The Masked City (The Invisible Library #2)(64)

Irene pushed herself forward, insinuating herself through the mob. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to a man with a tray full of pastries. ‘Pardon me.’ She circled round an elderly gentleman offering a set of supposedly holy relics, and found herself pressed up against one of the Train’s doors.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to nobody in particular, and tried the handle. It turned smoothly, and she stepped up inside the Train with a sigh of relief, quickly closing the door behind her.

It had changed. Now the corridor was all smooth ebony panelling and dark pewter metalwork, and the windows were shaded glass - so dark-toned that it was barely possible to see outside. And all sounds from outside were cut off. The flood of people ebbed and surged silently outside, their faces and hands like pale froth on the surface of a shadowy sea.

Irene took a deep breath. It was time to do something thoroughly reckless. ‘My name is Irene,’ she said in the Language. ‘I am a servant of the Library. I would like to speak with the Horse.’

Her words echoed in the carriage corridor like whip cracks and left a tense silence behind.

Come on, come on - at least be curious enough to find out what’s going on …

With a sound like an exhalation, the door at the far end of the corridor slid open, moving smoothly in its grooves. It was probably the closest thing to an invitation that she was going to get.

Irene began walking down the carriage towards it, but couldn’t reach it. The carriage was longer than it should be - not seemingly longer, but actually longer, stretching out without any clear markers of distance or space. She always seemed the same distance from the door, but never made any progress.

All right. Perhaps this was a test. Was it like every other Fae she’d had to deal with here, wanting to interact with her on its own terms? Through a fictional lens? As a story? But this time she was going to tell the story.

‘I know how these tales go,’ she said, still walking, slipping back out of the Language and into English again. ‘The woman buys nine pairs of iron shoes, and nine iron loaves, and nine iron staves, and she walks the length and breadth of the earth until the shoes are all worn through, and the staves are as thin as matchsticks, and she has eaten up every last scrap of the loaves, and only then does she find what she is looking for. But this is a different story.’

The door was abruptly ten paces closer. Still out of reach. But closer.

‘Once, in a long-distant state, there was a horse that galloped across land and sea … ‘ Irene began. She remembered the story well enough from Aunt Isra’s gathering. It was a standard myth, and that was part of its power. She kept on walking as she recited the story, and the door still stayed the same distance away: too far for her to reach, but close enough to tantalize.

Finally she came to the end. ‘From world to world he rides, from the gates of story to the shores of dream, until the world is changed and the horse is freed.’ She let the words hang in the air for a moment. ‘Until the horse is freed, the story says, which means that there must come a point when the horse is freed. And it must mean that the horse can be freed.’

The door jumped forward again in another blink of perspective. It was right in front of Irene now, almost close enough for her to walk through, but every step kept it one pace ahead of her.

Cold sweat trickled down her back. It’s listening to me. I’d better be able to give it what I’m promising, or this particular narrative is going to get very messy, very fast.

‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘in this story the heroine doesn’t necessarily know exactly how to free the horse. But the horse can usually point her in the right direction. Removing a collar, for instance, or undoing a bridle. And of course there’s usually a reason why the heroine wants to free the horse. You only get a kind-hearted heroine who unties the horse just because it looks unhappy in certain stories. I don’t think this is one of those stories.’

The door stayed at the same distance from her.

‘So, the story … ‘ Irene stopped walking. Without the sound of her footsteps, the corridor was even more ominously silent. ‘The young woman was in a strange land, and she looked around for help, for …’ It should have been her true love - that would have been one of the standard modes for a story of this type - but that wasn’t true of her and Kai. Even if there was wishful thinking on that subject. But that didn’t matter. She couldn’t risk a lie. Not if she was speaking in the Language.

‘The king’s son had been stolen, and she had come across land and sea to find him, in borrowed shoes and a borrowed dress, with no true friend at her side.’ The words stung in her mouth, true in their way, yet also just a story. It was like eating sherbet and feeling it pop in her mouth and rattle in her skull and ears. Her head was buzzing with it. ‘And she said, “I shall rescue him from the prison where they have kept him, and together we shall flee from his enemies and stop a war.” But she was sore afraid, for the whole city would rise to pursue them, once the king’s son was free from his prison.’

It was harder now. Irene had never tried this before, never thought of trying it before. But the Language was a tool, and her will was behind it, and this place was fragile, weak, easy to force. She wasn’t telling any lies. She was just telling the truth in a different way. ‘And as she walked down to the sea, she saw a chained and bridled horse, and said, “Would that I were as swift as you, so that we could escape!” And then the horse spoke to her, saying …’