The Burning Page

But the idea had been planted and had taken root. The security men looked at each other. ‘Perhaps you’d better not try to move till we can get one of the controllers over here, friend citizen,’ one of them said. ‘See if you can keep it calm.’

‘What’s going on here?’ The woman striding into the growing circle of empty space had a long black coat like the men, but there were green stripes on her shoulders and cuffs. Her long hair was braided back cruelly tight, and instead of the skirts the other women wore, she was in trousers and heavy boots, like the men. She glared around suspiciously. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘That’s the problem, mistress controller,’ the lead security guard said, pointing at the bear that was cuddling up against Kai.

The woman peered short-sightedly. Then she walked up to the bear and laid a hand on its head, murmuring so softly that Irene couldn’t hear what she was saying. Kai took a step back, but the tilt of his head suggested that he was listening.

‘Galina says that he smells of the sap in the tree as it goes thundering towards heaven,’ the woman announced, frowning. ‘She says that she salutes the lord of the powers of the earth and the sky, ruler of seas and shaker of mountains. I want her on immediate medical leave. And I want him questioned.’ She pointed at Kai.

‘On what charges, mistress controller?’ the guard asked.

‘I don’t know. Public nuisance, maybe,’ the woman said. ‘I’m sure he’s done something. Take him into custody, and anyone with him.’ She rubbed the bear’s shoulder affectionately.

The security guard did his best to look confident. ‘If you’ll just come along with me, friend citizen,’ he said to Kai. ‘And the lady who’s with you. I’m sure we’ll have this all sorted out in a few minutes.’

Damn, they remembered I exist. Irene stepped forward to Kai’s side, giving him a little nod. ‘Please let’s do as they say, cousin,’ she murmured.

Kai reluctantly let the bear be – it was fawning on the woman now, anyhow – and he and Irene followed the security guards to a side door. Irene was assessing the guards’ visible weaponry as they led the way. Heavy truncheons, like the guards in the museum. Coils of thin rope on their belts, at the opposite side – some sort of magical restraint? They wore silver whistles like the handler’s at their necks, so that was probably a quick way to give the alarm. All most inconvenient. And just because Irene didn’t see any missile weapons, that didn’t mean the guards didn’t have them.

They were ushered into a back corridor that was very different from the opulent sleigh-port exterior or the grand central hall. It was utilitarian, efficient and lacking any external windows that one could escape through. The doors spaced along it were open frameworks of heavy steel bars. ‘Just along here,’ the guard said, the reassurance in his words diluted by the nervousness of his voice. ‘If you friend citizens will wait in this room, someone will be along to see you in a moment.’

He gestured Irene and Kai into a sparsely-furnished room – bare and cell-like, with white-tiled walls and floor, and only a single chair – and then tapped his hand against the side of the doorway and mumbled a few words. A shimmering glow of light sprang up across the open doorway, hissing like magnesium in water.

‘What’s going on?’ Irene demanded.

‘Just to keep you here till the investigators arrive,’ the second guard said. ‘We’ll be back in a moment, friend citizens.’ He slammed the metal bars into place and locked the gate in position. The guards strode off quickly, with the air of men who were about to pass a dangerous problem on to someone else.

Irene looked around the cell. No obvious peepholes or ways of listening, but she couldn’t be sure. ‘So much for a quiet arrival,’ she muttered.

Kai spread his hands. ‘I really am sorry. I had no idea the bear would do something like that. But what do we do now?’

‘Wait for the investigators and explain everything to them,’ Irene said mildly. She tugged at her earlobe significantly. We may be listened to. ‘I’m sure that once they find out what’s going on, they’ll let us go. Didn’t that lady say the bear needed a medical check-up?’

Kai wandered across and poked the screen across the doorway with a careful finger. It spat thick sparks in all directions and he drew back. ‘That’s a surprisingly powerful magical field,’ he said, picking his words. ‘I suspect that even if someone simply tried to jump through it, it might knock them out – and give them bad electrical burns.’

‘The government seems to have a firm hold on the use of magic round here,’ Irene said. She was trying to orient herself geographically. Even though she hadn’t enjoyed the view when they came in, she’d seen that the sleigh-port was surrounded by the city, rather than being out in the countryside. If they could escape into St Petersburg, they could hopefully lose any pursuit. They just had to get out of here. Preferably before more guards came back.

There was no point wasting any more time. ‘Can you guide me to the nearest outside wall? Bearing in mind where we are, in reference to the river?’

Kai nodded. He knew what she was about to do.

The Language wasn’t magic. It was something else again, an entirely different sort of power. Irene couldn’t use it to work with magic, and she couldn’t use magic herself: it varied from world to world, and she’d never been trained in it. Her parents had always told her that a flexible mind and good use of the Language were more valuable than studying the minutiae of a given world’s magic, and she’d generally agreed. It was only at times like this, when locked up behind a magical force-field, that she felt their argument might have been a bit one-sided.