Mrs Jenkins looked at him for a long moment, then picked up a rag and wiped her goggles with it. ‘You’ll find the exit to your right,’ she said flatly.
Kai released Irene, and went to open the zeppelin door.
Irene saw it coming, but it was too fast for the Language to stop it. The man in his mini-copter was hovering there, levelling his gun to shoot directly through the open door at the people in the cabin. At Kai standing there with his back half turned.
She didn’t have time to speak, but she did have time to move. She threw herself at Kai, and the two of them went sprawling on the floor together, Kai’s mouth open in shock, as a whirring mass of silver flecks sliced through the air where he had been standing. The metal pieces sliced into the leather and wooden parts of the structure, chewing long gashes into them, and ricocheted off the metal struts, leaving long silver scars against the dark oiled surfaces. A couple of them sliced along Irene’s left arm, cutting through the cloth of her sleeve and drawing blood.
Vale went down on one knee, snatched up Kai’s pistol from where it had fallen, and fired.
There was a long, dwindling scream, and a distant crash.
Irene looked down at Kai’s face for a moment. He was looking up at her with that lost, puppy-like look again, as if she had somehow perfectly filled a hole in his personal universe. It was no doubt immensely flattering, but she didn’t have time for that. She didn’t have time to tell him that she trusted him, or that he could trust her. She didn’t have time for the immense feeling of gratitude that he was safe – or for anything except finding the book, stopping Alberich, and saving Bradamant. She had to finish the job, or all their efforts and the danger she’d put people in would be wasted.
And she couldn’t waste time indulging herself with personal feelings. Even if she wanted to.
‘All right?’ she said briskly, pulling herself to her knees. ‘Good. Come on.’
Vale offered his hand, and pulled her to her feet. ‘Good reflexes, Miss Winters.’
‘Good shooting, Mr Vale,’ she replied. ‘Thank you. Now let’s find that book.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
There were several guards on the roof who would have liked to discuss their crash-landing and the ensuing gunfire. But Vale simply strode past, and Irene and Kai marched along in his wake. Their commanding poise was spoiled a little by Kai’s sidelong glances whenever he thought her back was turned. What did he expect from her? ‘Through here,’ Vale said, pointing at a door in one of the smaller battlements circling the landing area. Beyond that bulged the wide glass curved roof of what must be the Reading Room. Irene hadn’t had time to admire it in this alternate, but she’d seen versions of it in other Londons, and she shuddered to think how close they came to landing on it. Though surely in a world of airships and personal helicopters, the curators must have taken some sort of precautions against things or people crashing through it from above?
She really hoped so. She’d seen too many glass pyramids and domed roofs and huge chandeliers that were just accidents waiting to happen.
Vale had a few quick words with the guard, who flung the door open and practically saluted them through. And then they were inside, and out of the wind, and surrounded by comforting walls and walls of books. The rich, delightful smell of old paper, leather and ink permeated the place, washing away the pettier odours of blood and oil and smog.
Irene felt a desperate surge of nostalgia for her Library. Her life was more than just airship chases, cyborg alligator attacks, and hanging out with this alternate universe’s nearest analogue to Sherlock Holmes. She was a Librarian, and the deepest, most fundamental part of her life involved a love of books. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to shut the rest of the world out, and have nothing to worry about, except the next page of whatever she was reading.
‘Which way is Aubrey’s office?’ Vale demanded.
Irene frowned, trying to remember the route. ‘Third floor,’ she said, ‘along from the south stairs, two rooms east, then one south, then east again, I think that most of the stuff along there was European history.’
‘This way,’ Vale said, leading the way down a gallery of drawings and prints. ‘Do you have a strategy?’
A couple of men looked up disapprovingly from their sketchbooks at the noise. Their faces were full of we are far too polite to say so, but really you shouldn’t be making any noise at all.
Irene ignored them. ‘Get the book,’ she said to Vale. ‘Secure this building against Alberich. My invoking the Library won’t keep Bradamant out, so she’ll be safe once she gets here. I’ll contact my central authority for direct assistance.’
Vale raised an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you going to tackle the fellow directly?’
Irene couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘I’d lose,’ she said.
‘This language of yours—’ Vale started.
‘I’d find it very hard to believe that other Librarians haven’t tried that against him already,’ Irene snapped before she could help herself. ‘And confrontations with Alberich generally end with him sending parts of their internal organs back to the Library. In neatly wrapped parcels. Someone said that they can tell it’s a parcel from Alberich because he always folds the paper in the same way.’
‘Miss Winters, just because this fellow has reached the status of an urban legend . . .’
‘He’s more than that,’ Kai said urgently. Their footsteps were loud in the stairwell. ‘You were there last night, Vale. He sealed us in the carriage and put a block on it which even I couldn’t undo.’ There was an unconscious arrogance to his voice. ‘And Aubrey, the Librarian stationed here previously. He would have been more experienced than Irene – no insult, Irene, but—’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Irene said with a shrug, surreptitiously flexing her hands and trying to decide how fully recovered she was. For the moment she was functional, if damaged. ‘You’re quite right. He wouldn’t have been stationed in an alternate like this unless he was competent, and he was older and more experienced than I am.’
‘It’s this floor,’ Vale said. They came out of the stairwell into a room blazingly full of painted hieroglyphics, icons and crosses with pointy end bits – Coptic, Irene decided. The light was artificial, presumably to spare the papyri from natural sunlight, but the colours leapt at them in a riot of gold, red and turquoise. ‘Straight ahead, then left. And may I suggest that Mr Aubrey had no warning that Alberich was coming. Presumably if he had done, then he could have secured himself and called for help from the Library, just as you intend to do?’
She didn’t want to hear this.