The Burning Page Read online

  There would be time to settle that later. For the moment, they were in a burning house with angry soldiers outside. Par for the course. ‘Out the back door, then, before the first floor’s impassable,’ she said.

  There was a crash behind them.

  ‘That was the stairs,’ Kai said, deadpan.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Right.’ It was amazing how being cut off by advancing flames focused the mind. And not just in the way that the first cup of coffee in the morning helped one concentrate, but more in the way that a magnifying glass directed all the minor fears into a single laser beam of pure terror. Irene had never particularly liked fire. More than that, the idea of fire getting loose among her books was a particular nightmare. Being caught in a conflagration was near the top of her Top Ten Ways I Don’t Want to Die. ‘We break the shutters on this floor, go out, surrender, and escape later.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  Irene raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless you have a better idea?’

  ‘Actually, I do.’ Kai sounded half-proud, half-defiant, but overall determined. ‘We don’t need to come back here, so it doesn’t matter what they know. I’ll change form and carry us both out of this world.’

  This threw Irene off-balance. It wasn’t something she had remotely expected. Kai hadn’t bothered keeping his heritage as a dragon secret from her – at least, not after she’d found out about it – but he very rarely offered to do anything that would involve using it. And she’d never seen him in full dragon form before. ‘They’ve got rifles,’ she pointed out practically.

  Kai snorted. Or perhaps that was the smoke. Which was admittedly getting thicker. Thank heavens there were no books in here to be burned now. She was a Librarian, after all: destruction of any books was loathsome. ‘Rifles are no threat to me, in my proper form.’

  Irene nearly said But what about me?, although she managed to shut her mouth before it could get out. It was their only hope right now, after all. ‘Right,’ she said after a moment. ‘Do we have enough space in here?’

  ‘Outside would be easier,’ Kai said. More smoke was drifting up between the floorboards, and the crackling of flames was getting louder. ‘But there’s just enough room in here. Please stay back against the wall.’

  Irene thrust the book inside her coat and stayed beside the window, her back pressed against the wall, as Kai walked out towards the centre of the floor. She did wonder if changing to a dragon was going to involve a loss of clothing, then mentally scolded herself for getting distracted at a moment of crisis. But she didn’t look away.

  Kai stopped and raised his arms, his back arching as he went up on his toes. But the movement didn’t end there. The air seemed to thicken in the room, growing denser and more real in a way that outweighed the smoke. The light spilling through the holes in the roof grew heavier, glowing around him as his form shifted. Dazzle stung Irene’s eyes, and she had to blink for a moment, however hard she tried to keep watching.

  When she could see clearly again, Kai wasn’t human any more.

  Of all the pictures of dragons that Irene had ever seen, he looked the closest to the images in some of the older Chinese works. He lay in a serpentine knot of dark blue coils, his wings folded against the side of his body. Where the light struck him, his scales were the clear dark sapphire of the deep ocean in daylight, and the traceries of scales along his body were like the ripples on the surface of a river. She thought he might be thirty feet or more long, fully outstretched, but it was hard to judge with him coiled up inside the room and in the smoke. His eyes were red as rubies now, with a light that didn’t need the sun to burn, and as he opened his mouth she saw a great many sharp white carnivorous teeth.

  ‘Irene?’ he said. His voice was deep and organ-toned, though still recognizably Kai’s, and it hummed in her bones. The floor seemed to shudder in response.

  She gathered herself. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Are you – all right?’ It was a stupid question, she knew, but it was difficult to know what one should say. Etiquette on dealing with apprentices after they have turned into dragons – another missing item from the Big Book of Library Procedures.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he rumbled. ‘This place is quite congenial to me. Stay back while I bring down the roof.’

  Well, the world was on the more lawful side of things, rather than on the chaotic end of the universe. The ruling despotic regime was an unfortunate side-effect of that. As were the guards and guillotines. It would explain why Kai had no problems with being a full dragon here. In a more chaotic alternate world, which they’d unwillingly visited before, he’d been barely conscious in human form, and it would have been much worse if he’d been in dragon shape.

