“Imminent disaster takes priority over on-the-job testing,” Irene said. “Let’s see what’s going on out there.”
CHAPTER 4
Kai made it down the stairs and outside first, and promptly stopped dead, face turned up to gawk at the sky like everyone else in the street. Irene, a step behind, looked up as well.
Five zeppelins hung in the foggy sky, their propellers cutting through the clouds. While all displayed the same dark blue and red livery, one was much larger than the vessels that had taken up positions around it. This particular zeppelin trailed glittering, somewhat tawdry, gold streamers and flaunted a coat of arms on its side.
Irene strained her eyes, but she couldn’t make it out. “Kai,” she muttered, “can you see the design painted on that airship?”
Kai raised his hand to shield his eyes and squinted. “There’s an eagle top left, in black and white on gold. Top right is a green crown on diagonal black and gold stripes. Bottom left is a vertically divided shield in red and white. And bottom right is some sort of harpy, again in black and white on gold. A hunting horn is right at the very bottom, with a horizontally divided shield in red and gold in the middle.”
Irene frowned, trying to remember her heraldry. She’d been to a few places where it had been important, but surely something that crowded would have stuck in her mind . . . Oh, wait, that was it. “It sounds,” she said slowly, “like Liechtenstein.”
“I thought that didn’t exist,” Kai said blankly.
“Course it does!” a newspaper seller scolded. He was perched on a battered stool next to his newspapers and a dramatic board that declared, MURDERER STALKS LONDON. “Best zeppelin builders in the world, ain’t they?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Irene said. “My friend’s from Canada and he doesn’t know much about Europe.”
“Oh. Oh well, then.” The old man nodded as if it made perfect sense. “Wanna buy a paper, love? Got all the news on the horrible murder of Lord Wyndham.”
“Pay the man, Kai,” Irene directed, and picked up one of the papers. It was thin, coarse paper, with thick black ink that threatened to come off on her gloves.
Kai handed over a few of Dominic’s coins. “Have they made an arrest yet?” he asked.
“Naaah.” The old man leaned forward and tapped the side of his nose, glancing at the zeppelins. “But you know what they say?”
“That the Liechtensteinians were involved?” Irene guessed, pointing with the rolled-up paper at the zeppelins above.
“Well. I mean. Makes sense, dunnit. What with them turning up like this so soon after that lord died, and all. And they do say that their ambassador was Lord Wyndham’s friend. Very personal friend, if you take my meaning.” The old man winked. “And they’re saying as how he was also his arch-rival and that they were”—he paused to check the front page of his newspaper—“constantly intriguing against each other in the most diabolical manner.”
“Is the ambassador a vampire too?” Irene asked. It would be totally inappropriate of her to use Kai as bait, if the ambassador’s tastes ran that way. That was the sort of thing Bradamant would do, she reminded herself.
“Naaah. Where’ve you been spending your time, love? Nah, he’s one of them Fair Folk, see. Always has to have artists draw his picture in the papers, ’cause none of them cameras will work on him, not even the stuff them geniuses make.”
“Fair Folk,” Irene said, a cold feeling gripping the pit of her stomach. This was bad news.
Chaos liked (if liking was quite the word) to manifest into a world where it could take advantage of illogical laws. Vampires and werewolves were particularly vulnerable to chaos. After all, strictly speaking, why should werewolves be allergic to silver, or vampires to garlic, or sticky rice, or a dozen other things? And as for the reasoning behind vampires rising three days after death, or behind most of Dracula—anyhow, the point was that chaos used creatures that obeyed illogical laws logically. Fae or fairies or elves or youkai or whatever they were called were among its favourite agents. Some of them were even living pieces of chaos, slipped sideways into various worlds and taking form from human dreams and stories. If there were Fair Folk manifesting in this world and being accepted by the population, then she needed to know. Dominic had made a note in the briefing about Liechtenstein being a “potential chaos portal” but hadn’t gone into details. She wished that he had. Liechtenstein could be the nexus of all the chaos in this world, if it had perhaps been weakened by too many supernatural or Fae living there, though at this point she could only speculate. However, that would make any agents operating from Liechtenstein particularly suspect.
“Right,” she said briskly, taking a few steps out of the old man’s earshot and gesturing Kai over with a wave of the newspaper. “We’re splitting up. I want you to find out everything you can about the Liechtenstein ambassador, his embassy, and his involvement in the current situation. I’ll check out Wyndham’s place. We’ll meet at the hotel in Russell Square—eight o’clock at the latest. Find some way to get a message to me there if you’re delayed.”
“Wait,” Kai said slowly. “You’re just sending me off, like that?”
“Of course,” Irene said firmly and tried to ignore her slight feelings of disquiet. “You were already competent when the Library recruited you. It won’t do either of us any good for me to keep you under my thumb all the time.” And it’ll drive me up the wall and onto the ceiling if I have to constantly operate with someone looking over my shoulder. “We need information as fast as possible. I’m relying on you. Do you have any problems with this?”
He looked at her
