians use. And I was hardly going to let her take me there. So she gave me as much information as she had about the world and the relevant version of Journey to the West. Now I’m going to drop Coppelia a quick email and warn her about the situation. You’re going to research the book while I search for the world, and then we’ll compare notes. We’re looking to find a place that matches Jin Zhi’s description, and which also contains the correct edition of the book. Right?”

  “Right,” Kai said, dropping down in one of the chairs. “So—the book is Journey to the West. And according to Jin Zhi, the plot contains higher-than-usual amounts of political satire, and a vastly increased plot for the dragon. And almost all copies were confiscated by the Chinese state at the time, due to this political satire. Anything else?”

  “I wish there had been,” Irene said, seating herself more carefully. “Go for it! Best of luck.”

  Her email to Coppelia was answered almost immediately. That in itself was worrying. Kai came round to read the response over her shoulder.

  You do keep getting yourself into trouble, don’t you, Irene?

  Now, that was totally unwarranted.

  I’m currently in the middle of something else extremely serious, I’m afraid. Other ongoing projects, and you’re not the only fish in the sea. But you’re right—this could be very bad indeed. So I want you to take this directly to Library Security—which is what I’d do anyway. I’ll arrange a transfer shift from your current location to the central lifts in an hour’s time, command word unreliable. Take a lift down. You’ll need to speak to Melusine, and I’ll let her know you’re coming.

  “I’ve never been down to Library Security before,” Kai said. He sounded a little too enthusiastic about it.

  “Nor have I,” Irene admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve never done anything that warranted it, that’s why not. You really don’t want to get involved with Library Security, Kai.”

  Hopefully this will be a false alarm, but be very careful if it isn’t.

  Coppelia

  Irene sighed. “Right. We have an hour’s deadline. Back on the job.”

  She and Kai settled into their research. The Library files on alternate worlds varied in terms of how much information they contained, but they usually had at least basic history and socio-politics. She could rule out at least half the possible worlds. Jin Zhi had been clear that the book’s world of origin didn’t contain magic—or at least none that actually worked. (There would always be people who claimed to be able to use magic, whether it worked or not.)

  Jin Zhi’s notes had said America was the dominant power in the target world, driven by a huge surge in American exceptionalism and manifest destiny, and all that sort of stuff, in the early nineteenth century. It had broken away from Britain, but without civil wars before or after. China had been invaded by various powers and was a collection of warring states. Europe was barely hanging together, merged into a quivering mass, mostly controlled by a republic centred in France. (Previously on good terms with America, currently shifting to a who’s-going-to-invade-first basis.) Africa and Australia were both off on their own and doing quite nicely for themselves, thank you very much. And nobody at all was on Antarctica, except possibly penguins. Some mass-communicati
ons technology, telephones, radio, and so on. Heavy criminal activity in America, Europe, and Britain, serious enough that Jin Zhi had thought it worth mentioning as a background detail. Electricity, but no nuclear power. Contraception. Lots of guns.

  Irene rubbed her forehead as she noted down possible alternate worlds that would fit the description. She hated guns. They were so unreliable. A stray bullet could hit anyone.

  After much data sifting, and with fifteen minutes to go, the Library records had revealed four potential alternate worlds. She raised her head from the computer screen to look across at Kai. “Any luck?”

  “Still checking,” Kai muttered.

  Kai went back to his half of the research, and Irene pulled up the Encyclopaedia function on her own screen. This bit of the Library archives didn’t relate to worlds or to books, but to Fae and dragons. It was a compendium of information contributed by Librarians in the field, heavily biased and full of personal opinion, so it wasn’t necessarily reliable. On the other hand, it was better than nothing.

  She wanted to be doing something. Time was limited, the stakes were high, and there was no knowing what Jin Zhi might do when she found out that Irene had slipped away. Irene tried not to think about what might happen if Jin Zhi held a grudge. She might have to retire her Irene Winters, freelance translator, friend of Vale identity permanently. That would be a shame. She liked being Irene Winters.

  As it was, the upcoming meeting with Security loomed in her mind. They had a reputation of the scorched-earth type. If they were involved, then it was because a Librarian had done something bad enough to warrant extreme punitive action. Even though Irene had a relatively clear conscience at the moment, she didn’t like the thought of willingly marching into their jaws.

  Five minutes later she was tapping her pen on the notepaper and muttering to herself. Nothing on Jin Zhi, and nothing on Qing Song—or at least, not under those names. Nothing personal on the Queen of the Southern Lands, though there was a twenty-year-old listing of her ministers and various worlds where she had influence. Irene sent that document to the printer, frowning. Something Kai had said earlier was nagging at her . . . they were supported by their families, that was it. “Kai, can you tell me anything about the families of our two candidates?”

  “Jin Zhi is of the Black Mountains family, and Qing Song is of the Winter Forest—” Kai started.

  Irene held up a finger to pause him. “Kai, I meant to ask this earlier. All the references to oceans, lands, mountains, forests—is this a translation issue? Does it mean something different to dragons?”

  “Yes,” Kai said, drawing the word out slowly. “But it’s not exactly a translation issue. I’ve carried you between worlds before now, so you know that dragons perceive the way the worlds are placed differently from humans.”

  Irene nodded, remembering an endless blue space with countless currents flowing through it in deeper shades: like a sea raised into the sky, or a sky as deep as the oceans. “Yes, that’s true. All I could see was colour and emptiness. But you saw—no, you perceived—it differently?”

