The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library Novel) Read online

  “I know,” Irene said with feeling. She disembarked with Catherine and Kai. A couple of locals clambered down from the open carriage, but none headed for the Zeppelin port, making their way towards the main road instead.

  “Kai,” Irene said quietly, as they trudged towards the airfield entrance, “can you do anything to clear up the weather? I’ve seen you cause a storm before.”

  Kai was already rather pale, and the rain sleeked his hair, enhancing the bone structure of his face till he looked positively consumptive—though, as usual, in the most handsome possible way. “It’s easier to call a storm than stop one,” he admitted. “My affinity with water makes it possible to invite the rain and turn it loose at a chosen moment, in the right conditions. But stopping the rain and wind . . . no, not really. Maybe when I’m older.”

  “What a pity we don’t have years to wait,” Catherine said, her temper not improved. “Irene, why can’t we just find a hotel and stay there till the weather’s better, and deal with the poison there? Even if someone saw us get on the tram, they won’t know where we got off. We can go cross-country and hide.”

  Irene swallowed the objections that came to mind, such as the difficulty of going cross-country across winter fields in the rain on foot. Catherine was doing her best to make a helpful contribution—and Irene was sure she’d made similarly “helpful” contributions during her own training. “We have a problem.” She lowered her voice. “Someone knows too much. Someone knew that Vale was going down into that submarine base. Someone knew we were planning to buy that book. We can’t be sure how much else they know, or what other plans they may have in motion—which is why I want us off the island and well out of their reach. And I want you two to receive proper medical care as soon as possible.”

  “And what about Vale?” Kai asked.

  “Already here,” said the man slouching next to the gates. To all appearances, Vale was a local engineer in canvas trousers and one of the island’s heavy knitted sweaters, with heavy boots and a flat cap, nursing a cigarette. “Don’t react. Just keep going, then turn right and head for the small Zeppelin with two yellow stripes at the far end. I’ll follow you.”

  Irene jerked her head in a gesture that might have been shaking rain off her hat and veil—though Vale would understand it as acknowledgment—and kept on walking, as did Kai. Catherine hesitated, then hurried to join them.

  The Zeppelin with the double yellow stripes hung above them in the sky, pivoting in slow arcs but anchored by ropes and ladders to the ground. Irene felt her shoulder blades tense as they approached it, as if she had a target painted on her back. She suppressed the urge to look round in case someone was following them. At least in the open field, nobody could sneak up close . . .

  “Stop right there!” someone shouted in French.

  Irene cursed fate, timing, and everything that thwarted escapes by ten seconds. “Help Catherine up there—I’ll handle this,” she told Kai, shoving the laptop into his hands. Before he could stop her, she turned round, adopting an air of mild confusion.

  Half a dozen men were running towards them, wearing the uniform that Irene had seen elsewhere on the airfield. It sported more braid and buttons than were strictly necessary to inspire confidence. “May I help you, gentlemen?” she inquired in French.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Vale, still disguised, heading for their target Zeppelin at a brisk jog. Good.

  “Madame,” said the man with the most braid and the heaviest moustache, “you and your companions must come with us at once, to answer charges of murder in the high street. Your companions also—”

  Irene held up a hand to interrupt him and shifted to the Language. This one rarely failed her. “You all perceive that we are not the people you’re looking for,” she commanded.

  She saw the belief take hold as the Language adjusted their perceptions, and relaxed—just in time for the resulting headache to hit hard. She winced and was about to add something along the lines of You perceive they’re actually at the other end of the airfield. Then a bullet whipped through the air inches from her skull.

  Trained reflexes made her drop flat and roll. Another bullet cut through the air, missing her by a bigger margin this time. The guards also scattered, diving for cover. Irene rolled across the wet grass, cursing her long dress. She could tell the shots were coming from behind the airfield’s fence, but she couldn’t see the shooter or the gun clearly.

  Fine. She’d just have to make do with what she had. “Fence, fall on the shooter!” she shouted.

