The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman Read Free Book Online Page B

blazed whitely in the ceiling, but the soft cotton of the quilts muted the effect, making the room more tolerable.
    Curiously she pulled one of the quilts away from the wall. Behind it there were shelves of books, their spines in a mixture of English, Swedish and German, with titles such as
Little Sod House on the Prairie, Vigilante Stories of New Gothenburg
and
Runestones of North America
. There was no explanation for why the quilts were covering them. Then again, there was often no reason for the Library’s architecture or furnishings.
    Outside the room, the brass plaque on its door read:
B-133 - NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE-20TH CENTURY - SECTION FIVE
. Not a room she recognized. And she found herself in a corridor both paved and walled in blue-and-white marble, with shuttered windows that would have been too high to see out of anyway. To her right was a flight of stairs, leading downwards. To her left was a simple bend in the corridor.
    This was the problem - well, one of the problems - with coming through on a random Traverse. There was no way to be sure where you would emerge. What she needed, as fast as possible, was a room with a computer where she could look up Lady (and possibly Lord) Guantes. She also required a local library map, so that she could locate a wall slot into which she could deposit the Stoker book and fulfil the request - the Library’s version of internal post. She hurried down the corridor, noting the decor in case she came this way again. The blue markings lay within the white marble like midnight-blue ink stains, and she had to restrain the urge to rub one of them to see if it would smudge.
    I am still far too easily distracted.
    Two turnings later she came to a couple of doorways, with a deposit slot between them. With a sigh of relief she opened her attache case and dropped in the envelope containing the book. One job done. Now she could get down to some serious research.
    The doorway on her left bore the plate:
B-134 - BELGIAN GRAPHIC NOVELS - 20TH CENTURY - SECTION ONE
. She pushed it open to look inside and was relieved to see a computer on the table. An overweight orange cat was curled up on the chair, feigning sleep. With barely a glance at the thickly shelved walls - and the occasional brightly displayed front page of a moon-bound rocket or a set of dwarfish mummies - she pushed the cat off the chair with a mumbled apology, sat down and logged in.
    She scanned her list of personal emails, rated them all as non-essential and ignored them. There was nothing from her mentor Coppelia, and nothing from her parents. Everything else could wait.
    Instead she brought up the
Encyclopaedia
function. It was supposed to be a general compendium of information from Librarians in the field in alternate worlds. In practice, although better than nothing, the information was patchy - Fae and dragons often inconveniently used false names.
    Guantes
, she typed in.
    One record came up, twenty years old. Irene resisted the urge to do a fist-pump in the air, and clicked on it.
    Moderate-power Fae. Masculine, usually claims to be a member of the aristocracy and titles himself Lord. Capable of travel between worlds. His archetypal aspects include: power, manipulation, control, leadership. The reader will have observed that his name is the Spanish word for ‘gloves’ and may find this indicative of a tendency to subtlety and manipulation.
    Irene glanced at the name of this entry’s author.
Rhadamanthys
. His status was marked as
deceased
. Damn, no way to ask him questions now.
    Originally encountered on G-112.
[A Gamma-type world, which meant it had both magic and technology.]
The world was neutral at the time, with both forces of chaos and order present. Guantes was fomenting an aristocratic rebellion against the Holy Roman Emperor. The latter was supported by another powerful Fae called Argent. During the power struggle between the two, the Empire fell and a Byzantine theocracy backed by a dragon princess came