“Fair enough,” the professor said with a shrug. “I don’t suppose I could ask you to dust a bit while you’re moving the books around? It’s been a while since the cleaners came in.”
“No,” Kai said firmly. Dusting was for servants.
Kai waved Evariste on to the first store-room. He wanted to attack the second one, but something was nagging at his sense of caution. The professor had given in too fast. It might have been because he was a coward, or drunk, or . . . because he was expecting someone else to turn up at any moment.
“Sorry about this,” Kai said. He pulled the professor’s handkerchief from his vest-pocket and stuffed it into the man’s mouth. “I’ll apologize later if this is really unwarranted . . .”
Footsteps outside. The door-handle jiggled. A female voice called, “Professor Jamison?”
Evariste appeared in the store-room doorway, an expression of horror on his face.
Kai opened the door a few inches. Fortunately the professor wasn’t in the line of vision. “Can I help you?” he asked politely.
The thin young woman on the other side of the door had a white cotton smock over her neat royal-blue suit and was carrying a pair of white cotton gloves. “I’m here to see Professor Jamison,” she said. “It’s about the archival work he wanted done.”
“I’m afraid the professor’s indisposed,” Kai said.
“Indisposed?” the woman echoed. “I hadn’t been told he was ill.”
“He had a long lunch. A very long lunch.” Kai wondered how far he could go in conveying alcoholic stupor. “He felt he needed a little nap.”
There was a snorting noise from inside the room—probably the professor trying to make himself heard through the gag.
“There, you see?” Kai said hopefully. “Indigestion too.”
The woman rolled her eyes skywards. “Now, you listen to me here, I don’t care if the old sot is awake, asleep, or so drunk he can’t stand. I’m here to collect his copy of Melchett’s Commentaries on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. So if you’ll kindly step aside—”
She peered into the room, and her eyes went wide.
With a silent curse, Kai grabbed her shoulder and dragged her into the room, spinning round to kick the door shut behind them. He put his hand firmly over her mouth. “Evariste,” he said. “Get another chair.”
“We can’t keep on doing this,” Evariste protested. “We’re going to run out of chairs.”
“Hopefully there won’t be any more callers.” The woman was squirming in Kai’s arms. “Look,” he said, trying to sound calming, “don’t make a disturbance and we won’t gag you. We’re just here to collect a book. We’re not here to hurt anyone.”
The woman relaxed a bit. As Evariste tied her hands behind her back in the chair (with his tie this time), she asked, “Are you with Lucky George?”
“Possibly,” Kai said. “If we were, we couldn’t admit to it. You know how that works.”
“Right.” She nodded at the professor, who was fighting his gag. “Let me guess. He’s been playing the horses again, and you’ve come to collect on his debts.”
“It’ll all be over very soon,” Kai said reassuringly, hiding his own growing nervousness. How many other people were going to walk in here while they were searching the place? Or might come checking to see what had happened to this woman? “Just a moment.”
He walked across to the professor and removed his gag. “Look,” he said, going down on one knee next to the chair. “We want to get this over with just as much as you do. You might as well cooperate. Where’s the Pemberton Collection?”
“The what?” Professor Jamison said, failing to sound convincing.
“The collection donated by Judge Richard Pemberton in 1899,” Evariste said. “The one you’re supposed to be responsible for.”
“Oh, that collection.” The professor looked vague. “Now that you mention it, I think it’s being held in the Cloisters—you know, out at Fort Tryon Park . . . ?”
It was a brave attempt. Kai respected it. He didn’t want to hurt either of their two prisoners. Neither of them deserved it. And every part of him revolted against the idea of torturing a pair of helpless innocents for information. But what was he supposed to do?
Then the woman’s earlier words gave him an idea. He walked over to the desk, where the telephone was half-buried under a mound of discarded papers. “It’s a pity I have to do this,” he said to Evariste.
“Yeah, it sure is,” Evariste said, an uncertain note to his voice. “Look, we don’t need to hurt these people . . .”
Qing Song or Hu might have done so, Kai realised, and Evariste was judging him by their standards. It felt surprisingly galling. “You’re right,” he said. “We need to ring up the boss and find out how he wants us to play things, since our friends here aren’t willing to talk.”
“Yeah, that sure is a pity,” Evariste said, with growing assurance. “You know how the boss is, when he doesn’t get what he wants. Still, no skin off our backs, right?”
Both the professor and the woman had gone pale. The woman was the first to find her voice. “You just want the Pemberton Collection? That’s all?”
“That’s all,” Kai reassured her. “We can take it from there.”
“Downstairs, in the basement,” she said very quickly. “Past the reception desk there, second right, signposted ‘Asian art section,’ third room on the left, check the cupboards on the right at the entrance to the section and they’ll have the full index there.”
“Maria!” the professor protested. But the guilty note to his voice suggested to Kai that he’d been about to crack.
“That’s good,” Kai said. “Now we’ll just leave you here. They’ll probably let you out when security does their final rounds.”
“But the museum doesn’t close till nine o’clock tonight!” the woman protested.
