The Burning Page

She’d left Kai behind with Vale, with the excuse that this trip to the Library didn’t need both of them, and that someone should stay with Vale in case he was targeted by whoever had sent them spiders. The more honest truth was that she’d wanted some time on her own. What little sleep she’d managed hadn’t been good, and she hadn’t felt very charitable to either of the men – even if Kai had done nothing to deserve it. And they could keep each other safe.

She was heading for the British Library, again, despite her misgivings that it might be too obvious a move to any unfriendly eyes. It was a trade-off: she could force a passage to the Library itself from some other large collection of books. But then she couldn’t control where in the Library she would emerge, and she’d only be able to hold the link open for a short time. There were too many urgent things going on for her to risk ending up in a distant corner of the Library. It was best to use the fixed entrance and run the risk of others knowing where it was. Hopefully nobody was planning to kill her this early in the morning.

‘Read all about it!’ the closest newspaper vendor shouted. Irene glanced at his display board. GUERNSEY ZEPPELIN BASE WITCHCRAFT SCANDAL, it read. No, probably not related to her current problems. Not everything was about her.

Then the shockwave hit. It was a surge of force that felt like the Library at first, but wasn’t – oh god, how very much it wasn’t. It seemed reassuringly familiar, but it had an aftertaste of chaos that roiled her guts and made her choke. Sweet to the mouth but bitter to the stomach, half-remembered scripture quoted itself in her mind as she struggled for balance. It was hunting for Irene, or for any Librarian, like a bat screaming sonar waves into the darkness and waiting for a response. The Library brand across Irene’s back blazed up so that she could feel each separate line of it, and the force of its weight made her stagger.

Nobody around her was reacting to it. Why should they? They weren’t Librarians. A couple of people glanced at her as she missed her step, but nobody stopped, or did more than adjust their own trajectory so as not to step on her if she fell over.

Then, like an ocean wave, the blow hammered down around her and left its imprint on the malleable sands of reality, then drained away, withdrawing to wherever it had come from. She’d felt something like this before, when the Library (or, more accurately, a senior Librarian) had been sending her urgent messages, only it hadn’t involved this feeling of chaos. The Library’s message had been classic scattershot technique, targeting any Librarian in the vicinity, then printing the message on the nearest written material. She automatically looked at the newspaper display board again.

‘Dreadful scandal—’ The vendor broke off as he looked at his papers and saw that the print on them had changed. Irene knew it would be the same as the message that currently showed on the display board, and any other printed matter within a few yards of her. It was written in the Language, and anyone who read it would see it in their own native tongue, even if the words made no sense to them.

THE LIBRARY WILL BE DESTROYED, it read. AND YOU WILL BE DESTROYED WITH IT. ALBERICH IS COMING.

Irene throttled the panicked inner voice which wanted to retreat into a corner and start whimpering. There was no time for that. Her feet carried her on automatically, away from the black-and-white message on all the newspapers. What she had just seen made it all the more urgent that she reach the Library and report this.

It had been in the Language. There was only one person outside the Library who was tainted with chaos and who could have used the Language. It was Alberich who had left that message, and he had left it for her to see.

He knew she was in this world. He remembered her. And he was coming.

Irene breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the British Library without being accosted by Zayanna again. She did want to know what was going on with the other woman. It might be relevant. But the Library and its own interests had to take priority, and she needed to report Alberich’s threat. It wasn’t only a threat to her, after all. It was a threat to the Library as a whole. And if it had anything to do with what happened yesterday to the Library gate . . .

She slipped through the British Library unobtrusively, adopting the preoccupied air of a student, and reached the door to the Library itself. As she closed the door behind her, she felt herself relaxing. Here she was safe. Safe from the physical dangers of spiders and guns, the emotional wrinkles of caring about the people around her and, most of all, safe from the threats of the Library’s greatest-ever traitor. Of all places, this was the one location where Alberich could never reach her.

But today, even this sanctuary seemed shadowed. The lights seemed dimmer, and the corners seemed darker. The very air seemed to whisper in the distance – like a ghost breathing, or the faint echo of a clock’s tick.

The computer terminal was already booted up. Someone must have been using it recently and left it on. Irene thrust aside her nervousness, sat down and called up her email, already starting to phrase her report on Alberich’s warning.

The blinking message at the top of the screen caught her attention: READ THIS NOW.

It couldn’t be spam. Nobody could spam the Library network. She clicked on it.

An emergency meeting has been called. All Librarians will attend. Transfer shifts have been established at all junctions within the Library to permit attendance. The command word is necessity. Your presence is required immediately.

‘Well, this is new,’ Irene said out loud. Her voice echoed in the quiet room. She was already logging off and pushing her chair back, not bothering to check the rest of her email. Whatever this was, it was urgent, and she cursed the fact that she’d been distracted and delayed by Vale, the newspaper and the whole mess.