The Lost Plot

by Genevieve Cogman

“I will inspect the place first . . . for signs of my property.” Qing Song tagged on the second sentence a little hastily, as if realizing he’d need an explanation for his interest. “If we find news of your colleague, we will inform you. What is his name? And where will you be staying?”

  Irene cast her mind back to the hotels Captain Venner had mentioned, and picked the one without a visitor with a wolf pack. “I’ll be taking rooms at the Plaza Hotel until this is sorted out,” she said. “And my colleague’s name is Evariste. If I run across your property while I’m looking for him—what is it, by the way?”

  “A jade statue of a wolf,” Qing Song said. “You couldn’t possibly mistake it.”

  “I see.” Irene almost wished she was wearing glasses so that she could adjust them disdainfully. She decided her persona needed one more little push, just to confirm herself in Qing Song’s eyes as a powerful, arrogant, but conveniently ignorant idiot. “I trust that your investigation won’t get in the way of mine. Which I shall start to commence now. Good day.” A powerful, arrogant idiot with bad grammar, she amended her own thought.

  Qing Song’s eyes narrowed in anger at being so casually dismissed, but he didn’t speak. However, his wolves growled as they backed away from the door, leaving Irene clear passage, and the note of rising fury in their voices told her that she had managed to prick his temper. The air was close and heavy with leashed power; even Lucci had removed his hat to swipe a handkerchief across his forehead and was standing well clear of his boss.

  Irene strolled to the door, keeping her pace even, and left the building. She’d need at least one trip by subway, just to make absolutely sure that no wolves could track her scent.

  And she had a lot of questions for Evariste.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Congratulations,” Irene said when Kai opened the door. “I believe you have managed single-handedly to find the most dubious hotel in New York.”

  Kai waved her into the room and closed the door behind her, then sat down with a thump in the battered armchair. He rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. “This has been very stressful,” he said in muffled tones.

  Irene looked from him to Evariste. Evariste was lying on the room’s only bed, thoroughly gagged with the remains of a torn-up pillowcase, with his wrists tied to the far corners. He glared back at her. “For all of us, I think,” she said drily.

  “I had to assume that he might be as resourceful as you are.” Kai paused. “Which is meant as a compliment. But then I had nothing to do except sit here and wait.”

  Irene imagined it. Sitting here in this windowless room in a seedy New York hotel, with nothing to do except look at the wall and listen to Evariste’s breathing. And no way for him to know what she was doing, or how much danger she was in. She laid a hand on Kai’s shoulder. “I know,” she said. “I wish I’d been able to think of a better option.”

  “Did you manage to deal with Qing Song?” Kai asked, sounding slightly mollified.

  “The answer would be yes, obviously, since I’m still alive and talking to you.”

  Kai snorted. “Seriously.”

  Irene noticed that Evariste, at Qing Song’s name, had gone very still and tense on the bed and that he was giving her his full attention. “Seriously,” she said to both men. “I accused him of interfering with my investigation, before he could suspect me of interfering with his investigation. Then I acted like an arrogant, over-privileged idiot until he was only too pleased to see me go. I’ve broken my trail enough times between there and here that his wolves won’t be able to follow me. But he left me with a number of very interesting questions.”

  She walked across to the bed where Evariste lay. Like everything else in this dump, from the lampshade to the carpet to the washstand in the corner, it was old and battered. But it was solid enough, and the bindings round his wrists held him firmly in place.

  He looked up at her, struggling for self-control. His throat jerked as he swallowed. His skin was a washed-out greyish brown against the off-white of the pillowcase, as though he’d been indoors for weeks on end without the chance to see the sun and he’d been living in fear for all that time.

  Irene felt a twinge of guilt but suppressed it. Evariste wasn’t an innocent; he was a sworn Librarian, like her, and as such he had responsibilities. Right now the best thing she could do for both him and the Library was to establish the truth. “Evariste, we need answers,” she said. “If I take the gag off, will you help us?”

  He jerked a nod.

