The Burning Page

by Genevieve Cogman

  She could argue about it with Kai for a hundred years, and all she’d get out of it would be wasted breath. And she wasn’t going to make tearful eyes at him and say If you were really my friend, then you’d agree with me. She’d never wanted her friendships to be on those terms.

  Irene took a deep breath, tasting the air and the familiar smell of Vale’s rooms. Paper, ink, chemicals, coffee, the old leather of the armchairs, the constant overriding fug of pipe smoke. ‘Let me be honest,’ she said. ‘This is not a situation I’ve been in before. I may have been let down in a professional way, but I’ve never actually been betrayed by someone whom I considered a friend.’ And I’ve never sacrificed a friend, either. Not like this.

  Kai had enough sense not to say anything along the lines of Well, obviously Zayanna wasn’t a friend and never could have been, and this proves it. He simply nodded.

  ‘And you’re right. I am feeling more than a little irrational about this.’ Her anger was a saw-blade, honed and ready to rip. She was tired of splitting hairs with him, tired of arguing comparative morality, tired of wasting time when the Library was in danger. The clock was ticking. ‘But don’t worry. I’m not going to let that stop me from getting the information we need. There’s no more time for this. I need to capture Zayanna, and I need to know that I can rely on you. Do you trust my judgement?’

  ‘I trust it enough to tell you all this to your face.’ He touched her shoulder and did his best to smile. ‘But do be careful. I’d rather not have to train a new superior.’

  Irene was trying to find a good reply to that when Vale emerged from his rooms, properly dressed and swinging a coat over his shoulders. He hustled them down the stairs to where Singh had managed, somehow at this time of night, to find a cab.

  The Belgravia Underground Market didn’t make any particular attempt to hide itself. Their cab driver recognized the address. When they arrived, the houses were dark at street level, lightless behind drawn curtains. But the windows of basement flats all down the road gleamed with the dazzle of strong ether-lamps. Passers-by strolled in pairs or groups, very few of them alone: even in this expensive part of London, the night was dangerous.

  ‘It was started over a century ago,’ Vale explained. He gestured down the row of elegant pale houses, their black iron balconies gleaming with reflected light from the street lamps. ‘Lyall Mews. The properties were all owned by the same noble family. Unfortunately, their heir wasn’t as good with cards and dice as he’d thought, and the family ended up mortgaged to their eyebrows. They eventually signed a contract with a syndicate, permanently renting the entire set of cellars to them for a nominal fee, though they kept the houses above.’

  ‘And that same syndicate still owns the contract,’ Singh agreed. He’d turned up his collar against the night air, and his moustache bristled above it. ‘Even if all the houses are owned by different families these days. How do you want to handle this, Mr Vale? There are two main exits, one at each end of the market. We don’t want to risk our quarry bolting out of one, the moment we walk in the other.’

  ‘You think Zayanna will actually be here?’ Kai asked.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Vale said. ‘Not very likely, but certainly not impossible. Or we can question stallholders who might have seen her. She is Fae, after all. And even if she doesn’t actually need any more pets, she may not be able to resist the urge to come shopping.’

  He pointed down the street again towards a square of light on the pavement, indicating an open door. ‘That is one of the two entrances to the market. The other is beside us. There are approximately three vendors who might have supplied king baboon spiders, giant Asian hornets and snakes – you did mention that she was fond of snakes? If two of us use this entrance, and the other two enter by the other door, we can work towards the middle. If we check with vendors on the way, then we can intercept the lady if she is present; and we may hope to find her delivery address, if not.’

  Irene was not wildly enthusiastic to find herself heading down to the far entrance in Singh’s company. Singh was too professional to show it, but she didn’t think he was happy either. But Vale had proposed the division of labour, and Kai had agreed to it.

  Are Singh and I supposed to realize each other’s good points while working together and bond over the job? She was perfectly well aware of Singh’s good points. He was intelligent, professional, ethical, and probably a better influence on Vale than she was. It was more a question of Singh disliking her – on the grounds that she was a book thief from another world who’d broken the law more than once, and who had put Vale in danger. And she couldn’t really argue with that.

