The Invisible Library (6 page)

Irene nodded. ‘Could’ve been worse. Schalken had us looking up illustrations of mosaics when we were doing training. Far too much time spent sitting with a magnifying glass and a
scanner trying to work out if there was a difference or if there was, um,’ she tried to remember the turn of phrase and tone of voice, ‘“a comprehensible yet tolerable deviation
from the norm, as expressed in the chosen world, given natural variations in the availability of minerals and colour . . .”’

A soft round of applause made her break off. Both she and Kai turned to look at the far end of the bridge. A woman in light robes was leaning against the railings, skin pale as ice and hair like
a dark cap.

She smiled.

Irene didn’t.

‘You’ve captured him exactly,’ the woman said. ‘Not surprising, given how often
you
had to listen to him say it until you got it
right.’

‘Bradamant,’ Irene said calmly. The back of her mind noted that her stomach was twisting, and that she felt sick, and that she was
not
going to show it. ‘How nice to see
you. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?’

‘You can always tell when she gets annoyed,’ Bradamant said confidingly in Kai’s direction. ‘She gets so very correct.’

‘I don’t think that we’ve met,’ Kai said. Irene was conscious of him at her elbow, though her attention was fixed on Bradamant. ‘I assume you’re one of
Irene’s colleagues.’

‘Precisely, dear.’ Bradamant stepped away from the railings. Her dark hair was cut smooth and short, like black silk against her skin. ‘I’m here for that assignment you
were given, Irene. There’s been a change of plan.’

‘What? Within the last ten minutes?’

‘Plans change so quickly,’ Bradamant said without blinking. ‘Be a good girl and hand it over.’

‘You don’t seriously expect me to believe that.’

‘It’d make life easier for both of us, dear.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ Bradamant smiled. ‘It’d mean that the mission was actually completed, for a start.’

‘And leaving aside any questions of your competence or my lack of it,’ Irene said, calmly, so calmly, ‘what could I possibly say to my supervisor?’ She was certainly not
going to lose control, especially not in front of a student, just on this level of provocation. But she knew from bitter experience just how poisonous Bradamant could be, and there was always
politics under the surface.

Bradamant shrugged. Her sheer garments rippled. ‘That, my dear, is your problem. Though your record is adequate, I suppose. You’ll just be facing a few decades of hard work to get
any sort of status back.’

‘Wait just a moment,’ Kai said. ‘Are you seriously suggesting just giving her the assignment?’

‘She is,’ Irene said. ‘I’m not.’

‘I’ll take the student as well,’ Bradamant offered. ‘Dear Kai has
such
a good record.’

Irene could hear Kai’s suppressed intake of breath. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she answered. ‘I have no reason to hand him over to you. Although you do have
such
a good record of dealing with students.’

Bradamant hissed. ‘Slander.’

It was Irene’s turn to smile. Bradamant might call it slander as much as she liked, but the facts were on record. The other woman hadn’t managed to keep a student for more than a
single mission, and whenever there’d been a problem with that mission, the student took the blame. Unfortunate when it occurred once or twice, but a nasty pattern when it recurred. ‘No
smoke without fire,’ said Irene.

‘How would you know? Keeping track, are you?’ Bradamant seemed disproportionately angry, taking a couple of impatient steps towards them, her heels loud on the bridge.

Irene smiled at Bradamant, making the expression as bland as possible. ‘Now why would I want to do something like that?’

The other woman sniffed, composing herself. She studied her fingernails. ‘I take it that you are going to be stupid, then.’

‘You may take it as you wish,’ Irene said. ‘But I am not giving you my mission, and I am not giving you my student, and if I were the sort of person who kept pet rats, I would
not give you my
rat
. Clear?’

‘Very,’ Bradamant said coldly. She swept a spare swathe of fabric around her shoulders in a loosely elegant motion. ‘Do not expect me to be nice to you when I have to clear up
your mess later.’

‘Oh,’ Irene murmured, ‘I’d never expect that.’

Bradamant turned without another word. Her footsteps rang on the iron bridge as she vanished into the dark corridor beyond, then faded into a heavier tapping of high heels on wooden floor, then
into silence.

‘An explanation would be nice,’ Kai said quietly. He didn’t try to whisper and his voice echoed in the stillness.

‘It would,’ Irene agreed. She frowned at the dark corridor. ‘I wish I knew whether that was personal or political.’

‘You sounded as if you had personal history. Big-time.’

‘We don’t get on,’ Irene said briefly. ‘We never have. She gets the job done but she’s got a reputation. You wouldn’t want to work with her.’ She began
to walk towards the corridor.

‘Irene,’ Kai said, and it surprised her in some indefinable way that he’d call her by name like that. ‘I get it that you don’t like her—’

‘I don’t like her at all,’ Irene cut in, keeping her steps calm and measured with an effort, not
letting
herself walk away from the conversation. ‘I don’t
want my personal and very strong dislike of her to cause me to slander someone who is an efficient, competent, even
admired
Librarian.’

Kai whistled. ‘You really don’t like her.’

‘We dislike each other enough that she
might
have staged that whole little scene purely as a whim and in order to mess with me,’ Irene continued. ‘Except that it’d
have taken a singularly unlikely set of coincidences for her to have found out that I was on a mission and to be here to intercept me. Which means politics.’ She stalked into the dark
corridor, still a pace ahead of Kai.

‘So who’s her supervisor?’

‘Kostchei.’

‘Oh.’ Kai was quiet for a few steps. ‘Him. You know, I always kind of thought that was a bit of a dramatic name for him to choose, even for here.’

