That made two of them.
“You have an entirely free rein,” the Shah had said that morning, when Shadow had sourly reported for work. “I trust your judgement.” This had not improved Shadow’s mood. The Shah was affable, but that meant he’d got whatever it was he wanted and that didn’t suit Shadow at all. And her concentration wasn’t up to much, either: memories of the disir, of the wrecked laboratory, and of Mercy Fane kept intruding. She wished Mercy was still here and that made her very nervous. Apart from Shenudah, Shadow was not accustomed to friends, and really, her friendship would not be doing the other woman any favours. Yet she’d felt that she could discuss things with Mercy, that the woman understood, and she certainly wasn’t used to having a sounding board. The fact the Shah was funding full repairs to the lab hadn’t helped, either. More unwanted obligations, more requirements for gratitude. Shadow had insisted on hiring the workmen herself, but she knew it gave the Shah the possibility to get someone inside the lab, perhaps sabotage the equipment for who knew what purpose further down the line. She could see a future in which she remained permanently tied to the Shah and she did not like it at all.
Now for the ifrit.
She could see nothing resembling features, or an eye. The ifrit could take semi-human form, but Shadow knew from experience that this was a loose term only: they were beings of fire, silhouettes of flickering eldritch light that freeze-burned the touch. Humans did not always survive long in their presence and this was why the Shah had confined this ifrit here, in a very expensive cage made of meteorite iron, and therefore holy. Shadow could see the many names of God as they wove and coiled around the bars, and resisted the urge to bow her head. She did not want to take her eyes off the ifrit for too long, wary of what it might do.
She had already tried speaking to it, in the old language of Persia, a tongue now lost or kept secret by the Fire Worshippers, the Zoroastrians. But the ifrit had remained within a vast and distant silence, like the quiet of the desert itself, at the breaking of the day. Shadow had not really expected anything else and repressed a sigh. They were not like angels, who might deign to talk to you, or demons, who were eager to do so in exchange for something else. They had an agenda which Shadow did not understand, and even the great mystics had failed to delineate their thoughts.
“If you will not talk to me,” Shadow said aloud, “Then I cannot give you what you want.” Yet she knew this was meretricious. She thought she did know, indeed, what the ifrit wanted: it wanted to be free, to roam the high places of the air beneath the stars, to step lightly with feet of flame upon the sands of the desert, to burn to a blaze that lights the night. She could not give it that, because the Shah had imprisoned it. So that meant forcing it into action.
Shadow swallowed, and went over to the latticed window. Below, the fountain played its music in the centre of the courtyard and a flock of golden doves wheeled above the Has, before settling onto the opposing roof where they cooed and quarrelled. That gave Shadow an idea. She walked back to the captive roil of the ifrit.
“You want to go back to your kind, don’t you?” she said. She pitched her voice low, almost seductive. “Back to your flock? I can help you.”
She lied, but she did not think the ifrit would know that. At least, not yet. The mass of energy slowed a little, she thought, although it could have been her own imagination. Wishful thinking . . . well, that was what magic was all about, after all.
“If you give me what I want,” Shadow said, “I will make the Shah help you. And then I will help you get your revenge.”
If the room were bugged, if she were challenged, she would say only that it had been a ploy to force the ifrit’s cooperation. Perhaps this was even true, in part.
The ifrit said, in a voice that was not a voice, within her mind,
“What do you want?”
“The Shah wants knowledge,” Shadow said. “Not to live forever—he is too wise for that. But when he does die, he wants to know how he can force the hand of paradise. He wants the name of a particular spirit, and you can get that for me.” She lied, of course, and did not like the lie. Once the ifrit had agreed to do her bidding, then she could act: transform the ifrit into other parameters.
That it should be changed into human form,
the Shah had commanded, and Shadow would have to do her best to comply.
“It is a long time,” the ifrit said, “since I set foot at the gates of heaven.”
“Your kind are not allowed into paradise, are they?” Shadow said, hesitant.
Soft, vast laughter. “We do not wish to go. The sunset airs are enough for us.”