  Metal came crashing down. There were screams. She didn’t stop to look—she dragged herself to her feet, gathering her wet, muddy skirts in her fists, and staggered towards the Zeppelin. Through the thickening rain she could see Vale waiting by the ladder. There was no sign of Kai and Catherine—hopefully already up and safe.

  Vale caught her by the arm, hauling her onto the ladder. He shouted to the airship above, “Take us up!”

  The anchor detached, and with a stomach-churning swiftness the Zeppelin rose into the sky. Vale and Irene clutched onto the rope ladder below, swinging like a lunatic pendulum with the impetus of their ascent. Irene wedged her feet around a rung and desperately clung to the ladder, trying not to panic as the airfield sank away beneath them. Her twisting stomach made a wonderful accompaniment to her aching head as the ladder was slowly winched into the belly of the Zeppelin. Below her feet, she could see the airfield guards chasing the gunman—no, there were two gunmen, and they were running for it now, heading for a carriage . . .

  “Witchcraft, smugglers, the Guanteses, corruption, spies, and my sister’s own agents subverted,” Vale noted, as they finally scrambled onto the decking. “My files on Guernsey are sadly lacking. I really must return and update them.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The nuns looking after Kai and Catherine had the crisp manner and white aprons of nurses, but their robes were golden brown and white wimples covered their hair. They ignored Irene in the corner, leaving her alone with her valuable suitcase. Out of sheer boredom, she had resorted to reading a nursing textbook and was learning more than she ever wanted to know about the human digestive system.

  Kai was the first to wake. His eyes flickered open, and he stared at the ceiling. “I feel awful,” he said.

  “You’ve been given activated charcoal and you’ve had a stomach lavage—that’s a washout. Your medical records show a list of the drugs that they injected you with, if you’re interested.” Irene closed her textbook. “On the positive side—”

  “You love saying that,” Kai muttered.

  “That’s because I desperately cling to any optimism I can get.” She sat on the chair between his and Catherine’s beds. “There was more than ricin in that poison, but we caught it in time. If you hadn’t made yourself vomit on the Zeppelin, it would have been worse. Though the captain didn’t look too happy about that. As it is, you should be up and around within twenty-four hours, though your guts may be a little tender.”

  Kai sighed. “I feel so stupid, being poisoned like that. My whole family would be disappointed in me.”

  Irene knew dragons well enough to recognize the problem. It wasn’t the poisoning that would disappoint his family, but the circumstances—he’d been dosed by a “mere” witch in a cheap tearoom. Quite different from a respectable politically motivated assassination attempt. And so much more embarrassing. “Your family would understand,” she said, looking around guardedly. “Because there are bigger implications here. We’ve hit a serious problem.”

  “What do you mean?” Kai tried to sit up, failed, and propped himself up on his elbow as if he’d meant to do that all along. “And where are we? I don’t recognize this place. The last thing I remember was the airship.”

  Irene answered the second question, because she suspected that once she tackled the first, there wouldn’t be space to discuss anything else.
“We’re in the basement of St. Henrietta’s Hospital, under Whitehall. You and Catherine both passed out while we were over the Channel.” And she didn’t want to remember just how terrified she’d been that they wouldn’t make it to help in time.

  Kai frowned. “I don’t remember a hospital by that name in London.”

  “It’s secret,” Irene explained, reaching over to check Catherine’s pulse. Still asleep. Good. “Excessively secret. As in founded-by-royalty-and-supported-by-a-hidden-order-of-nuns secret. Vale says that only the top ranks of the civil service and London’s criminal underworld know about it. Most importantly, it has some of the highest security in London. And some of the best treatment for poisons, too.”

  “Hidden order of nuns?”

  “The Order of St. Anastasia. It’s one of those situations where an order of nuns become experts at treating poisons, everyone suspects they’re really poisoners, multiple cardinals die, they have to flee for their lives . . . then they save a king’s sister from dying and he builds them a secret nunnery. You know how it goes.”