  “Right. But I’m sorry, there aren’t human words to express it.” Kai spread his hands helplessly. “It’s something we have to learn through experience. And we refer to some areas within and between worlds as oceans, or lands, or mountains or forests, or rivers, because those are the terms that we associate with our perceptions of those places. And that’s why some families or some kingdoms have the names they do, because they refer to a particular world or group of worlds. Earth references are generally more orderly places, and water references are less orderly. Other than that, I can’t give you convenient translations.”

  “Well, drat,” Irene said. “So much for my hopes of learning a new language and expanding my perceptions.”

  That coaxed a faint smile from Kai. “I regret being the one to tell you this, but even languages can’t do everything.”

  “Hush,” Irene said, raising a finger to her lips. “That’s heresy here. Anyhow, Black Mountains and Winter Forest families, right?”

  “Precisely. And no, the two families don’t get on well at all. They’re not exactly enemies, but if they’re involved in a political matter, then they’ll be on opposite sides.”

  Irene tried a few searches on those terms. She did wonder, occasionally, if she should be grilling Kai for information on every dragon he knew and then putting it down in the database. But that would put Kai in an impossible position.

  “There’s something here about the Winter Forest family,” she said in surprise, as it appeared on the screen in front of her.

  Kai was on his feet and peering over her shoulder before she could even consider the protocol of his reading Librarians’ comments on other dragons. “What does it say?” he asked.

  “As you can see,” she said drily, “the author approves of them.”

  Honourable, reliable, and consistent. Open to negotiation and willing to come to terms over the ownership of certain books, in return for information about Fae, the note said.

  “Qing Song isn’t usually described as open to negotiation,” Kai said doubtfully.

  “Perhaps they were dealing with a different family member,” Irene suggested. She checked the author. “It was entered by someone called Julian, not anyone I’ve ever met . . .” She followed the link on his name. “And unfortunately he’s unavailable to ask, due to having died a few weeks ago. Heart attack.”

  “The timing’s . . . interesting,” Kai said. His tone was very neutral, suggesting that he didn’t want to be the first one to jump to paranoid conclusions. “Since that would have been about the time the search for the book began.”

  “I’ll mark it as background,” Irene said, noting it down. Let Security be paranoid: that was their job. “How’s your research on the book going?”

  “I have three possible worlds for the book,” Kai said proudly. “A-15, A-395, A-658.”

  “And I’ve got four for the world.” Irene checked her list and tapped her finger against the second. “And one of mine is A-658. We have a match!” For a moment the pure joy of successful research made her forget why they were investigating. Then the implications caught up with her. “So Jin Zhi’s story could well be true.”

  She checked her watch. “And it’s time to get that transfer shift. Come on.”

  • • •

  Irene and Kai emerged from the transfer shift cabinet into the vaguely central area of the Library. This collection of rooms sprawled over several miles, and was widely believed to be expanding at moments when people weren’t paying attention. It included vital areas such as the main classrooms for new trainees, the sets of rooms belonging to elder Librarians who couldn’t walk far, and the main sorting points for incoming books collected from their native alternate worlds. As such, the area was moderately busy, and Irene and Kai nodded to various other Librarians or trainees as they passed.

  “Over there,” Irene said, nodding to the main lift-shafts. They ranged in size from heavy steel-walled lifts large enough to hold a lorry full of books, to little one-person lifts with brass fold-across lattice doors. “Pick a lift. Any lift. As far as I know, they all go down to Security, if necessary.”

  “If you’ve never been down there, how do you know?” Kai asked. He led the way to a moderately sized lift, one large enough to squeeze in half a dozen other people besides them.

  “Well, that’s what I was told,” Irene admitted. She scrutinized the bank of buttons inside. They were labelled with a variety of floor names and numbers, but none actually read Security. After a moment she gave up and pressed the one labelled Basement.

  The door slid shut, sealing the two of them inside the lift. The ceiling light flickered. Irene saw Kai twitch out of the corner of her eye, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. A pointed jab of memory reminded her that it wasn’t that long since he’d been locked in a prison cell
, waiting to be auctioned. “I hope it’s not too far down—” she began.

  “State basement level,” an automated voice intoned from the ceiling, with all the warmth and charm of a railway-station announcer.

  Irene suppressed her own twitch. “Er, Security?” she said hopefully.

  The light went out.

  The lift began to fall.

  CHAPTER 5

  Irene’s stomach dropped along with the lift as it fell down into darkness. There was absolutely no light, not even a fraction of a gleam on the lift metalwork or a glimmer in the overhead bulb. Her ears popped as the pressure changed. She reached out in sheer terror for something to hold on to, and caught hold of Kai.

  He braced her, his body firm against her, the only thing she could be sure of in the pitch blackness. But he was shaking too, bone-deep shuddering that spoke of panic on the verge of breaking loose.

  What went wrong? The thoughts shrieked in her head. Did I say the wrong thing? Is this some sort of security measure? What happens when we hit the bottom?

  And then, abruptly, it all stopped. The lift came to a halt gently, as if it had been coasting down at a rate of mere inches per minute, rather than miles per second, and the light came on.

  Sanity dribbled back into Irene’s mind. She tentatively detached her fingers from Kai’s shoulders. But it was harder to avoid looking at him, and she realized she was blushing. All her long-held principles about being in loco parentis were apparently much easier to crack than she’d thought. It simply took a dose of panic and here she was, clinging to him like the worst sort of romantic damsel, and wishing she could do more than just cling.

  He was holding on to you too, the part of her mind that wasn’t busy lecturing her pointed out. You weren’t the only one who was afraid.

  Kai was very nearly smirking. “First they assign us together,” he said. “Then they put us in a dark box together and shut the door . . .”