The Invisible Library (15 page)

‘Oh, allow me.’ Irene leaned in, and ordered the lock open in the Language.

The cabinet door didn’t open.

‘That’s interesting,’ she said.

‘How can it
not
open?’ Kai asked.

‘The easiest explanation is that it’s sealed by some other method, on top of the lock,’ Irene explained. ‘Something that’s not obvious, so I wouldn’t know
it’s there to tell it to open. Or then again . . . you were saying you could smell something. On which side of the cabinet is the smell strongest?’

Kai gave her a look suggesting that he wasn’t here to sniff on her behalf, but complied after a moment. ‘This side,’ he said, tapping the right-hand panel of the cabinet.

‘Right.’ Irene shuffled round to get a better look at it, then prodded carefully at the corners and the inlaid design. ‘Hm. Yes. Thought so. When is a door not a
door?’

Kai just looked at her.

‘When,’ Irene said triumphantly, ‘it’s a fake. Here.’ She pressed the upper corners simultaneously, and the whole side of the cabinet swung open on a hidden hinge.
‘There. Now . . .’ She would have said more, but a powerful stink of vinegar hit her, and she rocked back on her knees, fanning the air in front of her nose.

‘That’s rather raw,’ Kai said. ‘Is it a Library way of preserving documents?’

‘Not one that I’ve ever heard of.’ Irene regained her self-control, and drew out the contents of the cabinet. It was a single Canopic jar in the ancient Egyptian style.
‘So let’s see what’s in here.’

‘Should we?’ Kai asked.

‘Kai,’ Irene said gently. ‘If Dominic really wanted to keep this secret from us, he wouldn’t have hidden it and then been late for work, knowing we’d snoop
around.’

‘Just purely for information,’ Kai said, ‘are all Librarians like this over private stuff?’

Irene didn’t dignify his question with an answer. Besides, he’d learn better. A Librarian’s mission to seek out books for the Library developed, after a few years, into an urge
to find out everything that was going on around one. It wasn’t even a personal curiosity. It was a simple, impersonal, uncontrollable need to know. One came to terms with it. She lifted off
the Canopic jar’s stylized jackal-head lid. ‘There’s something in here,’ she reported.

Kai forgot moral scruples and leaned in closer. ‘What is it?’

‘Some sort of leather.’ Irene rolled back her sleeves and pulled it out. It was larger than it looked, thin delicate stuff with long trailing attachments. She shook it out to get an
idea of its full length and shape, then froze, horrified. Behind her she could sense Kai’s stillness and shock.

It was a complete human skin, all in one piece, with a single slit down the front from chin to groin.

It was Dominic Aubrey’s skin.

Kai drew back with an indrawn hiss, raising his hands in front of him like claws. The skin lay there on the floor, limp and wet, staining the polished boards with vinegar.

Irene swallowed, holding on to the smell of the vinegar to keep her own nausea at bay. Dominic Aubrey’s features looked so different like this. The flattened face was recognizable, but
lacking shape, spirit and the congenial warmth that had animated it just the day before.

‘Is it some sort of fake?’ Kai demanded.

Irene flipped it over. The Library mark ran across its back in a complex tracery of flourishes. It was unmistakeable; the Language couldn’t be faked, even if someone tried to copy it. She
felt the mark across her own shoulders twitch in a kind of sympathy. ‘No,’ she said, numbly. ‘It’s real. But it’s not
possible
for someone to shed their skin
like this . . . I mean, it may just be possible to remove your skin, if you consider some wilder fictional texts, but you couldn’t remove the Library’s mark and survive.’

‘Alberich,’ Kai said.

Irene didn’t need to ask him what he meant. ‘Certainly possible,’ she agreed. ‘Even likely. But there’s the Fae to consider as well, and there may be other factions
at work. Right. We have to report this.’

Kai sighed deeply in relief. ‘I was afraid you were going to say that we had to investigate it ourselves.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Irene said briskly. ‘We may collect fiction, but we are not required to imitate the stupider parts of it.’
And let’s hope we
don’t just get told to investigate this mess without backup anyway.
‘First things first. We’ll hide this thing again, then I’ll open the door to the Library.’

The handle of the outer door began to turn.

Irene barely had time to think
But I know I locked it!
She hastily shoved skin and jar behind one of the display tables and rose to shield it further with her skirts.

Kai managed two paces towards the door before it swung fully open.

A tall young woman stood there, clutching some books to her chest. She looked at the two of them.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Irene said quickly. ‘Mr Aubrey isn’t here yet. Can we help you?’

The woman stared at the two of them. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said slowly. ‘Who are you?’ Her brown hair was looped untidily on the back of her head and smeared with
dust, and there were traces of dust and ash on her grey skirt and jacket.

‘Vermin preventative defence,’ Irene invented quickly. ‘We’re working through all the rooms, looking for signs of infestation. Tell me, Miss – ’ She paused
invitingly.

‘Todd,’ the woman said. ‘Rebecca Todd. He told me to come in this morning about the
Lamia
manuscript.’ She shifted her grip on her books.

‘He should be in soon,’ Irene said. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t ask you to wait inside because we need to deploy some hazardous chemicals while we’re
testing for silverfish. Would you mind waiting outside in the corridor? We’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Of course,’ Miss Todd said readily. ‘If Mr Aubrey does arrive while you’re still testing, I’ll let him know.’

‘Thank you,’ Irene said with a smile. She waited until Miss Todd was safely out of the room before breathing a sigh of relief.

