The Burning Page

‘Do you think it’ll have made the security around the Hermitage any heavier?’ Kai asked. ‘Given how out of date the rest of our information is . . .’

‘No way of knowing, unfortunately. That’s the problem with not having a Librarian-in-Residence.’ She remembered his earlier comment. ‘By the way, what did you mean when you said there were dragons here?’

‘Not here in Poland,’ Kai said, a little too quickly.

‘No, in this world,’ Irene said.

‘I can tell they’re in this world. I don’t know where, without trying to find them. I’m just not sure that trying to find them would be a good idea.’

‘Why not?’ Irene asked, genuinely surprised. She’d thought Kai would be only too pleased to spend time with other dragons.

‘Well. You know.’ It was never a good sign when Kai went monosyllabic. He fiddled with the cakes. ‘Questions.’

‘Kai, we’ve talked about keeping dangerous secrets before,’ Irene said patiently. To be more precise, she’d talked and he’d listened. ‘Is this something I should know about?’

‘I’m worried about my father.’ Kai’s voice was quiet and uncertain. ‘I’ve already caused him inconvenience by being kidnapped and needing rescue. I don’t want him to be embarrassed by any further shameful behaviour on my part. What I do in private is one thing, but . . . Well, I know you understand what court intrigues can be like, Irene. Nobody’s going to actually challenge my father, but there are other things they can do.’

‘Delayed taxes and tributes?’ Irene guessed. ‘Orders getting accidentally lost en route? Polite semi-public insubordination? Negotiating with other monarchs?’ She’d learned earlier that there were four dragon kings, and Kai’s father was one of them. However, Kai himself was one son among many, by far the youngest and lowest down the scale of inheritance. ‘Long-term consequences on the grounds that misconduct in the son can imply weakness in the father?’

‘You do understand,’ Kai said with relief. ‘My uncle’s loyal to him, of course, and Li Ming’s loyal to my uncle, so it doesn’t matter if they know about my affiliation with the Library. But I don’t know which other dragons are actually here. It might even be representatives from one of the queens’ courts. I don’t want to be accused of intruding on someone else’s territory.’

Irene knew she should be getting on with the job, but Kai so rarely discussed dragon politics that she couldn’t resist the urge to ask a few more questions. ‘Are the queens enemies of the kings?’

‘Oh no,’ Kai said, sounding a little shocked that he might have given that impression. ‘But they’re established in the more secure worlds, the ones that you call high-order. The kings go there to visit them on state occasions, or for mating contracts.’

‘Were you brought up in your mother’s court, or your father’s?’ Irene asked.

‘My father’s. Male children are given to the father, and female ones to the mother. At least, with royal matings. Dragons of lower rank may have different arrangements.’ He caught the look in her eye. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t think that I grew up without any female dragons around. My royal father has many female courtiers and servants, and female lords under his command. It’s just that the royal households themselves are of the same gender.’

‘Why?’

Kai shrugged. ‘That’s how it is.’

Irene would have liked more detail, but the current urgent situation was more important. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘To get back to matters at hand, are any dragons who are here likely to interfere with us stealing a book?’

‘Not interfere as such,’ Kai said carefully. ‘But they would certainly be curious.’

‘In that case, we’ll be discreet and hope they don’t notice.’ She saw the relief in his eyes. ‘Next step: we need to get to St Petersburg, possibly with a stop to obtain clothing first.’

She nodded at the people passing by outside. While many of them wore some sort of dark coat over their clothing, as Kai and Irene did, these were distinctively heavy wool or felt coats, often with fur cuffs and collars. The clothing beneath the coats comprised long skirts for women, but with a bodice and blouse rather than a dress. These were banded with bright colours. The men wore heavy boots and thick trousers, with shirts and waistcoats. Both genders wore hats: Irene and Kai were unusual in being bareheaded.

‘Not too cheap, I hope,’ Kai said. Even though he could make a scruffy shirt and trousers look like the latest catwalk fashion, that didn’t mean he wanted to. He shopped with all the exquisite taste of a prince who’d been raised in personally tailored silks and furs.

Irene was something of a disappointment to him there, and she knew it. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want us spending too much of our spare cash before we get there. Fashions may be different in St Petersburg—’

‘I told you we should have bought Vogue,’ Kai put in.

‘That’s high fashion, not regular fashion,’ Irene said firmly. ‘It wouldn’t have been any use. Come on. We should get started.’ She commandeered the last cake, then signalled the waiter over, combining a tip with a request for directions to a local clothing shop.

She was grateful that Kai didn’t make any comments about urgency, or this errand taking up too much time. Running into a heavily guarded royal property without the right disguise would get them killed. And working out the details kept her stable. Whereas if she let herself start thinking the entire Library may be destroyed, her mind went into a terrified hamster-wheel spin. It was too large a concept to imagine.