“Am I to have no say in this operation?” Shan Yuan demanded.
“You are at perfect liberty to walk away,” Irene said through gritted teeth, “but given that Catherine helped you get in here, I’d hope you’d feel some responsibility for her predicament.”
Shan Yuan opened his mouth, then shut it again. Perhaps he was considering the political optics. What would it do to his career if he was held responsible for losing an important Fae’s niece—who also happened to be a Librarian’s apprentice? Or perhaps he was considering Kai’s opinion of him. After all, Kai was staring at him, wearing an expression of hope that his brother would do the right thing.
“Be careful, Winters,” Vale warned her. “I cannot shake the feeling that we’ve missed something important.”
“There’s one obvious thing we’re missing. Lady Guantes isn’t here.” She turned to view the throng of people around them—picturing them as a deck of cards, scattered face-down on a table. Any one of them could turn out to be the deadly Queen of Spades. “She may already be in the theatre. Watch out for her.”
“One of us should come with you—” Kai started.
“Three of you have a decent chance of getting Catherine to safety in the darkness, against Guantes’s minions,” Irene said regretfully, “but it would be harder for two of you. I’ll take all precautions.” She touched Kai’s hand for a moment, a reassurance to them both, then dived back into the crowd.
The architects had positioned the electrical generators on the top floor, away from the public areas. Fortunately Columbine had been able to provide plans of the building earlier, which meant that Irene knew roughly where she was going.
The upper levels of the building were formed of sturdy brick, rather than the elegant stone and tile of the areas beneath. The rooms here were oddly shaped, built to fit around the large glass dome that crowned the nave below. The building had only been open for a couple of weeks, so these rooms and corridors still looked new and sharp-edged, without the distractions of the crowd. Under the harsh ether-lights that provided illumination, occasional numbers or words were scrawled on the whitewashed walls. These indicated which rooms were for storage or machinery—and which held the generators. But there was an obstacle, of course.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” Two men were guarding the generator room. Irene thought it was a sensible precaution, given the over-enthusiastic men and woman of science gathered below. Some would just love the chance to “improve” the building’s power supply. “This area’s out of bounds.”
Irene slipped a Secret Service identification card out of her handbag and displayed it. (Really, she was going to owe Columbine a lot of favours after tonight.) “Government business,” she said. “We’re checking for saboteurs.”
He peered at it, frowning. “Sorry, ma’am. It’s been one of those nights. Will you need any assistance?”
“If you’ll just unlock the door for me, please.”
He opened the door and switched on the light—and the sound hit her like a blow as she stepped inside. The room was huge, larger than it had seemed on the building’s plans. Wheels twice her height spun in constant rotation, half-sunk into the floor. These were paired with and connected to smaller wheels on the same axles. Heavy cables led everywhere—upwards to what looked like windmills, which could be folded out onto the roof. They also led downwards through the floor and everywhere she tried to step, in a maze of connections. The air was harsh with the smells of oil, gasoline, and iron—a sharp contrast to the perfumed guests and floral displays in the rooms below. The place seemed to pulse like a mechanical heart, and for a moment Irene was uncertain of her plan. She was staggered by the noise and complexity of the place.
But a moment of doubt was all she would allow herself. She took a deep breath and raised her voice above the ambient volume. “Electrical generators, shut down safely and stop transmitting power!”
The words hung in the air—and then it all went wrong.
It was as if her use of the Language had triggered some kind of paralysis. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Dust motes glinted in the air as they spun downwards, and they fell slowly, so slowly, and the world itself shifted perspective around her. Her surroundings changed from a sharply lit room full of machinery to a dimly lit twilight where silently turning wheels gently spun to a halt. Beneath her feet, a circle of light blinked into existence. Despite her frozen state, she could see it was edged with and ornamented by words in the Language that gleamed in the shadows.
And opposite her, barely a few yards away, a figure unfolded itself. It was as though it slipped sideways, through a line drawn in mid-air, to emerge into three dimensions. He was robed in black, like a Benedictine monk—or some other, darker order. But when he raised his hands to push his hood back, Irene recognized his face.
Irene could breathe again now, but horror and sheer terror made her throat dry. “Alberich,” she whispered.
She’d seen this particular face once before, in a burning library. He could wear multiple faces and change his skin, so she wondered why he was attached to this one. Was it his true aspect, or had he left that far behind? There was nothing about his appearance to declare him a relentless traitor and the Library’s greatest enemy. She noted the receding hairline, thin eyebrows, strong nose and jaw, deep-set eyes, lean shoulders, and rope-sandaled feet—quite ordinary-looking, in fact. But she associated this face with unrelenting malice and eternal darkness. She quite simply could not look at him and see a normal man; not when she knew what he was.
“Ray,” he said, seeing straight through her mask and blonde wig. His eyes met hers in recognition.
“My name is Irene,” she corrected him. It was a small gesture of defiance, but one that gave her courage—and, more importantly, a moment to think.
“Ray is what your parents named you.” He smiled, his expression surprisingly rueful, surprisingly friendly. “Though I have to approve of any step towards self-development. We talked about that once before, if you remember?”
