The Burning Page (The Invisible Library 3)

The natural human response was to shout, ‘No!’ Which said something about humanity. But Irene was too busy watching Kai, in any case, and trying to stay back, as more and more of the ceiling and roof came tumbling down.

With a heavier crash, the floor began to give way. Kai flexed his body, shifting to brace himself against the walls of the building, and lowered his great head. ‘Irene, get on me, between my shoulders – now!’

It would be bad manners to argue with the designated driver. Irene unslung her rifle and dropped it, then scrambled on top of the nearest bit of Kai’s back, crawling up between his shoulders. It felt horribly lese-majesty and improper to be crawling on all fours along the back of a dragon like this. His skin was like warm flexible steel, rippling beneath her hands as his body flexed to hold him in position, and, now that she was on top of him, Irene could smell the sea, stronger than the stench of dust and mould and fire.

Another piece of floor went tumbling. Fire came streaming up from below, leaping in the sudden burst of air, and Irene flung herself flat on Kai’s back, her hands digging in as best they could. He was too broad for her to straddle, so she plastered herself against him and prayed. ‘Go go go!’ she shouted. ‘Just go!’

Kai flung himself upwards in a twisting curve, scraping through the gaping hole in the roof, his tail lashing behind him as he rose into the air. Irene clung to his back, her face pressed against his hide, and felt his body flex underneath her in the sort of S-bend that should have been impossible – that would have been impossible for a natural creature flying naturally.

But Kai was a dragon. He rose through the air as if he was simply moving from point A to point B like a painting on a scroll, and though his wings spread out in great blue arches as if to catch the wind, he flew against it. Irene could hear the screams and shouts from below, and the sharp cracks of rifle shots, but Kai’s pace didn’t falter as he drifted further and further up, till the city lay spread out beneath them like a photograph and the burning house was a distant blotch of orange.

‘Irene?’ He didn’t turn his head to look at her. His flight path changed to a curving hover, tracing a wide circle in the air. ‘If I hold steady now, can you get a little closer to my shoulders? It’ll be safer there for you, when we pass between worlds.’

‘Give me a moment,’ Irene said through gritted teeth. It helped if she kept her eyes on Kai’s back, rather than looking down at the ground beneath. She wasn’t fond of heights at the best of times, and sitting on a dragon’s back hundreds of yards in the air made it hard to ignore exactly how high up she was. However, one consolation was that she wasn’t being as wind-blown as she’d expected. Something was blunting the effect of the speed and the air currents on her – and on Kai too, presumably. It must be to do with the whole dragon magical-flight thing. She added it to her list of questions for later, as she pulled herself slowly along Kai’s back to between his wings.

‘Now sit upright.’ She could hear the amusement in his voice.

‘Like hell,’ Irene said. It was a very long way down.

‘You’ll be safe. We’ve carried people before, Irene. Sages, visitors, human favourites . . . Trust me. I won’t drop you.’

It’s not a question of me not trusting you. It’s a question of whether or not I can make myself physically let go of my death grip on you. Finger by finger, Irene released her hold on Kai’s hide and pushed herself to a sitting position. Kai was too wide for her to sit astride, so she curled her legs underneath herself. Tendrils of mane flowed back from around his head, and she tentatively held onto a couple of them. It wasn’t logical, but she felt much better for holding onto something. ‘What now?’ she asked.

‘Now I travel back to Vale’s world.’ Kai’s wings flexed, spreading to their full extent. The light glittered on them like the water on the surface of waves. ‘I know its place among the flow of the worlds, and I could fly to Vale himself, if I so desired. But he probably wouldn’t like that,’ he said, abruptly losing his formality. ‘Where should we go?’ ‘The British Library,’ Irene said firmly. ‘You can land on the roof and I’ll handle any guards while you change back. And then we can use the gate to the Library from there.’

‘That seems reasonable.’ Kai hesitated, the gesture more normal for a human than a dragon. ‘Irene, what happened back there?’

‘I don’t know.’ It was easy to admit ignorance, but more worrisome when it came to speculating about it. ‘If there’s a problem with that world’s access, I wasn’t warned about it. And if it’s a recent problem, then I need to warn other people. Urgently. I haven’t heard of anything like this happening before, and other Librarians could be at risk.’ Her grip tightened. ‘Take us home, Kai. Before the people here invent a rocket ship to come up after us.’

Kai rumbled a laugh, and she could feel the shiver in his body underneath her. Well, I’m glad one of us is enjoying this.

Then he dipped, losing altitude, his body curving through the air but not disturbing her, leaving her as well balanced as though she was sitting on a chair in her own study. The wind was only moderate, ruffling her hair around her face, but they were moving faster now – fast enough that the air was shrieking as they sliced through it.

The air gaped open ahead of them, luminous and shimmering, a rip in reality. The roaring wind sounded like chanting voices, the words indecipherable, but the tone ominous and warning. Irene’s stomach twisted in suppressed panic. She’d always been the one in control of travel between worlds. Of course she trusted Kai, of course she was sure he could handle it if he said so, and of course she wasn’t going to admit to being afraid, but the terror of the unknown was a cold shadow on her heart. Yet curiosity kept her eyes open. This was, after all, something she’d never done before . . .

Kai flew straight ahead, into the rift.

CHAPTER THREE

They plunged into an atmosphere that was as thick and dense as syrup. Irene could still breathe, after the first moment’s panic, but the air flowed around them like water, and tendrils of her hair drifted round her face as though she was submerged. There was no sun, no moon or stars or any obvious source of light, but she could see herself and Kai with a vague dawn-like clarity.

They were gliding through an ocean of air, in a thousand shades of blue and green. There was no obvious end or beginning to it, and no clear solid objects or real things except for the two of them. The only differentiation Irene could see was in the shadings and temperatures of the currents that constantly moved and shifted through the air, like vast streams of smoke or rivers entering the sea. And perhaps Kai could perceive even more than she could.

‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘Behind,’ Kai said. He didn’t change his steady pace, gliding through the flux of watery air. ‘Outside. Travelling.’

‘Is it that you can’t explain – or shouldn’t explain?’ Irene asked. Either would make sense.

‘More the first than the second.’ He winged a long, casual turn. ‘I’m seeking the river that leads to Vale’s world. I can’t explain it any better than you can explain the Language to someone who doesn’t have the Library brand.’

‘Fair enough.’ She patted his back reassuringly, then hoped that dragons didn’t object to that sort of thing from passengers. ‘You won’t get into any sort of trouble for this from your relatives, will you?’

‘For protecting you? Hardly. They’re still considering how best to reward you for your meritorious actions.’

Kai sounded smug, but Irene didn’t have quite so rosy a view of matters. Yes, she had helped rescue Kai, but tracking his kidnappers had meant leaving her post as Librarian-in-Residence and going AWOL and provoking a large number of Fae. This might have raised her stock with the dragons – or at least with Kai’s family, who were after all kings among the dragons – but it had left her on probation in the Library. She was lucky she hadn’t been exiled. Whether that was fair or unfair was something that wasn’t worth arguing, and would only mark her as a troublemaker if she tried. Irene wasn’t sure that she wanted to raise her stock with the dragons at the Library’s expense. She was a Librarian, sworn to the Library, and that had to come first.

‘That reminds me,’ Kai went on, a little too casually. ‘Have you considered Li Ming’s suggestion?’