‘I’ve got enough problems without you giving me any more of them, lady.’ He fished in a desk drawer. ‘Here, these are subway tokens. Make sure you’re both carrying a few of them. That way you can walk right through the turnstiles and onto the train.’
The captain made desultory conversation with Kai while they waited for Dorrins to return, fishing for details about Scotland Yard and clearly happier to be dealing with a male cop than a female one. Kai did his best to respond, while Irene retreated into the background with relief. She leafed through a newspaper, trying to get a sense of current affairs. The news was highly coloured, even if the print was black and white – scandals, mob crimes, movie news, temperance marches and other entertaining flashes of life in the big city.
Suddenly, mid-anecdote, the captain snapped his fingers. ‘Hell, I forgot something. They’re still turning your suitcase over downstairs. If I tell them to bring it up here, someone’s going to smell a rat. Anything you needed in there?’
Irene shook her head. ‘Nothing important.’ The only vital things were the money in her handbag and Kai’s wallet, and Evariste’s name in the locket round her neck.
‘Not even a piece?’ The captain remembered he was speaking to a non-American. ‘You know, a gun? Aren’t you travelling tooled up? And what about your clothing?’ There was a tinge of uncertainty to his voice, as if he was struggling with something in the back of his mind that hadn’t quite surfaced yet, but was sending out early warning tremors.
Irene swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. The Language’s effect was beginning to fade. ‘The whole point was to go unobserved,’ she said calmly. ‘We weren’t planning on getting into any shoot-outs, even if the police did catch up with us. You perceive that this is reasonable and makes sense, and explains any inconsistencies.’
The captain swayed in his chair. ‘Right,’ he said vaguely. ‘Of course. That makes sense.’
Irene felt a pang of guilt through the haze of an incipient headache. She hadn’t previously tried using the Language multiple times on the same person like this. She hoped she hadn’t somehow damaged the captain. He’d only been doing his job.
Fortunately Dorrins knocked on the door. ‘Captain?’ he called. ‘It’s all ready to go.’
‘Thanks for all your help,’ Kai said. He gave Captain Venner’s hand a quick shake. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
‘Just stay out of trouble,’ Captain Venner said, pulling himself together. Irene suspected he’d have liked to add And stay out of my city, but he shut his mouth on that and simply waved them towards the door.
Dorrins led them at a fast trot down the back stairs. ‘Once we’re at the bottom,’ he puffed, ‘we go straight out the door and you get into the car that’s waiting there.’
‘Right,’ Irene agreed. The sooner they were out of this police station and off the radar, the better.
A few minutes later they were in the back of a police car again, but this time as passengers rather than as prisoners. The city outside the car’s tinted glass windows was in full swing, bright and cheerful, humming with activity. Even though only about thirty years’ development (and a lack of airships) separated this city from Vale’s London, it was deeply, profoundly different – the clothing, the attitudes, the mix of people outside the window, even the way they moved. New York had its own pace: the brisk thrusting stride of the pedestrians, the jarring snarls of the traffic and the busy throb of the place.
Tyres ground against the pavement, horns squealed and people shouted. While the car might theoretically be heading for the subway station as fast as possible, in practice it was having to contend with the traffic. A lot of traffic. This gave Irene a chance to catch up with Kai on the current situation.
The two cops in the front had clearly been ordered not to ask inconvenient questions, meaning that Kai and Irene could talk undisturbed in the back. In order to avoid eavesdropping, they were talking in Chinese. Of course this in itself would be reported back to Captain Venner as suspicious behaviour, but by the point it did get reported back to him, they’d be out of reach. Hopefully.
‘So what was it about the wolves?’ Irene asked.
‘It slipped my mind earlier,’ Kai admitted. ‘But Qing Song is reputed to keep them as pets.’
Irene sighed. ‘I take it these are more likely to be slavering man-eaters than the well-trained type who might fawn on him in public.’
‘A dragon lord who keeps wolves does so because he wants wolves, not lapdogs,’ Kai pointed out. ‘If he’d been known for keeping chihuahuas, then that would be entirely different.’
Irene allowed herself to entertain fantasies where the worst-case scenario would be having her ankles nibbled on. She dragged herself back to reality. They were apparently at ground zero with one of the two participants in this contest. This meant that she and Kai might be getting closer to finding out what was going on, which was fantastic – especially as time was running out like sand through her fingers – but it also raised the prospective danger level. ‘But if it is Qing Song, why is he prowling the streets with his pack of wolves?’
‘You’re being a little dramatic there,’ Kai said. ‘That sounds like the sort of thing a Fae would do.’
‘Wolves.’ Irene held up a finger. ‘Public streets.’ She held up another. ‘The two don’t go well together. If all he’s doing is taking them for a walk so they can get some exercise, fair enough, but that seems implausible. And even if that is the case, what’s he doing in New York at the same time as Evariste? That does not look good at all.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Kai agreed uncomfortably. ‘But it could be . . .’
‘It could be what?’
‘It could be a friendship. Like you and me.’ His hand touched hers. ‘I know the Library can’t afford the appearance of a full alliance, but surely what’s done between friends is a different matter? And if that is the case, perhaps we could even sympathize?’
Irene wanted so much to simply agree with him.
But she couldn’t. ‘If it is simply friendship,’ she said, ‘and notice that I’m saying if here, then he has messed up big time. I can and will feel sympathetic, but that won’t change what I need to do. We’ve been through this. The stakes are too high. If he’s acted improperly, even out of friendship, then he should have known better.’ She knew her words were harsh, and she saw the anger in Kai’s eyes, but she felt no need to retract them. ‘Kai, Evariste and I are Librarians. We buy our privileges at the cost of responsibility. He should understand that.’
‘And if he disagrees?’
‘Then I’ll listen to what he has to say and make my decision based on that.’ She spread her hands. ‘We don’t know. We’re speculating. All that we do know is that he’s not here on Library orders. This is a matter of internal dragon politics at the highest level, and if Evariste has involved the Library, then he has to answer for it.’