“About evolution, and how both Fae and dragons were dead ends?” Irene remembered that far too well. They had been dancing in a Russian palace. But Kai had been there to save her that time. “Yes, I remember. But why are you here now?”
“For you.”
Her guts cramped with panic. What did one say when personal nightmares came strolling out of the darkness to tell you how pleased they were to see you? “Surely you have more important things to do.”
He took a step towards her. She would have moved back, but the circle around her feet held her fast. “On the contrary. You—and your friends—are extremely important.”
Irene ran through various conversational gambits in her head and finally said, “What’s going on?”
Alberich blinked in surprise—another human gesture, but this time it seemed just a little affected, like an actor’s projection for his audience. “So blunt? We could play a game of riddles for answers instead. Or dance around the subject, gathering information without giving any away. Wouldn’t that be more . . . fun? Or maybe—”
But she’d been gathering her nerve while he spoke. “Floor, break under Alberich!” she ordered with desperate speed, interrupting him mid-speech.
The circle around her flared, brightening as her voice was suddenly silenced. It was as if she stood inside a cone of perfect quiet. The Language had failed her, and the words she mouthed had no power.
“Yes, that would have been my next step too,” Alberich said. He took another step towards her. “It’s astonishing how much we think and plan alike. Librarians together, brothers and sisters in the same service . . .”
She’d shut down the generators—that part of her mission had been successful. She couldn’t hear any noise of chaos downstairs as a result, but the floor and walls were thick enough to block that out. Hopefully Kai and Vale would get Catherine to safety and then come lookin
g for her. But for the moment, she was on her own. “What do you want with me?” she demanded.
Alberich paused as a flicker of darkness ran through his body, like a glitch in a projection. “Ah. I have less time than I’d thought. That gets your hopes up, doesn’t it, Ray? You’re thinking that if you keep me talking a bit longer, you may be able to save yourself.” His grin was pure malice. “My scripts were set to react to your use of the Language. But you haven’t worked out what that means.”
The day’s uncertainty crystallised into raw panic. Irene had to work to keep her voice from shaking. “You expected me to come here?”
Alberich nodded and made a go on gesture with a hand that seemed to be fraying at the edges, fuzzy with something resembling static.
“We came here because Dr. Brabasmus would be here tonight. So . . . did you have someone leak that information?” Singh had said that report was unreliable—and he’d been right. “You expected me to use the Language.” She gestured at the shimmering circle around her feet. “You set this up.”
Alberich nodded. “The moment you used the Language . . .” He snapped his fingers. Shadows crackled between them. “Activation. And now we really can’t keep your friends waiting any longer, can we?”
Irene’s eyes flicked to the door, but Alberich shook his head. “No, it’s simpler than that. Their names are also woven into the circuit I’ve created. They’re coming with you. You’re all useful to me, and I know just how dangerous it is to leave any of you on the loose while the others are prisoners.”
“Language, release me!” Irene ordered, putting the whole of her will into the words.
Pain splintered in her temples and she tasted her own blood in her mouth. For a moment the words seemed to hang in the air like an echo—struggling with the force that surrounded her, like desperate fingers scrabbling at a cliff’s edge. The circle around her hummed as her will battled Alberich’s scripted trap, Language against Language, Librarian against Librarian.
For a moment she thought she might succeed.
Then Alberich spoke in the Language, and his words had the strength of centuries behind them: “My pattern, complete.”
The circle of light around her feet started to turn, rotating like a whirlpool. A rising hum of power sang in the air, drowning out the echoes of Alberich’s voice. The sound rose until it was louder than the generators had been before, until Irene had to press her hands against her ears to shut it out.
Flickers of fire ran through the darkness of Alberich’s robe. He spread his arms wide, exultantly, and the flames leapt up to the ceiling. They veiled him in a swelling conflagration that flared too brightly for Irene’s eyes to bear.
But Irene would not surrender. She could not let herself break if there was even the smallest chance of escape. She tugged against the circle, trying to pull free, and called out again and again in the Language. Yet she couldn’t hear her own voice above the surrounding noise. Panic swelled in her, and her mind ran in circles—a trapped rat with no way out. If only she could find the right words to use, there had to be something . . . If Alberich could write it, then she could rewrite it, she just needed time.
But then the floor dropped out beneath her, and she fell into fire and darkness.
CHAPTER 20
It was a sad commentary on Irene’s life that, on waking up in chains, her first thought was Oh no, not again.
At least she wasn’t dangling from the ceiling. That was always hell on her shoulders.
She was lying on her back, hands outstretched to either side; metal cuffs circled her wrists. She was chained to a cold stone floor. The stillness and dead silence suggested she was in a large open space with nobody else nearby. She could taste the chaos in the air, and the Library brand on her back itched with it. Definitely a high-chaos alternate world, even nearer to the chaos end of the universe than Vale’s world. Where had Alberich taken her?
At least she was still alive, Irene reminded herself firmly. Where there was life, there was hope. She’d escaped from difficult situations before. But as she looked around, she decided this had to rate pretty highly on the I’m really doomed this time scale.