“But can you get me the name?”
“Which is the spirit?”
“He is a prince of the air,” Shadow said. The Shah had coached her carefully in what she had to say. “His number is nine and his stone is the moss agate. His hour of the day is six o’clock in the morning. That’s the only information the Shah has, and do not ask me where he got it from.”
“I shall look within memory,” the ifrit said. “In return, when will I be free? And what assurance do I have that this will be so?”
“I will go away while you are looking,” Shadow answered. “When I come back, I will bring the Shah’s own Court with me, as a guarantee. Its use in my magic will set you free.”
“Then I agree,” the ifrit said, surprising her. (It was only much later, Shadow realised, that she had omitted a crucial factor from her considerations. Set on the notion that the ifrit would want its freedom above all else, it had not occurred to her that the ifrit might have other ideas.)
She left the room, seeking the Shah. She found him in the long room that adjoined the courtyard verandah.
“How are you getting on?” She might have been a new secretary, typing a report.
“I’m not sure.” Shadow was determined to treat the Shah with as much neutrality as she could muster. She told him what the ifrit had said.
“Interesting. You may borrow the ring.”
Shadow had been expecting more protest, which either meant that the Shah wanted this very badly, or that he was playing a different game altogether. She was inclined to suspect the latter.
“The ifrit will know . . . ” she began. The Shah blinked at her mildly.
“If it is a fake? Yes, I am aware of that. I shall just have to trust you with the genuine article, then.”
“All right,” Shadow said, warily. “I’d best get back.”
The Shah removed the heavy signet from his finger and put it into her hand, curling cool fingers around her own for a disconcerting second. “Do try to look after it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
On the way up the stairs, she looked down at the ring. It was a heavy thing of pale gold, with a carved obsidian stone. The letters were in Arabic and glided across the surface of the ring. Shadow blinked, as the Shah had done, and the letters changed. All at once, she was conscious of being watched. It was as though she held an eye in the palm of her hand. No wonder the Shah had not suggested accompanying her back to the room in which the ifrit was held; he had not needed to. He could watch, and perhaps listen, through the very mechanism that she had requested of him.
Holding the ring tightly in her fist, Shadow stepped back into the room to meet the ifrit.
• Twenty-One •
Mercy and Benjaya sat on one side of the table in a downstairs office, the
ka
on the other. Perra sat with its paws on the ebony wood, a small severe judge.
“You have a choice, as I see it,” the
ka
said. “Stay on this side of the world and try to close the gap, or pass through and find out why.”
“I told the Elders that I would do my best to sort this out,” Mercy said. She felt the obligation like an uncomfortable lump in her throat. The
ka
looked at her. “And how do you intend to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Mercy admitted. The journey to the Eastern Quarter had clarified the danger, but had accomplished little in terms of resolution. The idea of going through the gap held a dark appeal: Mercy had to ask herself whether this was simply escapism, staving off the problem in the guise of taking action. She looked at Benjaya’s hopeful face and thought:
Oh dear. Librarians. We don’t get out much.
When she turned to the
ka,
she saw to her irritation that Perra had already divined what she was thinking. The
ka
was not, so Mercy believed, reliably psychic—although it might just have been that Perra kept its own counsel.
“Should you go,” the
ka
said, “I shall accompany you.”
“Thank you,” Mercy said.
They set out that evening, when twilight was already falling in a soft veil across the city. Mercy once more carried the Irish sword; Benjaya bore his rapier. They had brought suitable clothes. Mercy was wearing one of the thick woollen sweaters that Greya had brought from the north and rarely wore in the temperate climes of the West, and toting a padded coat with a fur hood. The sweater—cream wool, with a design of small black snowflakes—made her conscious of a link with her mother, now who knows where on the
Barquess
. . . Even in the temperate climes of the Library, she was already feeling far too hot. The thought of that Arctic air was almost welcome.
Benjaya wore a leather coat, as dark as his skin, and sensible stout boots.
Perra padded alongside on small lion’s feet, saying little.