“Trust me,” Kai said, walking round behind her to insert a gag in her mouth. “It could be worse.”
• • •
It was coming up to six o’clock as they headed downstairs to the basement, having left a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the professor’s door. The crowds of visitors were thinning out, and the light coming through the windows was shaded with sunset colours, painting the exhibits in red and orange tones.
“I’m surprised they haven’t already put the Journey to the West out on display, given all the other classics here,” he said quietly to Evariste, keeping his tone of voice conversational.
“From the description in the catalogue, I don’t think the copy’s in the best condition,” Evariste answered. “It’ll be a low priority for exhibition.”
“At least we’re not having to bring back the provenance as well.” Kai tipped his hat to a young lady who was smiling at him.
Evariste gave him a look of mild horror. “You’re just enjoying coming up with ways to make this worse, aren’t you? How do we prove that it’s the correct book, without waving the provenance under Qing Song’s nose?”
“Irene will think of something,” Kai said confidently. “She’s very persuasive.”
“Yeah,” Evariste muttered. “She talked us into this, after all.”
Loyalty demanded some sort of response. Unfortunately nothing convincing came to mind.
The elevators down to the basement were half-hidden behind grand displays of medieval and Byzantine art, which filled several rooms. The elevators’ polished brass and wooden doors almost seemed artworks in themselves. But the basement below had been designed for efficient and clean storage, with white-tiled walls and floors.
At this time of day the only person around was the entry clerk sitting behind the reception desk. Kai stepped back, allowing Evariste to take the lead.
“Good afternoon,” Evariste said politely. “We’ve been sent down by Professor Jamison to collect some texts from the Asian art
section.”
The clerk sniffed. He was a thin fellow, his chin jutting out like a promontory, with suspicious bloodshot eyes. Unfortunately there was an alarm button on his desk, within easy reach of his hand. “Entrance desk is up on the ground-floor,” he said flatly. “Only graduates and above get access to these archives. If you want to look something up, you need full proof of your identity, and letters from at least a few of your professors. This here isn’t some sort of public library.”
“But I am a graduate,” Evariste said persuasively. “I took my degree in—”
“Harlem?” the clerk snorted. “Don’t give me that, boy. I’ve seen your sort before.”
Evariste’s mouth tightened, and there was a very nasty glint in his eyes. “You perceive that I’m currently showing you full documentation of everything that you should need to give me access to the archives,” he said firmly in the Language.
The clerk frowned. “You can show me all the documents you like, boy, but you’re not going to walk through those doors till I’ve had a word with my boss. He knows how to handle people like you.” He reached for the phone. Apparently the Language could bypass his perceptions, but that wouldn’t alter his prejudices.
Evariste glanced back at Kai, and the expression on his face was a clear invitation to violence.
Kai stepped forward and caught the clerk’s wrist, dragging him forward over the desk. As the clerk gasped for breath, Kai brought the edge of his free hand down on the nape of the man’s neck. He went limp with barely a sound, flopping across the desk.
“Sorry,” Evariste said with a shrug. His tone made it more of a pro forma apology than a genuine expression of regret. “I guess this is where we tie him up and hide him till later.”
Kai considered. “If we do that, they’ll raise an alarm when they find he’s missing. He should be unconscious for at least half an hour . . .” He tipped the clerk back into his chair and arranged the man with his hands folded over his belly, chin resting on his chest as though he’d fallen asleep. He also reached under the desk and ripped out the wire leading to the alarm bell. “There. That will buy us a little more time.”
When they entered the archive section, it became clear that they were going to need every bit of that time. Kai was grateful for the woman’s directions, but even so, the place was large. He approved of large collections in principle, but they were a nuisance when you had to trek through them to steal something.
“I’d rather have been doing this at night,” Evariste said quietly as they hurried through the corridors. “We wouldn’t have been so likely to run into people.”
Kai nodded. “Yes. But there wasn’t time.” He imagined the fervid hum of the city above them, the constant buzz and surge of business and activity, and Irene drifting through it like a single butterfly with a pack of wolves on her tail. The image lacked poetic balance, and he frowned. “What chases butterflies?” he asked.
Evariste glanced at him sidelong. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he asked.
Kai looked back in disdain. “Poetic metaphor,” he said.
A few minutes later they were finally opening a small corner cupboard.
The books inside had been carefully organized, much like one of those puzzles where one had to fit a set of blocks into a limited space. The person who’d filed them had been extremely careful not to squeeze them in or cram them together, but had clearly found it necessary to use every last fraction of space.
“Careful now,” Evariste said, abruptly taking charge. He began to lift the books out from the cupboard, placing them one by one on the room’s table. “No, not this, nor the other . . . wait, here they are. Six-volume set. All there.”
The volumes that he drew out from the depths of the cupboard were not in ideal condition. Kai could see why the museum might have preferred to put other, more obviously striking books on display. But when he opened one volume and began to leaf through it, he was relieved to see that the interior condition was sound. The pages were firmly attached, the yellowed paper was solid and untouched by damp or insects, and the ink was clear. He opened his mouth to congratulate Evariste.
