The Invisible Library (13 page)

Before anyone could come to awkward conclusions about the centre of the circle, Irene darted forward and elbowed her way past several complaining clots of shoppers. She could hear the grinding
whir of gears and levers struggling with disobedient mechanical legs. The flow of people carried her forward out of her cul-de-sac, leaving her pursuers trapped behind the barricade of frozen
stalls (and, she hoped, being trampled underfoot by angry shoppers). Irene headed for the nearest opening in the maze of tables, then from there to an alleyway. After a bit of rearrangement to veil
and jacket, it was out onto the main street again – heading back and round towards Holborn. With nobody following her this time.

With each step the reality of the message from the Library sank more deeply into her guts.
Beware Alberich. Beware Alberich. Beware Alberich.

She didn’t need this. She really didn’t need this. She was already in the middle of a complicated mission, with a trainee to handle on top of it all. She’d given Kai an
optimistic summary to keep his spirits up, but that didn’t mean that anything was going to be
easy
.

And now this.

Alberich was a figure out of nightmare. He was the one Librarian who’d betrayed the Library, got away with it and was still somewhere out there. His true name was long since lost, and only
his chosen name as a Librarian was remembered. He’d sold out to chaos. He’d betrayed the other Librarians who’d been working with him. And he was still alive. Somehow, in spite of
age and time and the course of years that would afflict any Librarian who lived outside the Library, he was still alive.

Irene found herself shivering. She pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, and tried to rein her thoughts back from a train of needlessly baroque images. Stupid thoughts. After all,
it wasn’t as if Alberich was on her trail at this very moment . . .

. . . was it?

The message from the Library couldn’t have been faked. It must have been sent by one of the senior Librarians, probably Coppelia. It wouldn’t have been sent unless things were
urgent, which meant that she had to assume that Alberich was in the area. Worst-case scenario.

She glanced back into a shop window. Nobody seemed to be following her.

She needed to talk to Dominic, urgently, but the British Library would be shut at this time of night. He’d be at home – the address being somewhere in the papers Kai was
safeguarding. Tomorrow morning would be easier. For the moment, she and Kai had to find a new hotel and go undercover.

Irene wanted to go very deeply undercover. She wanted to go so deeply undercover that it’d take an automated steam-shovel to excavate her out of it. She also had to decide how much to tell
Kai. It was too dangerous to leave him in the dark, not to mention simply unfair, but at the same time she didn’t want to panic him. After all, look how panicked she was herself. One panicked
person was quite enough. Two would be overkill.

Possibly he’d be ignorant enough not to realize just how bad the situation might be. Possibly he wouldn’t have heard the horror stories that had been traded round in quiet alcoves
about some of the things that Alberich had done.

And possibly, Irene decided, as she came into sight of Holborn Tube station and saw Kai loitering under a streetlamp, pigs would fly – which would at least mean bacon for breakfast. Oh
well. Hotel first. Dramatic explanations later.

‘I don’t want to complain or anything,’ Kai said, ‘but we’re currently holed up in a cheap hotel.’

‘We are,’ Irene agreed. She sat down and began to work her buttoned boots off, with a sigh of relief.

‘This place isn’t just cheap, it’s filthy!’ Kai gestured round at the tatty yellow wallpaper, the dirt-streaked window, the threadbare counterpane on the double bed, the
sallow mirror on the rickety dresser. ‘You can’t seriously expect us to—’

‘Kai,’ Irene said firmly. ‘You’re spoilt. What happened to the shady but useful background? What happened to being a cool street runner who could handle that sort of
thing? Have five years in the Library really softened you up that much?’

Kai looked around, and his nose wrinkled. ‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘They have.’ He sat down on the very edge of the bed. ‘Is this much deep cover really necessary?
Couldn’t we, you know, go and hide out at the most expensive hotel in town and claim we’re Canadians?’

‘No,’ Irene said. She removed one boot and started to work on the other. ‘Deep cover. For the moment, I want us untraceable. We’ll clean up tomorrow and find a nicer
place.’

‘Is something the matter?’

Irene pulled off the second boot. ‘Oof.’ She had to tell him; it wouldn’t be safe to keep him ignorant. ‘There is a potential problem,’ she admitted slowly.
‘I don’t know that it’s an immediate issue.’

Kai just looked at her.

‘I had an urgent message from the Library.’ The next few words were difficult to say, and even more difficult to keep calm and reasonable. ‘It warned me to beware Alberich. You
can pour me some of that brandy now.’

Kai’s hand halted halfway to the brandy bottle, on Irene’s list of essential supplies. ‘Wait,’ he said slowly. ‘When you say Alberich, do you mean the one
who’s supposed to be . . .’ He trailed off, leaving it hanging. And, Irene noted to her displeasure, not pouring her brandy either.

‘No,’ Irene said. ‘I don’t mean the one who’s supposed to be. I mean the one who is. Not that I’ve ever met him, and with any luck we won’t have to, and
this is just a precaution.’ She hoped. ‘Now can I have that brandy?’

‘He’s real?’ Kai said. Still no brandy.

‘He’s recorded in the Library. How could he not be real?’

Kai looked blank. ‘He could be fictional?’