  “Oh, that happens all the time,” Kai agreed. “My mother joined a few of those—only appearing in her human identity, of course. She says they’re very convenient in an emergency. Almost as good as universal health care.”

  Irene blinked. Kai rarely talked about his mother. It must be the effect of the poisons—or the antidotes. “Do dragons support universal health care?” she asked curiously.

  Kai shrugged. “It leads to the general protection and well-being of humans. So my father’s in favour of it, of course.”

  Irene knew enough about dragons to recognize that the general protection and well-being of humans usually came secondary to the general protection and well-being of dragons. “Sometimes I worry I’m too cynical,” she murmured.

  “You’re wandering off the subject,” Kai said, proving that even if he wasn’t telepathic, he knew Irene very well by now. “What is the ‘serious problem’ and what have you discovered?”

  It was amazing how the words Lord Guantes is back kept sticking in her throat, Irene thought, but she plunged in. “Do you remember Lord and Lady Guantes?”

  “Ah,” Kai said, jumping to the obvious conclusion. “She’s trying to murder us all—because you killed her husband and destroyed their plans to start a Fae-versus-dragon war. Quite understandable.”

  “She may be involved—she probably is, actually. But her husband is definitely involved.”

  Kai hesitated, his confusion shading into worry. “How so?”

  It made Irene feel slightly better to see that Kai was as reluctant as she was to consider that Lord Guantes was somehow still alive. It didn’t make sense. And I’m not the only one who’s still afraid of him . . . “Let me explain,” she said.

  Ten minutes later she’d finished her account of events, with interruptions, and Kai was digging his fingers into his sheets. She suspected it was pure self-control that kept his nails from growing into claws and shredding them to pieces. Dragons were occasionally prone to letting a few of their natural traits show through their human form, when strong emotions took hold—red eyes, claws, scales, local elemental effects . . .

  “So,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “What do we know so far?”

  “Don’t treat me like your pupil,” Kai snapped, proving he was more distressed than angry. Anger would never make him rude; it’d be more likely to provoke icy courtesy. “We’re past that.”

  “All right,” Irene said equably. Better that he snarl at her than at Catherine or the nuns. “I apologise. I didn’t want to prejudice your conclusions by giving my perspective first. What do you think of the whole affair?”

  “Assuming you weren’t somehow deceived, something very strange is going on.”

  “That’s not much of a conclusion.”

  “We’re lacking evidence. We can’t be sure Lord Guantes and Lady Guantes are behind all the recent attacks on us. What if he was some kind of . . . illusion? Someone could have used his likeness to send us on the wrong track. Many others know about the Venice business.” Which was shorthand for when I was kidnapped by the Guanteses to start a war. You destroyed their power base while rescuing me. And killed him in the process. She could see him shying away from the memory. He paused, thinking. “It’s undeniable someone was trying to kill us on Guernsey, though. Whether this is linked to the previous attempts is still up for debate.”

  “True,” Irene agreed. “But consider how it played out. It was . . . careless. It doesn’t match his reputation as a master schemer. Why set up a complicated death trap in the submarine base and then leave a back door open to his hideout?” She paused. “I suppose the answer to that one is that he didn’t expect me to be there and Vale couldn’t have passed through that door. If Vale had been alone . . .” He would probably have died. And she’d never have known how or why. With an effort she continued her theorising. “Why get Julie Robilliard to give you a slow-acting poison, when he could have used his powers to persuade her to outright murder you? And then have people with guns waiting outside as well? It’s all over the place. It’s not like him.”

  “He did almost get us killed, though,” Kai pointed out.

  “You’re not wrong,” she admitted. “Let’s go back to square one. We need to pool what we all know, what we can investigate, and what we should all do next for immediate self-preservation. Which means that Catherine needs to be awake—or rather, needs to admit she’s awake.”

  Catherine opened her eyes without bothering to argue. “I find out a lot more by listening without you knowing I’m listening.”

  Irene closed her eyes briefly. “Aren’t we supposed to be on the same side?” she asked.

