Irene was about to reply when one of the cabs rattling down the road outside drew to a stop outside their lodgings. ‘Well, damn,’ she said softly. ‘I’d been hoping I was wrong.’
Kai followed her glance. ‘It might be someone else,’ he said.
‘It might,’ Irene agreed. The two of them watched as the cab driver swung down and held the cab door open for the occupants to emerge. Jin Zhi was quite recognizable, even from across the street and through the cafe window, though the two men with her – the two large men – were strangers. ‘But it isn’t.’
‘We could confront her,’ Kai suggested.
‘She might take it badly. And there are so many breakable things around here.’ Like most of London, for a start. Irene had never witnessed a fight between dragons, and she didn’t want to start now. ‘Right now I need a lot more information, and that means visiting the Library.’
‘And leaving through the cafe’s back door before she sees us?’
‘I like back doors,’ Irene said.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kai was brooding as Irene led the way to a small local library. ‘Perhaps I should visit my contacts while you’re checking inside the Library,’ he finally offered. ‘It’d save time. We could meet up afterwards and compare notes.’
‘It might take too long for us to reconnect,’ Irene said. ‘I did consider it, but what if you ended up being delayed for days, and I had no way of finding you? Or what if I was held up in the Library, since you can’t access it without me?’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Kai said reluctantly. ‘I wish I knew why it works that way.’
‘Why it works which way?’ She showed her library card to the man at the front desk and was waved past. The main room was a comparatively tiny place with a very small selection of books, with a few doors off it leading to offices and storage. It had been built quite recently and it clearly showed it, with clockwork shelf-extrusions and cheap wrought-iron girders, rather than the wood and stone of older libraries in London.
‘Why I can go to other alternate worlds, assuming they aren’t too high in chaos, and find people I know – but I can’t reach the Library.’ Kai glanced around the room. ‘No witnesses,’ he added, in the same quiet tone of voice.
Irene couldn’t help thinking that if some of the more powerful and less friendly dragons could reach the Library that way, it would have a much harder time maintaining its independence. ‘And something I’ve been wondering,’ she said, ‘is whether Jin Zhi will be able to find me in future, whatever world I’m in. She did hint at it, but she might have been bluffing.’
‘It’s . . . unlikely,’ Kai said. ‘It’s not usually the sort of thing we can do after a single meeting. Besides, she couldn’t even sense you at the end of the street, drinking coffee.’
Irene nodded. ‘So Jin Zhi couldn’t get me looking for the book, so that she could drop in on me once I’d found it.’
‘She might regret it if she did,’ Kai said casually. ‘Interference with another dragon’s, ah . . .’ He gave Irene a sideways look, and she could almost see the words property, possessions and servants being considered and discarded. ‘Interests. That sort of thing could even be a duelling offence.’
Irene came to a stop in front of a side door to the building’s cellars and focused her mind on the Language. ‘Open to the Library,’ she said, grasping the handle.
On the other side there was now a spacious, well-lit room, floored and walled in steel, its shelves overfilled with irregular-looking books. She gestured Kai in, then shut the door behind her, feeling the portal close. Anyone trying to follow them from the alternate world they’d just left would only find the building’s cellars. The Library could be reached solely by Librarians – and a very good thing, too.
‘Irish sagas,’ Kai said, checking a small sign that dangled from one shelf. ‘World designation A-529, copied from Ogham script.’ He looked around at the hand-bound volumes, and at the stacks of computer printout and handwritten parchment piled on the floor. ‘That must have been a lot of transcription work for someone.’
Irene shrugged. ‘Well, it’s easier than bringing a pile of carved sticks or logs into the Library. When we’re on a job for the Library, we only need a copy of the story in question, not the actual original. For which I’m deeply grateful. All right, next stage: find a computer. Preferably find two computers, so we can both do some research.’
She led the way into the corridor outside. Paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling shrouded electric light bulbs, diffusing a soft light that caught sparks from the granite walls and floor. There were no windows in this corridor, only a long sequence of doors in either direction. Dust had gathered in the corners, and the air hung still and silent.
The next few minutes were spent peering into rooms piled with fascinating stacks of books, not finding any computers, and resisting the urge to stay and investigate anyway. This was the sort of thing that made Irene wish she had more free time – or, come to think of it, any free time at all to spend in the Library.
Since getting the job of Librarian-in-Residence to ‘her’ alternate world, she’d been kept constantly on the go. Not only had there been a queue of missions to collect various books from that world, but she’d also needed to make certain arrangements. Setting up secondary identities, arranging places for visiting Librarians to stay, assembling handouts on current history, secret societies and etiquette, and so on. She’d avoided involving Vale, though a detective’s connections with the underworld would have been invaluable. But as Vale was an ardent supporter of the law, explaining the need for her colleagues to come into his world to covertly ‘acquire’ books would not have gone down well. She just hoped the two sides of her life wouldn’t be in conflict any time soon.
‘Found one!’ Kai called. ‘No, found several!’
‘Coming!’ Irene answered, and hurried to join him.