CHAPTER 15

Irene sank to her knees in exhaustion, dropping the empty bottle. She knew that she was still conscious—at least, she thought she was conscious. How could one tell whether one was conscious or unconscious just by thinking about it?

She pulled herself together, breathing deeply and trying to stop her head from spinning. Being in the darkness like this made it worse: there was nothing visual to hold on to. The cats were still there—she felt warm fur against her hand when she reached out—but they’d stopped that awful shrieking. They were lying sprawled on the ground like worn-out rags, barely moving.

Priorities. What was most important? She needed to close that gap in the wall. “Bricks which come from the hole in the wall, rise back into place and seal it again.”

The sound of bricks grinding against each other ran through her head like an earthquake. She honestly considered throwing up. The only reason that she hadn’t realised how bad her headache was had been the comparative silence. Her nose was bleeding, and she couldn’t even be sure when it had started.

She pinched the bridge of her nose hard. That was what they’d taught her at school in first aid. Or was it supposed to be lying back with an ice pack on your nose and stuff it with cotton wool?

Focus, she told herself harshly. “Lights, on,” she tried.

Nothing happened.

Well, that was a nuisance. The combined influence of the Language and chaotic power must have blown a fuse somewhere, and even the Language couldn’t turn a light on if the light was physically incapable of turning on. She pulled herself upright and slid a foot forward, trying to avoid trampling on semi-conscious cats as she felt around for a wall.

“Winters!” came a call from the distance.

That was Vale’s voice. Irene breathed a great sigh of relief, coupled with just a fraction of annoyance that he couldn’t have gotten here five minutes earlier. “Over here!” she called back, then winced and put her hand to her head again.

She could hear multiple people approaching, not just Vale—hurried steps, the swish of skirts. Light broke through the darkness, and Irene shielded her eyes at the sudden glare from hand-held lamps.

“Are you all right, Winters?” Vale demanded.

“Passable,” Irene answered. “The Countess came off worse. But she’s gone from here now. I think. I drove her out.” She looked around the room in the lamplight. No signs of explosives. No big piles of dynamite. Nothing obvious. “Did you pass anything odd on your way in here?”

Mu Dan looked over Vale’s shoulder, scrutinising the room with flared nostrils. “This place stinks of chaos,” she opined. “As well as brandy. And why are there cats everywhere?”

“The Countess was somehow using them to manifest.” Irene picked her way across the living carpet of felines. “Let’s not kill them. Please. I don’t think it was their fault.”

“Can you guarantee that they are safe now?” Mu Dan asked. “We can’t afford to take chances.”

“How interesting.” Silver stepped from behind Vale and raised the lamp that he was holding to inspect the floor. He stirred one cat with the toe of a mirror-polished shoe: much to Irene’s regret, it didn’t lash out at him. “This place has certainly been the focus of power, but otherwise we seem to be a little lacking in evidence.”

“Well, I apologise for not having the lady in iron chains waiting for your inspection—” Irene bit her lip and stopped before she could get any further. There was no time for this. “I came down here because I thought whoever was causing trouble was trying to decoy all our attention outwards—which meant that they didn’t want us looking inwards and down here. I found the Countess in this room, together with a whole mob of cats. You can see the cats. And there was a hole in the wall, a cat-sized one, but I’ve blocked it now. But I’m afraid that she’s planted some sort of bomb here in the cellars, or done something which is going to be … bad.” Bad was far too minor a word for the current situation, but it would just have to do. “So we’d better search these cellars. Now.”

Silver frowned and checked his watch.

“You have an appointment?” Mu Dan needled him.

“No,” Silver said. “But it is five minutes to midnight. If I was the sort of person who wanted to be needlessly dramatic …”

A chill wormed its way down Irene’s spine. Because of course a lunatic warmongering bloodthirsty Fae would set off explosives at midnight. What could possibly be more appropriate? “We have to hurry,” she said urgently.

Vale nodded. Without needing to be prompted, the four of them separated, Silver and Mu Dan running ahead to check the cellars on either side. Irene stumbled along behind Vale, looking to left and right in the light of his lamp. “How long till they fix the lights?” she asked.

“Uncertain,” Vale said crisply. “It took a great deal of persuasion for them to let us come down here with lamps. Speaking of which, Winters, I apologise for the delay—”

“Here!” Mu Dan called, from ahead and to the right. Vale broke off and jolted into a run; Irene followed.