  The open door at the far end of the street also leaked light out into the foggy night, together with a mixture of aromas – an overriding smell of cheap incense, and beneath it undertones of hay, mould and dung. The room behind the door was small and bare, lit by a single ether-lamp, and might once have been a storage cupboard. Two large men were sitting behind a table, anonymous in overcoats and mufflers. A cash-box sat on the table in obvious invitation.

  ‘How much is it?’ Singh asked. He’d pulled his hat low over his eyes and, like the men, he’d now covered his mouth and chin with a scarf. Irene had collected a spare overcoat and veil from Vale’s rooms and was similarly well covered. The whole thing was verging on the ridiculous. If this was the general standard of dress for the Belgravia Underground Market, no wonder people with more money than sense spent their time and cash here. Still, it did increase the chances of them finding Zayanna here. She’d love it.

  ‘Five guineas each,’ the man on the right said. It wasn’t an attempt at bargaining. It was a simple statement of fact. Irene revised her opinion of this place’s customers, placing them even higher up the idle-rich scale of finance.

  Singh and Irene dropped money into the cash box, and the man on the left nodded them towards the inner door.

  Noise washed over them as they stepped inside, and the smell made Irene draw her veil closer across her face. The long stretch of cellars wasn’t well lit: the occasional lamps were turned down or muted with coloured shades, and the far end of the market was hidden in shadows. The cellars were wider than she’d expected, and she realized they must run under the front street on one side and also out under the back gardens of the houses on the other side. Vendors had laid out their stalls in little islands in the centre of each cellar, or jostled each other along the walls. Some displayed tanks and aquariums, with snakes, lizards and fish. Others showed off gauze-covered boxes and hives, or cages, or even animals on small leads. A pair of white owls in the corner overlooked the room with furious yellow eyes, glaring down like offended deities, their legs tethered to their owner’s table by paired chains. The clothing of the shoppers ranged from the expensive to the ridiculous, but given the time of night and the fog outside, most people were muffled in heavy coats.

  ‘Miss Chayat’s stall first,’ Singh said, nodding over to the right-hand wall. ‘She’s one of the main insect suppliers, I believe.’

  The stall in question was obvious, standing between purveyors of armoured lizards on the right and of Siamese fighting fish on the left. Its shelves were filled with tiny cages, each containing a single insect or a pair of them, walled with gauze and sealed with wax. The air around it hummed with the sound of struggling insects. The stallholder herself was as untidy as her wares were neat, with long greying hair that tangled around her face and blended indistinctly into her tattered shawl and beige dress. She peered at them suspiciously as they approached.

  ‘King baboon spiders,’ Irene said, getting to the point. ‘And giant Asian hornets.’

  The woman pursed her wrinkled lips. ‘It’ll take a week to order the hornets in. I can do you the spiders, though – there’s currently a glut on the market.’

  Irene had almost forgotten their earlier sale to the pet shop. It was interesting to see the free-market economy in action. ‘That’s annoying,’ she said, affecting her best upper-class accent. ‘I’
d been told I could find giant Asian hornets here. If it’s because someone else has placed a prior order on your stock, I’m sure I could pay more . . .’

  The stallholder shook her head, cutting Irene off. ‘Whoever told you that, told you wrong. Those hornets need to be ordered from abroad. You just can’t keep them in this climate, and nobody here would keep them in stock on the chance of a sale, least of all me. There’s no call for them. The only one in this market who might be able to get them for you in less than a week is Snaith. You’ll find him two cellars along, in the middle, if that’s what you’re after.’

  Irene glanced at Singh and he nodded. This didn’t sound like a vendor who’d sold any within the last month. Snaith – who was also one of the other sellers Vale had named – was a more likely bet. ‘Thank you,’ Irene said and moved on.

