Lokant (12 page)

‘Interesting,’ Angstrun
murmured, and she could only agree.

‘Keep an eye on this
one, Angstrun,’ she said. ‘Get her trained in beast control as well
as sorcery. And there might be more like her.’ She paused. ‘Get all
the white-haired children tested.’

He raised his heavy
black brows at her. ‘“All”? There might be as many as three true
white-hairs in the whole realm.’

‘Then find all
three.’

Later, after Susa and
her new friend had been dismissed, Eva sat comfortably in
Angstrun’s chair with her feet up on his personal footstool.
Rikbeek lay against her neck, shivering. She was cold, too. Didn’t
Angstrun use heating? Her gaze rested sightlessly at some spot on
the spotless ceiling as she considered.

She was remembering her
encounter with the two uncanny sorcerer-summoners in the Lowers.
The specific aberrations among their abilities had included a
degree of beast control that was normally impossible. Ana was a
strong summoner, but still it shouldn’t have been feasible for her
to reliably control a whurthag taken from the wild. Those creatures
- dark as night, fiercely violent and chillingly ice-eyed - had
been banned generations ago for their untameable ferociousness.

And as for her husband,
Griel, he was a sorcerer. Yet he, too, had manipulated whurthags
with ease, especially when he was in the Lowers.

Both had the same rare,
natural white hair as Susa. The same colour that Eva herself
shared. And she, too, had brought a whurthag under her control when
she’d had to. When Griel’s pet had threatened Tren, she had
protected him by dominating the creature herself.

To her surprise, she
had succeeded in bringing it under her control. It was tenuous; she
felt that, outside of the magic-enhancing atmosphere of the Lowers
- and without a draykon bone to amplify her strength - she would
have lost it.

But still. She could do
it. And, feeling the fledgling strength of the ten-year-old Susa,
she had little doubt that the girl would also be fearsomely strong
when she was grown.

Angstrun threw open the
door in the middle of her reflections, startling her. She turned a
level gaze on him as he crossed the room, stopping in front of
her.

‘That’s my chair.’

‘It’s mine now. At
least for the next few minutes.’

‘No it isn’t. Get
out.’

‘No. I’m comfortable.
Or I would be if it wasn’t so damned cold in here.’

He muttered something
and took the chair on the other side of the desk. His desk. ‘Right,
look. There’s only so much I can do with this without securing some
extra funding. We’re pretty stretched at the moment. Are you making
a report about this?’

Eva was silent for a
moment. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Darae. Think about this for a
moment. If I’m right - if Susa’s strength and her hair colour - her
heritage, let’s say - are linked, then we’d be training up a group
of people who can take on whurthags with impunity. And we’d be
making that public. I don’t want a whole group of people like Ana
on our hands.’

‘Spoken like a true
paranoid.’

She smiled briefly.
‘Believe me, if you’ve faced down Griel and a pair of whurthags
once, you don’t want to do it again. The ban needs to remain
untried for the moment. Just keep it quiet for now. Give them
whatever testing you can manage without giving them any ideas, and
without making it public. Let me know what comes up.’ She paused.
‘And keep an eye on Susa. I fear that one’s already had more
training than is good for her.’

Angstrun folded his
arms. ‘It can’t be kept from everyone. Certainly not from
Islvy.’

‘I’ll tell the
Guardian,’ Eva conceded. ‘But privately.’

Angstrun nodded. ‘How’s
Vale got on with finding your friends?’

Eva grimaced. Vale had
gone after Ana and Griel personally, but without any success; he
was still grumpy about it. ‘There was no trace of either of them in
Orstwych or Glour, though that wasn’t unexpected. He’s working on
Ullarn’s Sorcery and Summoning Schools to share their records.’

Angstrun’s lips
twitched. Eva could guess his thoughts. Ullarn’s magical academies
weren’t held in high regard elsewhere; like Irbel, Ullarn’s focus
was predominantly on engineering, and they allocated very few
resources to magical improvements. As a result, they usually lacked
sufficient sorcerers and summoners to maintain the necessary
magical infrastructures; but that didn’t bother them at all, as
they simply poached promising magical practitioners from the other
Darklands realms. That issue was a constant thorn in Angstrun’s
side.

Eva herself was more
annoyed by Ullarn’s lack of cooperativeness. They were secretive,
suspicious and sometimes outright unfriendly to the other realms,
and getting them to assist with anything was usually a difficult
task. ‘Vale will wear them down,’ Eva said confidently. ‘He’s used
to dealing with them.’

Angstrun abruptly
leaned forward. ‘Speaking of. You left pretty early the other
night.’

“Pretty early” was
putting it mildly. Lying in Angstrun’s house unable to sleep, Eva
had realised she’d made a mistake. It felt wrong, lying there with
Angstrun beside her, and suddenly her old friend’s house was the
last place she wanted to be. She had left well before moonrise,
when he was still deeply asleep.