She was in a church . . . no, a cathedral, and the Sagrada Familia cathedral at that. She recognized it now. Not just from the reports found on Lord Guantes’s laptop, but from images seen over the years. But this interior was far darker than versions of the place on other worlds. Black stone pillars rose like lithe young trees, twisting and branching out above her to support an intricately carved ceiling. Here patterns resembling open flowers bloomed across the stonework, petals spreading out to touch one another. Electricity cables wound around the pillars like vines, silver against their blackness. Some even passed through the pillars, as though the ancient structure had been designed to support them. Where she’d expected to find stained glass windows were computer screens. They blazed high above, shining with colours that had nothing at all to do with natural daylight. The whole place was a forest of dark stone, its ornamental flowers outlined in bright but poisonous hues. This unnatural light illuminated the aisles and nave with a pale twilight glow. Irene herself lay roughly where the altar should be, if this were really a version of the Sagrada Familia. She didn’t like the symbolism.
The cathedral was vast. She was so small compared with its immensity, a single human being in a huge silence that seemed to breathe. Strange lights behind the windows moved as though they were alive. They waxed and waned like distant moons, pulling up a tide of darkness to drown her. If she strained, she could just see doorways and stairwells leading to side chapels, crypts, or who knew where—the shadows hid the details.
Her chains ran from the cuffs on her wrists to two bolts set into the stonework, far enough away from each other that she couldn’t bring her hands together or rise to her feet. The most she could manage was to rise to her knees, to take stock of the situation. Her mask and wig were gone. Her hidden knife had been taken as well. And someone had hung a pendant around her neck on a leather cord—too short for her to see the object properly; she could only feel it against her skin. Whatever it was, though, it couldn’t be good news.
But worst of all, surrounding her on the floor—a few feet out from the bolts that held her chains—was a circle written in the Language. It formed a single line, word flowing into word like some form of ancient calligraphy, scrawled on the black stone in dull brown paint. The vocabulary was mostly unfamiliar to Irene, though she thought she could make out words referring to binding, holding, chaining, repelling. What she could definitely make out was her own name—forming part of the circle directly in front of her, as though to taunt her.
Irene sighed. I might as well know the worst.
“Locks, open,” she commanded, and was not particularly surprised when her words proved powerless.
The circle of Language was out of her reach, chained as she was. Even if she lay down and stretched to her limit, her feet still couldn’t touch the writing. Her lockpicks were gone, too. She forced down a growing sense of panic and tried to think. The problem is that I’m fighting someone who knows full well what Librarians can do. And he’s had plenty of practice at imprisoning our kind, which comes shortly before he skins his captive and sends a few spare organs back to the Library . . .
Irene was out of good ideas and was seriously considering spitting on the circle, to see if her saliva did anything useful, when she heard the distant creak and boom of a door opening. She could identify two separate sets of footsteps. I hope this is the start of visiting hours for prisoners—rather than someone here to dust, and change the flowers . . .
Lord Guantes came into view first, a spring to his step and a smile curling his lips. Even at a distance, Irene could see his enthusiasm as he approached her. After all, gloating over a defeated enemy was a key part of his archetype as a Machiavellian villain. But that gave her a grain of hope. People who thought they’d already won made
mistakes.
And then the second person came into view, and Irene stifled a gasp of horror. It was Catherine . . . but changed.
She walked with her head lowered, eyes cast down, taking small obedient steps. Her shapeless dress was grey and utilitarian, covering her from neck to toe, and her hair was pinned back into a tight bun. Black gloves like the ones the Guanteses favoured sheathed her hands. Her habitual expressions—irritation, annoyance, determination, and curiosity—had been wiped from her face. It was as though someone had erased her personality entirely. Now she looked calm and patient, placid and unconcerned . . . and utterly unlike herself. Lord Guantes had turned her into an obedient little acolyte, one that he could twist around his finger and have her thank him for it.
They advanced down the length of the cathedral, and the glowing windows were now flooding the aisles with crimson light so the pair seemed to trail blood in their wake.
Lord Guantes came to a stop five feet outside the circle, with Catherine a pace behind. He looked down at Irene. “How pleasant, Miss Winters, to see you in a more suitable position—on your knees.”
“My faith is a constant comfort,” Irene said blandly. She could cope with this. He wasn’t Alberich. She could even, on some level, feel sorry for Lord Guantes—now a mere puppet in someone else’s show. But she really felt for whoever the original host had been, before “Lord Guantes” was transplanted into his body.
He barked a short laugh at the obvious untruth, then beckoned Catherine forward. “I thought I’d introduce my new student to you,” he said.
Catherine smiled in the sunlight of his attention. The expression seemed out of place on her features. Her face was made for fierce enthusiasms, not blind sheep-like adoration. “What would you like me to do, sir?”
“I’d like you to tell Miss Winters here about your new position. And whether you like it or not, of course.”
Catherine looked down at Irene pityingly. “I’m going to look after Lord Guantes’s book collection,” she explained. “I’m so grateful to Lord Guantes for giving me this opportunity, in spite of everything my uncle’s done to him.”
The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library Novel) Page 22