‘Silverfish?’ Kai muttered.

‘Hush,’ Irene said. ‘We’ll be out of here before she knows it.’ She knelt down again, avoiding the growing puddle of vinegar, and hastily stuffed the skin back into
the jar. ‘Ugh. I need to wash my hands. Actually, I’ll take this with us. Perhaps Coppelia or one of the others will know what it means.’ She passed the jar to Kai. ‘You
hold this.’

‘Must I?’ he said, taking it distastefully.

‘I need to open the door.’ Irene walked across to the Library door. She remembered seeing the chain last time, but she rather thought it wasn’t in use then, perhaps freed by
their own journey through the door. It was clearly for show rather than substance, presumably to discourage outsiders from using it. And, of course, anyone like Irene could just use the
Language.

‘
Chain, open,
’ she said, laying her hand on the padlock.

It didn’t explode. It burst open. It unfurled like a chrysanthemum and then fastened onto her palm, spreading across her skin in a slick of white-hot metal. But there was more to it than
heat. Through the acute pain, Irene sensed active malice and deliberate will. Behind it all, as she almost lost consciousness, she caught a dazzle of brightness that ultimately faded to
darkness.

‘Irene,’ Kai was saying, but she had fallen to her knees, and didn’t have the space in her head to register his words or his expression. Or anything except the blazing pain
crackling from her hand to shoot up her arm. ‘Irene!’

The mark across her back flared to life, automatically resisting the invasive chaotic forces linked to the padlock. Order and chaos now battled for authority over her body. And it was too late
to recognize this as a trap laid for someone who’d use the Language, even though it was so clearly that in hindsight.

She could smell something burning. That would be her dress. Fabric was so flammable.

‘Get me loose,’ she gasped. If only she could break the physical link that held her to the padlock, or the forces powering it, that might be enough to let her regain control and
finish cleansing herself.

Kai closed a hand round her wrist and pulled. He didn’t try touching the padlock.

The padlock was stuck to her hand. She couldn’t even shift the grip that she had on it; her fingers were locked round what was left of it in a spasm that she couldn’t break. Through
the agony, she recognized this as a chaos-fuelled trap. A normal human being, one not sealed to the Library, would already have been warped to something on the verge of possible. Or they would have
been accelerated all the way into something that couldn’t exist in this alternate, and outright destroyed. Though a normal human being wouldn’t have triggered the trap . . .

She felt her grip slipping.

For the moment her Library seal was saving her, but it couldn’t last. The two competing forces would burn her out like an understrength fuse if she couldn’t break the connection
somehow.

‘Irene!’ Kai yelled in her ear, as if volume would make a difference. ‘Can I get you into the Library? Will that help?’

She jerked her head in a shake. ‘No,’ she gasped. She couldn’t enter the Library in this state. ‘I’m polluted – can’t –’ She tried to think
of any teachings covering this, but could only remember it was called the ‘Babelfish Principle’, which was no use. And it was hurting, it was
hurting
. . .

Then a solution came to her. But if the Library door wasn’t the trap’s power-source, she was so screwed. ‘Break my link to the door . . . break the chain!’

‘Right,’ Kai said as he pulled the chain taut, trying to wrench out the flimsy-looking loop holding it to the wall by brute force. It shifted, but not nearly enough, and he slipped a
knife from his sleeve, trying to prise open the links. One parted with a sudden snap, weakened by the forces flowing to the lock. Then the chain whipped free, and he yanked it through what remained
of the original padlock.

With the chain gone, the power circuit broke – and the padlock clicked open to fall from Irene’s hand to the floor. Irene knelt there, breathing in deep sobbing gasps, unable to
quite look at her hand yet and see what damage had been done.

‘Irene?’ Kai said. ‘What the hell was that? Are you all right? How did you get it loose?’

She looked up at him. Her vision was a little blurry. Maybe that was why he was swaying. ‘It was a trap,’ she tried to explain. ‘Set to react to the Language and bind to the
user, using the Library door as an energy source. That was why it stopped functioning when you broke the chain. It was very energy-efficient.’ There was a buzzing in her ears. ‘Kai? Can
you hear something? Is it the silverfish?’

‘Irene,’ Kai said. He went down on one knee beside her. ‘Are you all right?’

Irene looked at her hand. It was red all over the fingers and down the palm. ‘Oh,’ she said, in deep comprehension. ‘Kai. I think I’m . . .’ The buzzing was getting
louder. ‘I think I have to lie down for a bit.’

‘Irene!’

The world slipped sideways. She felt him catching her as it all went dark.

When the lights came on again, they did so slowly and blearily, through a haze of smoke and a drift of odd smells. She was propped at a strange angle, her skirts carefully
draped to hide her ankles. The back of a sofa dug into her shoulders and her head was tilted to one side, hat still pinned to her hair. Someone had pushed a cushion under her cheek. It was
horsehair. It prickled.

From under her eyelashes, she could make out a room that had been forced into ruthless order by someone who believed in making large piles of things. Books. Documents. Clothing. Glassware. A
dream-catcher in Lissajous lines of wire and ebony spun in the window, turning slowly in a drift of breeze and fog. The walls were also crammed with books, and someone had hung paintings and
sketches in front of them, and piled small objects on top of the shelves. The place was crammed with . . . with stuff. She was surprised there was room for her on the sofa.

Her hand ached less now. Someone had slathered it in something wet and wrapped it in bandages, and it lay like a foreign object in her lap. She twitched a finger, stifling a scream, and was
pleased to see that it functioned.