‘My dear sir,’ Bradamant said, with a nerve that Irene wasn’t quite sure she’d have managed to muster, ‘you still have not explained how you managed to track us here.’ She stepped to her left, forcing Silver to take his attention off Ramsbottom if he wanted to keep his eyes on her.
Silver waved a hand vaguely. ‘The simplest of matters. I subcontracted. Knowing that I could not track an agent of the Library – ah, you fooled me once, but not again! – I approached the elder Miss Olga Retrograde.’
Irene and Bradamant exchanged quick shocked looks. It was one thing to think that Silver might be aware of the Library – many Fae and dragons were, after all, just as the Library was aware of them – but to have him say it so baldly and in front of witnesses was rather worrying, in that it suggested there would shortly be no witnesses. And how had Silver known, in any case? What had he seen? How much did he know about the Library?
Vale, meanwhile, looked outraged. ‘You dealt with her?’
‘Merely a matter of convenience,’ Silver said airily. ‘Normally she is far too sordid for me to do more than invite her to my parties. I don’t suppose you would care to comment on that, would you, my dear private detective? From a, shall we say, family perspective?’
Vale looked even more furious, if that were possible. ‘I have nothing that I would wish to say about her,’ he spat.
‘Then allow me to clarify,’ Silver said with great satisfaction. ‘Her scrying attempts proved useless until you left your lodgings this morning. She caught the directions given to the cab-driver. From then it was simply a matter of reaching this museum first, and having my minions here locate your destination.’ He smiled at the hirsute thugs.
‘We know Mr Vale’s smell,’ one of them growled, his tongue coming unsettlingly far out of his mouth as he panted. ‘We all know Mr Vale’s smell. There’s a lot of us want to have a nice quiet little chat with Mr Vale down some dark alley sometime.’
‘There, there,’ Silver said. ‘I’m sure you’ll get your chance some day very soon now – if Mr Vale doesn’t advise his Library associate to comply with my requests.’ He smiled at Bradamant dazzlingly. Irene felt a little of the overspill of it, the burning surge of slavish desire and passionate adoration, and felt the brand across her back burn like raw ice in reaction. She also felt a quick burst of relief that apparently Silver hadn’t recognized her as a Library agent. She was still incognito for the moment.
Ramsbottom’s hands fell to his sides, and he gave up all attempts to be helpful to stare at Silver in mute fascination. Vale didn’t seem to be affected. Irene was tempted to look behind her to see what Kai was doing, but as a dragon, he should surely be immune to anything that Silver could throw at him. At least, she hoped so.
Silver thought that the book was still here. There had to be some way that they could use that. At least Bradamant was playing along and keeping Silver occupied.
‘But how did you know I was from the Library?’ Bradamant asked, edging still further to the left.
One of the thugs twitched forward as if to make a grab for her, but Silver shook his head. ‘No, my adversary deserves to know at least that much. How well you fooled me, my dear! I was quite distracted by your mousy little minion over there in her drab dress,’ he gestured at Irene, ‘and by your cunning thefts. How could I have realized that you were the mastermind behind it all? It was only after I put it all together that I saw you in your true light.’
Irene was torn between relief that he wasn’t focusing on her, and a certain amount of irritation that she was apparently a mousy little minion unworthy of his attention. Was she so utterly unnoticeable? Why wasn’t he pointing a finger at Irene and declaiming about her being an impressive mastermind? In fact, why was Silver claiming that there was a mastermind at all?
Part of her was aware that this was an incredibly stupid attitude to take, a reaction to his Fae charm or something. The same thing that was making her want to pout and preen at him. Maybe bare a shoulder or breathe deeply or somehow get him to notice her. To have him touch her with those beautiful long hands, his body pressing. . .
Right.
A thought at the back of her head was trying to get her attention. This is the problem with interacting with the Fae. An instructor’s voice from back at the Library, talking to half a dozen trainees while they made notes (or surreptitiously tried to plot out best-selling novels), droning away while rain spattered against the window that looked out onto a deserted grey stone square full of empty market stalls. They see everything in terms of their own personal drama. If you are not careful, they will drag you into it. This is in fact a problem and a risk with all chaos-infected alternates . . . ‘I see.’ Bradamant did a good job of drooping in response to Silver’s accusations. ‘Then you know everything.’
‘Everything!’ Silver declared. ‘I am not surprised that Aubrey should have called for reinforcements from the Library with such a prize at stake, but now he will have to admit that he has failed. Our long rivalry is at an end!’
Irene blinked in shock. No. No. That couldn’t be right. If Silver had known Dominic Aubrey, and had learnt that he was a Library agent, then Dominic should have known about Silver being a threat. But Dominic hadn’t said a single word about Silver being an enemy of his, or warned them about him, or even told them that Silver existed . . .
. . . and why was Bradamant nodding? What did she know? ‘Aubrey warned me about you,’ she said, ‘but I believe he did not prepare me enough.’
No, surely this was impossible. There was no conceivable reason for Dominic to warn Bradamant, but not her or Kai. They could well have come into contact, as the only door to the Library was in Aubrey’s office. But there had been no sign that they had exchanged this sort of intelligence. Of course Dominic might have had his own patrons in the Library, who wanted Bradamant to find the book first. That was entirely plausible, and wasn’t even an offence as such. But deliberately hiding the threat of Silver from her and Kai wasn’t just a casual slip, it was a betrayal. If she’d got back and told her superiors, then Dominic might well have been removed from his post.
Could Bradamant be lying? Her thoughts rattled in her head like computer keys. And the tension in the room escalated as Silver considered his next dramatic reply, as Vale and Kai shifted their positions behind her, and as the werewolves panted and waited to lunge.
No. It didn’t fit. Oh, all right, maybe Bradamant and Silver might be secret allies staging an argument to convince her. But that was taking paranoia too far. So if Dominic knew about Silver and considered him significant enough to warn Bradamant – but didn’t even bother mentioning him to Irene on the next day, when he knew Irene was on a confirmed mission – then what did that imply? What had changed?
She thought back to her brief contact with Dominic Aubrey. His use of the Language was strangely old-fashioned. And then there was Dominic Aubrey’s disappearance and skinning, which left his library tattoo intact but no sign of his body at all. And how did Alberich operate in this alternate world? Alberich, who had lived for long enough to be a legend even among the Librarians . . . but nobody knew how, and nobody even knew what he looked like.
An idea was forming, an idea that she mentally flinched from, but one that answered a lot of questions. Stealing someone’s skin and identity was covered in obscure folklore treatises, but it wasn’t something that she ever expected to be real. She didn’t want it to be real.
Silver had advanced on Vale and was flourishing his cane menacingly. ‘Wyndham only wanted the book because of information I gave him. Then he thought he could bargain for it. With me! Why, if the Iron Brotherhood hadn’t disposed of him, I might have been forced to do so myself . . . But all is not lost, my dear.’
So it was the Iron Brotherhood that had killed Wyndham. Assuming Silver was correct about it, that tied off one loose end. Good, Irene thought, at least that’s one less unidentified group of assassins running around the place.
Silver took a step forward, smiling brilliantly. Irene felt the air tingle with suppressed longing again. ‘Hand over the book and I will be glad to agree to any terms that you might desire.’
Over by the desk, Ramsbottom seemed poised to tell all. His hand wavered towards the small blue ledger.
Kai was the one who moved. He sprang forward like a leopard, and threw himself into a running dive across the desk, snatching the incriminating ledger out of Ramsbottom’s hands. He tossed the ledger across the room to Irene and it spun through the air in a flutter of pages.