The Lost Plot

by Genevieve Cogman

  “I thought you’d said you didn’t know anything about him,” Irene commented.

  “Barely anything,” Melusine said, brushing it off. “Your Kai already told you he was dangerous. I’m telling you that both Qing Song and Jin Zhi are dangerous. No dragon is safe. And Evariste doesn’t even have your experience with dragons. He’s an extremely good researcher, but he hasn’t your level of exposure to practical field operations.” She turned the computer screen so that Irene could see it. The dark-skinned young man in the photo had perhaps been photographed at a graduation, given the gown and hood he was wearing over a neat suit and tie. He had an air of dazzled disbelief and triumph, and was smiling at the camera. “He was due to be seconded to other Librarians for the next few years, for seasoning. I can easily believe that he’s out of his depth.”

  The theoretical mouse that Irene had smelled earlier had become a full-blown rat. No, make that a plague rat. “What do we do?”

  “You brought this one to my attention, which means that you’re first in line to sort it out.” Melusine swivelled round smoothly, and again Irene had the sense she was being inspected and assessed. “You’re ideally qualified for the job. You’re used to operating without backup or support, and you have a reputation as a rogue agent. If things go badly wrong, we may need to claim that you were acting on your own, and cut you off.”

  “Forgive me if I’m not exactly jumping at this chance,” Irene said, with a growing feeling of dismay. “Phrases like we may need to cut you off sound rather final. I’d like some support. I’d like some backup. I’d like some guidance.”

  “That’s part of the problem,” Melusine said. “We have no idea what the situation is. As you suggested, it might even be a complicated lure meant to trap us into doing something that can be used against us later. I’m not trying to flatter you, but you are good at assessing a situation and deciding on the most appropriate course of action. It’s possible—but highly unlikely—that this situation has an innocent explanation. We won’t know until we’ve spoken to Evariste. But we need an agent on the scene who can determine whether or not we’re compromised, and take action if we are. And with things being as possibly catastrophic as they are, it also needs to be an agent whom we can claim acted on their own initiative and cut loose. If necessary.”

  Irene swallowed. “This is not reassuring.”

  “The door’s behind you,” Melusine said with a shrug. “If you aren’t prepared to take this risk, this mission, then I can’t force you. I will just have to give the job to someone else. Probably someone not as well-qualified. Without your background knowledge. And with several hours’ delay while I find them and brief them. It’s entirely up to you.”

  Irene stared at her in combined admiration and disgust. “Have I told you that I hate emotional blackmail?”

  “I’ll add it to your record.”

  Irene reluctantly turned her mind back to the job. “Can you send Evariste a message the Library way?” she asked. It was possible for the Library to send a message to any Librarian, printing it out on all the written material surrounding them. While it was costly in terms of energy, surely a situation like this warranted the effort. “For all we know, he’s a prisoner and being forced into this.”

  “We can, and we will, but he doesn’t have to answer it. Which brings us to the next point on the agenda. How you find him.”

  “I’m really hoping you have some special secret way to do that,” Irene said resignedly. “One that we regular Librarians don’t get told about. Because otherwise, trying to find one man in a strange world is going to take time. Even if I look for the nearest draconic disturbance and assume he’s involved.”

  “Fortunately for you, you’re correct.” Melusine picked up a sheet of blank paper from the desk, then steered her wheelchair across to the far wall and a shelf there, lined with cream-bound volumes. She tapped it in the same way she’d done to the previous one. “E, please.”

  The books cycled through as the world-access ones had done, but this time Melusine was forced to check several volumes. She finally settled on EU-EW XIV, opening it to a particular page and laying it in her lap. “Stand back,” she advised.

  Irene kept her distance but watched with interest.

  Melusine laid the blank piece of paper across the open page of the book. “Copy the name of Evariste,” she said in the Language.

  The blank paper literally sizzled, shuddering against the book as if someone were pressing a hot iron against it on the other side. Irene’s own brand seemed to fizz for a moment in sympathy, and Melusine twitched her shoulders as if she was feeling the same thing.

  “There,” Melusine said. She removed the paper, and closed the book and re-shelved it. She offered Irene the paper, which was now marked with a full Library brand—Evariste’s name in the centre, in the Language, surrounded by the usual Library cartouche.

  Irene took the paper carefully, examining it. Rumour had it that if you examined the surrounding markings in a Library brand closely enough, such as with an incredibly high-powered microscope, you would find that they were composed of words from the Language in very small print. It was the sort of thing that might be true. “I can use this to find him?” she asked.

  “The principle of similarity,” Melusine said. “Use the Language with this to locate him—using the symbol to scry for him on a map, employing directional pointers, the usual sort of thing. He’s been off our radar for nearly a month now, so he might be anywhere in that world.”

  Irene nodded. “I have another question while I’m here, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, ask, ask,” Melusine said. “Don’t be so polite. I’m interested in getting the job done.”

