The Burning Page (The Invisible Library 3)

‘Which would be?’

Vale flopped back onto the pillow. ‘Oh come now, Winters. If I choose to take morphine, that is my business and not yours. And you’re clenching your jaw now, in that annoying manner which suggests you’re going to make a personal issue of the matter.’

Damn right I am. ‘You know perfectly well that morphine is an addictive drug.’

‘Of course,’ Vale said. ‘That is, naturally I am aware of this fact. Your point being?’

‘Merely that I am quite sure the criminal classes of London will be overjoyed to learn – no, to see the results – of you sliding into addiction and self-destruction in this manner.’ She kept her voice low, but didn’t try to take the edge off it. ‘Quite besides the feelings of your friends on the subject.’

‘You have an advantage over me, Winters.’ Vale sounded genuinely tired, rather than simply muzzy with the after-effects of the drug.

‘What would that be?’

‘An ability to admit your own failings.’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘Of course women are more prone to discussing their emotions than men. But even so, you have always been willing to acknowledge when you have made a mistake, or when your competency lies in areas other than the current situation. Almost too ready. Your opinion of your own abilities is frequently lower than it should be. Did you have the virtues of humility drummed into you at that boarding school you remember so fondly?’

Irene bristled, trying to work out if that whole little speech amounted to an insult, or if it was honest truth. ‘If you’re trying to annoy me so that I’ll walk out of this room, then I must tell you it’s not going to work.’

Vale sighed. ‘What a pity. But my point remains. You seem to find it quite simple to confess to error.’

‘Not really,’ Irene admitted. ‘I don’t like being wrong any more than anyone else. It’s more that I can’t allow my pride to get in the way of my function as a Librarian. I have a job to do, Vale. If that means letting someone else take over who can do things better, well . . .’

A cab rattled past outside in the darkness, wheels grating on the road. ‘If you truly believed that,’ Vale said, ‘then you would have permitted your colleague Bradamant to take charge of your earlier mission – to find the Grimm book. From what Strongrock told me, you were quite firm in refusing her help.’

Irene flushed. She still wasn’t comfortable discussing the other Librarian. While they had agreed to a degree of truce at their last meeting – at least Irene had proposed one, and Bradamant hadn’t actually said no – they hadn’t seen each other since. And they had years of bad feeling to overcome. Then she realized the purpose behind Vale’s words. ‘You’re trying to distract me. The sooner you’re honest with me, the sooner I can let you get back to sleep.’

‘Ah, and there lies the problem. Since that little trip of ours to Venice, I have had trouble sleeping.’

If Vale was admitting that he had any sort of problem, then the problem in question was probably already too big to handle. ‘And therefore the morphine?’ Irene asked.

‘And therefore, as you say, the morphine. Though . . . I must admit that I have increased the level of the dose in the last few days.’ Vale looked up at the ceiling. ‘Are you now going to tell me that you have used that Language of yours to remove the drug from my body?’

‘Frankly, I wouldn’t dare,’ Irene said. ‘I could try telling it to come out of your body, but heaven only knows how it would come out or what damage it might do to your bodily tissues. It’s the sort of thing I would reserve for emergencies. Please never give me cause to try.’ ‘I wish I could give you that promise, Winters,’ Vale said slowly. ‘But if I am to be functional, then I need to sleep. And if I am to sleep, then I must have morphine.’

‘Why can’t you sleep?’ Irene asked bluntly.

Vale was silent for a long moment. Finally he said, ‘I dream.’

The logical next question would have been: What do you dream about? Irene had never trained as a psychologist. Or a psychiatrist. She wasn’t actually sure what the difference was, or which sort had more letters after their name. The closest she’d come to it was on-the-job training in persuading people to talk to her. Usually to get them to tell her where books were. She wasn’t any sort of therapist. If Vale had been traumatized by his visit to that other dark Venice, like Kai with his understandable post-kidnapping PTSD, then where did she start?

Silence seemed to be the right course of action. Vale finally spoke again. ‘I dream of moving amid a world of masks, where we are all actors, Winters, and where we are all on the strings of greater puppeteers. I dream of a thousand, thousand worlds, all of them spinning at odds to each other, all of them gradually being lost to a random ocean of utter illogic and randomness, like flotsam in a whirlpool. I dream that nothing makes sense.’

‘Dreams can be chaotic—’ Irene started.

‘Of course they can,’ Vale said with exhausted patience. ‘But these are not just dreams where things from my daily life are jumbled together randomly. I dare say such dreams are common enough. These are dreams that exalt disorder and illogic, Winters. Nothing makes sense. The only thing that eases them is to throw myself into work, and even that is scarce – there are no problems large enough to challenge me, no mysteries complex enough to intrigue me.’ He was sitting upright now, grasping her wrist hard enough to hurt. ‘You must understand me, Winters. I cannot endure these dreams.’

Irene looked down at her wrist meaningfully. Vale followed her gaze and let go of her, carefully unfolding his fingers. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I should not have done that.’

‘I asked the question,’ Irene said. And the answer made far too much sense. They’d visited a high-chaos world. Vale had been warned not to go to that version of Venice – Lord Silver had been quite clear about risks, even if he hadn’t made it clear what those risks were. And now there was this threat – not to Vale’s body, which would have been comparatively minor, in Vale’s own estimation, but to his mind . . .

‘It hardly takes a great logician to connect this to recent events,’ Vale said, echoing her thoughts. ‘But I will be damned if I go to Lord Silver for help. If I can endure these dreams until the influence of that world weakens, then I can reduce the morphine afterwards.’

There were so many possible logical holes in that statement that Irene could have used it as a tea-strainer. But she could see from Vale’s face that he himself was aware of them, and it would have been no more than cruelty to have pointed them out, without something better to offer. Finally she said, ‘I could take you to the Library.’

Vale blinked. Just once. His eyelids flickered, but his gaze was set on her face. ‘You have never shown any interest in taking me there, in the past.’

‘You’ve always avoided actually suggesting it.’ Probably because you knew I’d say no. It’s not a tourist hangout.

‘Do you honestly think it will help?’ He left out the question What would your superiors say?, which was a relief, as Irene was trying not to think about that.