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The carriage tued at it The three of the the stop on its side Black Tha off all light, butit only barely possible for the three of them to see each other
‘The usual protocol in these cases is to wait until we are fully subed, then open ato equalize the water pressure, and swim up to the surface,’ Vale stated Irene could hear the sheer control in his voice, over the creaking of the carriage and the slow trickling sound of water ‘But if that person has sealed the carriage, given that I could not break theearlier, this tactic would be ineffective’
Right She had to explain to Vale about Alberich She owed his now But as the point, if they were just going to die – well, it did remove the need for justifications Yet there were other ways of dodging that sort of thing, and she was avoiding the subject again And the water was pressing down, and they were all going to die
He doesn’t just want us dead He wants us dying in fear, in the dark, and slowly This isn’t just wanting to get us out of the way, so he can work undisturbed It’s malice, pure and simple
She had been afraid She had been so very afraid that she’d been cringing in the corner, unwilling to speak, let alone act But now so else woke in her
I will not tolerate this
‘Then we’re just going to have to find a way to break it,’ Irene said She forced herself to lean forward ‘What onethe words th
‘But you can’t touch his ic!’ Kai said ‘When it infected you before it nearly killed you!’
She wished that she had tih callove off her daot an idea’
‘Would you care to explain?’ Vale invited tensely
‘I was attacked by the same forces he used earlier,’ Irene said She could feel the cold water soaking into her slippers and stockings, curling up around her ankles ‘If I can identify the, and we can swiood’ Vale eased himself further back in his seat Perhaps it was only the di to position his out later She’d explain things later Right now she just had to ers a fraction of an inch away from theand focused – away froe with her, and into a world where language structured reality
It was a fact that Alberich controlled and used chaotic forces The chaotic forces must therefore be discrete and identifiable But she had no words in the Language for these forces, and she could only control what she could name or describe
However, she could na that the Librarians did very often Oh, certainly if you had a broken left ar, ‘My left tibia is in fact not fractured but perfectly whole’ But while your tibia ht obey, your muscles would still be torn and any wound would still be open Unless you could na, you would probably end up with a partly healed wound that would beit heal in the normal way While some Librarians went in for that level of detail, and were very sought-after, Irene was not one of them
But a person, especially a Librarian, could be nale entity She bore the Library’s e If she could enforce that strongly enough, deliberately enough, there would be no space for the chaos forces inside her Without that to contend with, she could finally access her full powers as a Librarian
This was not soain, she’d never been infested to this degree before Only ierous, untested, theoretical techniques, otherwise ht of this earlier
Her life was far too full of learning experiences
Before she could lose her nerve, she shaped the words with her lips, barely audible, speaking in the Language ‘I am Irene: I am a Librarian: I am a servant of the Library’
Her brand burned across her back as she enforced her will But she felt curiously distanced froone In a flash of insight, she realized that would be disastrous What she felt in her was the conflict between self-definition and the contanore it She had to embrace it
But it hurt She heard her breath catch, the sound strange in her ears
‘Irene?’ Kai said, his voice concerned It was too dark to see hi spoiled food, the chaos power ca out of her She tried not to think of the buffet earlier that evening (salmon, mussels, crab, soup, little prawns in sauce) and failed It spilled froers in waves of shadow that rippled in the air – and like any living thing, it looked for shelter, for soh the narrow span of air, and crackled into the glass Irene had just enough time to wonder if she should juoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">