  Irene was fairly sure that if she stopped being polite, Melusine would be significantly displeased. But that was one of the perks of being higher-ranking: you could tell your juniors to cut back on the courtesy, while simultaneously being offended if you felt they were being too rude. A win-win situation, for the people on top. “All right,” she said. “As I understand it, dragons can trace people to a particular world. And if they follow them to that world, then they may end up emerging right on top of where they are in that world. Is there any way that I can stop dragons finding me that way? Jin Zhi could try following me, and I’d rather not have her in my general neighbourhood, let alone closer.”

  “Library wards,” Melusine said briefly. On seeing Irene’s blank look, she explained, “The usual Library wards that you’d put up if you were trying to avoid Fae interference—get inside a large collection of books and invoke the Library’s presence. That’ll keep dragons from tracking you as well, so long as you stay inside. And speaking of dragons finding you, try to avoid it. Ideally you’ll be in and out without them knowing you’re there. Keep Kai away from them too. If you get him involved in this political situation, and we have to explain it to his family—”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Irene said. “I’ll need to take the blame.”

  Melusine nodded, a little reluctantly. “I’m afraid so. We can hide you, if you get back here safely. But you wouldn’t be able to leave here for a few centuries, until they’d given up looking for you.”

  So it wouldn’t be just Irene’s career at stake, but her personal life too—her friends, Vale, Kai, the world she’d grown used to living in . . . “Then it’s a good thing I’m planning not to get caught,” she said, forcing optimism into her voice. “Or lying about my identity, if I do. Now, you said the previous Librarian who went to A-658 on official business left an emergency cache behind?”

  “Yes, and I was going to give you the details.” Melusine glanced at one screen, scrawled down an address and a number, and passed it to Irene. “Stop in at Wardrobe after you leave here, and pick up some appropriate clothing for Jazz Age America—suits, short skirts, guns, whatever. The Traverse to that world comes out in the Boston Public Library in America, so tha
t’s where you’ll be arriving. It shifted there in 1875. Used to be to the Escorial Library in Spain. When Gassire was there, he left a stash of local money and identity papers at the Northern Bank in Boston. Here’s the bank address, that’s the safe-deposit box number, and I’m sure you won’t have any problems getting access. Assuming that Evariste hasn’t already emptied the safe-deposit box, I suppose, in which case you’re on your own. You can track Evariste from there. The Journey to the West is a Chinese text, so I suppose he may be in China. Good thing that world has planes. We haven’t time for you to take a slow boat. Any remaining questions? Your student will be waiting.”

  “Just one.” Irene didn’t want to ask it, but she couldn’t avoid it any longer. “What do I do if Evariste is cooperating with the dragons?”

  The faint traces of camaraderie, such as they were, drained out of Melusine’s face. “That can’t be permitted. You’re to bring him back here to answer questions, by whatever means you find necessary. Unless there’s a watertight explanation for his actions, he may be facing far worse than simply suspension or probation. You understand how serious this is?” She waited for Irene’s nod. “We cannot afford to look as if the Library is playing politics. We can’t even let that rumour get started. You were right: this could be fatal to all the Librarians currently out working in their worlds, and to the Library itself. Evariste may be an innocent dupe, he may have been deceived or threatened into this, but ultimately that’s not important. You need to pull him out of there now and close the situation down. Whatever it takes.”

  Irene nodded. “Understood.”

  And she knew that she might just have agreed to his death sentence.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was always difficult to decide where one should hide vitally important papers when going into dangerous situations. An outer pocket? Too easily lost—or too easily found by casual searches. An inner pocket? Better, though if you were being searched, it was still likely to be found, and in that case it was clear the document was important. Tucked into the cleavage or clipped inside a stocking-top? Much more uncomfortable than romance novels would have you think. Irene settled for the inner-pocket approach for the paper with Evariste’s name on it, and hoped that nobody would be interested in it anyway.

  “It was helpful of Melusine to arrange a transfer shift to the Wardrobe, and then to A-658’s Traverse,” she said. It had saved them half a day’s walk through the Library. And they now had clothing roughly suitable for this nineteen-twenties America. Kai was embracing his sharp-fitting zoot suit and fedora with enthusiasm, while Irene was simply grateful for a knee-length skirt that she could run in.

  “No, it was merely practical.” Kai would be the first to deny that he was sulking, but his mood since having to wait in Melusine’s antechamber was thoroughly contrary. Irene had yet to venture an opinion he agreed with. “A significant matter needs a quick response. She’d have been even more practical if she’d sent additional Librarians.”

  “Besides us?”

  “Besides you. She made it clear that she didn’t consider me a Librarian.”

  “She’s paranoid,” Irene said. “She made me strip down to show her my own Library mark before she’d allow me in. And I’m fairly sure she had a gun in her wheelchair underneath that blanket. And she knew you were a dragon. I’m surprised she didn’t try to stop you coming along, given how the situation’s shaping up . . . Note that I’m not on her side, Kai.”

  “There wasn’t even anything to read,” Kai muttered.

  Irene rolled her eyes in exasperation. “If the worst that comes of this is you being stuck in a cellar for half an hour with nothing to read, then we’ve been lucky.”

  She looked round the room they were standing in one last time. It was stacked full of Westerns from A-658. The covers were festooned with lurid pictures of stern-jawed cowboys, rearing horses, and women falling out of their bodices. She hoped she never had to go anywhere like that. Horses weren’t one of her enthusiasms. “Anyhow, let’s get moving. It should be late afternoon or early evening by the time we get there. If we’re lucky, the bank will still be open.”

