The Mortal Word Page 8

  CHAPTER 6

  “My lord uncle!” Kai exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

  Ao Ji snorted. “Do you think that these humans could seriously threaten me?”

  “Well, no,” Kai admitted, “but where there is one enemy there might be others.”

  “Which is why we can’t kill this man yet,” Irene said, seizing the opportunity. “He might be affiliated with whoever killed Lord Ren Shun.”

  “A very good point,” Duan Zheng said. “We must put him to the question.”

  “And we’ll need to somehow explain this to the police,” Irene added reluctantly.

  “What is there to explain?” Ao Ji asked. “They assaulted me. I slew them. Personal self-defence is acceptable by the local legal code.”

  “I think Miss Winters means that we want to avoid attracting further attention to the summit, my lord uncle,” Kai said. “It will be inconvenient if we are forced to go elsewhere.”

  Irene noted Kai’s extreme level of formality, on a par with the time they’d been on trial before the Queen of the Southern Lands. Apparently Ao Ji’s rigidity extended to even his own family. “If I may make a suggestion, Your Majesty?”

  “Speak,” Ao Ji commanded.

  “It will be difficult to transport two dead bodies out of this hotel without being noticed. But we could shift the scene of the assault to one of your attendants’ rooms and say he was the one attacked. That will mean you won’t be personally involved, Your Majesty. And in the meantime we can find out why this person was trying to kill you.”

  “It’s workable, Your Majesty,” Duan Zheng said. “But we’ll need to do it before any of the hotel staff come to investigate the gunshot.”

  “See to it,” Ao Ji said. “Li Ming or Mei Feng can be the suggested victim.”

  The assassin underneath Irene chose that moment to try to struggle free, and she had to yank his arms up behind his back again. “Oppressors of the people,” he snarled. “Escaping the law by falsifying evidence!”

  “You just tried to shoot us, and you’re accusing us of breaking the law?” Irene demanded.

  “I serve a higher law! A society as unjust as this one must be changed by any and every means necessary.”

  Behind her, Irene was conscious of Duan Zheng handling the crowd of dragons and servants who were trying to enter the suite, drawn by the gunshot. She could hear him drafting servants to carry the dead bodies and arrange the faked assault. But her attention was on the man she was restraining. She’d heard that sort of language before . . . “Are you an anarchist?” she asked.

  “Yes!”

  Genuine anarchists? This was unexpected. Irene really hoped that mentioning anarchists hadn’t actually pulled them into the situation. After all, the Fae caused real life to fall into story forms, and the unfolding events made for powerful drama . . . “And why did you attack us here?”

  He glared in Ao Ji’s direction. “All monarchs shall perish. The people of your homeland would have rejoiced and blossomed into liberty, returning to their natural state under—”

  “Kai,” Ao Ji said. “Restrain him. Librarian, step back. I would not have you harmed unnecessarily.”

  Irene let Kai take over her grip on the man’s arms and rose to her feet, backing away. The other bodies had been dragged out of the room, and one of the servants was busy brushing tracks and other traces of the fight from the carpet. At least I won’t have to deal with the police trying to arrest Ao Ji. That’s one less thing to worry about.

  Ao Ji set down his teacup and stood. He paced across towards the helpless anarchist, cold air ebbing and flowing around him in an almost visible haze of frost. “You are a revolutionary,” he said. “You have attempted violence against me. Both these things are worthy of death. But if you confess everything you know, I may be merciful.”

  His will descended on the room like bitter, crushing frost, like the heart of winter given definition. Irene felt it even at a distance and without its being specifically directed at her: the impulse to submit, to obey, to beg for mercy. Her Library brand across her shoulders flared up again in response, aching like a fresh burn. The human servants in the room fell to their knees, bowing their heads and shivering.

  The anarchist squirmed on the carpet, struggling in a desperate attempt to escape from that icy majesty, that absolute power and contempt. “No,” he gasped, the words congealing in his mouth. “No, stop, please, in God’s name—”

  “I thought you revolutionaries were all atheists.” Ao Ji came to a stop in front of the anarchist. “You need not fear the divine. Fear me instead. Tell me who is behind you.”

