The Burning Page

by Genevieve Cogman

  The clock gave one last jarring tick, and stopped.

  ‘No!’ Alberich shrieked. He was looking at her as if she was the criminal, the aberrant, the lunatic. ‘Fires, go out!’

  For a moment Irene feared that he might succeed in extinguishing the flames. But they seemed to rise up with a new fury as he named them in the Language. She remembered her own attempts to put out the fire when she and Kai had been trapped by the broken gate. Perhaps it was due to the mixture of chaos and Language. Perhaps it was the power of Alberich’s own working, turned against him.

  Perhaps she should get out of range before he turned his attention back to her.

  ‘Metal, release my shoes!’ she hissed, and stepped free as the stair retracted its clasp on her feet.

  The scroll next to her was withering to ashes inside its cage. It had been a unique document, the lone copy of a story that only existed in one world. And now she’d destroyed it, and hundreds of others too. She’d felt embarrassment before in her life over quite a number of things – petty things, social errors, lack of politeness, moments of stupidity – but she’d rarely known true shame until now.

  She tried to push that to the back of her mind, and mostly succeeded, looking around for somewhere to run towards. The prospects were minimal, and getting worse. Fire was spreading out in a great circle, leaping from bookcase to bookcase. Burning pages carried the flames with them like a contagion. High shelves were beginning to lean and topple as their underpinnings scorched and charred away.

  For the moment she settled on getting away from Alberich. He was still shouting at the flames and at the clock, as if sheer volume could somehow compel them to obedience. She scurried along the walkway, the remains of her skirts fluttering in the rising heat. Choosing stairs at random, she ran around the outside of the network of steps, looking for a way out.

  The clock was silent now, and so was Alberich. The only noise was the growing roar of the flames, and the ringing of steps on the metal stairs. Smoke sifted through the air in white coils – thin for the moment, but growing.

  ‘Book-burner!’ The sheer fury and betrayal in Alberich’s voice made Irene cringe in renewed shame. It wasn’t the fact that he was saying it, but rather that it echoed her own thoughts. A part of her – a very stupid, senseless part – even felt that death would be an appropriate punishment for what she’d just done. ‘Ray, you are going to suffer for this!’

  As threats went, it wasn’t the most specific or blood-curdling that had ever been thrown at Irene, but the fury and malice behind it gave her even more incentive to run. Unfortunately she’d come to a corner of the structure, and the only options now were up or down. Down put her on ground level and maybe gave her a chance to escape, if she could somehow find a way out through the burning, collapsing bookshelves. It would also give Alberich a clear advantage of height, to call down obstructions and maledictions on her with the Language. Up . . . well, there wasn’t anywhere in particular to go, once she’d headed ‘up’. She’d be trapped. Unless maybe she could form a bridge of books in the way that Alberich had earlier?

  And falling from a height is one of the quickest and easiest available ways to die, a cold little thread of despair pointed out. Just for the record.

  She was not going to lose hope. She was not going to give up.

  ‘Smoke, choke that woman!’ Alberich’s voice rang out.

  The pale wisps of smoke solidified, massing together as they flooded towards Irene’s face.

  ‘Air, blow that smoke away from me!’ she gabbled.

  The first tendril of smoke touched her face and flickered across her lips, and more gathered behind it, flowing around her and up to her mouth. A quick gust of wind scattered the smoke and let her breathe, but there was no real definition or permanence to the moving air. The tendrils of smog began to gather again, and she fled up the stairway, holding a tattered shred of skirt fabric across her nose and mouth.

  She passed another of the caged books. It was charred to ashes now, and a thick column of dark, greasy smoke rose from its corpse. It was getting harder to breathe – not just because of the smoke that Alberich had commanded against her, but because of all the other smoke in the air. It wound through the metal stairs like ribbons, and rose in billowing clouds towards the distant ceiling high above. It was impossible to see Alberich now.

