The Masked City (The Invisible Library 2)

‘Probably a couple of weeks,’ Kai said without any real enthusiasm.

Irene tried to imagine what the problem was. ‘Are you embarrassed about your current position?’ she asked.

‘No!’ Kai’s answer was gratifyingly fast. ‘No - I wouldn’t have done it without my uncle’s permission, in any case.’

‘So he knows?’

‘No, that’s a different uncle,’ Kai said. ‘My father has three brothers. The youngest was my guardian when I started working for the Library. This is an older brother, the second-eldest in the family. So naturally I owe him my loyalty and should attend.’

Irene made a mental note that if this conversation was going to go on much longer, she was going to have to ask for names and draw up a family tree. ‘I don’t see what the problem is then,’ she said.

Kai shifted slightly in his chair. ‘I just hadn’t expected them to be able to contact me here. Any invitations should have gone to my former guardian, and of course I speak with him every few years. But for it to arrive like this—’

‘How did it arrive?’ Irene broke in, before he could edge around the subject any more.

‘By private messenger,’ Kai said.

Irene considered that. On the one hand, it meant that some dragon out there knew Kai’s postal address and, by implication, hers. On the other hand, was that necessarily a bad thing? ‘I still don’t understand why you’re objecting,’ she said. ‘If you’d waited till you next spoke to them, you’d have missed this family event.’

‘You don’t understand!’ Oh, maybe they were getting to it now. It was the wail of the teenage prince, or at least the college student prince - away from his family and enjoying a previously unknown sense of liberty. Perhaps, for junior dragons, taking a few years to explore alternate worlds was like a student’s weekend away in a foreign country - though possibly involving less drinking. ‘They know where I am. They might visit at any time. They might even disapprove of what I’ve been up to.’

‘Wait. You just said that you’re not embarrassed about your job. Now you’re saying they might disapprove. Is it because of our recent activities?’ Such as going to criminal auctions, infiltrating the Inquisition Cloisters under Winchester, or the time they’d had to run a con game on a visiting Kazakhstan warlord with a Silk Road travelogue …

‘It’s possible my uncles might not understand the full complexities of working with the Library,’ Kai admitted reluctantly. ‘I believe they think it’s just a job of researching and purchasing books.’

Irene wanted to swear at the waste of time. They needed to be on their way to see Vale about the woman, or get to the Library to get rid of the Stoker. Having to persuade Kai to confess his family problems was like pulling teeth while standing in front of an oncoming train. Though admittedly with less screaming. ‘When you were recruited for the Library, weren’t you hanging around with criminals and street thugs? Didn’t your uncle know about that?’

Kai’s back went absolutely rigid and a high flush flared on his cheekbones. ‘Irene, if you were not my superior, you would regret saying that!’

‘But you were hanging out with criminals and street thugs,’ Irene said, confused, but admiring his precise grammar under stress. That was the sort of thing you had to learn when you were young and impressionable.

‘That may be true,’ Kai said grudgingly. ‘But it was without my guardian’s knowledge. He is above such things.’ Irene rubbed her forehead in exasperation. ‘But you were staying with him …’

‘He encouraged me to sample local literature and art,’ Kai said, losing a little of his anger. ‘The fact that I became involved with local criminals was entirely beside the point.’

Irene mentally raised the draconic capacity for hypocrisy by several thousand points and took a deep breath. ‘We are wandering from the point. Kai, you will be attending that family gathering. It would be rude not to, and they might suspect I was teaching you bad manners and relocate you.’ She saw his face twitch. He hadn’t thought of that.

Kai sighed. ‘You talk like my elder.’

‘I probably am,’ Irene said. She’d lived more than twenty-five years outside the Library, in alternate worlds where she aged normally. But at least a dozen more had been spent inside the Library at various intervals, and people didn’t age within its walls. ‘Even if you’re a dragon.’

‘But how do you suppose they found me here?’ Kai asked, returning to the point in question like a cat with a favourite toy.

‘At a wild guess, my supervisor Coppelia had word passed to your people, so that they wouldn’t worry about you.’ Irene rose to her feet and began looking for her coat. She wasn’t wild about Kai’s family possibly turning up on her doorstep, but she could understand the political necessity of being able to account for where he was. ‘You won’t have any problems getting to your uncle when you visit, will you?’

Kai twitched a shoulder in a deliberately casual way. ‘Irene, I am a dragon. I don’t require the Library to travel between worlds. I can do so quite easily myself.’

She had to concede him that bit of smugness. It was quite justified. Librarians needed props and protocols; she couldn’t simply stroll from one world to another, as Kai could. ‘Can all dragons do that?’ she asked, trying not to sound jealous.

‘All royal ones,’ Kai said. ‘Lesser dragons can make smaller journeys - it doesn’t really translate into physical terms,’ he added hastily, when she raised a hand to ask what he meant by ‘smaller journeys’. ‘Or they can follow in a royal dragon’s wake, if he is leading the way.’

‘I see.’ She found her coat and started to button it. ‘Now we should be moving. It’s nearly ten o’clock.’

‘Irene …’ Kai hesitated. ‘You don’t want to get rid of me, do you?’

She simply gaped at him for a second. ‘What?’

‘You’re sending me off to my family. You’re treating me like any other apprentice. You don’t seem to care that they might order me to leave. You don’t …’ He looked at her, his face full of yearning and uncertainty. ‘If you want me to go, then I will go, but …’