CHAPTER SIX
It was always difficult to decide where one should hide vitally important papers when going into dangerous situations. An outer pocket? Too easily lost – or too easily found by casual searches. An inner pocket? Better, though if you were being searched, it was still likely to be found, and in that case it was clear the document was important. Tucked into the cleavage or clipped inside a stocking-top? Much more uncomfortable than romance novels would have you think. Irene settled for the inner-pocket approach for the paper with Evariste’s name on it, and hoped that nobody would be interested in it anyway.
‘It was helpful of Melusine to arrange a transfer shift to the Wardrobe, and then to A-658’s Traverse,’ she said. It had saved them a half-day’s walk through the Library. And they now had clothing roughly suitable for this nineteen-twenties America. Kai was embracing his sharp-fitting zoot suit and fedora with enthusiasm, while Irene was simply grateful for a knee-length skirt that she could run in.
‘No, it was merely practical.’ Kai would be the first to deny that he was sulking, but his mood since having to wait in Melusine’s antechamber was thoroughly contrary. Irene had yet to venture an opinion he agreed with. ‘A significant matter needs a quick response. She’d have been even more practical if she’d sent additional Librarians.’
‘Besides us?’
‘Besides you. She made it clear that she didn’t consider me a Librarian.’
‘She’s paranoid,’ Irene said. ‘She made me strip down to show her my own Library mark before she’d allow me in. And I’m fairly sure she had a gun in her wheelchair underneath that blanket. And she knew you were a dragon. I’m surprised she didn’t try to stop you coming along, given how the situation’s shaping up . . . Note that I’m not on her side, Kai.’
‘There wasn’t even anything to read,’ Kai muttered.
Irene rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘If the worst that comes of this is you being stuck in a cellar for half an hour with nothing to read, then we’ve been lucky.’
She looked round the room they were standing in one last time. It was stacked full of westerns from A-658. The covers were festooned with lurid pictures of stern-jawed cowboys, rearing horses and women falling out of their bodices. She hoped she never had to go anywhere like that. Horses weren’t one of her enthusiasms. ‘Anyhow, let’s get moving. It should be late afternoon or early evening by the time we get there. If we’re lucky, the bank will still be open.’
She walked over to the door and turned the handle, pushing at it. For a moment the door seemed to stick, as if hampered by something on the other side, and she frowned.
‘Is something the matter?’ Kai asked, dropping his moodiness.
‘Maybe there’s something leaning against it on the other side. Just a moment.’ Irene shoved at it, and this time it gave way; she stumbled through into the room beyond, and then stood absolutely still, horrified.
The place was a ruin. The noise of the city beyond the walls was like distant mockery, with the faint hum of traffic and voices a horrible contrast to the recent damage which had hit the building they stood in.
In the early evening light, recently fallen timbers and collapsed brickwork were everywhere. The room they’d entered was typical of nineteenth-century American or European municipal buildings, but it was badly damaged on one side. The wall had fallen into the room, charred with scorch marks. One timber had fallen against the door that they’d just come through – the blockage that Irene had pushed away. Tattered books lay everywhere, scorch marks like stains on pages white as bone. There was dust in the air – from some recent explosion or fire – and it made Irene choke. She put her hands against her face, trying to breathe, trying to calm herself. Trying not to think of fire, burning pages, smoke and ruin – and Alberich’s voice above all of it.
‘This conflagration, or blast, or whatever it was . . .’ She looked around her. ‘This must be very recent. Look, the ceiling’s gone.’ She could simply look up and see the twilight sky above, the clear blue of dusk. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. She had to pull herself together, she thought remotely. The situation was too dangerous for her to have some sort of flashback here. She felt herself digging her nails into the palms of her hands and forced herself to be calm, composed, rational. It didn’t help – not deep down, not where it really mattered. She still remembered fire and books burning. ‘But none of the books are wet yet. So they can’t have been rained on. We need to find out what’s happened. And when. And how.’
Irene began to pick her way across the fallen stones that covered the floor, then looked up in surprise as Kai caught her wrist. ‘What is it?’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course I am.’ Her momentary weakness had passed as the memories faded. She was entirely in control of herself again. She had to be. ‘I’m just furious. That’s all. How someone could do a thing like this, destroy a place like this . . . even if it isn’t involved with our investigation, I want someone to pay for this.’
She shook Kai off angrily and walked across to kick the door open. The corridor beyond was blocked to the right by fallen masonry and shattered windows. They had to turn left and then half-climb down past the stairway to reach the ground floor. Every movement disturbed stone dust from the explosion damage and set trapped pages fluttering as if reaching for assistance.
‘How much longer will this place stay linked to the Library?’ Kai asked as he followed her.
‘I don’t know,’ Irene had to admit. ‘I’m grateful it allowed us to get through – but who knows how long the gateway will hold? We don’t go round destroying libraries, just to test theories about what would happen if we did . . .’
Kai fell silent. Outside, beyond the broken walls of this shattered building, Irene could hear the hooting of car horns, the bells of trolleybuses, occasional yells and shouts. But in here there was nothing but the destruction all around her, and all the fallen books, with nobody even trying to save them. It was like walking through a personal hell, with a layer of glass between her and the rest of the world. She wasn’t even conscious of Kai a few steps behind her any more. And she wondered, Should I have come earlier? Would that have made a difference? If I’d come straight away, or persuaded Melusine or Coppelia faster, or . . .
Kai grabbed her again, and she realized they were approaching one of the building’s outer walls. ‘Irene, do we have a plan?’
She forced herself to focus. She would have tried breathing deeply, but there was still too much dust in the air. It burned her eyes. ‘Nothing’s changed. We’re going to the bank first. Money. Documents. Accommodation.’