“Yeah. Madame Coppelia”—he stressed the honorific slightly—“gave me the stuff. Didn’t look like much.”
Irene turned to face him. “If you wouldn’t mind?” she said, extending her hand.
Kai reached inside his jacket and pulled out a thin blue envelope. He handed it to her carefully, making the gesture courteous rather than a simple transfer. “There you go. Boss? Madam? Sir?”
“Irene will do,” she said. She hesitated for a moment, wishing she had a paper knife, but there wasn’t one to hand and she didn’t feel like showing Kai where she kept her hidden blade. With a slight wince at the inelegance, she ripped the envelope open and slid out a single piece of paper.
Kai didn’t actually lean forward to peer at the letter, but he did tilt his head curiously.
“Objective,” Irene read out obligingly. “Original Grimm manuscript, volume one, 1812, currently in London, parallel B-395: closest Traverse exit within the British Library, located inside British Museum, further details available from on-site Librarian-in-Residence.”
“Grimm?”
“Fairy tales, I imagine.” Irene tapped a finger against the edge of the paper. “Not one of my areas. I’m not sure why I’ve—why we’ve been assigned it. Unless it’s something you’ve experience in?”
Kai shook his head. “I’m not well up on the European stuff. Don’t even know which alternate that is. Do you think it’s something that’s unique to that world?”
That was a reasonable question. There were three basic reasons why Librarians were sent out to alternates to find specific books: because the book was important to a senior Librarian, because the book would have an effect on the Language, or because the book was specific and unique to that alternate world. In this last case, the Library’s ownership of it would reinforce the Library’s links to the world from which the book originated. (Irene wasn’t sure into which of the three categories her latest acquisition fell, though she suspected a case of “effect on the Language.” She should probably try to find out at some point.)
If this Grimm manuscript was the sort of book that occurred in multiple different alternate worlds, then it wouldn’t have warranted a specific mission from Coppelia. By the time senior Librarians had become senior Librarians, they weren’t interested in anything less than rarities. An ordinary book existing in multiple worlds would simply have shown up in someone’s regular shopping list, probably along with the complete works of Nick Carter, the complete cases of Judge Dee, and the complete biographies, true and false, of Prester John. The question of why some books were unique and occurred only in specific worlds was one of the great imponderables, and hopefully Irene would actually get an answer to it some day. When she was a senior Librarian herself, perhaps. Decades in the future. Maybe even centuries.
In any case, there was no point standing around guessing. Irene tried to phrase her answer to make it seem sensible rather than simply shutting Kai down in the first ten minutes of their acquaintance.
“Probably best to find out from the on-site Librarian, when we reach the alternate destination. If Coppelia hasn’t told you, and hasn’t told me . . .”
Kai shrugged. “As long as it gets me out of here, I’m not going to complain.”
“How long have you been here?” Irene asked curiously.
“Five years.” His tone was smoothed to careful politeness, like sea-worn stones. “I know it’s the policy to keep new people here till they’ve studied the basics and they’re sure we’re not going to do a runner, but it’s been five sodding years.”
“I’m sorry,” Irene said flatly as she tapped in a quick response to Coppelia’s email.
“Sorry?”
“Yes. I was born into the job. My parents are both Librarians. It probably made things easier. I always knew what was expected of me.” It was quite true; it had made things easier. She’d always known what she was being brought up to do. The years in the Library were rotated with years in alternates, and they’d gone by one after another, with study, practice, and effort and long, silent aisles of books.
“Oh.”
“I don’t expect that waiting has been . . . fun.”
“Fun.” He snorted. “No. Not fun. It was kinda interesting, but it wasn’t fun.”
“Did you like Coppelia?” She dispatched the email, then logged out neatly.
“I’ve only been studying under her for the last few months.”
“She’s one of the more . . .” Irene paused, considering what words she could use that wouldn’t get her into trouble later if repeated elsewhere. She personally liked Coppelia, but words such as Machiavellian, efficiently unprincipled, and ice-hearted didn’t always go down well in conversations.
“Oh, I liked her,” Kai said hastily, and Irene turned to look at him, surprised at the warmth in his voice. “She’s a strong woman. Very organized. Commanding personality. My mother would have liked her. If. You know. They never take people to work here with close living relatives, right?”
“No,” Irene agreed. “It’s in the rules. It’d be unfair to them.”
“And, um . . .” He looked at her from under his long eyelashes. “About those rumours that sometimes they make sure that there aren’t any close living relatives? Or any living relatives at all?”
Irene swallowed. She leaned across to turn off the computer, hoping that it’d hide the nervous gesture. “There are always rumours.”
“Are they true?”
Sometimes I think they are. She wasn’t naive. She knew that the Library didn’t always stick to its own rules. “It wouldn’t help either of us for me to tell you they were,” she said flatly.
“Oh.” He leaned back in his chair again.
“You’ve been here five years. What do you expect me to say?”
“I was kinda expecting you to give me the official line.” He was looking at her with more interest now. His eyes glittered in the dim light. “Didn’t expect you to hint it might be true.”
“I didn’t,” she said quickly. She slid the paper back into the envelope and slipped it into the pocket of her dress. “Here’s my first suggestion to you as your new mentor, Kai. The Library runs
