The Burning Page

Kai grabbed her wrist, his grip hard enough to hurt. ‘Irene,’ he said, his voice shocked. ‘Some of my kindred are in this world.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Irene stared at Kai in surprise, and was about to ask for more details when the door at the other end of the room boomed open, thudding against the wall. She and Kai both turned to see who it was.

The man standing in the doorway was presumably a museum guard, though the cudgel hanging from his belt looked too well-used for Irene’s peace of mind. His clothing was stark black with red accents, with a high-necked jacket over breeches and boots. A brutal scar marred one side of his face. Two other guards filled the space behind him: the bulk of their shoulders made Irene seriously wonder about their normal duties. Museum guards weren’t usually this well organized, beefy, or clearly ready for violence.

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ the lead guard demanded.

It was a reasonable question, and it was one that Irene had been asked quite a number of times in her career. Unfortunately, I’m Irene and I’m here to steal books was rarely the answer that interrogators wanted to hear. More immediately, she couldn’t think of any good answer that would adequately explain her presence in an apparently heavily guarded area. She might as well go directly to the next usual step.

‘You perceive that I and this man are people who have a right to be here and who should be allowed to leave,’ she said firmly in the Language. The effort took her by surprise. It felt as if she was having to push the words uphill. The universe didn’t seem to want to accept the Language’s effect. Was this how it felt to work in such high-order worlds? She’d generally been employed in more middle-of-the-road ones before, or even chaotic ones.

Nevertheless, the Language worked. The guards all looked a bit confused, but the arrogant intimidation drained from their posture. ‘Apologies,’ the first one said, saluting. ‘We hadn’t realized, ma’am.’

‘Carry on,’ Irene said with a casual nod, sauntering towards the door. She swayed a little, still light-headed from the effort, but Kai steadied her. The guards melted out of her way like butter before a hot knife, their eyes lowered in respect.

She and Kai were halfway down the corridor when there came a furious yell of, ‘Stop them!’

‘Faster than usual,’ Irene muttered, as the two of them sprinted round the corner. The guards had the advantage of knowing the terrain, but fortunately the place was a tangle of rooms. Very elegant, beautiful rooms, as far as Irene could tell while running through them, and full of interesting-looking books. More to the point, these were rooms where one could lose pursuers.

She took stock of the situation while hiding behind a display stand with Kai. The guards thundered past, yelling something that Irene’s Polish wasn’t good enough to translate.

She waited till they were out of earshot, then said, ‘We may need to rethink our usual strategy.’

‘Why?’ Kai asked.

‘Because normally that effect lasts for longer.’

‘I assumed it was just bad luck.’

‘No. I think it was the high-order nature of this world. It was harder to get it to work, too.’

‘Oh.’ Kai frowned. ‘Normally I’d have loved to take you to a high-order world, but this might make things inconvenient. I never expected to be actually stealing a book with you on one of them. And why did those guards come in just then? They seemed very prepared for action. I thought that sort of thing only happened on high-chaos worlds.’

‘Life has a tendency to be awkward,’ Irene said with deep bitterness. ‘All right. Let’s try and find the exit before they come back.’

Some very cautious exploration brought them to the more public areas of the building, and they were able to slip into the general comings and goings without attracting attention. Most of the visitors seemed to be students or scholars, and very few of them looked well off. Battered overcoats and an air of genteel poverty were the norm.

The guard at the door demanded to see Irene’s pass, but was willing to take a gold coin and her apology for having ‘forgotten’ it instead. Probably there would be trouble, once he and the guards who’d been chasing her compared notes, but Irene planned to be well out of the city by that time.

She and Kai found a cafe several streets away, collecting newspapers as they went, and settled down in a corner with a pot of tea and a plate of fried cakes stuffed with plum jam. For half an hour or so they were silent, except for occasional requests to pass a newspaper. Irene took the Polish papers, as she had at least a basic grasp of the language, while Kai read the international ones, since his Polish was non-existent.

Finally Irene put down the last paper and signalled for a new pot of tea. ‘This is going to be inconvenient,’ she said. ‘I don’t like trying to steal books in the middle of secessions and revolutions.’

‘Maybe not as inconvenient as it might have been.’ Kai tapped the French newspaper Le Monde. ‘According to this one, the troubles are in the outlying countries, not Russia itself. Once we’re in St Petersburg we’ll be safe.’ He thought about that. ‘Well, safer than we are here, at least.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’ Irene stacked the papers thoughtfully. ‘They’re using terms like “terrorism” and “foreign agents” and “fifth column”. I’ve found that when that starts happening, homeland citizens get suspicious of any oddly-behaving foreigners. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.’