  The words fell through the air, implacable, impossible to refuse.

  The anarchist shuddered. “The—the Theatre—” he began.

  Then his back arched in Kai’s grip, and blood ran from the corners of his mouth as his eyes glazed over. His breathing abruptly stopped, leaving the suite in silence.

  Ao Ji turned away with a small noise of disapproval. The coldness bled out of the air, returning it to something nearer normal room temperature. “Inconvenient,” he said. “He broke before we could learn more.”

  “What happened?” Irene asked. She’d seen deaths before, and she had no particular reason to grieve for a man who’d been ready to kill everyone in the room. But at the same time, watching a man’s “questioning” lead to death—whether the “questioning” was physical or mental—was an experience she would rather not have had.

  “He attempted to resist me.” Ao Ji seated himself. “But beyond that, he had been influenced by one of the Fae. When he was compelled by both that power and my own, his mind broke and his heart stopped.”

  The urge to see this as a metaphor for humanity, caught between the dragons and the Fae, was highly tempting. Irene put the thought aside for later brooding and went down on her knees beside the body. “Roll him over, please, Kai,” she instructed.

  “What are you doing?” Ao Ji asked curiously.

  “Checking for clues,” Irene said, going through the corpse’s pockets. “Evidence of identity, Métro tickets, anything like that—er, has the Métro been built here yet?”

  “It’s in progress,” Kai said.

  Irene would have liked to ask Kai more about what was currently going on at the hotel and around his uncle, but that might cause Ao Ji to have inconvenient (and accurate) suspicions about their collusion. She just nodded and unbuttoned the anarchist’s uniform jacket. “Hmm,” she said.

  “You have discovered something?” Ao Ji enquired.

  “His undershirt is dirty,” Irene said, indicating it. “It’s dirty enough that it would have fouled his jacket too if he’d been wearing it for more than an hour or two. His shoes are scuffed and worn: they don’t match the uniform. I’d conclude that he and his friends sneaked into the hotel, stole the uniforms, and took advantage of breakfast delivery to enter your room, Your Majesty.” She finished patting the man down. Her hands tingled with cold. “A coin purse, a packet of cigarettes, and a flick-knife. No papers. With your permission, Your Majesty, I’ll take these items in case Vale can deduce more from them than I can.”

  “Granted,” Ao Ji said. He glanced at a servant. “Have Duan Zheng place this corpse with the other ones. Will there be anything else, Librarian?”

  Irene decided that the dragons could probably handle the cover-up when the police got here. She needed to get on with the investigation—and if she delayed here much longer, Vale might have left the morgue by the time she arrived. “No, Your Majesty. Though if someone could take me to the Librarians here who are collecting statements, I would be most grateful.”

  “Kai, see to it.” Ao Ji settled back in his chair. “And have someone fetch me the newspaper.”

  “At once, my lord uncle,” Kai said with a bow.

  As he and Irene left the suite, Duan Zheng came striding up, trailed by two of
his servants. “Did the man provide any useful information?” he demanded. He seemed to already know that the third anarchist was dead.

  “He mentioned a theatre,” Irene said. “Nothing more than that, I’m afraid. Does that mean anything to you, sir?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Duan Zheng said bitterly. “No Fae conspiracies that I’ve heard of by that name, no other conspiracies either—and from what I hear of this licentious modern Paris, there are hundreds of theatres in the city.” He glanced at the door. “I can’t leave His Majesty unguarded. Your Highness, kindly report to me when you’ve finished doing whatever you’re doing with the Librarian here. I’m sure I can put you to good use.”

  “Of course,” Kai said, taking Irene’s arm and escorting her down the corridor.

  Once they were out of earshot, he took a deep breath and his shoulders slumped. “Walk slowly?” he suggested hopefully.

  “Did he mean for you to take me to the Librarians here?” Irene asked quietly. “Your uncle, that is. Or are you supposed to be just handing me over to a servant, to get those statements?”