  “All right. Hold still . . .” Irene fumbled with the knot. “Kai, please can you get a glass of water? I imagine Evariste’s mouth will be dry, after he’s been gagged.”

  “That sounds like personal experience,” Kai said, splashing water into a glass.

  “My exploits aren’t always brilliantly successful.” Irene managed to tease the knot open and dropped the strip of fabric on the pillow, then helped Evariste work the remaining wad of fabric out of his mouth. She sat down on the bed next to him and wished that she’d had some actual training in interrogation. As opposed to practical experience of being on the other end. “All right, Evariste. I realize that we haven’t met under the best of circumstances. Would it help if I said I’m sorry about that?”

  “No,” Evariste croaked.

  Perhaps that had been a bit too much to expect. She took the glass of water from Kai and held it to Evariste’s lips, letting him sip from it. “I’ll introduce myself. I’m from the Library. My name is Irene.”

  Evariste choked on the water, and Irene hastily pulled the glass away. “Are you all right?”

  He stared up at her. “You’re her? The Irene? The one who stopped Alberich?”

  “Most of our teachers would be getting migraines at such an imprecise sentence,” Irene said, wondering about her reputation. “My name is Irene, and yes, I recently left Alberich abandoned in a burning library, which I can only hope did stop him. Permanently.” She left out the part that she’d started the fire. She was, after all, trying to get Evariste to trust her.

  He hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “Prove it. Let me see your Library brand.”

  Irene suppressed a sigh. It would have been nice if the one person in this world to whom she’d actually told the truth had believed her. “Very well. Just a moment.”

  After a few contortions, she was able to bare enough of her back for Evariste to see it. She was conscious of Kai’s eyes on her as well, and for a moment she wished Evariste wasn’t there. She forced herself back to the task in hand. “Satisfied?”

  “I’m satisfied that you’re a Librarian and that you’re called Irene.” Evariste’s voice was stiff with disbelief and stubbornness, as if he was building his barricades before the rest of the world had the chance to betray him. “I still don’t know why you’re associating with a dragon or why you kidnapped me.”

  “That’s exactly the same tactic I was using earlier today,” Irene said approvingly, covering herself up again. “Challenge the other person to explain what they’re up to, in order to hide the weaknesses in your own position. I’ll give you a good mark for that when we get back to the Library. But I need to know what’s going on first.”

  Evariste jerked his head in Kai’s direction. “I want to know what’s going on with him before I tell you anything.”

  “For the moment I am studying under Irene here,” Kai said coldly. “I am her apprentice. My father and uncle are aware of the situation. I don’t yet know if I will take permanent vows to the Library. But my presence doesn’t imply that the Library and the dragons are allied.” He paused. “Even if maybe they should be.”

  “You aren’t helping, Kai,” Irene muttered. “You aren’t helping at all.”

  “I concede that the Library shouldn’t be dragged into disputes like this one,” Kai said, “but you and I have far more in common than the Library does with
the Fae.”

  Irene passed him the empty glass. “More water, please. Look, Evariste, getting back to my questions—”

  “Is this where the threats come in?” Evariste asked. “Are you going to offer to go out of the room while he works me over?”

  Irene took a deep breath. “We are not here to play good cop, bad cop. Or even bad cop, worse cop. Evariste—we’re on your side.”

  Evariste just looked towards Kai.

  “I’m on Irene’s side,” Kai said. “Don’t give me an excuse to be otherwise.” His voice was neutral, even mild, but it still managed to have an undertone like the edge of a razor.

  Irene strongly considered running her hands through her hair. “Evariste . . .” Perhaps he’d be more helpful if she could convince him that she was speaking the truth. She switched to the Language. “I have been sent here by the Library to find you and to establish what’s going on. Rumours that a Librarian is meddling in dragon court politics are a great danger to the Library and to Librarians. The Library is not allied with the dragons, and I am not working for either Qing Song or Jin Zhi, and nor is Kai. I can’t promise that you won’t be in trouble from the Library . . .” And she couldn’t promise that she was here to save him either. Not if he’d betrayed the Library. She chose her words very carefully. “But I will do my best to help you escape from Qing Song, if you will explain the current state of affairs.” The words seemed to hang in the air as Irene spoke them, like distant organ notes in a far larger space: a guarantee of truth, and a promise that would bind her.

