CHAPTER 14

Irene found herself retreating, step by step, unwilling to take her eyes away from the rats. She’d never tried outracing rodents before, but she wasn’t sure she’d win. Especially not in thin slippers and a full-length dress. And there was something about the rats that made it impossible to look away: there was a presence that united them, that bound them together and looked out of their eyes at their targets. It wasn’t a remotely healthy presence: it conjured unpleasant squirming thoughts of blood and darkness. She could taste chaos on the air, more potent than sewage, more poisonous than chlorine.

“Perhaps if we could reach the Seine …” Hsien suggested quietly.

A little wave of movement ran across the rats, as though they could perfectly well hear and understand him. They scuttled faster.

A desperate plan came together in Irene’s head. She grabbed Erda’s arm—half to get her attention, but the other half to keep her where she was. The rats had to be in just the right position for this to work. “Could it be the Blood Countess commanding them?” she demanded.

“It’s her.” Erda was keeping her composure, but her eyes were wide with fear and her arm was tense under Irene’s hand. Of the three of them, she probably had the best idea of what they were facing, and she was clearly horrified. “Who else would it be? It’s exactly the sort of thing that she’d do. They say she sealed people up in a dungeon once, for rats to eat.”

“Tell me what she is!” Irene gave Erda’s arm a shake. “I need to know!”

“The witch-queen,” Erda whispered, “the demon-summoner, the crone who washes her skin in the blood of maidens, the lady of the dungeons, the …”

The rats had slowed their pace to a crawl again, spreading out across the road in a broad, rippling wave of rancid fur, eyes, and teeth. Just as I thought, Irene reflected drily. No powerful Fae is ever going to miss out on the chance of hearing someone else talk about them.

But it put them where she wanted them. Almost all of them on the road.

“Street, hold the rats!” she shouted at the top of her voice, forcing the words out as fast as she could.

The rats burst into movement as Irene’s words in the Language seared the air, scurrying towards them, but she was—just—in time. Stone flowed as if it were water, clasping tiny clawed legs and writhing bodies. A hideous screeching chorus broke out as the creatures squirmed and tugged at the stones that now held them.

One of the rats had made it across the road in time, and it raced towards them. Hsien’s knife pinned it to the ground. “I’m impressed, Miss Winters,” the dragon’s servant said. “I hadn’t realised—Miss Winters?”

Irene was sagging with the effort of multiple Language uses in a short time. She leaned against Erda, grateful for the other woman’s support. “Let me get my breath,” she muttered. “Anyone got some aspirin?”

But something was prodding at her mind besides the oncoming pain of a headache. Something was wrong here. No, not exactly wrong; but she was missing something.

Erda made a noise of shock and disgust. “I’m not sure we have the time,” she said.

Irene forced herself to look up. The rats were actually gnawing at their own trapped limbs, trying to bite through the flesh in order to pull themselves free. Her stomach twisted with nausea. “That’s … repulsive.”

“She controls them,” Erda snapped, pulling herself together. “And they may be infected with diseases. We can’t let them bite us. Time to retreat—”

“No,” Irene said quickly, trying to focus. Her head ached. She could try to sink the rats further into the pavement, but that might knock her out. They had chaotic power invested in them: she’d be fighting that as well as the nature of reality. Her first attempt had been hard enough: she wasn’t sure she would succeed with a second one. “Let’s circle round them and get back into the hotel. They can’t get into there.”

“Are you sure?” Hsien asked. He had a new knife between his fingers now.

“If they could, why would they bother being out here chasing us?” Irene reached down to gather up her dress to run. “Damn these slippers—”

“I’ll take her,” Erda said to Hsien. “You guard us.” She grabbed Irene and easily slung her over one shoulder, not bothering to ask Irene’s opinion first.

“Now,” Hsien agreed. The two of them began to run, heading sideways down the pavement and towards the hotel entrance.

Irene jolted along on Erda’s shoulder, trying to control her growing feelings of nausea. A fireman’s lift might be a more efficient way of carrying a passenger than sweeping them up in your arms, but it was much less pleasant. And it gave her a view of the rats ripping themselves out of the stone, leaving bone and flesh trapped behind, dragging themselves after Erda and Hsien with bloody mouths and mad little eyes.

She really, really hoped that she was right about the hotel being safe.