Irene shrugged, glad of the change of subject. It was true that Russian fairy tale villains weren’t the most obvious name choice. But then again her own choice of ‘Irene’ had
hardly been dictated by logic. At least ‘the Undying’, the epithet usually attached to that name, was fairly accurate for a Librarian who’d made it to his age. ‘When we were
students, some people spent hours trying to pick what they’d call themselves after they’d been initiated. They’d go round saying, “How about this one?” or “Do
you think Mnemosyne sounds all right or is it too obvious?” or “I like Arachne, do you think it suits me?”’

Kai snorted a laugh.

They walked on together, passing room after room of stockpiled books. While there were faster (and non-linear) ways to get around the Library, Irene would have needed authorization from a senior
Librarian to use them. In the absence of such shortcuts, all she and Kai could do was walk and watch out for landmarks. Finally the corridor opened out into a small room, whose dominant feature was
the iron-barred door on the opposite wall. The walls were covered with full bookshelves, but large posters covered sections of the books. These announced statements such as – CHAOS
INFESTATION, ENTRY BY PERMISSION ONLY, KEEP CALM AND STAY OUT and THIS MEANS YOU.

Kai settled his fists on his hips and looked at the posters. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘are there some people round here who can’t take a hint?’

‘You tell me,’ Irene said. ‘Given some of the people you’ve probably met here.’ She reached into her pocket and pulled out Coppelia’s mission briefing.

‘Before we go any further,’ Kai said, more seriously, ‘what about Kostchei and Bradamant? Do you think she’s working for him?’

Irene tugged at her earlobe.
We may be overheard
. When Kai didn’t seem to take the hint, she tugged at it more obviously.

‘Or do you think—’

‘I’d rather do my thinking through on the other side,’ she snapped.
So much for Kai’s potential streetwise criminality and any ability to take hints
.
‘Let’s get a briefing from the Librarian there first before we come to any conclusions.’

Kai’s shoulders slumped. ‘Sure,’ he said flatly. ‘As you say.’

Irene resolved to apologize later – well, to some extent – and turned to slap the mission briefing against the door. The solid metal rang softly, like a distant bell, then reechoed
again, chiming back until the room was full of distant harmonies.

Kai edged closer, apparently willing to drop the sulks for a moment. ‘What would’ve happened if that had been faked?’

‘It wouldn’t have sounded half as nice,’ Irene replied. She tucked the briefing back into her pocket, then reached down to turn the door handle. It moved easily, swinging open
to let her and Kai through into another room full of books, glass cases, and flaring gaslamps.

The room had the indefinable air of all museum collections, somehow simultaneously fascinating yet forlorn. Manuscripts lay beneath glass cases, the gold leaf on their illuminations and
illustrations gleaming in the gas-light. A single document was spread out on a desk in the centre of the room, next to a modern-looking notepad and pen. The high arched ceiling had cobwebs in the
corners, and dust lurked in the crevices of the panelled walls. Next to the Library entrance was a rattletrap machine, all clockwork and gears and sparking wires, with a primitive-looking printer
mechanism and vacuum tubes attached.

Kai looked around the room. ‘Do we ring a bell or anything?’

‘We probably don’t need to,’ Irene said. She closed the door behind them, and heard it audibly lock itself. ‘I imagine Mr Aubrey has already been alerted. Librarians
watching fixed Traverses like this one don’t leave them unguarded.’

There was a ping. Several vacuum tubes on the mechanical contraption lit up and the printer juddered into motion, spitting out a long paper tape, letter by letter.

Kai picked it up and looked at it. ‘Welcome,’ he read out. ‘Please make yourselves comfortable and I will be with you—’

The printer came to a halt with a grinding, permanent sort of noise.

‘Shortly, I hope,’ Irene said.

‘This is cool.’ Kai began to wander round the manuscripts, peering at them. ‘Look, this one says it’s an original of Keats’s
Lamia
, though I’m not sure
what it’s doing in Classical Manuscripts in that case—’

‘That would be because I’m cross-referencing it with the Plutarch material.’ The door at the far end of the room had swung open to reveal a middle-aged, dark-skinned man.
‘Good day. I’m Dominic Aubrey.
The action of seeing you is a pleasure,
’ he added in the Language.

‘
The action of conversing with you is a pleasure,
’ Irene replied. ‘I’m Irene. This is Kai. We’re here about the 1812 Grimm manuscript.’ She was
conscious of Kai frowning, and remembered from her pre-initiation days how strange the Language could sound. Listeners who weren’t trained in it heard it in their native language, but with a
certain unplaceable accent. Librarians, of course, heard it for what it was, which made it an ideal tool for cross-checks and passwords and countersigns. Like this.

Dominic Aubrey nodded. ‘I’d invite you to take a seat, but there’s only one chair. Please lean wherever suits you.’ He fiddled nervously with his glasses, pushing them
back up on the bridge of his nose, then brushed at his coat. He was in what looked like vaguely Victorian-period garb from the most common timelines. His regalia included the standard white shirt
and stiff collar, with a black frock coat, waistcoat and trousers. His straight hair was tied back in a crisp tail, reaching halfway down between his shoulder-blades. ‘The situation has, um,
developed a bit since I last sent in a report.’

Irene leaned against the edge of the desk, making an effort not to look condemnatory, judgemental, or recriminatory. However much she might feel it. ‘I quite understand. This is a
chaos-infested world, after all. Perhaps if you’d give us the briefing from the beginning?’ She glanced at Kai, and he nodded in acceptance, waiting for her to take the lead.