The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library, #1)

by Genevieve Cogman

Clausewitz: no strategy ever survived contact with the enemy. Or, in the vernacular, Things Will Go Wrong. Be Prepared.

There were three basic reasons why Librarians were sent out to alternates to find specific books: because the book was important to a senior Librarian, because the book would have an effect on the Language, or because the book was specific and unique to that alternate world.

The Library runs on conspiracy theory. Admit nothing, deny everything, then find out what’s going on and publish a paper on the subject. It’s not as if they can stop you doing that.”

The room had the indefinable air of all museum collections, somehow simultaneously fascinating yet forlorn.

He looked almost human. He had scales in the hollows of his cheeks and on the backs of his hands, as fine as feathers or hair. He had claws, manicured to a mother-of-pearl sheen. He had horns. His eyes were like gems in his face. His skin was the colour of fire, and yet it seemed natural; my own skin was blotchy and dull in comparison.

An hour later, Irene was buttoning herself into a jacket and long skirt while Kai sat outside the dressing-room on a rickety chair and read through the dossiers. The cheap clothing shop Dominic had directed them to was certainly cheap, very definitely cheap, and had little that could be said for it other than the fact that it was cheap. If they were going to infiltrate high society, they’d need better clothing. And costumes that didn’t rely on heavy overcoats.

Irene looked unenthusiastically at the tattered partial wig that lay on the table like a mangy dark squirrel. “Wearing that thing’s going to cause

Irene strained her eyes, but she couldn’t make it out. “Kai,” she muttered, “can you see the design painted on that airship?” Kai raised his hand to shield his eyes and squinted. “There’s an eagle top left, in black and white on gold. Top right is a green crown on diagonal black and gold stripes. Bottom left is a vertically divided shield in red and white. And bottom right is some sort of harpy, again in black and white on gold. A hunting horn is right at the very bottom, with a horizontally divided shield in red and gold in the middle.”

Right now, she wanted nothing more than to shut the rest of the world out and have nothing to worry about except the next page of whatever she was reading.