Irene pulled herself together. Symbolic cleansing, she scribbled on the cover. Get water, as pure as possible. You use the Language – say it’s washing my throat clean of dragon influence as I drink it.
Hu saw what she was doing, and his horrified intake of breath was almost audible despite the noise going on around them. ‘Don’t write on the books!’ he nearly shrieked, in a manner worthy of a Librarian.
Kai stepped between Hu and Irene and Evariste, before Hu could launch any one-dragon assaults to drag the books out of their hands. ‘Are you sure you can’t get hold of that antidote? Before we end up defacing the Queen’s personal reading matter even further?’
Hu’s face was tight with frustration. ‘My lord kept it on his person. I don’t have it. Your highness, there isn’t much time—’
The two dragons clashed in the sky again, curling around each other like the links of a chain, before breaking free. Their roaring rippled across the city. The street lights flickered in a crazy chiaroscuro as their posts shook and trembled. People abandoned their cars, fleeing on foot.
Irene knew roughly how large Kai was as a dragon. Both of those dragons were bigger than he was. No doubt in time – possibly lots of time – his royal blood would have him outgrowing them both, but at the moment he was young. Purely on grounds of size, he’d be outweighed and outmatched in an open fight against either of those dragons. If they joined forces against him, he might even be risking crippling injury or death. She couldn’t just send him up there and tell him to stop them.
But this couldn’t be allowed to go on. Not for the sake of the dragons – but for the sake of this New York, and the whole of this world. Having two dragons fight might mean more than simply physical damage. It might mean that the world itself was somehow destabilized.
Evariste had been frowning at Irene’s written instructions, but finally he nodded. ‘We need water!’ he called to Kai.
Hu’s backup thugs were looking rather overtaken by events, but had been listening to the conversation. Before Hu could tell them to keep quiet, one of them spoke up, pointing at a side street. ‘There’s a joint there,’ he suggested. ‘Brown door, third on the right, you knock three times and ask for Louie . . .’
‘Right.’ Kai strode towards it, with Irene and Evariste hurrying to keep up. Hu followed, still protesting, his thugs trailing behind and looking increasingly confused.
There was indeed a speakeasy there, and it was doing a thriving trade. Many were reacting to the crisis by getting drunk, and Irene couldn’t blame them. It was a perfectly reasonable response to the situation, and it was supporting local businesses. A win–win situation.
‘Water,’ Kai said, forcing his way to the bar and getting to the point. ‘A large glass of the purest water you have.’
The man behind the bar stared at him, then shrugged. ‘You want ice with that?’
‘Wasting time on this is a bad idea,’ Hu said. The wolves had been left trapped in the concrete. Evariste had been extremely deaf to Hu’s hints that it would be a good idea to free them, that it would give Qing Song a reason to show him favour, et cetera, et cetera. A small part of Irene hoped that nobody killed the wolves while they were helpless, but on her scale of priorities it rated rather low.
‘On the contrary, I think it’s an extremely good idea,’ Kai replied. ‘I think releasing Irene is a much better idea than me throwing myself into the fight and making matters worse.’
‘Well, if Miss Winters must contribute to the discussion, can’t she simply write it down?’ Hu offered. ‘Simply gargling with water isn’t going to restore her voice.’
The barman pushed the glass of water across the counter, clinking with ice cubes. Kai caught it and slid it towards Evariste. ‘Will that do?’ he asked.
‘Give me a moment.’ Evariste put his bundle of books on the floor, glanced sideways at Hu, then rested a foot firmly on top.
Hu winced. ‘You won’t improve your bargaining position by destroying them in front of me,’ he said.
‘After all this shit, I’m not letting go of them.’ Evariste turned his attention to the glass, picking his words. ‘Water in the glass in front of me, let your impurities enter the cubes of ice until you are pure.’
Just because most of the people in the speakeasy were busy getting drunk didn’t mean that they were going to ignore free entertainment. When the ice cubes began to grow murky and dull, there were yells of laughter and comments of disbelief.
‘Always knew your gin was bathtub-quality,’ one man commented to the bartender, ‘but looks like your water’s even worse.’
‘Ready?’ Evariste asked Irene. He flipped the cloudy ice cubes out of the glass and passed it to her.
Irene nodded.
She tipped her head back and took a long swig of water, then another. It was absolutely tasteless and oddly unappealing. If only she’d been able to think of a symbolic cure involving brandy.
‘The water that Irene is drinking is washing her throat clean of all other influences,’ Evariste said, ‘dragon, Fae, or anything else, so that she can once again speak freely.’ He frowned, his mouth tight with concentration, and visibly swayed, putting out a hand to brace himself against the bar.
Irene buckled to her knees, dropping the glass and clutching her throat and her stomach. The water slid down her throat like broken glass, as if someone was scouring her gullet with a wire brush. Her breath sawed painfully in her lungs, and she would have screamed, but she couldn’t get the sound out. She could hear her stomach gurgling, and her brain supplied violently disturbing images of fluids at war inside her. She was vaguely aware that she was curled up on the floor, with Kai supporting her. The speakeasy crowd had moved back to give her space, some of them even having the kindness to call for doctors. But nothing mattered besides the claws that seized her throat from inside and dug into her . . .
And then, like ice dissolving in rain, they were gone.
Irene took a breath that was mercifully free from pain, then another, and tried to speak. ‘I think I need a brandy,’ she croaked.
That was when Hu and his men moved. One of the thugs bowled into Evariste. He punched him hard in the stomach, grabbed him by the tie, then cracked his head against the bar. The other kept his gun on Kai and Irene, as Hu stepped forward and picked up the bundle of books.
‘I think I’ll take these, your highness,’ he said smugly. ‘My lord will be able to make his explanations much more easily with these in his possession.’ Almost as a formality, he flipped back the fold of Evariste’s coat to inspect his prize.
He stared.
Irene had read the phrase He froze as if turned to stone, but she’d never seen it happen. For a moment the only living thing in Hu’s face were his eyes, filled with horror as his position collapsed like a house of cards. Not only did he not have what he wanted, but he’d just put a large hole in his chances of ever getting it.