Irene shifted her position so that she was sitting on the side of the bed. It made her feel slightly less vulnerable. ‘I do, your majesty, but I’m not sure what it’s politic to ask – and what I should pretend I never knew.’
Ya Yu raised her hand to her mouth, hiding her smile behind a trailing sleeve. Her presence was subdued now, not weighing down on Irene as much as it had been in the throne room. ‘This is a private audience, child. It’s the meeting where we decide what you should forget about and never mention again. That would be difficult if you can’t talk about it now.’
This was all pointing towards a relatively optimistic outcome, Irene tried to convince herself. Except for Kai . . . ‘So the Library is cleared of collusion or theft?’
‘There were no such charges in the first place,’ Ya Yu said blandly. ‘There was an internal inquiry in my court, in the course of which two Librarians were requested to provide information. They generously and disinterestedly did so. The Library itself was not involved. Am I correct?’
Irene mentally reviewed the precise meaning of disinterested – not influenced by personal considerations, neutral, uninvolved – and decided she could live with that. ‘I believe my superiors would agree with you,’ she said carefully. ‘Though since this is your court’s internal business in any case, it wouldn’t be a subject for general discussion.’
‘It’s certainly not going to be for general discussion,’ Ya Yu agreed. ‘But the families involved will need to be made aware of the facts.’
Irene didn’t want to raise the question, but she needed an answer. ‘Will the Winter Forest family hold a grudge against the Library, for the way events turned out?’
‘I’ve ordered them not to,’ Ya Yu said crisply, ‘and Qing Song himself apologized for his errors. I think they’re more likely to avoid Librarians than seek revenge.’
‘You ordered them, your majesty? That was very generous of you towards the Library.’
‘I am far older than Jin Zhi or Qing Song,’ Ya Yu said, ‘and certainly older than Hu. I know better than to discount the Library. I know what you do to stabilize our realms, and why. And while I will certainly take advantage of you if you put yourself in my debt, child, I do not wish to make you my enemy. Or the Library.’
‘Nor we you, madam,’ Irene said quickly. She chose not to think about the fact that Ya Yu apparently considered her worth personal mention. ‘If I may ask – what happened to Hu?’
Ya Yu’s face drew into rigid lines, and her eyes glinted red with personal offence. ‘I have spared him, for the moment, in case you wished to be present at his execution . . .’
Irene tried not to pale at the thought. ‘No, your majesty. I don’t.’
‘Then he will be returned to the Winter Forest family, to answer for his actions towards his master.’
Which was probably the worst fate Irene could wish on him.
‘You have time for one more question,’ Ya Yu said, watching her.
Irene weighed her options and decided to chance it. ‘Your majesty, did you intend for Jin Zhi and Qing Song . . . well, for anything to happen between them while they were trying to find that book for you?’
Ya Yu was silent for a long moment, giving Irene all the time in the world to reflect on how she might just have said exactly the wrong thing, and to calculate her chances of walking out of this room alive.
Finally the Queen said, ‘It would have resolved certain difficulties between their families if they could have found an . . . original solution to the situation. I reward solutions that work, Irene Winters. I was aware of their previous relationship. If they’d come to me together with the book, then I would have found some way to reward them both. As it is, I have lost one servant and another is mourning him. But I have you to thank that matters are not worse.’
Ya Yu had assumed her role as queen again. The previous intimacy, fragile as it had been, was gone. So Irene rose to her feet and bowed. ‘Thank you for your time, your majesty. I am glad this issue has been resolved in a manner agreeable to both sides.’
At the back of her mind she wondered: if Qing Song had successfully manipulated Evariste and found the book, then would the Queen have punished him? Or would she have approved it as a solution that worked? And what would the consequences have been for the Library? Irene locked the thought away. After all, she wanted to leave this place alive.
She was more tired than she had thought possible. It wasn’t just the weariness of recovering from a near-fatal wound: it was an exhaustion of the soul. She was tired of playing politics, of walking a knife’s edge between danger for herself and danger for the Library. She wanted to get back to her books, to go back to being a Librarian. And she knew, with a cold, truthful bitterness, that she had cared about Kai. And she was going to keep on caring about him for a very long time – now that she’d lost him.
Ya Yu acknowledged the bow. ‘One of my servants will show you to a castle library. If you can’t reach your own Library from there, then she will escort you to another world where you can do so. Oh, and ask your superiors if you will lend me that copy of the Journey to the West.’ She smiled as she left. ‘They do have two copies now, after all. And I still want to read it again.’
The attendant who appeared a few minutes later led Irene to a set of interconnected rooms, which almost had Irene wishing she could stay a bit longer. The shelves brimmed with interesting possibilities, neatly stacked scrolls and well-organized books.
But with a nod of thanks to the servant, she touched a nearby door and said, ‘Open to the Library.’
This was the highest-order world that Irene had ever visited. It was set in its ways, rigid and unchanging. It didn’t want to obey the Language at all. But right at this precise moment, Irene wouldn’t allow it to refuse. Her brows came together in a frown and she wrapped her hand around the door handle, focusing her will on her own connection to the Library, on her certainty that all libraries could reach the Library and that this one was no exception.
The wood of the door shuddered and then relaxed, and she knew the connection had formed.
She opened the door and stepped through, closing it behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Irene managed to reach Vale’s world a few hours later, after writing a number of reports and changing her clothing to something more appropriate. She hadn’t yet been summoned by Coppelia or Melusine or any other senior Librarians to explain herself in person, so she’d decided to slip off to her current world of residence before any of them could demand an interview. There had been a very brief note of thanks from Evariste. He’d managed to combine gratitude with a subtext of hoping that he’d never need her help again. She couldn’t blame him.