The Masked City (45 page)

The Tale of Loyal Heroes and Righteous Gallants by Shi Yukun

A year later I was sent to acquire a copy of
The Tale of Loyal Heroes and Righteous Gallants
- a transcription of oral performances by the storyteller Shi Yukun. It was one of those books which show up in rather a lot of worlds, but this particular one was unique - it went on for a hundred chapters longer than other versions. The world where the book was based was quite peaceful, which made a nice change. It was ruled by the Chinese Empire, and there wasn’t much magic or much technology, but there was a lot of trade. I had to establish an identity as a foreign student, travel halfway across China by slow train, and get a place at the university at Ch’ang-an in order to have access to the university library. This was where the only known copy of the full original was stored. I then spent a solid three months sneaking in by night and copying the manuscript by hand, and I only had to dodge the guards a few times. It wasn’t a time-sensitive mission, and this way I could leave the original there. It was quite an enjoyable assignment. I even managed to get some studying done. My life isn’t
all
running around and screaming, you know.

Lady Catherine’s Denial by Jane Austen

Finally, there’s one mission that I remember particularly due to the book itself. I’m not saying that the world wasn’t interesting - it had high technology, moderate chaos levels, cloned dinosaurs, et cetera. But more importantly, this was the only world on record where Jane Austen had gone on to write whodunits. Naturally I was briefed to retrieve the entire set. The hardest to find was her final book,
Lady Catherine’s Denial
: the manuscript had vanished with Austen’s death. I managed to trace it to the private estate of a mad scientist in Wales. (I’m not saying that all mad scientists read Jane Austen, but a surprising number of the ones that I’ve met do.) Annoyingly, he was the sort who fills his private park with carnivorous cloned dinosaurs to ensure privacy. I had to sneak in via an underground passage, from a disused local coal mine. Even then I was captured and almost ended up as an experimental subject. (Of course I escaped. I’m writing this, aren’t I?) I still have a copy of the book on my own shelves, if you’re interested. It starts with the murder of Lady Catherine de Bourgh …

LEGENDS OF THE LIBRARY

In the Library one hears plenty of stories about ‘the monster that lives in the basement’ or ‘the Librarian who tried to find the oldest book in the Library and was never seen again’ or ‘the time someone tried climbing out of one of the windows - that lead to nowhere’. Typical urban legends - well, Library legends. Then there are the more classical ones. The sort that have a Librarian lost in the deepest part of the Library. She might come into a room containing a circle of ornate chairs, with sleeping knights in armour seated upon them, where a mysterious voice says to her, ‘Has the time come yet?’ And she says, ‘No, go back to sleep,’ and then runs away, and she can never find the room again. This is a typical folktale of the Sleeping King and his Warriors type - whether about Arthur, or Barbarossa or whatever.

But there are other stories.

They say that a Librarian once saw someone’s cat squeezing through a corner between two shelves. (Some of the older Librarians have pets. Some of the pets can be a little strange.) So he pulled out some books to check behind them, and found a crack in the wall. And since it was a brick wall, and he was a curious man, he levered out more of the bricks in an attempt to find out what was behind the wall. He found a vast echoing darkness, the air dry and unmoving, so pitch-black that even shining a torch into the void illuminated nothing. Being a halfway sensible man (a fully sensible man wouldn’t have removed those bricks in the first place), he didn’t try lowering himself down into it on a rope or anything like that, and he put the bricks back in place. But before doing that, he wrote a note on a piece of paper, suggesting that if there was anyone out there, he’d like to talk, and he threw the note into the darkness before sealing up the crack.

When he returned to his rooms, he sat down with the book he’d been reading earlier that day and tried to relax. But when he turned to the correct page, his bookmark had been replaced with something else - with the note which he’d thrown into the darkness. The paper was now brittle with age and dust, and written on the bottom in the Language was,
‘Not yet, I think.’

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

Genevieve Cogman has written some wonderfully entertaining fiction, set within incredible new worlds. We wanted to find out a bit more about Genevieve’s writing, her characters and the origins of these worlds. Genevieve was kind enough to indulge our bookish curiosity - and please find our interview below.

If you could choose one thing from Irene’s world and bring it to ours, what would it be and why?

