‘What have you done to her?’ Kai demanded.
‘What do you think?’ Hu answered. ‘She’s healthy enough, as you can see. But if you want her returned to you as you left her, your highness, we need to discuss terms.’
Irene caught Evariste’s glance. He was a few paces behind Kai, still clutching his package. He returned Irene’s gaze, then raised an eyebrow. It said, as clearly as words, What do we do now?
If they removed the wolf threat, Hu couldn’t hold Irene – and couldn’t manipulate Kai. As Kai and Hu continued to exchange words, Irene pointed at the sidewalk, then indicated the wolves around her. Then she upturned her hand and brought her fingers together in a grasping motion.
Evariste nodded very slightly. As Kai was opening his mouth to speak again, Evariste said in a conversational tone, ‘Sidewalk, hold the wolves.’
The concrete flowed upwards as silently and smoothly as oil, rising to several inches high around the wolves’ legs and locking them in position. Irene was already moving, throwing herself between the animals with desperate haste as they whined in shock, before their jaws could get a grip on her.
She stumbled forward as the wolves howled in fury, and Kai stepped forward to catch her. He swung her behind him and turned to sneer triumphantly at Hu. ‘No terms.’
‘No terms?’ Hu said. ‘Can you stop bullets now, your highness? Because I think your Librarians are still vulnerable.’
‘And I think you’re out of luck.’ Evariste clung to his bundle of books so tightly that his hands were shaking, but he stepped forward to stand beside Kai. ‘You want to know what I can do to those guns? What I can do to you?’
And then the night split open with a sudden flare of light that tore through the sky. Street lamps flickered and went out. The top of the St Regis Hotel broke open, stonework and balconies cracking like eggshells, as two tangled dragons rose through it into the night sky: one burning gold, the other dark emerald, both tearing furiously at each other.
Their mingled roaring ripped through the sky, shuddering through New York, and reality trembled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Irene had thought New York was noisy by night. Now she had an entirely new standard for comparison. People screamed and ran as the dragons clashed in the darkness above, with no idea of what to do or where to go, except to somehow get away: the ants’ nest that was New York had been stirred into panic. The stream of traffic down Fifth Avenue dissolved into a dozen flows and counterflows as drivers leaned out to see what was going on. Brakes shrieked and metal crumpled as cars collided.
In a way the noise was almost too huge to be understood. Here at street level, their small group seemed to be surrounded by an eggshell of temporary calm, one that might be broken by violence at any second.
Hu only needed a moment to pull himself together. He took a step forward. ‘Your highness. You have to stop them.’
Kai looked at him in blank disbelief, his arm locked around Irene’s waist in a clasp that felt more possessive than protective. ‘What business is it of mine if they should want to kill each other? I’d say they both show excellent judgement.’
‘Sounds about right to me,’ Evariste said harshly. ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys. If they want to tear each other to bits, they can get on with it, and good luck to them.’
Hu ignored Evariste. His face was a stark white in the glow of the street lamps. ‘This may well draw the Queen’s attention, and might even affect the balance of this world. Surely your highness doesn’t want to be reported as the instigator of this . . . situation.’
Irene knew his only concern was the battle between the dragons. All of this – all the gangs, the shooting, and now the growing confusion and damage, the city ripping itself apart – all of it was just a situation, insignificant when compared to the private politics of dragons. The thought burned inside her with a new anger. But fear mingled with it: Hu’s threat had teeth.
Kai looked around at the confusion and the troubled night sky, his face as distant as if he had been reading an account of it in the newspaper. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude on your lord’s territory or in his business,’ he said coldly. ‘Besides, what do you expect me to do? Throw myself between the two of them and hope that they halt in time? Even if I raised the river against them, it might not be enough to stop them both.’
Irene needed her voice back, right this minute, in order to contribute to the discussion. She coughed loudly.
Kai met her eyes, and his expression lightened at the realization that she had something to say. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘if you have the antidote to whatever’s been done to Irene, that would affect my decision.’
Hu shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, your highness. My lord has that.’ He glanced at the ruined top of the St Regis Hotel. ‘Well, had that. It might take a little while to fetch it. If you were to reason with my lord and with the lady Jin Zhi, while I take Miss Winters in charge . . .’
Irene made her opinion on that clear with a healthy sniff. She pried Kai’s arm from around her waist, pointed at her throat, then mimed drinking something, looking at Kai and Evariste hopefully. If Kai knew what it was, he might also know some way of fixing it.
Kai shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Irene. I don’t know what he’s given you.’
‘And if I don’t know the words for it . . .’ Evariste trailed off, his forehead furrowed in thought. It was all very well for a Librarian to have the Language, but if they didn’t have the words, their power was useless.
In between her panic and fury, Irene wondered: what was the drug she’d been given? Ordinary magic, if one could use that term, wouldn’t have worked on a Librarian. And a paralytic drug would have affected her mouth and throat, too, not just her vocal cords.
Which meant it was dragon magic of some sort. She’d seen Fae magic powerful enough to bind dragons – Kai had been collared to stop him using his powers. So why couldn’t dragons create something that could block a Librarian’s abilities?
She held up one hand to Kai – wait – and then stepped over to Evariste, pulling out her battered eyebrow pencil and looking for something to write on.
Perhaps more than anyone else present, Evariste must have understood exactly how frustrated she was feeling. He pulled his coat back from the books he was carrying, offering her a cover to scribble on.
Irene looked at the cover of the topmost book. Her eyes widened before she could stop her reaction. It wasn’t the Journey to the West. It was The Dream of the Red Chamber.
Evariste gave a very slight nod at her reaction. ‘It’s under control,’ he muttered. ‘As much as anything is at the moment.’