  “No, he meant me to see to it.” Kai didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m supposed to be getting information out of you.”

  “That’s not going to be very successful, given how little I know,” Irene noted. “I’ve hardly had time to discover any interesting clues yet.”

  “I think my uncle believes that you personally are innocent.” Kai shrugged. “He doesn’t necessarily believe your superiors are innocent. And let’s not go into the potential for guilt of every single Librarian out there. My uncle is wary. He is a monarch. He has reason to be careful.”

  Irene would have liked to add your uncle is paranoid, but that would have been rude. Besides, it wasn’t paranoia if everyone really was out to get you. And when you were a dragon king whose closest servant had just been murdered in the middle of a peace conference, and there was evidence of Librarian duplicity floating around, then it was no more than justifiable caution.

  Possible evidence of Librarian duplicity, she reminded herself firmly.

  “All right,” she said. “After all, my superiors are certain to tell me to get information out of you. Turnabout is fair play. I’m not going to take offence.” She squeezed his arm reassuringly. “Is there anything we need to cover in private before we run out of corridor?”

  Kai looked as if he’d have liked to smile, but he couldn’t quite manage it. “The mood is bad,” he said. “Most of the courtiers here believe—or say they believe—that the murder is a deliberate provocation to try to stop the talks, so they aren’t going to back out of the conference. But that doesn’t make anyone feel any safer.”

  “What does your uncle believe?”

  Kai frowned. “I can’t be certain. He hasn’t told me. He wants answers. He doesn’t want to be questioned. But I am sure he thinks the Fae are somehow behind it—whether it’s the ones here at the conference or other ones behind the scenes.”

  “How did he react to your arrival here?”

  “Better than I’d dared hope,” Kai admitted. “He considers me young and frivolous, so usually I escape his notice. But he seemed actually pleased to see me. I’m wondering if he thinks that my father sent me—though of course if he had, he wouldn’t admit it.”

  “Your father wouldn’t admit it if he had sent you, or your uncle wouldn’t admit it if he suspected it?” Irene asked, trying to disentangle the pronouns.

  “The second,” Kai said. “Though if my father had wanted to send a secret representative to these talks, he certainly wouldn’t choose me. I’m far too inexperienced, and my mother is of low rank.”

  “I’m not sure that you can really call yourself inexperienced any more,” Irene said thoughtfully. “In fact, I’d bet good money that you’ve had more experience dealing with Fae and Librarians than a lot of dragon nobles and royalty. Has it occurred to you how valuable that may be in the current situation?”

  Kai snorted, sounding very much like his uncle for a moment. “Most of those nobles would tell you there’s only one way to deal with Fae.”

  “Most of those nobles may have to change their habits. If we can get a peace treaty signed and sealed, then everything’s going to change. Not all at once, but . . .” Irene had never actually considered such a possible future before. It was almost frightening. “Perhaps your uncle’s already thinking about that, and he sees you as part of that change.”

  Kai pondered that for a few steps. “It’s a nice idea,” he said reluctantly, “but it doesn’t feel like what I know of my uncle.”

  “Has he given you any particular tasks?”

  “Besides getting information out of you?”

  “Besides that.”

  “I think he’d have liked to add me to the investigation team, but then the Fae would have insisted on adding a second person as well, and so would the Librarians, and it would have started to get ridiculous.” Kai shrugged. “Of course, if I just happen to meet up with you and Vale later, we can share more information. Will you be at dinner?” he asked hopefully.

  “In what context?”

  “There’s a grand dinner tonight in Le Meurice. Everyone’s going to be attending. And then it’s the opera tomorrow night. All parties are supposed to be interacting.” Kai’s tone of contempt suggested that any interaction on his part would be with extreme prejudice and from a distance.

  Something Irene had been wondering about earlier came back to her. “Kai, you can usually tell how much order or chaos is in a given world. This place is supposed to be as neutral as possible. Has this changed at all?”

  Kai frowned. “Have you ever seen the sort of marbled dye work where someone’s poured different colours of dye over the surface of a pool of water, then used a tool to draw lines through the colours till they’re all mixed together in a pattern?”