Mu Dan pointed mutely into the small side wine cellar she’d found. Tangles of wires ran from various points in the stacks of wine bottles—and behind them—to a central nexus, where they were wrapped around a clock-hand dial. The second hand was moving silently, barely visible behind the network of fuses.

“Stand back,” Vale said, assuming charge. “Winters, can you do something about the light conditions?”

Irene couldn’t turn the lights on—but she might be able to upgrade the lamps that everyone was holding. “Give me your lamp,” she said, reaching out for it. “Lamp which I am holding, increase your light until you are lighting up your surroundings as brightly as noon.”

The lamp burned more and more brightly, bringing the old cellar timbers and bricks into focus and casting everyone’s shadows into harsh relief against the walls and floor.

“Hold it up,” Vale said. He frowned. “Yes, I thought so. Stay back, all of you. Winters, keep me illuminated. Don’t use the Language.” He stepped carefully over a wire Irene hadn’t even noticed that ran across the cellar entrance, then dropped to his knees next to the dial and its surrounding fuses. Reaching into his jacket, he withdrew a small flat case the size of a manicure kit. But the tools inside were lockpicks, not nail files or clippers.

“Should we clear the hotel while he’s working?” Mu Dan asked. She was in sleek dark crimson silk, with a diamond collar that matched her hairpins. “If this goes wrong—”

“We’ve only got a minute and a half anyhow,” Silver said from behind Irene. “We’d never manage it in time.”

“You’re very calm about it,” Irene commented.

“My dear little mouse …” She hated that epithet from him. It was so diminutive in every way. “I trust the detective here to be able to do his job. It’s in his nature, after all. Besides, I honestly can’t see myself dying like this. Would you like to know how I do visualise myself dying?”

“No,” Irene and Mu Dan said simultaneously.

Irene couldn’t take her eyes off the clock dial and the second hand slowly creeping around it. The second hand was one of the sort that made little shuddering jumps forward rather than moving slowly. Second after second was counted off.

“I can stop the clock—” she offered.

“If I’d wanted that I’d have asked for it,” Vale said, not looking up. He chose another pick and slid it behind the clock. They were all quiet enough that the tiny sounds of metal against metal were audible. “Underneath a hotel full of Librarians? She’ll have booby-trapped it against what you can do.”

Irene knew that was true. She’d encountered that sort of trap before—and the fact that the Countess had wired the entrance already demonstrated that she was capable of thinking that way. But if it got down to five seconds and Vale hadn’t defused the timer, was it worth the risk?

Her mouth was dry. She swallowed, trying to clear her throat. Ten seconds. Nine. Eight.

She could still smell the odour of blood from earlier. Her lamp blazed pitilessly bright, stripping away comforting shadows. Each second seemed to stretch out longer and longer. Seven. Six. Five.

If she didn’t stop the clock with the Language now, then this whole hotel could go up in the explosion. People would die.

Irene bit her lip hard enough to hurt. She trusted Vale.

Four. Three.

The second hand stopped.

Vale sat back on his heels and began to put his implements away. “A nasty little piece,” he said calmly. “One of the more complex that I’ve seen. Can you go into a little more detail about your encounter with this Countess, Winters?”

Irene ran briefly through a description of the meeting. It was a relief to finally know who the enemy was. “But why would she put the bomb here?” she asked. “It’s not that close to the Salon Tuileries.”

“No,” Mu Dan said thoughtfully. “But I think it’s beneath the Salon Pompadour.”

“Which raises interesting questions about how much the Countess knows about tonight’s dinner.” Vale rose. “We should return upstairs, I think.”

Irene saw that Mu Dan was frowning. “Is something the matter?” she asked.

“It’s a pity,” Mu Dan said carefully, “a very great pity that we couldn’t actually see this Countess of yours ourselves.”

A sudden uncertainty gripped Irene. She realised that she’d been subconsciously congratulating herself on the fact that not only had they seen off the Countess and defused her bomb, but they now had actual proof of her existence. “I beg your pardon?” she said, hoping against hope that she was misunderstanding Mu Dan.

“I’m not trying to be awkward,” Mu Dan clarified. “I agree that this place reeks of chaos.”

“Could we be just a little less prejudiced in our verbs here?” Silver suggested. But his manner was restrained, and his objection clearly more for the sake of snideness than a genuine contradiction.

Mu Dan paused to glare at him before continuing. “I concede some sort of chaotic interference down here. Possibly Fae. But we have no proof beyond your word that this theoretical Countess set the bomb. And as for evidence of what you’d been up to down here—well, we found you in the middle of a pile of drunken cats!”