As they approached the stacks of Section C, Mercy thought she felt a cold wind already blowing through, but she was not sure if this was only her imagination. She looked down at Perra, but the
ka’s
face was as unruffled as ever.
“Do you feel a draft?” she asked Benjaya. He twitched as though she had poked him.
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“What happens if it doesn’t open?” Mercy said to Perra. “You said you can see a rift, but I can’t. What happens if we can’t get through?”
“Then we go home,” Perra said, sounding slightly surprised.
Perhaps, Mercy thought, it was that obvious.
But when they were standing in front of the stacks, there was no mistake. The blast of freezing air, seemingly blowing out from the pages of the books themselves, was very marked. Mercy donned her coat.
“Take a book down from the shelf,” Perra instructed. Mercy did so, an old fairy story book from Denmark, full of trolls and elves and dark old gods. As soon as she opened the pages, the edges of each page became rimed with frost and she breathed in a fresh clean cold, which soon became stifling, freezing her lungs and throat. Beside her, Benjaya made a small sound of fright.
“It is opening,” Perra said, and the
ka’
s calm voice steadied her. Mercy flicked swiftly through the pages of the book, aware of a gradual roaring in her ears. The cold intensified, making her gasp, and when she looked up again the rift was there, gaping up before her and letting through a glimpse of starlit snows.
“All right,” Mercy said, her grip tightening on the hilt of the Irish sword. “We’re going through.”
She stepped forwards. There were words in the air ahead, between her and the rift. Mercy found herself whispering aloud, telling the story, summoning the road that was the storyway that would take them into the world beyond:
“ . . . and there was a troll who lived under the bridge, and his name was . . . ”
She stopped, but the words were scrolling up from the pages of the Danish fairy tale book, coiling into the air like silver and black threads and pulling them in through the weave . . .
. . . there was a vast tugging sensation, as though the air had been sucked out of the room. Mercy was gasping for breath, the oxygen knocked out of her. She was lifted off her feet and whisked upwards and
through
. . .
Stone hit under her heels. She heard Benjaya shout out. The
ka,
predictably, was silent. Mercy blinked into sudden light.
“Sunshine?”
It was a winter sun, low and red, hanging over a jagged black line of forest. She breathed in yet more cold air. They were high up, standing on stone flags which formed the arch of a bridge. Perra balanced on the low parapet and Mercy noticed that the
ka
’s coat had become thicker. A ruff of gold and cream obscured the sleek lines of its neck.
“I didn’t think spirits felt the cold,” Mercy said.
“This is a chill of the spirit,” the
ka
said, reprovingly.
“If this is the bridge,” Benjaya remarked, with unease, “then where’s the troll?”
• Twenty-Two •
Deed waited for Darya in the winter garden at the top of the Court, behind the gallery. Here, those of his colleagues who possessed green fingers chose to grow various plants: poisonous verdure, delicate orchids, various aphrodisiacs. Deed was not among them. Plants withered when he came too near. If he planted a seed, it went black in the ground and rotted as if the frost had touched it, which essentially it had. But he admired plants, with a kind of wary reluctance. They grew and lived with no help from him, and he could kill them, yet they always rose up again somewhere else. He sometimes felt the same about people.
Now, he sat, not too close, to a wall of orchids. They were the colour of roses, of bruises, of flesh. Some were like stormclouds, a livid white with indigo hearts, and some were a sooty midnight black. Deed liked those the best, and despised himself for predictability, but only a little. They had very little scent; it had been bred out of them.
He heard Darya’s bone heels clicking against the treads of the staircase like some monstrous insect and grew very still, waiting. He had intended to remain human, but that—well, that wasn’t happening. Instead, his own bones began to sharpen and change, his jaw elongating and the teeth within growing sharp. His vision changed, the flowers growing darker, a spectrum that humans do not see becoming resonant, a glimmering aura emerging around each bloom. By the time Darya’s footsteps reached the door, paused, hesitated, faltered—Deed was a long way from mankind, a skeletal nightmare in a ruff.