The Burning Page

Coppelia reached down painfully and flipped open the leather briefcase beside her chair. She slid out a thin folder of papers, offering them to Irene. ‘The book we want is The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki. He was Polish, but the manuscript was written in French. In a lot of alternates it was published without any problems, but something was different about it in this world, B-1165. The book was mostly destroyed. A few copies showed up in private collections. We have a lead on one of them, and since we’re short on time, you’d better try for that one. Don’t think you’re being given an easy job to keep you occupied. This one’s going to be difficult to acquire. We would have liked to get hold of it some time back, but it was judged to be too difficult a mission. But under the current circumstances . . .’

Irene took the papers. ‘If it’s a beta-world, then it’s magic-dominant?’

Coppelia nodded. ‘The major power is Tsarist Russia. The book’s in the restricted collection in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. There isn’t a Librarian-in-Residence on that world, so you’ll have to operate without backup.’

Irene’s feeling of relaxation was ebbing rapidly. ‘What do I do about Kai?’ she asked. ‘I’m nervous enough about leaving him alone in Vale’s world while I come in to report. Should I leave him here in the Library while I’m collecting this Potocki manuscript?’

Coppelia apparently considered, but she had a particular set to her lips. Irene recognized it as meaning that the older Librarian had already made up her mind. ‘You’d better bring him with you. The world’s disputed ground, not high-chaos or high-order – but it is more order than chaos, so it shouldn’t be too risky for him. And you might find his help useful.’

Irene nodded. ‘All right. It’ll certainly make him happier. But level with me on this one, Coppelia, please. I didn’t ask this outside, in the meeting, but what are we going to do if this stabilization approach doesn’t work?’

‘Think of another one,’ Coppelia said. She cracked her wooden knuckles. ‘Melusine is correlating reports from Librarians across all the alternates, as they come in. Once we get a lead on where Alberich’s hiding out, we can move in a strike force.’

‘It’s amazing how Alberich threatening to destroy the Library suddenly gets everyone interested in locating him and hunting him down,’ Irene said. She couldn’t stop a certain amount of sarcasm seeping into her voice. ‘Rather more serious than just killing individual Librarians.’

‘Individual bias is fine in private,’ Coppelia said gently. ‘But be careful what you say in public.’

‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll do my job.’ Irene realized she was echoing Kostchei, and was reminded of another question. ‘Did Kostchei deliberately play down my report?’

‘He gave it what he considered the appropriate level of significance.’ Coppelia shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘He may follow it up later, but at the moment we’re rating the destruction of Library portals and the deaths of Librarians as more significant than one threat to your life.’

Irene hadn’t wanted to ask, but she couldn’t force the thought away any longer. ‘Has this affected anyone I know? My parents—’

‘Not your parents.’ Coppelia met Irene’s gaze. ‘Nobody you know. Some Librarians just haven’t been in contact yet. We’re trying to reach them. At least a couple are known to have died. So far they were on worlds where the gates have been destroyed. We think at least one was caught in a gate going up in flames.’

Irene thought of how nearly the same thing had happened to her. ‘I understand you don’t want to start a panic,’ she said. ‘But I’m wondering if this news perhaps justifies a bit of panic.’

‘Panic is the last thing we can afford,’ Coppelia said. ‘Panic will have everyone rushing off in different directions to try to “save the Library”. Panic is the antithesis to good organization. Panic is messy. I am against panic on a point of principle.’ She checked her watch. ‘Do you have any other questions? The next briefing’s in a few minutes, and it’s my turn to chair it.’

Irene had been carefully putting her other problem to one side, balancing it against her professional responsibilities and her duty to the Library. But that didn’t make it go away. And Coppelia, an elder of the Library, might have an answer. ‘How would you recommend cleansing chaos contamination from a human’s system?’ she demanded.

‘Dear me.’ Coppelia frowned thoughtfully. ‘Vale, I take it? Yes, I did wonder how he’d coped with that version of Venice . . . Don’t look at me like that, Irene; chaos contamination wasn’t a certainty, and in any case he isn’t a Librarian. For a start, you won’t be able to bring him in here.’

Irene mentally cursed. ‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘The obvious reason – if he’s reached too high a level of intrinsic chaos, the gate won’t let him through, just as it wouldn’t have let you through while you were contaminated yourself. But you know that. Why bother to ask me?’

‘I was hoping I was wrong,’ Irene admitted. ‘What about moving him to a high-order world?’

‘By other methods of transportation, I assume.’ Coppelia made a wiggly gesture in the air that might have been meant to mimic dragon flight. ‘Yes, that should work in the long term, assuming he survives it. If it’s too deep in his system, he might simply calcify, the way that the high Fae do in such worlds. You’d need somewhere mid-order, and you’d be looking at a long-term convalescence. Or you could take him to another high-chaos world.’