“They weren’t drunk, they were just soaked in alcohol—” Irene started hotly, then realised that she was arguing on the wrong front. A sense of betrayal was making itself keenly felt. “All right, I admit that doesn’t actually sound much better. But why are you trying to disprove what I’ve told you?”

Mu Dan glanced between Silver and Vale, as if hoping that one of them would supply the answer instead of her. Neither of them spoke. She turned back to Irene. “Because it’s in your interest—in the Library’s interest—to have some third party trying to sabotage things. And so far we have no actual proof otherwise—”

“You mean besides the attempt to kidnap you earlier today?” Irene snapped. “Or the chlorine gas in the cake delivered to the hotel? Or the rats outside?”

Mu Dan’s face might have been carved from stone, but her eyes were hot with anger. “I am an impartial judge-investigator. These events happened, but where is your proof of some evil genius behind them all?”

“Are you saying,” Irene asked very carefully, biting down on the urge to scream in the other woman’s face, “no, wait, forgive me—are you suggesting that we might have set all this up in order to provide fake evidence that the Countess exists and is here?”

“I am saying,” Mu Dan replied, an equal anger and restraint audible in her voice, “that at the moment we can’t prove or report otherwise.”

Irene was drawing in her breath to say precisely what she thought of that, when Mu Dan’s choice of words raised a red flag. Perhaps Irene wasn’t the only one having to cope with unreasonable management on this job. “Report,” she said carefully. “Hmm.”

There was a momentary glint of relief in Mu Dan’s eyes. “I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like such proof, you understand.”

“What about you?” Irene turned to Silver. “Do you have any thoughts on the subject that you would care to share with us?”

“Manners, manners,” Silver murmured. “Just because you’ve had a near-death experience with a powerful kindred of mine down here in the cellars, all on your own, and you didn’t even get to drink any of the brandy yourself, does not mean that you get to take it out on me. It’s my superior’s official position that the Countess exists, but he acknowledges—no, let’s go the full stretch, he positively insists that we get outright proof of it. And that would be more proof than just your testimony, a lingering odour of chaos, and a lot of cats.”

“We are omitting something here,” Vale said thoughtfully. “Winters has always assured me that Librarians can bind themselves in their Language to speak the truth. Surely that makes her testimony as reliable as I believe it to be?”

Irene was about to thank Vale for his support, but then she saw the possible flaw. “Let me guess,” she said, resigned. “Certain people—certain high-ranking people, whom we can’t actually name because they wouldn’t want to be quoted on this—are going to say that the problem with this is that it all relies on ‘the Librarians say’ in the first place. Or that I could have somehow been fooled and that I’m honestly telling the truth, but that I’m wrong about what I saw. Or something. And nothing is going to be acceptable here except for proof so big and obvious that you could sink the Titanic with it.”

Vale didn’t bother asking what the Titanic was. He was better at prioritising than Irene. “Well, then,” he said briskly, “we had better find this proof. Starting by tracing the dynamite in the morning, and any other evidence which may have come to light—did you say something about a cake and chlorine, Winters?”

“Yes,” Irene said. She was dragging herself back from the verge of despair. This was a temporary roadblock, not a total burning of bridges. “Erda on the Fae security team has photographs. We should be able to trace it. And the poisoned apples too.”

“You should have said so earlier,” Mu Dan chided Irene, as they headed back to the stairway. “When will I be able to inspect them?”

“Hopefully as soon as she’s got them developed,” Irene said. “I think she’ll need to go back to their hotel for that.”

The kitchen was still active, though it had moved to the dessert stage, and waiters were carrying through bowls of peaches swimming in jelly. Irene’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had so far managed to avoid almost every course. “Do you suppose we can sneak back in with nobody noticing us?” she asked hopefully.

“Ah! Monsieur Vale!” It was Inspector Maillon, melting snow dripping from his cape, followed by a couple of gendarmes, with Prutkov, Duan Zheng, and Sterrington right behind them, and the whole procession backed up by a couple of waiters desperately trying to usher them out of the kitchen. “We have had another outbreak of this vile anarchist behaviour! I would not normally call a man away from his dinner, but your hotel was en route to the scene of the crime—and this may be connected with the earlier assault upon you.”

“What’s happened?” Vale asked.

The chopping of knives and sloshing of jelly and pouring of alcohol had quietened enough for the entire kitchen to listen to the conversation. Inspector Maillon’s words were audible throughout the room. “An explosion at the Richelieu Library, sir! At the stroke of midnight. Minor, no serious destruction, but still an appalling act of vandalism and anarchy! I am on my way there at once, and I thought to invite you to accompany me as well.”