  Evariste still hesitated. “You swear you’ll help me?”

  “I won’t help you get away from the Library,” Irene said, “but I can and will help you get away from Qing Song. Evariste, you need to understand how bad this is. We have two major dragon factions competing for power, and one of them’s claiming that the Library’s been helping the other. Do you realize how much danger that puts Librarians in if the Fae hear about this? Or if other dragon factions get involved and take sides against us?”

  She saw Evariste’s face twitch, and with a sick feeling she recognized guilt in his eyes. He has done something, and he knows it . . .

  She put every ounce of sincerity she could muster into her voice. “I’ve been sent by Library Security to make sure that the Library doesn’t get dragged any further into this. And let’s be honest, I’m here to bury the evidence if it has been. We are neutral: we cannot afford to be otherwise. We’re past the point of covering up minor breaches of regulations. I need to know what you’ve done and what’s going on here. I’m not trying to railroad you or blame you, but I have to know.”

  Evariste shut his eyes for a moment. “All right,” he finally said. He swallowed. “I’m not stupid. I understand what you’re saying. I know this looks bad—no, I know this is bad—but I had my reasons. And I didn’t realize how serious it was until I was too deep to get out. I’ll tell you. But will you untie me first? Please?”

  Irene started to unknot the torn sheets that leashed his wrists to the bed-posts. “Where would you like to start?” she asked.

  “It started with Julian.” Evariste watched the ceiling as Irene untied him. “He was my mentor, you know. He recruited me into the Library.”

  “Was he your mentor while you were training too?” Irene freed his right wrist and walked round the bed to undo his left wrist.

  “No, that was Neith.” Evariste flexed the fingers of his right hand, working out the stiffness. “Julian was Librarian-in-Residence on the world I came from. I knew him when I was growing up. He helped me get a scholarship to the local university, you know? Got me trained and everything. I hadn’t found out about the Library then, and sometimes I thought there was something a bit weird about him—about the people who came to see him. But it wasn’t that important. He was an okay guy.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “Chicago. On G-14. There were a lot of wizards around there; it was a high-magic world. That let him hide in plain sight. People just assumed he was one of the crowd.” Evariste’s words came spilling out as if he’d been waiting for the chance to tell someone about it. “Things went wrong for me—I couldn’t get a job, I didn’t have the credentials for big-time research, I’d broken up with my girl. Then Julian recruited me for the Library. It was my big chance. My way to something better.”

  Irene nodded, trying to assess his age. He was younger than she was, but it was difficult to judge by how much. He looked as if he was in his mid-twenties, but he wouldn’t have aged during his years of study in the Library. “You had the standard apprenticeship?”

  “Yeah. He sent me letters from time to time. I was apprentice, then journeyman, and I got my brand. And so finally I thought I’d go and see him. I’d been holding off, you know.” His voice slowed. “I guess I wanted to show him all of it at once—to show how far I’d come, what I’d become, to tell him I was grateful . . .”

  “To go back as an adult,” Irene suggested quietly. “As an equal colleague, rather than just his student.”

  “Yeah, that was it. I’d sent him a letter. He knew I was coming . . .” Evariste took a deep breath. “Can I have some more water?”

  Irene handed him the glass and waited while he drank.

  “Thanks,” Evariste said, putting the glass down on the bedside table. “That gag. It does dry your mouth out.” He glared at Kai.

  Kai shrugged. “If you want me to try to think of some other way to stop a Librarian talking, then by all means encourage me to experiment.”

  Evariste didn’t quite flinch, but he drew in on himself, retreating behind that personal barricade again. “Yeah, there are ways, and your sort know all about them.”