Irene gritted her teeth. ‘No. He was formally marked for the Library, given the initiation and everything. That’s why he can’t go back there. It’d know he was there. But
it proves that he is real, that he’s not some sort of urban legend like the thing about the pipes and the tentacle monster.’ That had been one of the popular ones when she was a
trainee. The logic was that if rooms of the Library could be connected by the plumbing, then there was some sort of dark central cistern with a huge tentacle monster living in it which ate old
Librarians. And of course it was all covered up by order from on high . . . She and other trainees had spent several hopeful hours rapping on pipes and trying to pass messages or find tentacles.
‘Brandy?’ she finished.

Kai finally remembered to get up and open the bottle. He splashed a bare quarter-inch into a battered china cup, and offered it to her.

‘Thank you,’ Irene said, and knocked it back in one gulp, then offered the cup for a refill. ‘A bit more this time, please.’

Kai stared at her. ‘Are you
sure
you’re all right?’

‘It’s been a busy evening,’ Irene said. ‘And I’m going to be sitting up for the next few hours studying the local Language listings that Dominic gave us. You can
get some sleep.’

‘But we ought to tell Dominic at once! After all, if Alberich’s here, it proves how important the book is! And we should warn Dominic—’

‘How?’ Irene enquired. She’d decided a while back that Socratic questioning was a good idea, because (a) it got students thinking for themselves, (b) sometimes they came up
with ideas she hadn’t thought of, and (c) it gave her more time to think while they were trying to find answers.

‘We can go to the British Library – oh, wait. It won’t be open at this time of night.’

‘It won’t,’ Irene agreed, ‘which is going to be annoying if we need to sneak back in there at some point to get back to the Library. And he didn’t give us a home
address.’ It should have been in those papers he’d given them. It wasn’t. Which, a niggling voice at the back of her mind pointed out, had been careless of Dominic. Almost to the
point of outright dereliction of duty in such a dangerous location. She might have needed his help urgently.

‘We can use the Language to contact him,’ Kai said triumphantly.

Irene considered that. ‘I can make a construct and send it to warn him, but it will need to travel and find him.’

‘Magic,’ Kai said.

‘Not my field,’ Irene replied. ‘Are you any good at it?’

‘I can command some spirits,’ Kai said modestly. ‘But I haven’t had time to introduce myself to any local ones. I wouldn’t want to try that unless we have no other
choice.’

Irene nodded. ‘And Dominic did say they could be dangerous. So we’ll go to the British Library in the morning and talk to Dominic in person, then. The Library will have updated him
in any case, just as they did me. It’s not as if we’re leaving him in danger. This isn’t a bad horror film.’ She smiled, hopefully reassuringly.

‘Oh,’ Kai said. He glanced at the small case by the door with the documents in it. ‘So,’ he said, with a little too much casualness, ‘can you show me some of the
Language words in there?’

‘I could, but it wouldn’t do you any good.’ Irene put down the cup. ‘It won’t be any different from how it is inside the Library. It still won’t look like
anything other than normal speech to you.’

‘Did it hurt?’

Irene blinked at the change of subject. ‘Did what hurt?’

‘Getting the Library mark.’ Kai threw himself back down on the bed. It creaked under him. ‘If that’s the only way to understand the Language.’

‘Yes, and yes.’ Since Kai evidently wasn’t going to bring it over to her, Irene got up and walked across to fetch the case. ‘Look, you should get some sleep.
There’s no point us both staying up all night.’

Kai rolled onto his front, resting his chin on his hands, and looked up at her. ‘Irene,’ he said, and there was something low and stroking in his voice. ‘When you say sleep, do
you really mean just sleep?’

Irene looked at him, the case in her hands, and raised her eyebrows pointedly. ‘Yes. I do really mean just sleep.’

‘But you, me – we’re sharing rather a small space, don’t you think?’ He stretched, and she noticed his trousers clung appealingly tightly. ‘You’re not
feeling some kind of
loco parentis
responsibility towards a novice, are you? Is that what it is?’

‘No,’ Irene said briefly. ‘But it’s irrelevant in any case.’

‘But . . .’

‘Look,’ she cut him off, before he got any ideas about standing up and taking her in his arms or anything like that. ‘Kai, I like you, you’re extremely handsome, and I
hope we’ll stay good friends, but you are not my type.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

She walked back, sat down, and opened the case, starting to thumb through the papers inside.

‘What is your type?’ Kai asked hopefully.

Irene looked up to see that he’d removed his cravat, unbuttoned his shirt, and was showing a triangle of muscular, smooth, pale chest. She could imagine what he would feel like under her
fingers.

She swallowed. ‘Do we really have to do this?’

‘I’m not just trying to flatter you,’ Kai said. There was a thread of annoyance in his voice now. ‘But I like you, I think you’re clever and witty and charming and
I have a lot of respect for you. And believe me when I say I am
marvellous
in bed.’

‘I do believe you,’ Irene said, looking for a way out of this. ‘I’m sure that we would spend a very nice evening. But I wouldn’t get any study done then.’

‘After the study,’ Kai said hopefully.

Irene rubbed her forehead with the back of one hand. She was getting a headache. ‘Look, I appreciate you being polite about this, I appreciate you being absolutely charming, and I wish I
could be more polite about turning you down. But it’s been a long day, and I still have work to do, and you’re not really my type. And before this goes any further, my type is darkly
dangerous and fascinating, of dubious morality. And yes, this caused the whole problem in the cat burglar scandal that was mentioned earlier. Which was deeply embarrassing at the time. And still
is. Also, let me make myself perfectly clear that if you repeat this I will
skin you alive
. Right?’

Kai looked at her with big disappointed eyes. ‘I would have enjoyed partnering you,’ he said. ‘Really. You would, too.’