The Masked City (The Invisible Library #2)(93)

She saw failure in that moment. Unless she remembered something.

Abandoning one precious handhold, she raked her fingers against a join in the roof’s metal panelling until she felt a raw edge snag her skin and draw blood. Then she reached into her bodice, finding the pendant that Kai’s uncle had given her, and dragged it over her head. The chain caught in her tangled, matted hair and she had to tug to get it free. What had he said?

… place a drop of your blood on this and cast it to the winds …

Irene folded her grazed hand around the pendant. But nothing happened. There were no dramatic changes of temperature, no glowing lights - nothing. Some sort of sign would have been nice.

Please let this work, Irene thought, and threw the pendant out into the darkness beyond. It glinted for a moment in her vision, perhaps a spark of brightness from the silver chain, and then it was gone.

She continued to crawl down the Train.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX



Four painstakingly counted carriages later, each one of them a dance with death as the Train swayed and bucked, Irene decided she must be there.

Now she needed to check the interior of the carriage. But fortunately the old cliche was true: people never did look up. And they wouldn’t be able to hear her up here, either. She positioned herself over the nearer trapdoor, locked her grip firmly and shouted, ‘Trapdoor, turn transparent.’

The steel complied. Inside it looked positively cosy, in a dark, steely sort of way. Possibly it was the warm light of the gas-lamps, and the contrast from carriages-worth of cold, dark crawling. Her angle of vision also, most importantly, gave her a clear view of Vale and Kai. Both had been tied hand and foot, with their wrists behind their backs. They were on the floor at her end of the carriage, and they both seemed unconscious. Sterrington was standing over them, a naked pistol in her hand, in a posture suggesting that she’d shoot them at the least provocation. She looked, for want of a better word, ruffled. So Irene’s first move must be to neutralize Sterrington, and her gun.

The Guantes were further down the carriage, towards the far end. Lord Guantes was seated, frowning intensely at the hostages, his focus on them almost palpable. Look away, instinct prompted Irene, and she forced herself to watch Lady Guantes instead. The woman was pacing slowly from side to side of the compartment, placing one grey-slippered foot deliberately in front of the other. She was entirely dry. (Unlike Lord Guantes, whose fine velvets showed traces of damp.) Her silk gown swished around her ankles as she walked, and her fur cape was drawn tightly around her shoulders; her gloved hands tightened on its edges as she said something that Irene couldn’t hear.

‘Trapdoor, return to your normal state. And thank you,’ Irene shouted as quietly as she could. She didn’t know how much licence she’d been given to use the Language, but she wasn’t taking any risks. She flexed her hands one at a time, to get some feeling back as she readied herself. All right. Her situation was pretty dire. But she had the element of surprise, and the Language. And a gun.

Although Sterrington also had a gun. And Lady Guantes and Lord Guantes might be armed too.

Perhaps she should make sure that nobody had guns …

Irene inched backwards to where two carriages met. The join was walled and roofed with canvas, swaying alarmingly with each movement of the Train. Fortunately, she didn’t need to navigate it, as there was actually a ladder down the side of the carriage. She was out of the wind as she clung there, and she scraped her tangled hair back from her face so that she could see clearly.

The connecting sections opened onto the carriage corridors, rather than the interior compartments. And the corridor would be filled with guards, according to Zayanna and Atrox Ferox. But they wouldn’t expect her to burst through the compartment wall - if she had enough adrenaline left to muster the appropriate Language. The butt of Atrox Ferox’s gun was cold in her sweating hand.

‘Train wall in front of me,’ she shouted, ‘open like a door and allow me to enter the carriage beyond. Then close.’

To her relief, the metal in front of her swung open compliantly, and she stepped into the carriage, just a yard behind Sterrington and the prisoners. She stumbled at the sudden cessation of pressure and wind. But Sterrington was already turning and raising her gun, Lady Guantes was whirling, her hand moving beneath her cape, and Lord Guantes was standing. Irene bowled Atrox Ferox’s gun down the compartment, straight at the Guantes.

‘Guns,’ she shouted, as Sterrington levelled her pistol at her, ‘explode!’

The carriage rang with the thunderclap, and the Train shook.

It was messy. There was no way it couldn’t be. Sterrington shrieked in pain as the gun in her hand shattered in a bloom of flame. She clutched at her bloody wrist, trying to stop the flow of blood, bone showing white through the bleeding flesh of her savaged hand.

Lord and Lady Guantes were both getting up from the floor. Atrox Ferox’s gun had exploded much more violently than Sterrington’s, but they weren’t as close to it. All that was left of the weapon was a charred patch, like an exotic stain, which stood out against the grey-draped back wall. Fragments of metal had ripped into the cushions of the chairs and into the thick carpet, and had scarred the dark panes of the windows.

But both the Guantes looked unharmed, beyond some damage to their clothes. Whatever Lady Guantes had under her cape, it wasn’t a gun. A knife, perhaps. Irene didn’t think she was the sort of woman to go unarmed.