Erda gathered up her skirts with her free hand and took a long running leap over a swirling mass of rats. She nearly stumbled as she fell, but Hsien caught her elbow and steadied her. There were yells of encouragement from ahead of them, but Irene couldn’t see what was happening. The rats were moving again, faster now, flooding towards them and leaving trails of blood on the stone and snow.

And then Erda and Hsien were stumbling into the hotel reception area, and hotel staff were gathering round them with murmurs of shock and horror, offering assistance. Erda let Irene slide off her shoulder, setting her on the floor again, and someone pushed a glass of brandy into Irene’s hand. Irene tossed it back before the thought of poison even crossed her mind. It helped her steady herself. She glanced towards the hotel doors: they were safely shut. The rats weren’t trying to enter.

The hotel staff offered apologies, swearing that such a thing had never happened before, that the police would certainly do something about it, or the fire brigade, or someone at any rate. Irene made a mental note that another Librarian might need to go out there later and use the Language to smooth down the street’s surface, before anyone asked awkward questions.

But now that she was out of immediate danger and had a moment to think, her feeling that she was missing something had clarified. “Hsien,” she said quietly, pulling the man aside, and beckoning Erda. “Erda. Would it be fair to say that all the threats so far this evening have been—well, not safe, but manageable? Things that we could handle, if we devoted sufficient time and attention to them?”

Erda frowned. “I’m not sure we could have handled them as well without your assistance, but you may be right. Why?”

“We’re being diverted,” Irene said savagely. “Managed. Distracted. Our attention’s being kept focused on minor threats while our enemy is up to something else. Something more serious.” She glanced between the two of them, but neither of them disagreed; they were both nodding slowly.

“What do you think that she’s trying?” Hsien asked. He didn’t need to explain who she was. Mu Dan must have passed on their suspicions about the Blood Countess.

“We need to be prepared for something large and wholesale, just in case.” Irene said. “But I’m not sure …”

She frowned, trying to make the pieces whirling round in her mind come together into a recognisable shape. The rats, buzzing with chaotic power and malice, but unable to enter the hotel. But why? Because of the Library wards? But the Fae delegation had been able to come and go without any problems. Was there some other reason why the rats hadn’t tried to get in? The witch-queen, Erda had called her. The Blood Countess was a Fae, and Irene knew that powerful Fae could infuse their power into dramatically appropriate animals.

Yet what had the rats actually done? Well, they’d attracted everyone’s attention to outside the hotel …

Her eyes opened wide in shock. She recalled the empty cat’s basket in the kitchen. The cat being traditionally a witch’s familiar … The archway leading down to the wine cellars. And the fact that with the anarchists, an enemy had already proven that they could use the Paris sewers to move around underground …

“The threat might be down in the wine cellars,” she said, very softly. “Whatever it is. I don’t know, but I have to check. I’m about to disregard Prutkov’s instructions. I need Vale, and Mu Dan and Silver, or if you can’t get them, someone else competent from both sides, and I need them now.” Besides, the political back of her mind pointed out, in addition to the straightforward physical and metaphysical assistance, having witnesses from both sides might be very useful in the near future—if Irene found what she was afraid she might find downstairs. “As fast as possible. I’ll be down in the wine cellars.”

“Alone?” Hsien demanded.

“We have no time.” Irene shrugged off her cape and tossed it to Hsien, brushing snow from her hair. “I’ll take along some of your people if we meet them on the way, but we have to search the place now—and if there’s nothing in the cellars, then we’ll go through the rest of the hotel. We’ve gone past the point of worrying about disturbing supper. If I’m wrong, then I’ll take the blame for it. Now, please!”

She put authority into her voice, and they responded, heading off at a run for the dining room. Irene herself caught up the skirts of her gown and ran for the kitchens, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her. If she was right and the Countess had a bigger scheme ready to trigger, then it wasn’t a matter of if she’d do it—it was a case of when.

The kitchen was still quiet. Well, technically it wasn’t quiet, it was a hive of activity with a constant buzz of noise. It would be more accurate to say that it wasn’t a scene of bloody murder or any other sort of violent disruption. Asparagus was being chopped, squabs were in the final stages of being roasted, and foie gras was being carefully positioned on artfully decorated plates.

“Madam, is something the matter?” Hsien’s assistant demanded. She’d been keeping an eye on the cooks, but Irene’s entry had been hasty enough to signal that something was wrong.

“Has anyone been down to the wine cellars?” Irene asked quietly.