  Kai reared up, his wings spreading till they bent against the walls, and set his back against the ceiling. The floor creaked ominously beneath him, but it was drowned out by the groaning of the ceiling as he shoved against it. Tiles came loose, falling to shatter against the floor, and through the dust and the increasing smoke Irene could see the remaining plaster cracking and falling away, and the central rafters bending.

  ‘Is anyone up there?’ came a yell in French from downstairs.

  The natural human response was to shout, ‘No!’ Which said something about humanity. But Irene was too busy watching Kai, in any case, and trying to stay back, as more and more of the ceiling and roof came tumbling down.

  With a heavier crash, the floor began to give way. Kai flexed his body, shifting to brace himself against the walls of the building, and lowered his great head. ‘Irene, get on me, between my shoulders – now!’

  It would be bad manners to argue with the designated driver. Irene unslung her rifle and dropped it, then scrambled on top of the nearest bit of Kai’s back, crawling up between his shoulders. It felt horribly lese-majesty and improper to be crawling on all fours along the back of a dragon like this. His skin was like warm flexible steel, rippling beneath her hands as his body flexed to hold him in position, and, now that she was on top of him, Irene could smell the sea, stronger than the stench of dust and mould and fire.

  Another piece of floor went tumbling. Fire came streaming up from below, leaping in the sudden burst of air, and Irene flung herself flat on Kai’s back, her hands digging in as best they could. He was too broad for her to straddle, so she plastered herself against him and prayed. ‘Go go go!’ she shouted. ‘Just go!’

  Kai flung himself upwards in a twisting curve, scraping through the gaping hole in the roof, his tail lashing behind him as he rose into the air. Irene clung to his back, her face pressed against his hide, and felt his body flex underneath her in the sort of S-bend that should have been impossible – that would have been impossible for a natural creature flying naturally.

  But Kai was a dragon. He rose through the air as if he was simply moving from point A to point B like a painting on a scroll, and though his wings spread out in great blue arches as if to catch the wind, he flew against it. Irene could hear the screams and shouts from below, and the sharp cracks of rifle shots, but Kai’s pace didn’t falter as he drifted further and further up, till the city lay spread out beneath them like a photograph and the burning house was a distant blotch of orange.

  ‘Irene?’ He didn’t turn his head to look at her. His flight path changed to a curving hover, tracing a wide circle in the air. ‘If I hold steady now, can you get a little closer to my shoulders? It’ll be safer there for you, when we pass between worlds.’

  ‘Give me a moment,’ Irene said through gritted teeth. It helped if she kept her eyes on Kai’s back, rather than looking down at the ground beneath. She wasn’t fond of heights at the best of times, and sitting on a dragon’s back hundreds of yards in the air made it hard to ignore exactly how high up she was. However, one consolation was that she wasn’t being as wind-blown as she’d expected. Something was blunting the effect of the speed and the air currents on her – and on Kai too, presumably. It must be to do with the whole dragon magical-flight thing. She added it to her list of ques
tions for later, as she pulled herself slowly along Kai’s back to between his wings.

  ‘Now sit upright.’ She could hear the amusement in his voice.

  ‘Like hell,’ Irene said. It was a very long way down.

  ‘You’ll be safe. We’ve carried people before, Irene. Sages, visitors, human favourites . . . Trust me. I won’t drop you.’

  It’s not a question of me not trusting you. It’s a question of whether or not I can make myself physically let go of my death grip on you. Finger by finger, Irene released her hold on Kai’s hide and pushed herself to a sitting position. Kai was too wide for her to sit astride, so she curled her legs underneath herself. Tendrils of mane flowed back from around his head, and she tentatively held onto a couple of them. It wasn’t logical, but she felt much better for holding onto something. ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘Now I travel back to Vale’s world.’ Kai’s wings flexed, spreading to their full extent. The light glittered on them like the water on the surface of waves. ‘I know its place among the flow of the worlds, and I could fly to Vale himself, if I so desired. But he probably wouldn’t like that,’ he said, abruptly losing his formality. ‘Where should we go?’