  She walked over to the door and turned the handle, pushing at it. For a moment the door seemed to stick, as if hampered by something on the other side, and she frowned.

  “Is something the matter?” Kai asked, dropping his moodiness.

  “Maybe there’s something leaning against it on the other side. Just a moment.” Irene shoved at it, and this time it gave way; she stumbled through into the room beyond, and then stood absolutely still, horrified.

  The place was a ruin. The noise of the city beyond the walls was like distant mockery, with the faint hum of traffic and voices a horrible contrast to the recent damage that had hit the building they stood in.

  In the early-evening light, recently fallen timbers and collapsed brickwork were everywhere. The room they’d entered was typical of nineteenth-century American or European municipal buildings, but it was badly damaged on one side. The wall had fallen into the room, charred with scorch-marks. One timber had fallen against the door that they’d just come through—the blockage that Irene had pushed away. Tattered books lay everywhere, scorch-marks like stains on pages white as bone. There was dust in the air—from some recent explosion or fire—and it made Irene choke. She put her hands against her face, trying to breathe, trying to calm herself. Trying not to think of fire, burning pages, smoke, and ruin—and Alberich’s voice above all of it.

  “This conflagration, or blast, or whatever it was . . .” She looked around her. “This must be very recent. Look, the ceiling’s gone.” She could simply look up and see the twilight sky above, the clear blue of dusk. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. She had to pull herself together, she thought remotely. The situation was too dangerous for her to have some sort of flashback here. She felt herself digging her nails into the palms of her hands and forced herself to be calm, composed, rational. It didn’t help—not deep down, not where it really mattered. She still remembered fire and books burning. “But none of the books are wet yet. So they can’t have been rained on. We need to find out what’s happened. And when. And how.”

  Irene began to pick her way across the fallen stones that covered the floor, then looked up in surprise as Kai caught her wrist. “What is it?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I am.” Her momentary weakness had passed as the memories faded. She was entirely in control of herself again. She had to be. “I’m just furious. That’s all. How someone could do a thing like this, destroy a place like this . . . Even if it isn’t involved with our investigation, I want someone to pay for this.”

  She shook Kai off angrily and walked across to kick the door open. The corridor beyond was blocked to the right by fallen masonry and shattered windows. They had to turn left and then half climb down past the stairway to reach the ground-floor. Every movement disturbed stone-dust from the explosion damage and set trapped pages fluttering as if reaching for assistance.

  “How much longer will this place stay linked to the Library?” Kai asked as he followed her.

  “I don’t know,” Irene had to admit. “I’m grateful it allowed us to get through—but who knows how long the gateway will hold? We don’t go round destroying libraries just to test theories about what would happen if we did . . .”

  Kai fell silent. Outside, beyond the broken walls of this shattered building, Irene could hear the hooting of car horns, the bells of trolley-buses, occasional yells and shouts. But in here there was nothing but the destruction all around her, and all the fallen books, with nobody even trying to save them. It was like walking through a personal hell, with a layer of glass between her and the rest of the world. She wasn’t even conscious of Kai a few steps behind her any more. And she wondered, Should I have come earlier? Would that have made a difference? If I’d come straightaway, or persuaded Melusine or Coppelia faster
, or . . .

  Kai grabbed her again, and she realized they were approaching one of the building’s outer walls. “Irene, do we have a plan?”

  She forced herself to focus. She would have tried breathing deeply, but there was still too much dust in the air. It burned her eyes. “Nothing’s changed. We’re going to the bank first. Money. Documents. Accommodation.”

  “You got my attention at the word money,” a strange voice said.

  Irene and Kai both turned. A man was watching them, standing in a crevice between two fallen walls that gave him a commanding view of the area. His suit was pin-striped and sharply cut, and his hat was tilted to half conceal his eyes. Stone-dust had settled on his shoulders and sleeves, suggesting that he’d been waiting there for a while.

  Of course, the thing that really caught Irene’s attention was the gun that he was holding, pointed directly at the two of them. It was about a yard long, and he was supporting it with one hand while keeping the other on the trigger. She didn’t know very much about guns, but it looked large and unpleasant. “Is that a Thompson submachine gun?” she said.

  “I see you’re an educated type, lady. We call it a tommy gun. Don’t give me no reason to fire and we’ll do just fine.” He pursed his lips and whistled. An answering whistle came from their right, followed by approaching steps.

  “But why are you pointing a gun at us?” Irene hoped that sounded like an innocent question, rather than just a completely stupid one. But then pointing guns at people frequently resulted in stupid comments. She’d been on both sides of the barrel, so she should know.

  “That’s how it goes,” the man said unhelpfully. “Rob, you think he’s going to want to talk with them?”

  Another man emerged from the shadows. He was holding a tommy gun too, and like the first one, he was pointing it right at them. This was a significant problem. Irene knew a number of ways to disable a gun by using the Language, but words took time. And if either of those men so much as twitched a finger on the trigger, Irene and Kai could end up dead.