  Irene held up a hand to stop Kai before he could escalate things. “What happened when you went to see Julian?” she asked, keeping her tone as encouraging as possible, though nervousness was a tight ball in her stomach. The suggestion that the dragons had ways to inconvenience Librarians—to use a mild, non-terrifying word—was unnerving. But it was more important to keep Evariste on track and telling his story. And they had limited time before someone tracked them down, whether it was dragons, police, criminals, or all three.

  Evariste looked down at his hands. “He was dead,” he said quietly. “He’d been dead a few days. It was a heart attack. The local cops had done a post-mortem. There wasn’t anything suspicious about it. He’d left his property to me in his will. But it was too late. I was too late.”

  “I’m sorry,” Irene said quietly.

  “I didn’t know, okay?” Evariste looked up at her, and she dismissed thoughts that he’d been trying to hide his expression in order to tell a more convincing lie. The grief in his face was too raw to be anything other than genuine. “I mean, I knew he had a bad heart, I’d seen him take pills, he’d been to the hospital and all that, I knew that he didn’t do active missions because of it, but I didn’t, you know, I didn’t figure he would . . . die.” He took a deep sobbing breath. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t in time.”

  Irene reached across to put an arm round his shoulders comfortingly. “You couldn’t have known,” she said. “There was no way you could have known.” But underneath she was conscious of a colder self saying, Yes, get his confidence, you need the information.

  There were parts of herself that she didn’t particularly like.

  Evariste swallowed after a moment and his back straightened. “I’m okay,” he said, shrugging her off.

  Irene nodded. “So what happened next?”

  “It was that night. I’d gone to his house to start cataloguing his books—and to make sure there wasn’t anything that might give away stuff about the Library. Diaries, whatever. I didn’t think he kept any, but . . .”

  “But you had to check,” Irene agreed.

  “And then they turned up.” Evariste’s eyes moved to Kai again, and his body tensed. “Two dragons. Qing S
ong and his liegeman.”

  “Hu?” Irene asked.

  “Yeah, that’s him. The wolf and the fox. I was polite at first, asked them in, figured that I didn’t want to insult anyone. They said they’d known Julian and . . . well, I knew he’d known some dragons, so what was the harm? But then he started making demands.”

  “‘He’ being Qing Song?”

  Evariste nodded jerkily. “He said that Julian and he had had an arrangement, and Julian owed him a few debts. And since I was Julian’s protégé, I had to pay what Julian owed. The way he said it, it sounded like I should be grateful for the opportunity.”

  Irene could see Kai was biting back a comment so as not to interrupt Evariste’s flow. She suspected he would have agreed with Qing Song. “How did they react when you weren’t enthusiastic?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.” Evariste’s laugh was bitter, grating in his throat. “First Qing Song just stares at me, and then Hu tries to sweet-talk me, and both of them saying that it’s simply a matter of finding a book for them. Then Qing Song admits it’s something to do with dragon politics—and shit, I know we stay out of dragon politics. So I’m saying not only no but hell no, as politely as I can. And finally Hu takes out this envelope and shoves it across the table and suggests I read it.”

  He shut his eyes, his energy draining from him again. “It was a letter from Julian. Remember I said my girl broke up with me before I joined the Library? Well, turns out it hadn’t been as neat and tidy as I’d thought. She’d been pregnant. She’d had a daughter. And Julian never told me.”

  Irene tried to think of something helpful to say, something that would bridge the gap to him and convince him that she understood, but absolutely nothing came to mind.

  “Anita died a couple of years after I went to the Library,” Evariste said. His voice was numb now, as if he were reading the lines of a play but had no idea how to put the right emotion behind the words. “It was a car accident. Her family looked after her daughter. Miranda Sofia, that’s her name. Julian had kept track of it all. He wrote in his letter that he hadn’t wanted me to be distracted. Distracted, he called it. He wrote that he wanted me to get experience as a Librarian without having to worry about a daughter. That he’d kept tabs on Miranda. That he was sort of an occasional uncle. That he was looking forward to when he could get us together . . .” Evariste’s hands clenched in his lap. “He had no right, he had no fucking right to do that to me, to never even tell me about her!”