‘How is Vale?’ she asked, getting straight to the point. It was three o’clock in the morning and the street lamps outside were barely visible through drifts of smog. Here in Vale’s rooms the lights were all turned up high, viciously bright to her tired eyes, and showing no pity to the room’s clutter. The place was even more disarrayed than usual, with papers lying in drifts as though thrown there. ock clicked audibly and the door swung open, slamming into the wall behind it, but the way was still blocked. The doorway was filled from floor to lintel with crates. Someone had clearly piled them up outside – after setting the shotgun and hives, and locking and closing the door. Marvellous.
The dark swirl arrowed towards her and Kai. Irene flung her arms up to protect her face, a purely instinctive move, and felt burning needles jab into her hands. Crawling buzzing things, which she couldn’t even see clearly in the near-darkness, landed on her wrists and tried to crawl down the sleeves of her clothes. Flickers of motion touched her face, as vibrating wings brushed against her and tiny insect feet settled onto her skin.
‘Wind, blow these insects off me!’ she screamed.
She found herself at the centre of a mini-hurricane, which thrust away from her as if she was the centre of a sonic boom. It left her gasping, before she could breathe properly, but it flung the creatures back for a moment. Her hands burned with their stings, and next to her she heard Kai cursing. This was worse than seeing a pair of hunting tigers approach. Here in the darkness, unable to see what was attacking, locked in a room with these things . . .
It was a trap that had been set for a Librarian. Very well, she’d meet it like a Librarian.
‘Kai, down!’ she ordered, throwing herself to the ground as the things came buzzing back for her. ‘Glass, shatter! Glass fragments, impale the insects!’
She heard Kai hitting the floor as well. Then the display cases and lamps flew to pieces in a scream of breaking glass which almost drowned out the furious buzzing. Shards flew in all directions above her head, scything through the air. She kept her head down and covered, hoping against hope that this would actually work.
The noises were promising. Repeated thwips, like arrows, only on a smaller scale. Three heavy scrunching sounds, as if someone had dropped large bags of cereal. Then only a faint buzzing, still furious, but not so immediate. Then silence.
‘I think they’ve stopped,’ Kai said. His voice was muffled, suggesting that he hadn’t yet uncovered his head to look.
‘Right,’ Irene said. She forced herself to move her arms and look up. The floor was littered with the glitter of broken glass, intermingled with small things that still twitched and scrabbled, their little wings moving them across the floor in futile painful millimetres. Some of the insects still zoomed around the room, flecks of darkness in the shadows, but they’d retreated to the ceiling. The three nests were shattered masses where they’d fallen to the ground, jarred loose and weighed down by the amount of glass they’d taken on board. ‘Kai? How badly did they get you?’
‘Enough to hurt quite a bit,’ Kai said, coming to his feet and shaking his hands as though he could physically expel the venom. Which gave Irene an idea – but one better tried out of insect range. He was deliberately keeping his tone even, but Irene could tell that he was annoyed. ‘Of all the petty, humiliating ways to try to murder you!’
‘I’m not totally sure it was meant as murder,’ Irene said thoughtfully. She turned to the crates blocking the doorway and pitched her voice to carry. After all, someone might have double-stacked them to add to their trap. ‘Crates, move aside from the doorway.’
Her head ached a little as they slid sideways, but the Language worked much more easily here than in the world they’d just left. I never thought I’d be preferring a high-chaos world to a high-order one.
With her and Kai outside and the door safely shut behind them, she took advantage of the corridor’s lighting to get a good look at her hands. They looked . . . uncomfortable, to put it mildly. They felt hideously painful, but there was something about actually seeing the multiple sting wounds on both hands that left her feeling queasy. Or perhaps that was the venom. But she’d never get used to seeing her own injuries. ‘Kai, hold your hands out while I try something. Insect venom, exit my body and the dragon’s body through the wounds by which you entered.’
