The Burning Page (The Invisible Library 3)

High above, the dragon dipped and swung round in a turn, heading directly for the half-tower where Irene was perched. He seemed to be moving slowly, almost lazily, his wings extended to glide, but he was halfway to Irene before she could blink.

‘Stair unbind from stair.’ Alberich’s voice rang across the fire, and the steps under Irene shuddered. Screws jerked loose and joints came undone. She felt the metal quivering under her, only kept in position by the fact that it was mostly shattered and leaning together in any case. Something came loose, with a crash of dreadful finality, and the half-tower slipped sideways.

She began to fall.

Kai spun sideways, one wing to the ground and the other to the heavens, and as he cut through the air and past the half-tower, Vale caught Irene’s wrist.

She slammed against Kai’s back, his scales grazing her cheek and her arm and shoulder screaming from the strain. Vale was shouting for her to hold on, but there was nothing for her to hold on to. She dug her fingers in as the wind streamed past. Kai tilted again, returning to a horizontal keel, and she slid more towards the centre of his back. Vale was perched just behind his neck, where she’d been sitting before, and was clinging on with one hand while grasping her wrist with the other.

‘Railings, gut that dragon!’ Alberich screeched, his voice carrying dimly through the rush of wind.

Irene tried to shout something in the Language in defence, but she had no breath to spare and no time to speak. Pieces of metal wrenched themselves free from the broken stairs and flung themselves upwards at Kai. He contorted his body, sliding through the air in a fluid twist that escaped several of them, but one of them sliced across his underside, and another went through his left wing. He cried out in pain, the sound shaking the air like thunder.

‘Get us out of here, Strongrock,’ Vale called. ‘I’ve got her.’

Kai struggled to gain height, streaking away from the central blaze where Alberich stood, but his motions were slow and laboured. ‘There’s too much chaos in this place,’ he groaned. ‘I need more time . . .’

Another set of improvised javelins arced towards them. Kai dropped beneath them as they rushed past above, diving between a couple of tenement-high bookcases that were still standing. The tips of his wings brushed them on either side, shaking down a rain of books. Blood pattered from his wounded wing, and Irene could see that he was having to keep it extended and glide on it, rather than use it with the fluidity of his other wing.

He wasn’t regaining height. He was barely managing to maintain his current altitude. She could feel his muscles working underneath her body, and the long, shuddering struggle of his breathing. Would he be able to fly them out of there?

But if he’d managed to get here, and if he was managing to stay conscious and functioning, it meant this place wasn’t as far out in the depths of chaos as she’d thought. Irene could try to reach the Library again. Without Alberich possessing this place and interfering, she might just be able to get through. And Vale . . . well, they hadn’t actually tried to get him into the Library before. They would simply have to succeed now. She would drag him in there, if she had to tear a way between the worlds with her own bare hands.

‘Kai!’ she shouted. ‘Over to the left, there! By the far wall. Do you see that door? Can you get us there?’

‘Yes,’ he rumbled. He winged towards the point she’d indicated, outracing the growing fire. As Irene looked down, she saw the flames overtake the collapsed shelves where Zayanna lay buried.

‘Did you succeed, Winters?’ Vale demanded.

‘I sincerely hope so—’ Irene had to break off as Kai landed, his wings curving out and back as he settled to the ground. The left wing didn’t move as easily as it should have done, and he groaned in pain again, thumping down hard enough to rattle Irene’s teeth. She hastily slid from his back to the ground, then clung to the nearest bookcase as the floor shook underneath her.

Vale swept a quick glance across her. ‘No serious injuries?’ he asked. Behind him, the light flexed and ebbed around Kai as he changed form.

Irene shook her head. ‘No, nothing serious. Let me—’

The ground shook again, this time in a more directed and precise way, as if some great worm was moving through it. And Irene realized, with the sort of cold terror that swept from feet to brain and through every point between, that if the area where Zayanna lay was burning, then the sigil that Irene had marked on the ground there might be burned away as well. Which might mean that Alberich could inhabit the ground and furnishings of his library once more. Without even waiting to check Kai’s wounds, she turned to the door. ‘Open to the Library,’ she demanded in frantic haste, throwing all her strength into the words as she grabbed the handle.

The cold metal fizzed under her hand, buzzing with an energy like static electricity, only more powerful and far more dangerous. The door didn’t want to open to the Library, or perhaps the Library didn’t want to let the door open onto it. Or perhaps Irene was being unreasonable in imagining personalities here, and it was simply the difficulty of reaching from a high-chaos world all the way to the Library.

The door tried to cling to the jamb, holding shut as she strained at it. She could feel the connection, she knew she’d reached the Library again, but the door held closed. Bookcases toppled and books fell as the floor rippled towards them, rising slowly like a tidal wave.

She’d failed in her earlier attempt to open to the Library. But she was not going to lose now, not at the cost of the two friends who’d risked their lives to come and save her.

‘Open!’ she commanded.

The door wrenched itself open, pulling against its hinges with a creaking scream of wood that was audible above the roaring flames and the falling shelves. Beyond was a dark corridor lined with books, achingly familiar.

Vale thrust the staggering Kai through the doorway, then halted on the step. His expression was one of sheer incomprehension as he pushed at the empty air, his hands pressing at the gap of the doorway as though there was an invisible sheet of glass between him and the safety on the other side.

He’s still chaos-contaminated, Irene realized, as though she was reading it off the title card in a silent film. The Library won’t let him in. She’d thought, she’d hoped, but none of it had been enough. She would just have to do something about it instead.

Once before, she’d expelled chaos by naming herself and forcing out everything that wasn’t Irene. I am Irene, I am a servant of the Library, she had said in the Language, and it had acted to remove anything that refuted those words. She’d hesitated to try it on Vale because she’d been too worried about hurting or even destroying him, if she couldn’t describe him accurately. He wasn’t a Librarian, after all.

But there was no time left. And in this place, the Language had answered her intent rather than her exact words. She could only try, and pray. All her life she had been taught that the Language allowed its users to shape reality. But if reality said that Vale couldn’t enter the Library, then she was going to change that reality.

She grabbed Vale by the hand. ‘Your name is Peregrine Vale,’ she said, her voice audible through the crash of falling books and the rumble of the shuddering floor. ‘You are a human being. And you are the greatest detective in London!’

The shock was like a deep organ-note, humming in her bones and making her stumble. Vale rocked back as if he had been hit by a blast of wind. Chaotic power vented out around him, crumbling the floor underneath him to fragments and transforming the blowing fragments of paper into ash. He fell to one knee, his face white under the smears of dust that marked them both, and his breath came in great heaving gasps.