Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (51 page)

Laura skidded into the yard and pushed past Nown. She yelled, “Look out!” She didn’t even look back, just rushed to her family’s rescue. She banged through the back door, stumbled across the kitchen, skidding on mashed eggs, and fell through the kitchen doorway.

A man with a revolver jumped forward and seized her. He thrust the gun’s muzzle into her ribs. She twisted, and then a gap appeared beside her—the darkroom door had opened. The gunman’s grip loosened momentarily, and Laura flung
herself through the door, crashing into her uncle, who was saying, “I remembered where I put the spare key.” Then,
“Ouch”
as she trampled him, though he didn’t sound very perturbed.

Laura crashed into the worktable and turned to see what was coming. For an instant the doorway was full of the Body man, his gun raised and pointed right at her, then a shadow slammed into the man, snapping him in the middle so that his knees bashed his head. The doorway was empty.

Laura emerged to find Nown standing over the felled man. Nown was still, erect and calm, not like a combatant but like a ceremonial sentry. He said, “I have rendered them unconscious.” He’d clearly dealt the same way with her pursuer.

From the street Laura heard an unmistakable noise—the squeal Rose used to make as a child when she was angry about not getting her own way. Laura looked for the revolver. She picked it up and went to the door. She peered out.

Plasir was struggling with Rose, who’d sat down like a stubborn toddler and was kicking her legs.

There was a barge out on the Sva. The man at its wheel was watching the struggle. Laura heard him shout, “Hey! You there!”

Laura ran down the front steps, hurried up to Plasir, and pointed the gun at him.

Rose stopped struggling and stared at Laura with big eyes. “He’s a nasty little thing, but I don’t think you should shoot him, Laura,” she said.

“She won’t,” said Plasir. His eyes were darting about, between the gun, the barge, and the door to Laura’s house. “What did you do with those Body men?”

“I shot them,” Laura said, and eased the hammer back a little.

Plasir released Rose and backed away, his hands raised. “I didn’t hear any shooting,” he said, but looked uncertain.

“Don’t go another step,” Laura said. “You are to come with me.”

“You won’t shoot me.” Plasir continued to edge away. “There are too few of you,” he said. “You can’t win. You’d better just leave the city.”

Laura raised her voice, and called, “Nown!”

Rose said, “Oh—your monster! Do you have him again?” She cackled and shook her finger at Plasir, then gaily began to call too, “Nown!” Nown!”

Nown came along the embankment. He noticed the agitated barge man, gave him a wave with his gloved hand, then advanced on Rose, Laura, and Plasir. Laura kept her eye on Plasir, who saw that the reinforcement she’d summoned was a man bigger than he was. He turned to run.

Nown went by Laura, gently relieved her of the gun, then closed on Plasir, caught him in a few swift bounds, pinned him, picked him up, and carried him back to the house.

Laura put her arm around her cousin, helped her up, and followed.

Plasir had gone completely limp. Nown carried him to the darkroom, took the key from Chorley, and put Plasir inside. Laura saw that Plasir was shocked and passive. He was staring at Nown, trying to penetrate all the wrappings to see why the body that had grappled him had been so unnaturally hard. He peered but seemed to wince away too, as though, much as he wanted to know what was under the wrappings, he was also afraid of knowing.

Nown picked up the unconscious official and put him in the darkroom too. He closed the door and locked it.

“Who is this?” Chorley said to Laura. “Why is he wearing
all that? Is it snowing?” Then, distracted, “Rose, your robe is torn.”

Laura took her uncle’s arm. “Let’s get something to eat and drink. My friend here will check on Da and bring Rose a clean robe.”

“All right,” said Chorley, and contentedly went with his daughter and niece into the kitchen.

A few minutes later Nown came through the room, handed Rose a robe, and said, “No, thank you, I’m a little busy,” to Chorley’s friendly offer of a cup of tea. Then he went out into the yard, returning with the other unconscious man. He disappeared with his bundle into the hallway, this time to stay out of range of Chorley’s happiness-hampered but still too lively curiosity.

At three in the afternoon, Father Roy turned up with several cars as an escort. Laura let him in and showed him her father, Rose, and Chorley, who had opened every can and jar of preserves and were at the kitchen table enjoying a long, large, messy lunch. She told Roy about Plasir and the two unconscious officials locked in her uncle’s darkroom. She handed over the revolvers. “I’m putting all this in your hands,” she said. “I have a dream that will clear space in Doran’s grid of Contentment. I only want to get my family back. Please, can you tell someone to meet Aunt Grace when she comes out of the Place? Can you bring her to me so that she can be safe too? The dream she’s gone to catch isn’t a master dream.”

Father Roy sat down at the kitchen table and spoke in a very gentle voice to Chorley, Tziga, and Rose. “Come on, we’re all going for a ride.”

“If I’m going out, I should get dressed,” Chorley said.

“Naturally. Let’s see how quick you can be,” Father Roy said.