  Surely this was any Librarian’s hell, full of burning books and smoke and fire. She would have run onwards, but there was nowhere to run to now.

  Irene coughed, her lungs burning and her mouth full of the taste of ashes. She had to take the offensive. ‘Stairs, open beneath that man’s feet,’ she shouted.

  The clanging of collapsing metalwork answered her, but there were no human-sounding crashes or screams. Damn. She ran along a long open stretch of walkway, passing more book-cages, then stopped as Alberich’s form loomed through the smoke ahead of her.

  He was opening his mouth to speak, when a huge creaking roar came from the outer bookshelves and a shadow fell across the two of them. Both he and Irene turned to look. One of the tallest bookcases had begun to topple and was leaning towards the central arrangement of stairs, almost in slow motion. Books slid from it, sifting out to scatter in all directions, as it teetered down towards them.

  There was no time for further reciprocal attacks, and even the Language couldn’t have stopped that colossus mid-fall. Both of them turned and ran in opposite directions.

  Then it hit.

  The concussion shuddered through the tangled structure of stairs, as the timbers of the bookcase sheared through metal and collapsed the walkways under their weight. Irene was thrown off her feet, and held onto the walkway with the strength of desperation as it shivered and tilted sideways. She crawled along it, coughing in the smoke, until it was more level and she could get back to her feet, then looked behind her.

  Even through the haze, she could see that the fallen bookcase had broken the central construct in half. Tangled remains of stairs and walkways still stood – well, leaned – on either side, but the centre, where the clock had been, was a mass of timbers and papers. The ruined shelves were a roaring bonfire that was swelling and burning higher with every passing moment.

  ‘Ray!’ Alberich’s voice carried over the crackling of the flames. ‘You haven’t won!’

  ‘It looks to me as if I have,’ she shouted back. It was stupid and pointless to be exchanging taunts at this stage of events, when they were probably both about to die horribly, but it did feel good to get in the last word.

  ‘If I must wait a thousand years, I’ll find my son.’ For a moment she could see him silhouetted against the flames, his robe billowing in the hot wind. ‘He will avenge me. And you will perish with me.’

  ‘You can’t have all three,’ Irene said, more to herself than to Alberich. She was swaying from the heat and the smoke, and she had to lean on the railing to hold herself up. Perhaps it would be easiest just to let herself go and fall. She wasn’t going to get out of here. She might as well accept it, and finish things quickly. ‘I don’t think that works . . .’

  A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to see if another building was about to collapse on her.

  But it wasn’t a building. It was a dragon. It was Kai. The crimson light tinged his blue wings with amethyst. A shadow, indistinct in the smoke and dazzle, clung to his back – Vale? She couldn’t be sure.

  The shock of seeing Kai was like a wave of cold water in her face, driving away all Irene’s despair. First things first. She had to distract Alberich. ‘Metal, seize Alberich!’ she shrieked, putting all her will into it. ‘Rails, pierce Alberich, smoke, blind Alberich . . .’

  As she shouted, she was already running for the nearest high point. She couldn’t get to the ground, and there was no free space for Kai to land anyhow, so she’d have to get up as high as she could, and pray. Behind her she could hear Alberich shouting angry negations and shielding himself. The smoke swirled around where he’d been standing, briefly as dense
as a London pea-souper.

  There was a convenient high point just to her left, once a semi-tower of stairs and now a semi-collapsed mass of stairs that leaned at a dangerous angle. Irene inched up it, clinging with one hand and waving frantically with the other. She wished she had a flag to signal with, but there wasn’t really enough of her dress left to be worth ripping off and waving.

  High above, the dragon dipped and swung round in a turn, heading directly for the half-tower where Irene was perched. He seemed to be moving slowly, almost lazily, his wings extended to glide, but he was halfway to Irene before she could blink.