And then an electric bell broke into wild shrieking peals, ripping through the silence of the archives like a chain saw.
CHAPTER 21
Hu’s arm was an iron bar across Irene’s throat, cutting off both breath and speech. It brought back unwelcome memories of her doing the same thing to Evariste. Unhelpful thoughts about poetic justice pinwheeled dizzily through her head. She tried to get the fingers of her free hand underneath Hu’s arm and pry it loose from her throat. She stamped on his feet, throwing her weight into it, then kicked back at his knee-caps.
All she managed was the satisfaction, through the buzzing in her ears, of hearing him grunt in pain. “My lord,” he said, through what sounded like gritted teeth, “I know you reserved the dose for the other Librarian, but under the circumstances . . .”
“Very true.” Qing Song rose from his chair and reached into his jacket.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. Panic worked almost as well as oxygen in giving Irene a burst of fresh strength. She tried to get her balance and hook a foot behind Hu’s ankle, but he simply shifted his weight. He yanked her arm farther up behind her back, dragging her onto her toes.
Irene’s vision was muzzy, veined with flashes of light. Qing Song was standing next to her now, holding something cold against her lips. As if he were dosing one of his pet wolves . . .
With the last of her consciousness she tried to keep her mouth shut, but Hu’s hold on her throat loosened, making her gasp for air, breathing in huge racking swallows of it. A cool liquid ran down her throat. She choked on it, barely conscious of anything except her struggle for breath.
When the room stabilised, she became aware that Hu had let go of her throat. He was saying something to one of the two gangsters. The more she heard, the less helpful it sounded. “. . . handcuffs?”
“We generally kinda leave those to the cops, Mr. Hu,” the gangster answered.
“Very well. Just hold her for the moment, then. I don’t think she’ll give any trouble.” Her free arm was twisted behind her back, to join the one that was already pinioned, and a stranger’s hands took a firm hold of her. Qing Song was scrutinizing her critically, and Hu stepped in front of her again. “You won’t cause any further problems, will you, Miss Winters?”
Irene opened her mouth to speak.
Nothing came out.
Something in her throat was numb. She tried to form the words, but she couldn’t make a sound. She realized with despair that the Language was out of her reach. Sheer panic made her struggle in the grip of the man holding her, until common sense made her stop. But her fear didn’t go away. She was helpless in a way that she had never been before.
“Where did you get any of that stuff?” Jin Zhi indicated the flask that Qing Song was sliding back into an inner pocket. “I’d thought it was being reserved for . . . special cases.”
Such as for really important Librarians? Irene wondered. She supposed she shouldn’t be too surprised that the dragon courts had something specifically adapted to deal with Librarians, though it was a worrying discovery. But at the moment she was more concerned with how fast it would wear off. She could still write in the Language, but not while restrained like this.
Qing Song ignored both the question and Irene. “The urgent matter is what to do next. Hu, you said that you thought she was lying about the Library knowing what’s happening here.”
“My lord, she’s been under observation for most of the day.” Hu absently neatened his jacket. “If she had known everything when she came to Boston, or even to New York, she wouldn’t have acted the way she did. If all she’d wanted to do was tell you to leave the other Librarian alone, then she’d have come here directly—rather than having to be dragged into your presence. But we�
��ve seen that she’s a shameless liar: she’ll tell you anything that would persuade you to release her. We can’t trust a word she says.”
Show me a single person in this room who’s actually been telling the truth today, Irene thought venomously. Apart from the wolves. And the gangsters.
“Yes, but what about Ao Guang’s son?” put in Jin Zhi. “She’s been known to share his company. He might be involved. And what about the other Librarian?”
Qing Song rounded on her. “You appear to know far too much about my affairs.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jin Zhi said, a little too fast. “I have been listening for the last five minutes, after all. I heard what she said. You had a Librarian in your hand. She took him from you. And now we have another Librarian, but she’s not ready to cooperate—yet. Or worse still, she could be cooperating with someone else.”
Except that’s not quite right, Irene thought. Even if Qing Song didn’t spot it. How has Jin Zhi been finding these things out? And how did she know about Qing Song’s employing a Librarian, but not about Evariste’s escape till just now . . . ?
But Jin Zhi’s words made Qing Song hesitate. “You cannot be serious,” he finally said.
“What if Ao Guang wants to influence which of us gets the position? If he offered one of us the book on terms of obligation or alliance, could we afford to refuse? It would be the perfect opportunity for the King of the Eastern Ocean to get a foothold in the Queen of the Southern Lands’ affairs. And here we see the boy’s pet Librarian meddling in our business, hunting down the book for her own ends. Am I wrong?”
Irene almost admired the way Jin Zhi glossed over the fact that she’d asked Irene to get involved—even if only to prevent Qing Song receiving Librarian help. But she felt a growing panic at the way this was implicating both Kai and herself. And Kai’s father, Ao Guang, the King of the Eastern Ocean. The idea of him being involved in this mess—and blaming the Library for it—was a horrible new way in which things could go wrong.
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