  ‘The British Library,’ Irene said firmly. ‘You can land on the roof and I’ll handle any guards while you change back. And then we can use the gate to the Library from there.’

  ‘That seems reasonable.’ Kai hesitated, the gesture more normal for a human than a dragon. ‘Irene, what happened back there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It was easy to admit ignorance, but more worrisome when it came to speculating about it. ‘If there’s a problem with that world’s access, I wasn’t warned about it. And if it’s a recent problem, then I need to warn other people. Urgently. I haven’t heard of anything like this happening before, and other Librarians could be at risk.’ Her grip tightened. ‘Take us home, Kai. Before the people here invent a rocket ship to come up after us.’

  Kai rumbled a laugh, and she could feel the shiver in his body underneath her. Well, I’m glad one of us is enjoying this.

  Then he dipped, losing altitude, his body curving through the air but not disturbing her, leaving her as well balanced as though she was sitting on a chair in her own study. The wind was only moderate, ruffling her hair around her face, but they were moving faster now – fast enough that the air was shrieking as they sliced through it.

  The air gaped open ahead of them, luminous and shimmering, a rip in reality. The roaring wind sounded like chanting voices, the words indecipherable, but the tone ominous and warning. Irene’s stomach twisted in suppressed panic. She’d always been the one in control of travel between worlds. Of course she trusted Kai, of course she was sure he could handle it if he said so, and of course she wasn’t going to admit to being afraid, but the terror of the unknown was a cold shadow on her heart. Yet curiosity kept her eyes open. This was, after all, something she’d never done before . . .

  Kai flew straight ahead, into the rift.

  CHAPTER THREE

  They plunged into an atmosphere that was as thick and dense as syrup. Irene could still breathe, after the first moment’s panic, but the air flowed around them like water, and tendrils of her hair drifted round her face as though she was submerged. There was no sun, no moon or stars or any obvious source of light, but she could see herself and Kai with a vague dawn-like clarity.

  They were gliding through an ocean of air, in a thousand shades of blue and green. There was no obvious end or beginning to it, and no clear solid objects or real things except for the two of them. The only differentiation Irene could see was in the shadings and temperatures of the currents that constantly moved and shifted through the air, like vast streams of smoke or rivers entering the sea. And perhaps Kai could perceive even more than she could.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

  ‘Behind,’ Kai said. He didn’t change his steady pace, gliding through the flux of watery air. ‘Outside. Travelling.’

  ‘Is it that you can’t explain – or shouldn’t explain?’ Irene asked. Either would make sense.

  ‘More the first than the second.’ He winged a long, casual turn. ‘I’m seeking the river that leads to Vale’s world. I can’t explain it any better than you can explain the Language to someone who doesn’t have the Library brand.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ She patted his back reassuringly, then hoped that dragons didn’t object to that sort of thing from passengers. ‘You won’t get into any sort of trouble for this from your relatives, will you?’

  ‘For protecting you? Hardly. They’re still considering how best to reward you for your meritorious actions.’

  Kai sounded smug, but Irene didn’t have quite so rosy a view of matters. Yes, she had helped rescue Kai, but tracking his kidnappers had meant leaving her post as Librarian-in-Residence and going AWOL and provoking a large number of Fae. This might have raised her stock with the dragons – or at least with Kai’s family, who were after all kings among the dragons – but it had left her on probation in the Library. She was lucky she hadn’t been exiled. Whether that was fair or unfair was something that wasn’t worth arguing, and would only mark her as a troublemaker if she tried. Irene wasn’t sure that she wanted to raise her stock with the dragons at the Library’s expense. She was a Librarian, sworn to the Library, and that had to come first.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Kai went on, a little too casually. ‘Have you considered Li Ming’s suggestion?’

