The Burning Page

‘And how am I to tell you what I find out, assuming that Lord Silver is actually aware of anything beyond his immediate surroundings?’ Vale demanded.

Irene was about to snap back, but then she heard the same tone in his voice that had been there earlier, when he’d been complaining about her absence. Expressing worry about anyone else was outside his emotional lexicon. ‘My mission is urgent, so naturally I won’t be wasting any time,’ she said. ‘I hope to be back in a few days. I’ll leave a message with Bradamant in the Library if I expect to be longer than that, so she can drop by to see you, if necessary. She knows you, and where to find you.’

‘Adequate,’ Vale said begrudgingly.

‘Have you any instructions for me, Miss Winters?’ Li Ming enquired. ‘My lord Ao Shun takes an interest in your welfare, after your actions in guarding the Prince here.’ It wasn’t quite clear whether he was being serious, or simply ironic. Then Irene caught the side-glance he threw Kai. He was being serious.

‘No, thank you,’ she answered politely. ‘Though if you do hear of anything strange going on outside this world, I’d be grateful if you could pass it on to Vale here.’

‘I shall do that,’ Li Ming agreed.

Kai had moved into place next to Irene and was buttoning up his coat, the folder safely under one arm. ‘We should be on our way,’ he said quietly. Then he glanced at Zayanna and there was a glint of fire in his eyes again. ‘Before there are any more hindrances.’

‘Good luck, Miss Winters,’ Singh said, standing at Vale’s shoulder. ‘Though I must say that if you are going to be borrowing books again, I’m glad to hear you’ll be doing it outside my jurisdiction.’

‘I’d rather avoid complications like that,’ Irene agreed and escaped from Vale’s rooms onto the street, with Kai one step behind her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

When they stepped into the Library, it was dark. The receiving room was full of shadows, with a wan emergency light bulb as the only source of illumination, and the titles of the books on the walls were illegible in the dimness.

Irene tensed in shock, and her hand tightened on Kai’s arm as the door to Vale’s world thudded shut behind them. ‘This is . . . unusual,’ she said carefully.

‘Where are we?’ Kai’s eyes dilated and glinted in the remnants of light as he scanned the room. ‘Is this an outlying area?’

‘I don’t know,’ Irene admitted. They’d come in through the first library she could reach on Vale’s world, rather than by the regular Traverse. As a result, they might be anywhere at all in the Library. ‘That’s the problem with opening a random entrance. But we were in a hurry.’ The room unnerved her. She’d never before been in a part of the Library that felt so deserted and abandoned. ‘Come on, we need to find a room with a computer.’

The corridor outside was lit only by a thin strip of emergency lighting that ran along the ceiling. The floor creaked under their feet, as if another pair of steps was echoing theirs. There were windows to their left, but they faced out onto a barren courtyard under a lowering sky, so full of clouds that there was no light to spare.

Five doors later, they found a room with a computer in it. Irene threw herself down and turned it on, and felt a surge of relief as the screen lit up. Kai leaned over her shoulder, resting his weight on her chair, and watched as she logged in.

An immediate message spread across the screen, before Irene could even check her email.

All non-essential power usage has been cut back, in order to conserve energy for essential needs. All Librarians who require immediate transport for book retrieval have been allotted the use of transfer cabinets, command word ‘Emergency’. Abuse of this privilege will be noted.

But she’d only been gone a few hours. Had the situation become that much worse in her absence?

‘I thought they trusted you to be adults,’ Kai commented.

Irene bit her lip and focused on the current situation, choking down her rampant and probably entirely justified paranoia. She could think of plenty of reasons why the elder Librarians might monitor Librarian movement. Such as watching for suspicious travel, or attempts to escape, or even outright treason . . . ‘Maybe it’s like being a parent,’ she said, bringing up a Library map. ‘You never really see your children as adults.’

‘You’re exaggerating,’ Kai said, with the easy confidence of someone who hadn’t tested the issue yet.

Just you wait till you try to convince your father that you’re grown up and know what you’re doing. But Irene was distracted from her planned retort by the Library map unfurling across the screen. ‘Aha,’ she said. ‘The nearest cabinet is . . .’ She checked the map. ‘About half a mile from here. Could be worse.’

‘Do we actually have any plans yet?’ Kai asked.

‘Oh, the usual.’ Irene typed as she spoke, writing Coppelia a quick email covering Alberich’s messages and Zayanna’s rumours, as clinically and unemotionally as she could. ‘We get there, we review the situation, then we decide how to get in and we snatch the book. We may be lucky: if there are enough books stored in the Hermitage, or at least in some bits of it, then I might be able to force a gate to the Library from there. That would speed up our getaway.’

‘I’m hearing a lot of mays and mights in that,’ Kai said.

‘That’s because I’m desperately trying to find any good points at all in the current situation,’ Irene admitted. ‘As opposed to thinking of it as . . . well, an unplanned theft from a royal palace at very short notice. You know I don’t like short notice.’ She hit the Send button. ‘Still, at least we won’t have long-term identities to protect.’