  It was difficult to make one’s way through the market in a straight line. The stalls were laid out haphazardly, in some defined pattern that had evolved from rationality into chaos. And the buyers clustered around them, examining their wares, rather than clearing the way for others to get through. Singh and Irene had to take a wide detour round one stall, where the vendor was shouting down a group of buyers who wanted armadillos – claiming that the recent leprosy scare was making imports impossible. A pair of men in overcoats, similar to the men at the entrance, were already shoving through the crowd towards the disturbance. The market’s internal security, no doubt.

  They had to pause again in the second cellar. A woman with huge glasses like an insect’s faceted eyes was complaining vociferously. Apparently her new cheetah cub, Percival, was too fond of eating her food and chewing her fingers – and she’d specifically asked for one with better training. The cub in question was trailing behind her on a silver chain, chewing it and staring at the tanks of piranhas on the next stall along. Between the woman and her secretary, and the stallholder, and all the interested onlookers, there was no way past. Singh and Irene had to circle round laboriously towards the third cellar.

  It was then that Irene recognized a face.

  It wasn’t a particularly distinguished face, and it had a brand-new black eye since last she’d seen it. But it was the face of Davey, one of the werewolves who’d kidnapped her earlier. He was speaking to one of the stallholders that Vale had pinpointed. And even more importantly, due to their sidelong approach, he didn’t seem to have noticed her.

  She drew Singh to one side, ostensibly to examine some duck-billed platypuses, and murmured an explanation to him as she watched Davey surreptitiously. She was grateful for the animal smells all around them – it should cut down on the chance of him recognizing her.

  Davey was complaining about the failure of an order to arrive. The order – a mated pair of spitting cobras – had apparently been delayed in transit from Mandalay, due to prevailing winds. Davey was whining about the inconvenience of it all: the stallholder polished his monocle, unimpressed.

  ‘It might be a trap,’ Singh muttered. Irene nodded. She’d had the same thought. Zayanna could quite easily trail a known agent in front of Irene and Kai, in order to lure them into a prepared ambush. But then again, they had come to the market because Vale had deduced that Zayanna was shopping here. It was plausible that she’d send an agent rather than come herself. This might be for real.

  ‘I’ll follow him,’ Irene said, keeping her voice low. ‘You can find out from the stallholder where the order’s supposed to be sent. Then find Vale and Kai, and send them after me. I’ll try to leave a trail to show where I’ve gone.’

  Singh’s brows drew together. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. Irene turned to glare at him, but he shook his head very slightly. ‘Miss Winters, I know this is serious, but what if this Davey fellow takes a cab the moment he steps outside? Or what if you’re several streets away before I manage to find Mr Vale and Mr Strongrock? Having you off on your own somewhere won’t help the situation. We’ll do better to find out where he wants the stuff delivered and then go there together.’

  Irene gritted her teeth. ‘We may be almost out of time. I don’t think we can afford to wait. If he gets away from us, or if the address is a fake one—’

  ‘Miss Winters.’ Singh’s hand tightened on her arm, and when she looked at him, she saw genuine concern in his eyes. ‘Think it through, madam. It’s because the matter’s so urgent that we can’t take any risks. You’re the one person here who can reach your Library. We can’t risk losing you.’

  ‘You know damn well that Vale would be going after him alone,’ Irene muttered.

  Singh sighed. ‘Indeed I do, Miss Winters. Indeed I do. And I’d say exactly the same thing to him, madam. You are not making my life any easier by suggesting precisely the same thing that he’d have in mind. A little bit of self-preservation would make life a great deal easier for all your friends. This is no night to be splitting up and losing you in the fog. Nor is it a good thing for them to be getting into trouble because they lose track of you.’

  He had a point. Irene locked down the rising panic that was her constant companion, the sense that every second she wasted was a second the Library couldn’t afford to lose. ‘Very well,’ she agreed, and tried not to sound too grudging about it.

  A few minutes later, greased by the application of a lot of money, they had an address.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The delivery address was a warehouse in the East End of London. The cab had dropped them off a few streets away.