  “I don’t care.” Catherine struggled to pull herself upright, bashing the pillows into submission. “You’re supposed to be making me a Librarian. So why don’t you do it? Get me into the Library and you won’t have to worry about anyone killing me anyway. You won’t have to worry about me any longer.” The bitter undertone to her voice would have corroded crystal.

  “Catherine . . .” Irene didn’t count to ten, but she sorely wanted to. She could sense Kai vibrating like an offended high-voltage cable on her other side. “I ask you as a rational adult: is this really the time for angst and venting your feelings?”

  Catherine fumbled for her glasses on the bedside table and stared at Irene with malignant focus. “I object to being a pawn in your games. I’m sure you already know the Guanteses and my uncle had a thing, but that’s over and done with.”

  “When you say that they had a ‘thing’ . . .” Kai said carefully.

  Catherine winced. “I didn’t mean that sort of ‘thing.’ Though you know what he’s like. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “If I might wrench this conversation back to its original topic,” Irene suggested firmly. “Someone has tried to kidnap or kill myself, Kai, and Vale. Catherine may have been deliberately included, or she might be collateral damage—‘a pawn’ to use her words. And the attempts on Guernsey involved in-depth knowledge of our schedule and penetration of the British Secret Service. Which is where Vale is now, incidentally. He’s trying to find out where the leak came from, as well as pursuing his mysterious crime lord case.”

  “Does this mean we can sue the British Secret Service?” Catherine asked.

  “No,” Irene said. “They get very unhappy about people trying to sue them. The last person who tried was jailed for indecency with public transport—”

  “With or on?”

  “With. It was complicated . . . Look, Catherine, please stop distracting me or we’re never going to get anywhere. It seems that Lord Guantes was behind the attempts to kill us, but he was acting in a highly unusual manner, and crumbled into dust afterwards. That’s certainly unusual. And there’s been no sign of Lady Guantes.”

  “Is that a fact?” Kai asked. “In the sense
of a data item, that is.”

  “It absolutely is. Absence of someone who should be there is a definite fact. Now, moving on to avenues of investigation. Catherine, I assume your uncle didn’t mention anything about Lord Guantes returning from the dead to seek vengeance?”

  “Not a word,” Catherine said. “He did mention Lady Guantes might try and kill you at some point. But he didn’t think she’d try to kill me, so he wasn’t too worried about it.”

  “Yes, that sounds like him,” Irene said with resignation. “But if Lord Guantes is back, we should talk to him. Maybe he’ll remember something useful, if he’s likely to be a target as well.”

  “The problem I see is how we’re going to split up to investigate,” Kai said. “Or maybe we shouldn’t split up at all. Separated, we’re more vulnerable as targets. I’m not happy that Vale’s gone off on his own.”

  For a moment the light caught his eyes and made them flicker red. Dragons might not hoard gold, whatever legend said, but they could be remarkably possessive of things—or people—they considered they owned.

  Irene shrugged. “I’m not happy about it either. But if anyone’s safe on his own in London, it’s Vale.”

  “Well, true,” Kai admitted. “I suggest we bring in additional staff. My father would be happy to assign us some servants. Technically they’d be assigned to me, but in practice we can use them for all us treaty representatives.”

  “That’s actually a good idea,” Catherine agreed. “Uncle has plenty of dangerous people on his private register too. Should we go primarily for bodyguards, poison-tasters, or getaway specialists?”

  Irene was loath to disrupt this positive interaction between the two of them. However, she was conjuring up a mental image of two separate groups of protective servants who—knowing dragons and Fae—would suspect the worst of each other . . . It could be almost as dangerous as having an active assassin on their trail. Possibly worse. “Let’s consider leads so far first,” she suggested, ticking them off on her fingers. “Lord Silver, in case he knows something about the Guanteses. The laptop I took. Whatever Vale finds out regarding the leak. And Sterrington, in case we need Fae intel. There may be relevant conspiracies in Fae circles which we haven’t heard about.”