“No, madam. All the wines for the dinner were removed earlier, and there has been no need yet to fetch extra bottles.” The woman flicked a glance at the archway. “Is there some reason …”

“There may be. What lighting do they have down there?”

“Electric, madam, like the rest of the hotel.”

“Good. We need to investigate down there urgently. Can you be spared from supervising here, or do you need to stay on guard?”

The woman hesitated. Irene suddenly realised how dubious she must look: she’d shown up here alone, without Hsien to back her, and she was demanding that the woman leave her assigned post to accompany her. “It’s all right,” she said. “Keep an eye on things up here. I’m going down there: send Hsien and anyone else down after me as soon as they arrive.”

The woman nodded, clearly relieved. “I will do that, madam.”

As Irene passed the cat basket, she glanced at it. It was still empty, except for a scattering of black hairs on the blanket.

The archway yawned in front of Irene. She flicked the light switch, then began to descend the stone stairs in the sudden glare of light. The stonework was older than the new gilding and woodwork upstairs: it belonged to a Paris that disregarded time and that built to last. The air down here was colder than in the main hotel, stroking along her skin in icy draughts and raising goose bumps on her bare shoulders and arms.

The short stairway led into a sequence of long cellars that were lined with racks of bottles and heavy barrels. Despite the best attempts at ventilation, there was a tang to the air: the memory of wine and brandy, port and liquors, and echoes of all the alcohol that had sweated out of barrels or through corks.

Irene sniffed again. She could feel it now. It had been drowned out by all the Library’s own safety wardings and by the great presences at the banquet above, but now that she was down here and in close proximity to it, she could tell it was present. It wasn’t a scent or a touch or a physical sense, but she was aware of it, and her Library brand tingled in response. Something—someone—that belonged to chaos was down here in the cellars with her.

And if whoever it was had noticed the lights being turned on and heard Irene’s steps on the stairs, then that person knew that they were about to have company.

The place was silent. Nothing moved. Nothing dripped.

Now, if I were a threat, what would I be … ? The first answer that came to mind was a bomb. And if a bomber was trying to catch the maximum number of dinner guests, then the bomb would be located beneath the Salon Tuileries. Irene mentally oriented herself and headed for that part of the cellars.

Then the lights went out.

Irene weighed her options: turn the lights on again with the Language and force a confrontation, or try to navigate this place in pitch darkness with an enemy hunting for her?

Something brushed against her leg from behind.

Irene bit back a gasp of shock, jumping forward. That settled it. Open confrontation was preferable to trying to dodge someone who could clearly see in the dark. “Lights, turn on!” she commanded.

The lights came on again, but they were dimmer now, like half-burned torches, throwing shadows at every angle. There was no sign of whatever had brushed against her leg. Silence filled the air: hungry, expectant silence.

Two clocks ticked down in Irene’s head. One of them was the time until her reinforcements arrived. The other was the time until the theoretical bomb went off—or whatever else might be down here.

If the Countess—or whoever the enemy was—had been directing the rats, then she’d seen Irene outside. Acting innocent would do Irene no good. She might as well gamble for high stakes.

Before she could let herself realise how bad an idea it was, she called out, “Blood Countess? Milady? I request an audience.”

There was still no sound, but the lights began to flicker off one by one behind Irene and to either side, leaving only a single corridor of illumination ahead of her. The invitation was clear.

Irene followed the lit path, collecting a bottle of brandy from one of the racks that she passed. She felt more comfortable with a solid object in her hand that could serve as a weapon. The lights went out once she had passed them, and darkness drew in behind her. A barely audible scuff on the floor made her glance to her left: a dust-smeared tabby cat slid out from behind a rack of bottles to pad beside her. More cats emerged from the shadows, squirming out from under barrels or spilling down from the higher racks. They moved around her in a silent escort, herding her forward, brushing against her dress and glancing up at her with unreadable bright eyes.

Irene came to the archway of the final cellar and paused there, looking into the room ahead of her. A draught tugged at her dress and curled around her shoulders, making her shiver. Realisation cut in: there must be an opening of some sort in the wall of this cellar, if the air was moving. It might be a gap into the sewers or into some other building’s cellar next door or across the street. But from this angle, all she could see was more stacks of bottles …

Then light flared redly at the end of the room, and Irene saw the woman standing there.