“Race you!” shouted Rose to her father. They jumped up, jostled each other into the hall, and thumped up the stairs.

“I’m an invalid,” Laura’s father said, and drew his robe protectively around himself. “I’m excused from making efforts.”

Laura closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

Father Roy summoned his escort, unlocked Chorley’s darkroom, and manhandled Plasir and the one limp and one groggy official to the cars outside. He then went back to the darkroom and gathered up an armload of film canisters, including the one the Body officials had located. “I’m taking all these in case we need decoys at some stage,” Father Roy said.

Laura was alarmed. “Didn’t the Commission reconvene today? Isn’t this almost
over?”
Her throat began to hurt. She was going to cry again.

“No. That’s why we missed you when you came to find us. His Eminence and I were cooling our heels at the Palace of Justice. When your uncle and father didn’t turn up with you, we simply imagined you’d gotten word.”

“Word of what?”

“Word that the meeting was postponed because the convening judge, Seresin, was ‘unavailable.’”

“No,”
said Laura. “No. This can’t go on. Someone has to put a stop to it.”

Chorley and Rose came downstairs. He looked very spruce, as usual, but reeked of cologne. Laura could see that his jacket was dewed with it. Rose had her shirt buttoned up wrong and was wearing all her favorite necklaces—amber, coral, carved ivory, crystals, jet, pearls—together. She said, “I ate so much I had to be sick.” She spoke in a loud whisper, perhaps meaning to speak only to Laura.

Chorley looked at the stack of films in Father Roy’s arms. “Are we having a screening?”

Laura went to get her father, and while she was in the kitchen she poked her head around the back door and told Nown to follow her. “There are steps down to the river around three sides of the Temple. You’ll be able to find a place to hide. My task now is to sleep and take care of Da and Uncle Chorley and Rose.” She spoke to the space between his hat and the top fold of his scarf. His glassy surface was in shadow, and, without reflected light, the visible segment of his head was just an absence, something watery rather than airy on which the hat seemed to float.

“There were weapons,” Nown said. “When there are weapons, I should stay at your side.”

“I don’t feel safe without you, true. But I think I
am
safe at the Grand Patriarch’s Palace. And his people need my protection.”

“Yes,” said Nown.

Behind Laura, Father Roy said, “Miss Hame, we should go.”

Laura gave Nown a beseeching look, then pushed the door shut.

She helped Father Roy get her father up. Tziga walked, slow and shaky, leaning on both of them. As they went along, he said to Laura, “The thing about this dream, darling, is that even though the man is blissfully pleased with himself, it’s the wasps eating the apricots that are most
present.
Those wet shells of fruit still hanging on the branches. It’s as though the dream uses the man’s eyes like a camera to show us something more real than the story he’s telling himself about what a fine person he is.”

“Da!” Laura was floored by surprise and admiration. “You’re yourself.”

“Not really. But I am a dreamhunter.”

Laura kissed her father’s hand.

“Also—when Rose and I were bouncing the eggs, I had a seizure. Didn’t she tell you?”

“She didn’t.”

“She and Chorley must have carried me up to bed. The fit seemed to shake the dream loose a little.”

Father Roy helped Tziga into his car. Laura climbed in beside her father and cuddled up to him. She whispered, “The dreams
are
memories, Da, like Uncle Chorley always thought. Human memories from a time in the future. But the Place itself uses them to try to talk. It shows us what
it
finds meaningful.”

Laura’s father peered at her, puzzled.

“The Place is a Nown, Da.”

Tziga opened his mouth but didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally he said, “Whose?”

“I don’t know.”

6

N TUESDAY MORNING LAURA WOKE FROM A LONG, REPEATED CYCLE OF THE GATE. SHE OPENED HER EYES. SHE FELT
her whole body breathe in and exhale the dream’s radiance. Then the person beside her in bed said, “Am I where I think I am?”

Laura sat up and studied Rose. Her cousin looked affronted. She lifted the covers and said, “You let me get into bed wearing shoes.”

“Sorry,” said Laura. “It was an emergency.
You
were an emergency.”

“I certainly was,” Rose said, with feeling. Then, “Who can I sue? Who can I kill? Show me my enemies and I will burn them to the ground!” She propelled herself out of bed, then had to throw the blankets over her head and burrow in the covers for a shoe.

Someone knocked on the tall double doors of the gloomy bedchamber. A nun put her head around the door and said if they would wash and dress she would see them in to breakfast.

Rose began to straighten herself out. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. She rubbed her mouth, which was still crusted with food. She found a mirror and inspected the crocodile skin on her neck, the indentations of all the beads
she was wearing. Then she stood stock-still. “You pointed a gun at Maze Plasir!” she said. And then, in an elated squawk, “You have your monster back! He was dressed like a cabbie on a cold night. He
scragged
Plasir!” She laughed.

“Come on,” Laura said. “I want to hear what the adults are planning. Dear God—let them have a plan.”