The Masked City (The Invisible Library #2)(66)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Irene strolled away from the crowd, trying to think of options besides the drastically overdone and hideously dangerous. Her preferred form of book heist - or, rather, borrowing - involved a significant amount of time scouting out the area first. Book-collecting activities (as opposed to dragon-rescuing undertakings) usually involved befriending people whom she could pump for information. She also regretted the lack of money with which to bribe guards, a good cover identity, an escape route and all the little things that made life so much easier.
She was just not used to operating on this sort of shoestring basis, and with no time to strategize. That was the hell of it. They’d have Kai on the auction block at midnight. And the chances of scoping out a top-secret prison in time seemed slim at best. Oh, perhaps a heroine might manage it, if the story was in her favour … but she couldn’t depend on that.
She watched the crowd and let herself reflect on what she’d just done. She’d made a pact with a Fae. Not just a convenient cooperative arrangement of the sort she’d organized with Silver, but an outright bargain, promised in the Language. She just hoped there wouldn’t be consequences from the Library. Young Librarians were always warned not to deal with the Fae at all, let alone make formal deals with them. And Irene hadn’t broken the letter of any ordinances - she hoped. She’d just jumped up and down on the spirit of them, then taken them down a dark alley and made some pointed suggestions at knife-point. Saving Kai and preventing a war might save her - but only if she was successful.
There were bells everywhere, echoing through the streets and along the canals, filling the air with sound. The people around her, both masked and unmasked, crossed themselves at particular notes, and Irene tried to match the action without too obviously copying it. The air was cooler, and decent women had drawn their shawls around their shoulders against the evening chill, while the more indecent women strutted with bared shoulders and nearly bared breasts. The last fragments of sunset streaked the sky with orange and pink, like folds of silk showing through a grey-velvet outer layer of cloud. This morning the city had seemed to float on the water, rising out of it like a particularly architectural Venus in pink-and-white marble. Here and now, as twilight gathered and people whispered, it seemed on the verge of sinking into the smoothly shifting reflections.
But there was more to it than that. With the evening came a more definite sense of suspicion within the crowded squares. Perhaps she’d been blind to it earlier, in the brilliant sunlight, surrounded by the daytime sounds of work and enthusiasm. But now in the twilight, with the bells echoing in a constant susurrus of minor tones, she felt … watched. Observed. Spied upon.
Eyes glinted behind masks, and people murmured to each other in corners. And every time she passed someone, she had an urge to look back and see if they were watching her.
Irene paused to buy a penny’s worth of sugared nuts from a street vendor and asked casually, ‘Which way is the opera house from here?’
‘Which one?’ the street vendor asked, tugging his apron straight with a weary sigh. ‘La Fenice?’
Yes, that was what Aunt Isra had said. And it was one of the biggest and most spectacular opera houses in Europe, in a large number of alternates. Where else would one auction off a dragon at midnight? ‘Yes, if you please,’ she said eagerly.
‘Ah, now that isn’t far,’ the vendor said, and rattled off a string of directions. ‘Say a prayer to the Virgin for me as you pass her church, young lady, and I hope that you have a good evening.’
Irene hoped so too, as she smiled behind the mask and continued on, tucking the packet of nuts into an inner pocket. She would gladly have eaten them, as she was feeling famished. But she couldn’t eat anything without removing her mask, and she didn’t feel like tempting fate that much.
As she came closer, she realized there was no chance of getting lost. She only had to follow the noise.
She heard the roaring crowd outside La Fenice well before she saw it. This was not one of those cities - such as the many versions of London - where people queued up politely before major cultural events. The mob was a heaving, swirling mass of people. Good. All the more cover for me. Soon she was lost in its wild enthusiasm, enthusiastic anticipation and anticipatory friendliness - all of it containing just a hint that things might go over the edge, if the crowd became too excited. Men in uniform surrounded the opera house and stood along the bank of the canal, and several nicer-than-usual gondolas displaying coloured pennants were moored alongside.
Irene was again grateful for her mask, and she was far from being the only masked person in the crowd. Both men and women, well dressed or more poorly clad, had covered their faces, and the last of the sunlight turned eye slits into dark, suspicious hollows.
She drifted inconspicuously into the rear of a medium-sized group of unmasked men and women who were sharing bottles of wine and loudly discussing the main singers in the night’s performance. ‘How long till it starts?’ she asked one of the men.
He squinted at her a little blurrily, passing his bottle to the woman next to him. ‘In five minutes, darling. They’re already tuning up for the overture. We won’t have a chance to get in until the interval. Were you waiting for someone?’
No chance of getting in round the front, then. She’d have to try the stage door around the back, or wait for the interval. And this must mean an actual opera was about to be performed - it was an opera house, after all. Maybe it was a warm-up for the auction to come? A bit of casual eavesdropping made it clear that the group was expecting Tosca, and gave her some additional information on the performers, their voices and their personal habits. ‘I think I see him over there,’ she murmured as she sidled away from them.