Her hair might have been gold under sunlight, but in this dim light, under the glowing bulbs, it was burnished copper, braided up and surmounted with a crimson coif. She was in the stiff formal clothing of the sixteenth century, with a huge white lace ruff and puffed white sleeves, crimson full skirts and laced bodice. The only parts of her skin that showed were her hands and face. She was very beautiful. Nobody could possibly have disagreed. But something about the extreme pallor and purity of her skin was unhealthy; it made Irene think of lilies and fungi grown on graves and nourished on corpses. Like Irene, the woman was surrounded by an entourage of cats. They pressed against her legs, their mouths open in silent purring, as if she were as intoxicating as catnip.

She was impressive, and Irene would have been more impressed if the day hadn’t been an utter cavalcade of people doing their damnedest to impress her. Between dragon kings and Fae nobility, she was worn-out, and her capacity for awe and terror was nearly exhausted. Nearly, but not quite; she had enough left to be sensibly afraid.

“Madam,” she said, and dipped a curtsey. The important thing was to play for time. Or perhaps—maybe—even manage to negotiate a truce? It was probably wishful thinking, but she’d never know if she didn’t try. “Do I have the honour to address Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed?”

The woman seemed vaguely amused. “You do. But if you already knew who I was, then why did you come sauntering down here so very bravely?”

“To speak to you, of course,” Irene lied. “And I just followed the cats.”

“They say I once cast a spell to summon a cloud filled with ninety cats to torment my enemies.” The Countess gestured at the animals surrounding her. “That may be an exaggeration. But I’ve always found them to be my friends.”

Irene raised the bottle in her hand. “May I offer you a drink, perhaps?”

“I never drink … brandy.” The Countess pursed her lips, mildly irritated at herself. “Dear me, how hard it is to avoid cliché! But I’m certainly not going to accept any food or gifts that you offer me.”

“Then why are you here?”

“You know perfectly well.” The air smelled of blood and dust. “I am here to bring ruin upon this pitiful attempt at peace.”

“What I don’t understand,” Irene said, walking closer, “is why.” Her throat was dry with fear. She could feel just how powerful this Fae woman was: every step towards her was like walking into a cobra’s reach, safe only so long as the snake chose not to strike.

The Countess shook her head, and her hair fell free of its coif and braids, flying out around her face like a lion’s mane. Her face remained unmoved, as perfect as a mask. “Do you know what it is like to be part of a cycle?” she asked.

Irene blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“I am Elizabeth Báthory.” The Countess ran her hands through her hair, smoothing it back. Her dress was changing, shifting to a younger woman’s clothing, less ornate and with a smaller ruff. For a moment her skin seemed natural rather than cold alabaster. “I am her as she was when she was young and innocent, marrying an older man who went off to the wars. I am her when she grew older and had to rule the estate with a rod of iron. I could tolerate no disloyalty, no dissent. I was cruel because rulers were cruel, maiden. I am the Elizabeth who was falsely accused and who died in darkness, immured in my own castle, with day upon day to learn to hate the world beyond those walls. And I am also the Elizabeth who was truthfully accused, and who bathed in the blood of virgins to be young again, and who grew old and withered without that blood. I am the witch-queen and the torturer, the owner of the iron maiden of Nuremberg. I am all these things at once. Do you understand me?”

Irene wasn’t entirely sure she understood, but she was developing some nervous theories about what happened to Fae who had to embody contrasting parts of one archetype at the same time. Insanity might be the least of it. “Madam,” she said, “I appreciate all this, but I do not see why you should want war rather than peace.”

The Countess’s eyes were deep dark brown, the same shade as old dried blood on white cloth. “There is no truth to peace,” she said. “Peace is at best a brief interlude between hostilities. The treaties which might be signed here are no more than lies. The field of battle is more honest. What you are trying to build here won’t last, and you will be blamed for it when it falls apart. Name yourself.”

“No,” Irene said. She had to force herself to refuse; the Countess’s words came with an impulse to obey, with a tang of fear and promised pain. She took a step closer. The drift of cats around her feet merged with the mass surrounding the Countess.

“You are walking into my hands,” the Countess said. “Are you waiting for your friends to arrive and save you? They will be lost in these cellars for a century if I will it so.” This time her smile was edged and pointed, full of a lust for the suffering of others. This was a woman who could bleed her victims to death and bathe in their blood. “You speak like a heroine. We shall see if you can suffer like one.”