  ‘Stair unbind from stair.’ Alberich’s voice rang across the fire, and the steps under Irene shuddered. Screws jerked loose and joints came undone. She felt the metal quivering under her, only kept in position by the fact that it was mostly shattered and leaning together in any case. Something came loose, with a crash of dreadful finality, and the half-tower slipped sideways.

  She began to fall.

  Kai spun sideways, one wing to the ground and the other to the heavens, and as he cut through the air and past the half-tower, Vale caught Irene’s wrist.

  She slammed against Kai’s back, his scales grazing her cheek and her arm and shoulder screaming from the strain. Vale was shouting for her to hold on, but there was nothing for her to hold on to. She dug her fingers in as the wind streamed past. Kai tilted again, returning to a horizontal keel, and she slid more towards the centre of his back. Vale was perched just behind his neck, where she’d been sitting before, and was clinging on with one hand while grasping her wrist with the other.

  ‘Railings, gut that dragon!’ Alberich screeched, his voice carrying dimly through the rush of wind.

  Irene tried to shout something in the Language in defence, but she had no breath to spare and no time to speak. Pieces of metal wrenched themselves free from the broken stairs and flung themselves upwards at Kai. He contorted his body, sliding through the air in a fluid twist that escaped several of them, but one of them sliced across his underside, and another went through his left wing. He cried out in pain, the sound shaking the air like thunder.

  ‘Get us out of here, Strongrock,’ Vale called. ‘I’ve got her.’

  Kai struggled to gain height, streaking away from the central blaze where Alberich stood, but his motions were slow and laboured. ‘There’s too much chaos in this place,’ he groaned. ‘I need more time . . .’

  Another set of improvised javelins arced towards them. Kai dropped beneath them as they rushed past above, diving between a couple of tenement-high bookcases that were still standing. The tips of his wings brushed them on either side, shaking down a rain of books. Blood pattered from his wounded wing, and Irene could see that he was having to keep it extended and glide on it, rather than use it with the fluidity of his other wing.

  He wasn’t regaining height. He was barely managing to maintain his current altitude. She could feel his muscles working underneath her body, and the long, shuddering struggle of his breathing. Would he be able to fly them out of there?

  But if he’d managed to get here, and if he was managing to stay conscious and functioning, it meant this place wasn’t as far out in the depths of chaos as she’d thought. Irene could try to reach the Library again. Without Alberich possessing this place and interfering, she might just be able to get through. And Vale . . . well, they hadn’t actually tried to get him into the Library before. They would simply have to succeed now. She would drag him in there, if she had to tear a way between the worlds with her own bare hands.

  ‘Kai!’ she shouted. ‘Over to the left, there! By the far wall. Do you see that door? Can you get us there?’

  ‘Yes,’ he rumbled. He winged towards the point she’d indicated, outracing the growing fire. As Irene looked down, she saw the flames overtake the collapsed shelves where Zayanna lay buried.

  ‘Did you succeed, Winters?’ Vale demanded.

  ‘I sincerely hope so—’ Irene had to break off as Kai landed, his wings curving out and back as he settled to the ground. The left wing didn’t move as easily as it should have done, and he groaned in pain again, thumping down hard enough to rattle Irene’s teeth. She hastily slid from his back to the ground, then clung to the nearest bookcase as the floor shook underneath her.

  Vale swept a quick glance across her. ‘No serious injuries?’ he asked. Behind him, the light flexed and ebbed around Kai as he changed form.

  Irene shook her head. ‘No, nothing serious. Let me—’

  The ground shook again, this time in a more directed and precise way, as if some great worm was moving through it. And Irene realized, with the sort of cold terror that swept from feet to brain and through every point between, that if the area where Zayanna lay was burning, then the sigil that Irene had marked on the ground there might be burned away as well. Which might mean that Alberich could inhabit the ground and furnishings of his library once more.

  Without even waiting to check Kai’s wounds, she turned to the door. ‘Open to the Library,’ she demanded in frantic haste, throwing all her strength into the words as she grabbed the handle.