My first thought would be, the entire Library, but that’s probably a bit excessive! So I’ll settle for a login to the Library email system so that I can start accessing their most tempting files.

How do your plots come together? Do ideas strike you while you travel to work, or in the supermarket? Or do ideas actually emerge as you sit at the keyboard?

I think it was Agatha Christie who once said that the best time for planning a book is when you’re doing the dishes. I find that ideas can come at any time - but rarely arrive at a convenient moment, such as when I’m actually sitting in front of the computer and ready to use them. This is why I often have a number of scribbled notes to hand by the time I get to the computer. I sometimes jot down particularly brilliant lines (!) that I don’t want to forget (or at least lines that seem brilliant at the time - they don’t always look as good a few hours later). I do even have ideas when I’m working at the day job. However, fortunately for my characters, I have yet to inflict on them any of the diseases or injuries I read about while at that job.

George R. R. Martin talked about writers being either architects or gardeners - in terms of either planning ahead or rather letting the plot grow. Would you class yourself as one or the other and if so why is that?

I’d class myself as a gardener, but the sort who lays out the flower beds before starting. I have an idea of what’s going to happen, and a rough draft of the plot. I’ll also have marked out stages such as ‘in this bit, Irene does X and acquires bit of information Y’. But at that point I haven’t necessarily worked out the full details of how she comes by that knowledge. And I may have other bursts of inspiration which develop in the process of writing, or characters who are supposed to be one-offs but end up making multiple appearances during the course of the novel. And then again, there are the parts of the plot which go something like this: ‘at this point Irene stages a brilliant escape attempt but I haven’t yet worked out how she does it - research this bit more’. This can result in the whole metaphorical garden having to be re-dug. Still, it’s all worth it if it makes for a better story …

When a Librarian uses ‘the Language’ it has all kinds of magical effects on the world. Do you have a favourite use of this language in either
The Invisible Library
or
The Masked City
?
And if so, what makes it special?

I think my favourite use of the Language is in
The Invisible Library
, when Irene commands the stuffed animals in the museum to animate and attack the werewolves. It’s baroque and dramatic and probably expends more energy than some other things she might have tried, but it was just such fun to write.

Librarians have the mark of the library tattooed on their backs. What does this look like exactly?

It’s a rectangle of black script across the back, about a foot across, below the shoulder-blades. It’s low enough that Irene can get away with a moderately off-the-shoulder dress! There’s also a cartouche around it, providing a bookish framing device. Anyone looking at it who wasn’t a Librarian would see Irene’s name (or whichever Librarian’s name it was) in their own native language. It can’t be covered with makeup or dye, so Librarians tend to be careful in their choice of clothing. There are rumours that the cartouche around the Librarian’s name is actually microscopically compressed script which goes into great detail about the Library. But you know how rumours are …

I love Irene’s dry wit and calm ability to rise to any (most!) occasions. Was she inspired by any other characters in fiction, or did she emerge fully-formed?

I would like to think that she’s mostly original, but probably I’ve unconsciously borrowed bits here and there. She definitely owes a debt to Lois McMaster Bujold’s heroines. I also see her as having a certain resemblance to John Steed, from the classic TV series
The Avengers
, in terms of her polite manners and unscrupulous nature. (Kai gets to be Emma Peel.)

Where does Irene’s name come from? Is there a story behind that?

Irene is a lifelong admirer of Sherlock Holmes, and of the Conan Doyle stories in general, and named herself after the notorious adventuress Irene Adler (to Sherlock Holmes, always
the
woman) in a fit of enthusiastic obsession. These days she’s much more embarrassed about it.

What other authors have influenced you, in terms of writing these ‘library’ books?

Quite a few that I can think of straight away, and probably even more that I can’t think of offhand but that if you pointed them out to me then I’d go, ‘Of course, I should have thought of so and so.’ The first names that come to mind are Ursula Le Guin, Terry Pratchett, Diane Duane, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Barbara Hambly, John Dickson Carr, Umberto Eco, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and Louise Cooper … Plus I owe a debt to classic television such as
Doctor Who
and
The Avengers
- and to kung-fu and wuxia movies.

How long does a librarian have to serve in the field as a librarian spy before they can lord it over the juniors as a senior librarian, posted to the library itself?