If Alberich was involved in this, then the warning was definitely desperate and necessary.
She pulled herself together with an effort that set her teeth on edge, and glanced over her shoulder to check on the men who’d been following her. Damn. They were closing fast. They must have decided to pick her up now rather than risk losing her.
Irene allowed herself a vicious smile. Pester an agent of the Library, would they? Hassle her when she’d just received an urgent message? Get in her way? Oh, they were going to regret that.
She waited for a breathless half-minute until the shifting patterns of moving stalls closed up behind her, blocking her pursuers. They’d open again in a moment, of course . . .
She spat out in the Language, loud enough for it to carry, ‘Clockwork legs on moving stalls, seize up and halt, hold and be still!’
‘I beg your pardon?’ the man next to her said. ‘Were you speaking to me—’ He cut off as, in a widening circle within range of Irene’s voice, the moving stalls all came stuttering to a halt, jointed legs going abruptly rigid and stopping where they were. The general swirl of people and stalls was thrown into sudden and shocking confusion, far more dramatic than the earlier printing incident. People who’d been preparing to zig suddenly found themselves forced to zag. Piles of goods teetered on the edges of stalls and were barely saved from sliding off – or not saved, in quite a few cases, adding to the general uproar.
Before anyone could come to awkward conclusions about the centre of the circle, Irene darted forward and elbowed her way past several complaining clots of shoppers. She could hear the grinding whir of gears and levers struggling with disobedient mechanical legs. The flow of people carried her forward out of her cul-de-sac, leaving her pursuers trapped behind the barricade of frozen stalls (and, she hoped, being trampled underfoot by angry shoppers). Irene headed for the nearest opening in the maze of tables, then from there to an alleyway. After a bit of rearrangement to veil and jacket, it was out onto the main street again – heading back and round towards Holborn. With nobody following her this time.
With each step the reality of the message from the Library sank more deeply into her guts. Beware Alberich. Beware Alberich. Beware Alberich.
She didn’t need this. She really didn’t need this. She was already in the middle of a complicated mission, with a trainee to handle on top of it all. She’d given Kai an optimistic summary to keep his spirits up, but that didn’t mean that anything was going to be easy.
And now this.
Alberich was a figure out of nightmare. He was the one Librarian who’d betrayed the Library, got away with it and was still somewhere out there. His true name was long since lost, and only his chosen name as a Librarian was remembered. He’d sold out to chaos. He’d betrayed the other Librarians who’d been working with him. And he was still alive. Somehow, in spite of age and time and the course of years that would afflict any Librarian who lived outside the Library, he was still alive.
Irene found herself shivering. She pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, and tried to rein her thoughts back from a train of needlessly baroque images. Stupid thoughts. After all, it wasn’t as if Alberich was on her trail at this very moment . . .
. . . was it?
The message from the Library couldn’t have been faked. It must have been sent by one of the senior Librarians, probably Coppelia. It wouldn’t have been sent unless things were urgent, which meant that she had to assume that Alberich was in the area. Worst-case scenario.
She glanced back into a shop window. Nobody seemed to be following her.
She needed to talk to Dominic, urgently, but the British Library would be shut at this time of night. He’d be at home – the address being somewhere in the papers Kai was safeguarding. Tomorrow morning would be easier. For the moment, she and Kai had to find a new hotel and go undercover.
Irene wanted to go very deeply undercover. She wanted to go so deeply undercover that it’d take an automated steam-shovel to excavate her out of it. She also had to decide how much to tell Kai. It was too dangerous to leave him in the dark, not to mention simply unfair, but at the same time she didn’t want to panic him. After all, look how panicked she was herself. One panicked person was quite enough. Two would be overkill.
Possibly he’d be ignorant enough not to realize just how bad the situation might be. Possibly he wouldn’t have heard the horror stories that had been traded round in quiet alcoves about some of the things that Alberich had done.
And possibly, Irene decided, as she came into sight of Holborn Tube station and saw Kai loitering under a streetlamp, pigs would fly – which would at least mean bacon for breakfast. Oh well. Hotel first. Dramatic explanations later.
CHAPTER SEVEN