Irene felt the colour leave her face. She put the lamp down on the nearest flat surface before she dropped it. She’d failed even worse than she’d thought she had. The Countess must have had a double-pronged attack ready to go, and Irene had only guessed at half of it. She’d failed.

In the background she was half-conscious of intense discussion, then Vale shouldered in front of her. “Winters, I need to— Winters, are you all right?”

With what felt like an effort big enough to shake Paris, she pulled herself together. “We’re going to investigate the explosion?”

Vale lowered his voice. “To be precise, Winters, I am going—the inspector and this whole world seem to think it inappropriate to drag ladies into such a situation. I will be taking Silver as well: he assures me he can locate any signs of Fae interference. I fear you and Mu Dan will have to deal with things here. I’ll let you know what we discover in the morning.”

Irene thought of protesting. Then she looked across at Inspector Maillon and gauged the level of his gender-based prejudice. It wavered somewhere between bristling moustache and indignant eyebrows. Irene might be able to insist on coming along, but it would take valuable time, and the inspector’s willingness to cooperate might dim in the face of what he considered unreasonable demands. She’d just have to sneak in later. “I’ll be here,” she said with an effort. “Good luck.”

With a nod, Vale was gone, and the whole group of them were sweeping—or more accurately, being swept by the principal chef, who’d had quite enough of them all—out into the corridor. Irene glanced wistfully after Vale and Silver, who were vanishing together with the inspector and his gendarmes, but then found herself being backed against the wall by Prutkov. “Irene,” he said. “Kindly explain what’s going on. And why you have been calling people away from the formal dinner, in spite of my specific instructions otherwise.”

Irene would have preferred to be giving her report to him in private, rather than in front of other people from both sides, but at least it distracted her from thoughts of the Richelieu Library in ruins. She clung to the inspector’s description of it as minor like a talisman, and ran through the evening’s events so far as quickly as possible.

Prutkov’s lips tightened as she went on. “I see,” he finally said. He turned to Duan Zheng and to Sterrington. “I must ask you to accept my apologies for the situation, and for the lack of any clear evidence about what has taken place. Clearly our response to this whole threat was inadequate. We will review the situation and are prepared to have another Librarian take charge of the investigation, if your representatives would rather work with someone else.” Someone who hasn’t fouled up and demonstrated her incompetence, his tone made clear.

Irene had been blamed for situations and hung out to take the blame before, but rarely quite so publicly. A dozen different responses boiled in her mouth and tried to force their way out, from the childish that’s not fair! to the more adult there was no way anyone could have predicted this! to the blame-shifting you yourself refused to give me any further assistance. She quite literally tasted bile in her mouth as she kept her mouth shut and swallowed. Contradicting Prutkov in public would only weaken the Library’s position. Dragons would see it as improper behaviour. Fae would see it as showing a potential weakness they could exploit. Either way, saying anything at all would be a mistake. She knew that. She was—oh, how she hated that term right now—professional enough to keep her mouth shut.

Though if she had been capable of telepathy at that precise moment, Prutkov’s head would have boiled from the inside and exploded.

Duan Zheng and Sterrington glanced at each other measuringly. Irene guessed that they were weighing up the chance of getting any advantage in the negotiations from the current situation. And of course, there was the possibility that they were each waiting for the other to begin, so that they could disagree with them.

And who would the Library put in Irene’s place? Bradamant, maybe, or someone else brought in from outside. Irene folded her hands meekly behind her back and began revolving plans to get back in on the investigation. Vale would talk to her, wouldn’t he? He’d better. Normally she might have sat back and assumed the Library knew best what they were doing, and that someone better than Irene would be taking the job …

It surprised her to find that for once, she didn’t believe that. Irene was the person on the spot. She had contacts on both sides. The rest of the team were prepared to work with her. And the Countess now knew about her and considered her a personal enemy—which in this case practically guaranteed that Irene would be a target. This was, in a way, good, inasmuch as being hunted by a bloodthirsty torturing cat-loving sadist could ever be considered good. It gave them a lead.

And her parents were at stake.

Irene couldn’t let them take her off the case. But as the seconds ticked by and fear congealed inside her, she knew that it was entirely possible.

Sterrington was the first to speak. “We see no reason to ask for a change in the Library’s representation on the investigative team.”

“Nor do we,” Duan Zheng said. He glared sidelong at Sterrington, as though annoyed at having the same opinion as a Fae. “Mu Dan, accompany me: my lord will expect a report.”