  “No, but I think I can visualise what you mean. So this Paris is sort of currently . . . mixed-up? For want of a better term?”

  “That’s the best I can manage,” Kai admitted. “Some areas are more strongly affected than others, because the people there are intensifying the effect—this hotel’s very order-heavy at the moment, and that would be spreading across Paris if it wasn’t for the Fae in their hotel. And vice versa.”

  Irene considered theories. “If there was someone here from either the Fae or dragon side, not part of the delegations but someone else—someone powerful, trying to sabotage negotiations—would they be affecting things? Would you be able to tell?”

  “I have no idea. Probably not unless I actually ran into them. But I haven’t been able to leave the hotel yet.”

  “Well, if you do, let me know. And how many flights of stairs are we going up here, anyhow? Don’t tell me that your uncle’s parked his assigned Librarians in the attic.”

  “No, just the sixth floor.” Kai led her along the hallway and knocked on one of the doors. “What did you expect?”

  “I’m not sure what I expected,” Irene said. “But I would think that if his Librarians were up here last night, then neither of them will have any idea about what was going on elsewhere in the hotel.”

  “If that was a bet, you’d win it,” a woman said, opening the door. Her iron-grey hair was pulled back into a tight bun, streaked with white, and she’d bundled a thick tartan shawl round her stocky shoulders, lurid against the dark green of her dress. “You must be Irene Winters. Do come in. We won’t be a moment, Your Highness.” She shut the door in Kai’s face before he could try to insert a foot.

  “That’s rather harsh,” Irene said. “And yes, I’m Irene Winters. But we haven’t been introduced . . .”

  “I’m Sarashina,” the woman said. “And I’ve nothing particular against Kai out there, but if he has any political sense whatever, then he knows we need to talk in private. That’s Rongomai over there.” She nodded to a young man who’d fallen asleep
sprawled on the sofa, draped like a sagging tent with multiple blankets. “He’s been running around the hotel all night, so I’m letting him have a few minutes’ rest before he leaps back into action.”

  “Collecting statements?”

  “Exactly. We can’t expect the nobles to come up here, after all, can we?” The morning light fell through the window and across Sarashina’s face, bringing out the lines and shadows of weariness. She held herself stiffly upright with the posture of a woman who would have to be knocked down rather than allow herself to relax. “And you’re here to pick them up. And to pick our brains.”

  “Have a seat,” Irene suggested, taking one herself. The gilt-and-velvet chairs were more solid than they seemed. “We need to be fast. I don’t want to get Kai in trouble for taking too long to escort me, and I have to meet up with Vale at the morgue as soon as possible. What do I need to know?”

  “Right, the detective.” Sarashina sat down with a sigh. “Basically, we don’t know much. This morning—no, it was yesterday morning now, I suppose . . . sorry, I haven’t had much sleep. Everyone got woken up early by His Frosty Majesty having a snit fit about where Ren Shun had got to and why he wasn’t there with the coffee and the newspaper and the day’s agenda. Then just as everyone was really starting to panic, word came over from Le Meurice that they’d found his dead body there. Cue panic. Cue accusations. Cue Lord Icicle down on the first floor declaring that the whole thing was a Fae plot and could anyone give him a good reason not to destroy their entire lying delegation.”

  Irene winced. “I know this is just between these four walls, but I wish you wouldn’t keep on nicknaming him like that.”

  “It’s a defence mechanism,” Sarashina said. “Have you ever had to share a hotel with a dragon king for a few days? No? Then don’t criticise me. Anyhow, there was an immediate high-level conference at Le Meurice, and everyone spent most of the day trying to thrash out how to investigate it and who should do it. While, you know, lying to the police about it. Not that we were there. Kostchei passed the word that Rongomai and I were to get statements from everyone in this hotel while people still remembered what was going on.” She covered a yawn. “Including the hotel staff. And the human servants. And the dragons themselves. You want the bad news? Every single dragon swears that they stayed here in the hotel all night. Absolutely nobody knows where Ren Shun went. And nobody knows what he was up to.”