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The insectoid robot head swivelled to focus on Irene and Bradamant. It took a jointed pace down the corridor towards them, the claws attached to each segment of the body dragging it along and leaving horrible gashes in the wood. Its top scraped the ceiling, bringing down cobwebs that had probably been centuries in the making, leaving a long swathe of scoured white plaster in its wake.
‘Go right,’ Irene shouted to Bradamant on no particular evidence, and ran in that direction. She was already calling vocabulary to her mind – words for gears, joints, pedals, steel, glass, struts and nuts and bolts. But there was always the chance that the construct would decide to chase Silver and the werewolves rather than them, and it seemed a shame to wreck it if so.
‘It won’t work, you know,’ Bradamant said, catching up and outpacing her. ‘Do you seriously think that thing won’t chase us?’
‘It’s worth a try,’ Irene gasped. She turned and looked back over her shoulder.
The iron automaton came jolting forward in a screeching rattle of steps, then halted as it reached the junction. With a whirr the head turned to edge itself into the passage that Bradamant and Irene were running down. Its shoulders began to creak after it, manoeuvring so it could bear down the passage after them like an oncoming train.
Irene and Bradamant looked at each other.
‘I’ll do the gears if you do the joints,’ Irene said.
‘Right,’ Bradamant said. ‘Give it a moment so that it can block the junction.’
The robot managed to half-negotiate the turn. Its claws dug into the floor as inner springs rewound themselves. The huge lenses set into the head reflected the two women, mirror-like. If they were in fact windows, it was impossible to see who might be lurking behind them.
‘Gears, lock up!’ Irene shouted, pitching her voice to carry as far as possible. ‘In head, in claws, in body, and in every part which can hear me – gears, seize solid and stand firm!’
The robot came to a standstill in a horrific mechanical screaming of blocked joints and gears. Even the distant howling of the werewolves was drowned out. Wires and cables tensed and broke. One claw rotated backwards, caught itself in the floor at an angle, and snapped. And a fragment of steel went flying, pinging off the wall with a high-toned ring of metal, audible even over the noise of the machine destroying itself.
Both women turned, and ran down the corridor away from the thing, past closed offices and storerooms. The air was full of fresh dust, the smell of oil and burnt metal. A part of Irene’s mind wondered if it’d make tomorrow’s front pages. Probably. She didn’t like making headlines. A good Librarian was supposed to read headlines, not make them.
‘There!’ Bradamant pointed unnecessarily to a stairway ahead of them. They plunged down it at a run, Bradamant swinging wide on the banister at the curve and almost hip-checking Irene. The door at its base opened on to the ground floor, revealing a room full of shells and corals. Several family groups turned to look at them disapprovingly.
Irene smiled her iciest smile, brushed some of the dust off her skirts, and took a firmer grip on the precious ledger. Behind her, Bradamant whispered something to the door lock. Irene couldn’t quite make it out, but it had the cadence of the Language.
Hopefully they had a couple of minutes before any werewolves, Fae, Iron Brotherhood, or other book-hunters caught up with them. Irene spotted a small office on the other side of the room and caught Bradamant’s eye. ‘Over there,’ she suggested, jerking her chin towards it.
‘Absolutely,’ Bradamant agreed.
The two of them walked decorously across the room, skirting glass cases full of dried sea anemones, brittle polyps, and other brightly coloured objects that were probably happier when they’d been underwater. With a polite nod to an elderly man shuffling along behind a walking frame, Irene quietly tried the handle of the office door.
‘Is it shut, dear?’ Bradamant enquired quietly.
‘Oh no,’ Irene said, keeping her voice down. ‘In fact, this door is open.’ The Language rolled in her mouth, and the handle loosened under her hand, turning obediently to let the pair of them in.
‘Not bad,’ Bradamant said, closing the door behind them. She looked around for a key, saw none, and muttered, ‘Door lock, shut.’ The lock clicked to again.
Irene glanced round the room. It was clearly someone important’s office: the desk and chairs were newer than the ones downstairs, the pieces of artwork and diagrams hanging on the walls had frames, and there wasn’t any dust. ‘We’d better not take too long,’ she said, walking over to the desk. She sat down and flipped the ledger open. ‘Someone might come in at any moment.’ ‘My dear Irene,’ Bradamant said, raising her hands to adjust her hat and her hair, ‘I may not be able to handle a set of werewolves and an angry Fae, but I can certainly handle one museum official. Especially as he is overweight.’
‘Overweight?’
Bradamant’s smirk was obvious in her voice. ‘I don’t need to be a great detective like your Vale to look at the chair you’re sitting in and see that it’s usually sat in by an extremely fat man.’
‘Oh,’ Irene said, a little stung. Just because she had her own particular tastes in fiction didn’t mean that she liked to be sneered at about them. She flipped through the pages, looking for entries dating two days ago. It arrived five days ago, then three days after that he would have sent it on . . . ‘Ah!’ she said, finding the date. ‘Mm. He’s had a lot of packages going through. Professor Betony must get a lot of mail.’ She ran her finger down the page, looking for a mention of Wyndham’s name. ‘Got it. Package from Lord Wyndham, redispatched to—’
‘To Dominic Aubrey, British Library!’ Bradamant said in shock, reading over her shoulder.
‘Of course!’ Irene slapped her hand against the desk. ‘You said it yourself, Dominic was indiscreet in what he told Wyndham! And Wyndham was afraid of Silver striking at him or trying to steal the book.’ Well, technically a cold iron safe would keep a book safe from any thieves, not just Fae ones, but Silver had known to look there for the book. ‘If Wyndham wanted to hide the book from Silver, and if he knew more or less about Dominic, or at least if he knew for certain that Dominic was an enemy of Fae in general, and Silver in particular . . . Wyndham must have sent this package before his death, once he had the copy of the book made, the one that you stole.’ She was aware that she was getting incoherent, and she took a deep breath. ‘He must have expected to get the book back from Dominic later.’ Suddenly her earlier fears about Dominic returned to her. ‘But that means—’
A bright pain knifed into the side of her neck, as sharp and vivid as a wasp’s sting. She would have exclaimed in shock, but the words were somehow fuzzy in her mouth and her lips were numb. She was sagging back into the wide seat, thoughts clear but body numb and loose, unable to form a single deliberate word.
‘But that means,’ Bradamant said, wiping the end of her hatpin on the shoulder of Irene’s coat before sliding it back into her own hat, ‘that I don’t need you any more.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘What’reyoudoin’?’ Irene slurred. She could barely form the words in English, let alone in the Language.
