‘He’s more than that,’ Kai said urgently. Their footsteps were loud in the stairwell. ‘You were there last night, Vale. He sealed us in the carriage and put a block on it which even I couldn’t undo.’ There was an unconscious arrogance to his voice. ‘And Aubrey, the Librarian stationed here previously. He would have been more experienced than Irene – no insult, Irene, but—’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Irene said with a shrug, surreptitiously flexing her hands and trying to decide how fully recovered she was. For the moment she was functional, if damaged. ‘You’re quite right. He wouldn’t have been stationed in an alternate like this unless he was competent, and he was older and more experienced than I am.’
‘It’s this floor,’ Vale said. They came out of the stairwell into a room blazingly full of painted hieroglyphics, icons and crosses with pointy end bits – Coptic, Irene decided. The light was artificial, presumably to spare the papyri from natural sunlight, but the colours leapt at them in a riot of gold, red and turquoise. ‘Straight ahead, then left. And may I suggest that Mr Aubrey had no warning that Alberich was coming. Presumably if he had done, then he could have secured himself and called for help from the Library, just as you intend to do?’
She didn’t want to hear this.
Casual strollers saw them coming and stepped out of the way. A couple of elderly ladies muttered something condemnatory about young people these days, as Irene strained to listen.
Irene knew that this was displacement behaviour, as the last thing she wanted to do was listen to Vale talking about tackling Alberich. Playing chess matches against masters who were certain to defeat you was one thing: you learnt about chess, and you didn’t die in the process. Getting into a fight with someone who would kill you (messily) failed to teach you anything useful, unless reincarnation was genuine, and you did die in the process. It was hard enough to have to consider how important the book might be to this world. She could only think in small steps. If Alberich wanted the book, that meant it was important, possibly even vital, to this world, and he mustn’t have it . . .
She was also trying to ignore Kai’s sympathetic glances from behind Vale’s back. Maybe there was a whole genre of literature written by dragons for dragons about how they sensibly stayed out of fights that they couldn’t hope to win, and flew away to do something very important somewhere else. Or maybe it was a bad idea to be distracting herself quite so thoroughly when they were almost at Aubrey’s office.
‘We can’t possibly know how Aubrey tried to handle Alberich,’ she finally said. ‘I believe the Aubrey I met was simply Alberich disguised. I never even met the real man. All I know is that I am not going to get into a fight which I can’t win, when there are alternatives.’
Vale nodded towards the exit. ‘Through that way, then straight on for the next seven rooms, then turn left. Very well. I accept your judgement. Can you fetch help rapidly?’
Irene was glad she could agree. ‘From what I’ve heard, the main problem is that my superiors rarely know where Alberich is. If they can actually pinpoint him to this world, then they can take steps—’
Vale cut in, and Irene realized it was a sign of his urgency that he’d actually interrupt. ‘Miss Winters! A little logic, if you please. They already know he is in this world, as they warned you about him.’
Something in Irene’s stomach went cold. ‘Oh,’ she said. She hadn’t thought that through. ‘Maybe – maybe they just suspected he was here, but had no actual proof . . .’
Vale didn’t say anything, but then again, he didn’t need to, as Irene could feel the shallowness of her reasoning. Oh, it was fashionable among Librarians of her age to impute dubious motives to their seniors. She’d heard the gossip – they’d use us as bait if they thought it was necessary, they edit the information they give us, they’d sacrifice us to get their hands on a text. But that didn’t mean they believed it. At the bottom of her heart, Irene had faith in her superiors.
Genuine doubt was worse than fashionable adolescent doubt had ever been.
‘And possibly I’ve been misinformed,’ she said, forcing firmness into her voice. ‘Can we at least assess the situation before we start assuming the worst?’
‘As you wish,’ Vale said, in tones stating I know perfectly well you aren’t going to stop thinking about it now. ‘But why wouldn’t he be in his office, though we might wish him elsewhere?’
‘The automaton attack at the museum,’ Kai suggested. ‘If that was him, and if he expected to find the book there, wouldn’t he be on the spot to collect it?’
Vale rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘That assumes that he was responsible for the automaton attack. And it would be rather overly controlling, wouldn’t you say, to be there in person if he could command underlings . . .’