  ‘Kai.’ Irene took a deep breath before she could snap at him. This was the third time he’d brought it up in the last three days. ‘I appreciate that you didn’t ask for your uncle to send Li Ming to Vale’s world. And I appreciate that Li Ming is only being courteous in offering to provide accommodation for you and your household. But I can’t – not won’t, can’t – move in and live under his protection.’

  ‘You won’t be under his protection,’ Kai protested. ‘You’d be under mine!’ He seemed to realize that he’d said the wrong thing. ‘Besides, it wouldn’t be protection as such. It’s just that he’d be paying for it. And you’d still be keeping up your duties as Librarian-in-Residence.’

  ‘No,’ Irene said. She looked out at the endless flows and patterns of colour. It was enough to make anyone feel insignificant. Dragons must be immune, however, which probably said a lot about dragons and their inbuilt feelings of extreme significance. ‘I can’t compromise the Library’s interests by living in accommodation that’s being paid for by a servant of your uncle.’

  That was the diplomatic way of putting it. The Library was neutral and stayed out of the way of both dragons and Fae, unless their interests came into direct conflict – usually over the ownership of a book, or an immediate life-or-death situation. They certainly weren’t going to formally ally themselves with either side. It would be highly inappropriate for a Librarian to be living as a paid dependant of one of the dragon kings.

  Irene’s immediate reaction was a bit more visceral. She didn’t object to Li Ming in person. He was always courteous and diplomatic, and while he was here to watch over Kai, he did so very discreetly and didn’t stop Kai going on jobs like the current one. But Irene was absolutely certain that in the long run Li Ming wanted Kai away from the Library and going back to his previous role as dragon princeling, with Irene either installed as a favoured servant or out of the picture. Which was fair enough. But in the end, it was going to be Kai’s choice.

  Kai was silent for ten minutes, probably reviewing his strategy. ‘What if I was paying for it?’ he suggested.

  ‘With money you got from Li Ming? Sorry, that won’t wash.’

  ‘You’re treating this as a major issue.’ Kai curved downwards: there was enough gravity to make it perceptible as ‘down’ rather than ‘up’, and Irene was grateful for that, since she was having enough trouble as it was in reconciling her perceptions with reality. ‘I just want to protect you. So does Li Ming. So does my uncle. He views you as a suitable friend for me. Why can’t you unde
rstand that?’

  ‘As your friend, I’m grateful for that.’ It would have been too blatant a kick in the teeth to say I don’t need your protection or Last time I was the one protecting you. Plus there was the fact that Kai was the one who’d just rescued her, less than an hour ago. ‘But as a Librarian, I can’t accept it. Not in that way.’

  Kai growled, and Irene felt the vibration underneath her, down the length of his body. ‘You aren’t making this easy!’

  ‘I’m sure I’m not,’ Irene said. ‘Have you asked Vale about any of this?’

  The dead silence in response was indicative. Vale was a number of things: he was London’s greatest detective in the alternate world where they were living, and he was a good friend of Kai’s, and – Irene thought – not entirely unattached to Irene herself. He was also very similar to a certain fictional Great Detective, but Irene didn’t like to bring that up in conversation.

  ‘Is that a “Yes and he said no”?’ Irene enquired. ‘Or just a plain “No”?’

  ‘Since when did you become so involved in my relationships?’ Kai rumbled, with a deepening undertone of anger.

  ‘He’s my friend too,’ Irene said.

  For a moment Kai was silent. Irene was congratulating herself on having found a conversation-stopper when he suggested, ‘I don’t mind you having a relationship with Vale, you know.’

  ‘How very open-minded of you,’ Irene muttered.

  ‘It wouldn’t hinder our friendship, of course,’ Kai went on blithely. ‘Nor would it matter if you were bedding me as well. I know you say that you feel that would be inappropriate, as mentor to student, but among my kind it would be considered quite natural. And if you’d like some suggestions about how to approach Vale . . .’