  The cold metal fizzed under her hand, buzzing with an energy like static electricity, only more powerful and far more dangerous. The door didn’t want to open to the Library, or perhaps the Library didn’t want to let the door open onto it. Or perhaps Irene was being unreasonable in imagining personalities here, and it was simply the difficulty of reaching from a high-chaos world all the way to the Library.

  The door tried to cling to the jamb, holding shut as she strained at it. She could feel the connection, she knew she’d reached the Library again, but the door held closed. Bookcases toppled and books fell as the floor rippled towards them, rising slowly like a tidal wave.

  She’d failed in her earlier attempt to open to the Library. But she was not going to lose now, not at the cost of the two friends who’d risked their lives to come and save her.

  ‘Open!’ she commanded.

  The door wrenched itself open, pulling against its hinges with a creaking scream of wood that was audible above the roaring flames and the falling shelves. Beyond was a dark corridor lined with books, achingly familiar.

  Vale thrust the staggering Kai through the doorway, then halted on the step. His expression was one of sheer incomprehension as he pushed at the empty air, his hands pressing at the gap of the doorway as though there was an invisible sheet of glass between him and the safety on the other side.

  He’s still chaos-contaminated, Irene realized, as though she was reading it off the title card in a silent film. The Library won’t let him in. She’d thought, she’d hoped, but none of it had been enough. She would just have to do something about it instead.

  Once before, she’d expelled chaos by naming herself and forcing out everything that wasn’t Irene. I am Irene, I am a servant of the Library, she had said in the Language, and it had acted to remove anything that refuted those words. She’d hesitated to try it on Vale because she’d been too worried about hurting or even destroying him, if she couldn’t describe him accurately. He wasn’t a Librarian, after all.

  But there was no time left. And in this place, the Language had answered her intent rather than her exact words. She could only try, and pray. All her life she had been taught that the Language allowed its users to shape reality. But if reality said that Vale couldn’t enter the Library, then she was going to change that reality.

  She grabbed Vale by the hand. ‘Your name is Peregrine Vale,’ she said, her voice audible through the crash of falling books and the rumble of the shuddering floor. ‘You are a human being. And you are the greatest detective in London!’

  The shock was like a deep organ-note, humming in her bones and making her stumble. Vale rocked back as if he had been hit by a blast of wind. Chaotic power vented out around him, crumbling the floor underneath him to fragments and transforming the blowing fragments of paper into ash. He fell to one knee, his face white under the smears of dust that marked the
m both, and his breath came in great heaving gasps.

  She grabbed Vale’s hand, pulling him forward as she threw herself through the doorway. And he followed her.

  The world was blurry in front of her eyes, and she barely stayed on her feet. Both Vale and Kai were shouting at her, holding her up as she swayed, the world swinging round her in huge stomach-churning arcs. She blinked to see the open doorway in front of her, looking out on a landscape that was all inferno, where flames devoured books and shelves and ground and sky, and the wind screamed for vengeance.

  There was something she had to do. Yes. That was it.

  ‘Door, close . . .’

  The door slammed shut with a thud that echoed down the book-lined corridor, cutting off the flames and fury, and leaving the three of them in silence and darkness.

  Then slowly, one by one, the lights started to come back on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Put your hands there, Winters.’ Vale positioned her hands to hold the pad in place while he bandaged the gash across Kai’s midriff.

  Irene tried to focus, but it was too much effort. She simply knelt there and let herself be used as a convenient surgical clamp, while Vale applied strips of torn-up shirt and Kai bled. The gashes weren’t life-threatening, but they were nasty and they might leave scars.

  ‘I hope your uncle isn’t too annoyed that you came here,’ she said, vaguely following the thought through to a logical destination.

  ‘And thank you for favouring us with your attention, Winters,’ Vale said, sitting back on his knees and wiping his hands on the remaining rags. He seemed to have pulled himself together with barely a moment’s pause, all self-possession and control once more. ‘I take it that inferno was a success?’