The Masked City

But dragons, when taking human form, apparently took implausibly handsome (or possibly beautiful) human forms. Kai had smooth black hair with blue lights to it, skin pale as marble, deep dark eyes and cheekbones that begged to be touched. He moved like a dancer with a physique to match. The dramatic sort of dancer who could whirl you around the dance floor before bending you by the waist and pressing himself against you, and then …

He was also, Irene reminded herself firmly, her student and apprentice and her responsibility. The point wasn’t whether he might be willing - though he had strongly suggested that he was, and kept on suggesting it - or whether she might be willing. The point was whether she had the right to take advantage of his offer. For the moment she was content to have him as a friend as well as a colleague, and to be grateful for it.

Being responsible has a lot to answer for, she thought resentfully. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

‘I was just …’ Kai fiddled with his pen. ‘There was a message,’ he finally said.

‘From whom?’ This was clearly going to take a few minutes to sort out. Irene sat down opposite him, settling her elbows on the table. The healing scars on her hands from months ago stood out against her skin, and made a criss-cross pattern across her palms and fingers.

Kai plucked a scroll from under a pile of other papers. The wax seal on it had been broken, and the ribbon untied. Irene could make out what looked like Chinese characters, in black ink, signed in red. ‘From my uncle,’ he said. ‘My oldest uncle, my father’s next-oldest brother. He requests my presence at a family ceremony in a few months.’

‘Well, of course you must go,’ Irene said promptly. ‘I can manage without you for a few days. Or weeks - how long a celebration is it?’ She knew very little about dragons, in spite of sharing lodgings with one, and possibly they thought that a good family celebration lasted several years.

‘Probably a couple of weeks,’ Kai said without any real enthusiasm.

Irene tried to imagine what the problem was. ‘Are you embarrassed about your current position?’ she asked.

‘No!’ Kai’s answer was gratifyingly fast. ‘No - I wouldn’t have done it without my uncle’s permission, in any case.’

‘So he knows?’

‘No, that’s a different uncle,’ Kai said. ‘My father has three brothers. The youngest was my guardian when I started working for the Library. This is an older brother, the second-eldest in the family. So naturally I owe him my loyalty and should attend.’

Irene made a mental note that if this conversation was going to go on much longer, she was going to have to ask for names and draw up a family tree. ‘I don’t see what the problem is then,’ she said.

Kai shifted slightly in his chair. ‘I just hadn’t expected them to be able to contact me here. Any invitations should have gone to my former guardian, and of course I speak with him every few years. But for it to arrive like this—’

‘How did it arrive?’ Irene broke in, before he could edge around the subject any more.

‘By private messenger,’ Kai said.

Irene considered that. On the one hand, it meant that some dragon out there knew Kai’s postal address and, by implication, hers. On the other hand, was that necessarily a bad thing? ‘I still don’t understand why you’re objecting,’ she said. ‘If you’d waited till you next spoke to them, you’d have missed this family event.’

‘You don’t understand!’ Oh, maybe they were getting to it now. It was the wail of the teenage prince, or at least the college student prince - away from his family and enjoying a previously unknown sense of liberty. Perhaps, for junior dragons, taking a few years to explore alternate worlds was like a student’s weekend away in a foreign country - though possibly involving less drinking. ‘They know where I am. They might visit at any time. They might even disapprove of what I’ve been up to.’

‘Wait. You just said that you’re not embarrassed about your job. Now you’re saying they might disapprove. Is it because of our recent activities?’ Such as going to criminal auctions, infiltrating the Inquisition Cloisters under Winchester, or the time they’d had to run a con game on a visiting Kazakhstan warlord with a Silk Road travelogue …

‘It’s possible my uncles might not understand the full complexities of working with the Library,’ Kai admitted reluctantly. ‘I believe they think it’s just a job of researching and purchasing books.’

Irene wanted to swear at the waste of time. They needed to be on their way to see Vale about the woman, or get to the Library to get rid of the Stoker. Having to persuade Kai to confess his family problems was like pulling teeth while standing in front of an oncoming train. Though admittedly with less screaming. ‘When you were recruited for the Library, weren’t you hanging around with criminals and street thugs? Didn’t your uncle know about that?’

Kai’s back went absolutely rigid and a high flush flared on his cheekbones. ‘Irene, if you were not my superior, you would regret saying that!’

‘But you were hanging out with criminals and street thugs,’ Irene said, confused, but admiring his precise grammar under stress. That was the sort of thing you had to learn when you were young and impressionable.

‘That may be true,’ Kai said grudgingly. ‘But it was without my guardian’s knowledge. He is above such things.’