Clear liquid bubbled from the puncture holes in her skin, and she watched queasily as it dripped to the floor. Her hands still stung and ached, but it wasn’t quite as bad, and at least it wasn’t getting worse.
Kai frowned at his hands as the venom left them. ‘Irene, what did you mean when you said you weren’t sure it was murder?’
‘It could have been meant to drive us back into the Library,’ Irene pointed out. ‘Or repel any other Librarian who tried to get through. I don’t know. Add it to the list of questions we have to ask.’ Her hands seemed to have finished dripping venom for the moment. She shook them dry, and regretted not having any bandages. She also regretted shaking them. ‘Anyhow, priorities. We need to find Zayanna. And Vale. And Singh. And Li Ming, while we’re at it. And the fastest way to all of those is through Vale.’
And please let the Library hold on a little longer, she thought. And let Vale be all right.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Thank God you’re here, Miss Winters,’ Singh said. He actually looked pleased to see her and Kai, which in itself worried Irene. As a general rule, the inspector tolerated the two of them, or at best considered them useful resources. If he was glad to see them, then Vale must be worse than she’d feared.
‘How is Vale?’ she asked, getting straight to the point. It was three o’clock in the morning and the street lamps outside were barely visible through drifts of smog. Here in Vale’s rooms the lights were all turned up high, viciously bright to her tired eyes, and showing no pity to the room’s clutter. The place was even more disarrayed than usual, with papers lying in drifts as though thrown there. Singh frowned. He was in ordinary civilian clothing rather than his usual police uniform, and his tie-pin, Irene noticed with the precision of fatigue, was a little sword. ‘He’s not good, not good at all. May I speak frankly, Miss Winters?’
‘Of course,’ Irene said, mentally resigning herself. Anything that started off with May I speak frankly never ended well.
‘I’ve seen Mr Vale under stress before. I’ve seen him caught up in a case before.’ Singh folded his arms. ‘I have even, I must admit, seen him dosing himself with substances that I would prefer not to notice legally. But I have never seen him in quite this driven a state. And given that you know all about it, Miss Winters – you and your friend Strongrock here – I would be grateful if you could tell me exactly what’s going on.’
‘Where is Vale at the moment?’ Irene glanced at the closed bedroom door. ‘Is he . . .’ She trailed off, not wanting to actually say hitting the morphine again out loud.
Singh shifted his weight from foot to foot. ‘I confess that I put a little something in his tea to help him sleep. When I arrived earlier this evening he was pacing the room, throwing out theories with one hand and digging himself deeper into depression with the other. Mr Vale’s a man of moods, and they’ve been getting worse over this last month. But in all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him this bad.’
Singh’s words in all the time I’ve known him hung in the air like an accusation. He was a long-term friend of Vale. They’d worked together for years before Irene and Kai had shown up. From Singh’s point of view, Irene was the interloper who’d swept in bringing trouble, and who’d then brought this down on Vale.
And it was all entirely true. Her guilt was a sour taste in her mouth.
‘It’s my fault,’ Kai said. Irene began to protest, but he brought up his hand to cut her off. ‘Let’s be honest about this, Irene. I was the one who was kidnapped, and when Vale tried to help, he was exposed to a toxic environment. That’s why he’s in trouble now. There isn’t anything I can say except that I’m sorry, Inspector Singh, and I will do my best to make amends.’
‘You can claim responsibility all you like, Mr Strongrock,’ Singh said. ‘And I’m not denying that you may well be responsible. But even though I’m only a police inspector, and not up to Mr Vale’s standards of detecting, it’s still very obvious that Miss Winters is in charge. She brought you here. And her friend was visiting earlier today. I think I’d like my answers from Miss Winters.’
Irene didn’t bother asking how Singh knew that Bradamant had visited. Vale might have told him, or the housekeeper, or anyone. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that, several months ago, Bradamant had sold Singh a whole pack of lies while they’d been hunting for the Grimm book. Singh wasn’t inclined to trust any Librarian after that.