The Burning Page

It wasn’t quite as helpful as I’ll make sure Davey turns over your stolen property, but it would do for a start. Irene nodded in thanks.

Then the wave of chaos-tinged power hit her again, slamming down on the room in a silent burst that made her shake. She locked her knees and bit her lip, conscious that she was swaying, but aware that if she showed weakness, her grip on the situation would be broken. It didn’t touch the werewolves, they couldn’t even feel it, but it ran across Irene’s nerves in a burst of foul scent and heat, then leapt for the nearest printed material like an arcing current.

‘What the hell is this?’ Dawkins rose from his throne, inspecting it in confusion. Irene went up on her toes to get a better look at it, over the heads of the werewolves that were crowding around, and her heart sank even lower. All the carefully attached Tube signs were covered in graffiti or had changed their wording entirely, and the new writing was all in the Language.

I know you’re there, it said.

Write something back on it, she’d been told. It was harder than she’d thought to pull herself together in the aftermath of that strike. It was probably also a bad idea to associate herself with the event in the eyes of the werewolves. But she needed answers. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, then raised her voice above the confused babble. ‘Excuse me! Does anyone have pen and ink?’

‘I do,’ said one of the werewolves who’d been near the throne. He was an elderly man, with grizzled hair that ran down his face in long sideburns, paired with a draggly beard, and he was fully dressed. He fished in his breast pocket. ‘That is, would a pencil do?’

‘Perfect,’ Irene said, plucking it from his hand before he could object. ‘Mr Dawkins, please give me a moment and I’ll try to find out who sent this.’

‘Do you know what’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘Possibly,’ Irene said. She squeezed between two werewolves to get at the throne, stepping on a set of bare toes to make some space for herself, and hastily scrawled in the Language on the nearest sign: Alberich?

This time she was more prepared for the shock of the response. It didn’t make it any easier, but it did mean that she could brace herself against it. The writing on the throne changed, like sand being dragged into new patterns by an invisible tide. My little ray of sunshine. Have you changed your mind about your future?

Irene gritted her teeth. At least that proved it was Alberich. Only a very few people knew that her original name had been Ray, and he, unfortunately, was one of them. From what, to what? she wrote.

Dawkins leaned over her shoulder, with enough rolling power to his movement that it nearly burst the seams of his city gentleman’s suit. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain,’ he said. There was a non-optional tone to the suggestion.

‘It’s on my newspaper!’ one of the nearby werewolves complained, holding up a sheaf of newsprint, which Irene recognized, from her acquaintance with Vale, as the agony page from The Times. ‘All the same stuff that’s on there!’

Irene spared a moment to hope that Davey – and her folder – were well out of the effect’s range. ‘It’s from a man named Alberich,’ she said. ‘He’s tried to kill me in the past.’

‘Why?’ The tone of Dawkins’ question acknowledged that people no doubt had perfectly good reasons to kill each other. It seemed he was asking merely to satisfy his own curiosity about their motivations, rather than from any moral imperative to prevent a killing.

Irene shrugged. ‘I stole a book, he stole it back, he betrayed us, these things happen—’ She broke off at a new surge of power, and the writing on the throne changed again. Join me, tell me what the book said, and be safe. Or perish with the Library.

‘Oh, you don’t need to make excuses to us,’ Dawkins said. There was a thin round of applause and snarling from the mob. ‘So, you going to tell him what he wants to know?’

‘No,’ Irene said. A sudden headache was rising to a blinding intensity. I’m interested, she scribbled. I want to live. Tell me more. All of which were true in themselves. One couldn’t lie in the Language. She just hoped that together they’d give a totally false impression of surrender.

There was a pause, and then the words re-formed. You’re probably lying. But we’ll talk later. If you live.

The humming weight of power grew, swelling around Irene. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being in the cross-hairs of some impossibly large gun. The metal Tube signs were beginning to shudder on the throne’s framework, rattling against their fastenings in a rising screech of metal.

Her next conclusion wasn’t born from logic. It was a leap of imagination, combined with a very vivid mental image of what would happen when the energy levels down there rose too high. ‘Everyone get back and get down!’ Irene shouted, following her own advice.

The throne exploded. Shattered Tube signs scythed in every direction, humming through the air and slicing into everything in their way. Irene hugged the ground, her arms over her head, hearing screams and crashes, but not daring to raise her head till the noise had stopped.

At least the bursts of power had ended too. Her headache was draining away, and she could think clearly. And her first thought was, Dawkins is not going to like this.

She looked up. Dawkins was standing above her. His coat was split down the sleeves, and his arms rippled with muscle. A healing gash dribbled blood from his forehead to his jaw, and while his face was still human, there were too many teeth in his mouth, and his eyes were pure red.