  ‘Zayanna is going to have a back exit,’ Irene said, repeating a point she’d already made several times in conversation in the cab. ‘And we know she has henchmen. Maybe even better-quality ones than Davey. We can’t risk letting her escape out the back while we come in the front. Or vice versa.’

  ‘What’s the roof like?’ Kai asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust any roofs in this area,’ Vale said. Now that they were about to swing into action, he seemed entirely his normal self, and Irene could almost persuade herself that the febrile edge in his eyes was her imagination. ‘Not without a chance to check them first. I don’t like Winters’ idea of us splitting up any better than you do, Strongrock, but it seems our best option.’

  ‘Then I’ll distract Zayanna,’ Kai suggested. He drew himself up, every inch the young prince and commander. ‘Irene would be much more effective getting in round the back and using the Language to open the locks.’

  Irene had been wanting him to demonstrate his independence and decision-making ability. Just not right now. She didn’t need an argument at this moment. She had too many other balls in the air. ‘Kai, in case you didn’t notice, Zayanna doesn’t like you.’

  ‘So? She’s Fae. She’ll welcome a confrontation—’

  ‘I’m not talking about pandering to her love of drama,’ Irene said, thinking of the Fae fondness for declaring eternal enmity against a rival, then spending their lives plotting obsessively against such a target. ‘I’m trying to establish that she actually, genuinely doesn’t like you. I think she might even seriously try to kill you, if she sees you in the firing line. With me, she’ll want to talk first.’

  ‘And you want to talk to her, of course,’ Kai said coldly.

  ‘If you know any other method to get information out of her, then kindly tell me now and don’t waste my time being facetious,’ Irene snapped. ‘And a lock-pick will work just as well as the Language. You don’t need me to open locks.’ She considered saying, It’s three to one, since Vale and Singh had already agreed, but she didn’t want Kai being half-hearted about his side of the job. Also, it wasn’t a democracy. ‘Please be careful, gentlemen. If Zayanna’s expecting us, she may think we’ll use the back way as a matter of course and may have set up all her traps there accordingly.’

  Vale nodded. Singh looked as if he was questioning exactly why he was there – and about to run into danger on her account – but he nodded, too. Kai finally made a reluctant noise of agreement.

  ‘Right.’ Irene checked her watch. ‘Ten minutes for yo
u to get into position, then I go and knock on the door.’

  A distant church clock was chiming five when she finally rapped on the warehouse side door. The skies above had begun to pale a little, but the fog still clung at street level.

  There was no answer from inside the warehouse.

  Irene stepped to one side and inspected the area in the way that Vale would have done. An arc of dirt on the pavement showed that the door had been opened recently, and the mark of twin wheel-tracks demonstrated that something heavy had been pushed or dragged in or out. It also suggested that Zayanna did indeed have minions in there, if this was her base. Zayanna was not the sort of person to push heavy trolleys herself.

  She tested the handle, still standing to one side of the door. Locked. All right. This was manageable. ‘Warehouse door lock, open.’

  It was quiet enough on the street at this hour of night that she could hear the tumblers in the lock click into place. She gave it a moment to see if anyone inside reacted, but there was no answering noise. Mentally crossing her fingers, she tugged the door open and peered into the room.

  To her relief, there weren’t any shotguns or harpoons or axes, or whatever, wired up to the door. The room inside was an ordinary small office, an ether-lamp still burning on the wall in spite of the late hour, complete with chairs and desk. Another door in the far wall led further into the warehouse.

  The thought of incriminating documents and invoices led Irene across to the desk, but she hesitated as she reached for the top drawer. For one thing, it was far too convenient a location for traps. And another thought had struck her. Why should the ether-lamp be on at this time of night? Either because someone had just been in here, or because someone – like Irene – was expected . . .

  ‘All right,’ she said, looking around. Her voice seemed too loud in the silent room. ‘Zayanna? I came to see you.’