The corridor emptied, leaving Prutkov and Irene alone. “Mm,” he said. “That went about as well as could be expected.”

“It did?” Irene said. She reminded herself that they were still in a public corridor and that they might be overheard, and that giving Prutkov her free and full opinion on proper treatment and leadership of subordinates who’d just had the sort of evening she’d suffered through was not a good idea. Just a very tempting one. “I’m glad to hear it.”

He patted her shoulder. “Well, of course we weren’t going to take you off the case. But I’m sure that you understand I had to make the offer.”

It would have been comforting to believe him. It would have been reassuring. But Irene trusted him just as much as she trusted thin ice to hold her weight. One false step and she’d be going under while he murmured sad nothings about her failure. “Of course,” she agreed, matching her tone to his. “It was an awkward situation.”

“I’m glad you understand.” He smiled at her, his eyes like blank glass. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure things are under control …”

And he was heading back towards the Salon Tuileries.

Irene looked down at herself. Dust and cat hairs smeared her skirts at knee-height and below. Her evening slippers felt as if they were in rags. Her gloves were dirtied and torn. She could still smell the echoes of blood and chlorine. A ferocious headache was twisting behind her temples. She was absolutely not fit company for a polite evening’s state dinner. And she was exhausted.

The stairs up to her bedroom seemed to take forever. Weariness had settled into her bones, and she was reminded with every step just how little sleep she’d gotten the night before. I’m not twenty years old any more, she thought sourly, and given the way things are going, I’m not even sure that I’m going to live to see another birthday …

She slammed the bedroom door behind her and kicked her slippers off, sending them tumbling across the room. The petty violence made her feel a little better. She peeled her gloves off, shivering as the cool air ran up her arms, and wondered about the possibility of a bath.

There was a knock at the door.

Irene opened it to find Kai standing there. He had a tray in one hand, and even with the cover over it she could smell hot soup and fresh bread. “May I come in?” he asked.

Irene hesitated, though her stomach clenched, reminding her just how hungry she was. “I’m fairly sure that your uncle will be very unhappy if he finds out that you’re acting as a waiter.” She knew she was making excuses—possibly even stupid excuses—but she had been through quite enough this evening already. The situation was fragile enough as it was.

Kai lowered his voice. “I’ve spoken with Duan Zheng. I know what happened tonight.” Raw anger showed in his voice, and his eyes were briefly dragon-red, like rubies with a flame behind them. “I should have been there too!”

Irene took a deep breath, biting back the urge to agree with him. “When we agreed to have you come and find your uncle, we both knew that would mean working with him rather than necessarily working with me. The point is getting the treaty signed. Right?”

“Irene.”

“Yes?” She tried to raise an eyebrow coolly, but she’d never been very good at that.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me in the Language that you didn’t want me there.”

“Kai.” Irene counted silently to five. She wasn’t sure she could have reached ten. And she couldn’t look him in the eyes. “Let me make something clear to you. An evening when I have been facing off rats, poison gases, evil Fae, and useless, selfish management is not the evening to be asking me emotionally revealing questions about our relationship.”

There was another silence, and Irene wondered if Kai was employing his own private version of mentally counting to five. But then his expression cleared, and he said, “You have a point. And I have something for you.” He offered the tray.

“Aren’t you coming in?” Irene would have liked to talk with him, if nothing else.

Kai coughed. “Well, to be entirely frank with you … I have had it suggested that I should seduce you in order to get more information out of you. And as you said, it’s been a difficult evening for you. I wouldn’t want to make it worse.”

“Really?” Irene found her spirits lifting. “Well, just for the record, I’ve been told to seduce you as well.”

Kai frowned. “That sort of order shames whoever gave it to you.”

Irene was tempted to agree. “But what about you?”

“That was just a suggestion,” Kai said. “That’s quite different.”

“Well, I’m not obeying orders,” Irene said, and took the tray from him, stepping aside so he could enter. Her headache was vanishing. So was her exhaustion. What she wanted, right now, was to be with someone whom she could trust. Kai might be ordered to act against her. She could accept that. But he was honest. He wasn’t lying to her. And she desperately needed—no, wanted—to share that with him, for just one night. For their own reasons, between the two of them, and for no other motive than that. “I’m off the clock for the rest of the evening. That’s been made quite clear to me. What happens next is just between the two of us as private individuals.”

“But what about tomorrow?” Kai objected, taking a hopeful step forward.

“Tomorrow is another day,” Irene said.

She beckoned him in and locked the door behind him.