Her words held such a promise of pain that for a moment Irene was trapped, frozen where she stood. Then an unexpected recognition cut through the fear and gave her words. “I thought we were trying to avoid cliché.”

The Countess raised a mocking eyebrow.

“That’s from The Mysteries of Udolpho,” Irene pointed out. “If you’re going to threaten me, please be original about it.”

The air seemed to congeal around Irene, as tight as a noose around her throat. “Don’t mock me,” the Countess said very softly, each word a sharpened knife. The colour drained from her skin, and her clothing darkened to black: now she was as pale as ice in a morgue, in a dead-black dress that blended with the shadows. “Little Librarian, down here with me in the darkness, all alone … have you no respect? Have you no humility? Have you no fear? I promise you, I give you my word, that I will be more original than you can possibly imagine.”

It is probably not a good idea to taunt the Blood Countess, Irene reminded herself, lowering her eyes. “Forgive me,” she murmured. “I am a Librarian. Books are our business.”

But something additional had caught her attention. While the Countess was changing her aspect and appearance as the Cardinal had earlier, or like another powerful Fae Irene had once seen, there was something translucent about her. She was just a fraction … unreal. The scent of blood that suffused the cellar was centred on her, but it wasn’t coming from her. She wore no perfume. It was as if she was a hologram, or a projection.

And there were no doors in the wall behind her; Irene could see that, even in the dim light. Apart from the entrance that Irene had used, this cellar had no openings large enough to admit a human being.

But now that Irene was actually looking, she could see that there was a small recent opening in the wall to one side, at floor level, barely a foot high. The scatter of bricks around it suggested that it had been broken open from the other side. It was far too small for a woman.

But it was big enough for a cat.

And the cats pressing around Irene’s legs, rubbing against her, eyes catching the light as they stared at her, were real enough.

“It’s true that it has been a while since I played with a Librarian,” the Countess mused. “It will be interesting to see if you still break as easily.”

Irene’s half-formed plan jumped from maybe to immediate. The Countess sounded like a woman unwilling to waste any more time before getting to the disembowelling stage of the conversation. “Now I’m the one who wants the drink,” Irene said. She raised her bottle. “Cork of the bottle of brandy in my hand, come out.”

The cork popped out as though the bottle of brandy had been a shaken bottle of champagne, bouncing off the ceiling to land somewhere in a corner.

“You will find that isn’t as good a painkiller as you might hope,” the Countess said. She’d tensed for a moment as Irene used the Language, then relaxed again as the words had become clear.

“We shall see,” Irene said. She raised the bottle. “But the thing that I’m wondering at the moment is …”

“Yes?” the Countess enquired.

Irene tipped the brandy out over the felines, swinging the bottle so that the alcohol sprayed out in an arc. “Brandy, cleanse these cats of chaos influence!” she ordered.

The cats shrieked as the liquid hit them. It would have been more efficient—more symbolic—to use pure water as an agent, but under the circumstances Irene could only hope that brandy would work. It was a logical chain of reasoning; the cats were the only things that could have gotten in and out of here, and the cats were somehow acting as an agent for the Countess to project her will into this place. So theoretically, if Irene could somehow break that link, then the Countess would no longer be able to access the hotel. It was all perfectly solid logic, and Irene desperately hoped that it was correct.

The sound of the cats screaming was almost worse than human voices in pain. Their desperate noises weren’t human; they were creatures that didn’t understand what had been done to them, or why Irene’s actions hurt them so much. They rolled on the floor, snarling and scratching at each other, and something rose from their bodies—something like lightning, or fox-fire, or the first flare of light in an incandescent bulb. It flowed towards the Countess and through her, flaring in her eyes.

Irene found herself staggering, wanting to collapse to her knees, as the huge drain of her words in the Language hit her. She was deliberately opposing herself to an ancient and powerful force of chaos that very much wanted to keep things as they were. The Countess flickered in and out of existence like the juddering images in a roll of film, trying to maintain her presence.

Irene swayed but held herself upright. I have too many people depending on me to let her win. It was a promise to herself, a self-set binding on her own will that was as real as anything the Language could do. The thought of everyone sitting up above her, unaware of what was going on, drove her to take a step forward, and she dashed the last of the brandy in the Countess’s face. “Creature of chaos, leave this building!”

The Countess froze, abruptly as flat and two-dimensional as a painting. Her face was a mask of anger, as white and dead as bone.

Darkness closed around Irene as the last of the lights went out.