‘Sorry,’ she said
mildly. ‘Early start that day.’

Angstrun glowered.
‘That’s not it, is it? Something tells me I won’t be enjoying any
more visits from you in the Cloaked hours.’

Eva sighed and sat up.
‘I think not, Darae. I’m sorry. I wanted... I
want
to be
able to go back to my twenties, when I could do as I pleased in
that respect and it didn’t matter. But it does matter, now.’

Angstrun looked sad,
but he didn’t argue. ‘You’re engaged, for the first time in your
life. Things are bound to change.’

Eva didn’t reply. It
was true that she’d changed; she felt that her life was in the
process of altering completely, and she couldn’t predict where it
would take her.

Because the part that
puzzled her the most was
why
she was changing. And the
reason she’d felt that sense of wrongness in Angstrun’s house
hadn’t been because of Vale. It had been someone else’s face she’d
been missing.

Leaving the Academy,
Eva had her carriage drop her a few circles away from her house and
proceed home without her. She felt in need of a walk. At least,
that was the reason she gave herself; underneath that she was oddly
reluctant to reach home.

She had not seen Tren
for two days. He had left her house immediately after Vale’s
unlooked-for arrival home, after which she had disgracefully
allowed herself to be distracted away from her promise to meet him
at the city library. She’d gone there the next day instead but this
time it was Tren who had not appeared. He had not turned up at her
house as had become his habit of late, nor had he replied to the
note she had sent him. His sudden absence and silence affected her
more profoundly than she liked to admit, and she feared arriving
home to find that, once again, nothing from Tren awaited her.

She hadn’t wanted to
agree to Vale’s pressure to hasten the wedding. But with him
standing before her, smothering her with affection and his familiar
face lit with hope and love, she hadn’t been able to refuse.

But for a sudden,
horrible moment, she’d wanted to.

And why? The marriage
had been her idea. She felt her approach to the years when her body
would lose the ability to create heirs; she felt the social
pressure for a woman in her position to marry and have a family;
she’d made a rational, clear-headed choice of partner for reasons
which were as true now as they’d ever been. Lord Vale was perfect
for her. A suitable age, suitable social status, suitable
personality. She had never been bothered with notions of whether or
not she loved him; she had no faith in the romantic notions that
ruled other people. Decisions made for such irrational reasons fell
apart later.

Nonetheless, now that
she was on the verge of carrying through her decision, something in
her insisted on rebelling. She felt drawn irresistibly in another
direction, and much as she tried to reject and repel it, the
attraction refused to be suppressed. She had a horrible feeling
that her heart, long under her rational and considered control, had
betrayed her at last.

But none of that should
matter. Particularly when the wholly unsuitable object of her
wayward affection was apparently unmoved by it. Tren’s manner was
almost unwaveringly cheerful, and he bantered with her more in the
manner of a comfortable friend than anything else. And when she’d
tried to tell him something of her feelings, he had merely
blabbered something nonsensical and smiled in his old way and
nothing had come of it.

Now he seemed to have
forgotten about her entirely. That hurt enough to warn her that she
was most definitely in trouble.

Reaching home, she
resolved on putting these reflections out of her mind. She had
enough to occupy her thoughts, more than enough; the matter of
Llandry and the other draykon remained unresolved, and she had a
new theory to pursue. She smiled at the servant who came to take
her coat as she stepped into the hall, and aimed resolutely for the
study.

‘This came for you,
m’lady,’ said Milyn with a curtsey, holding out a folded note. Eva
took it with a flutter of trepidation.

‘Thank you,’ she
murmured, taking the note with her into the study.

It was from Tren.

Lady Glostrum,

I have been called away
on an urgent matter and will therefore be unable to attend your
ceremony on the 12th. I wish you every happiness nonetheless.

At present I am unsure
when I will be able to return to Glour. Any urgent correspondence
may be left with Mrs Geslin in the meantime.

Yours etc.,

P. Warvel

Eva read this note
through three times, her puzzlement only increasing with each
perusal. The suddenness of it was peculiar. Only two days ago he
had been as involved in their research as she, and apparently as
enthusiastic; now he abandoned it entirely, for an unspecified
time, on account of an unnamed “emergency”?

He had been on
secondment to her for the last few weeks as her research aide, but
he was still technically employed by Angstrun. And her own Lord
Vale also utilised him from time to time as an investigator of
magical infractions. Perhaps one of them had sent him away on his
urgent errand? If so, they should have had the courtesy to inform
her first.

But maybe they had
nothing to do with it. Perhaps she’d simply been too forward, and
Tren had responded by taking himself beyond her reach. She was,
after all, more than ten years older than he was.

Thirteen,
said a
traitorous inner voice. Thirteen years. She would be forty in less
than two more years; he wouldn’t even reach thirty for another
five. She was being absurd. The prospect of committing herself to
marriage at long last was making her nervous, that was all, and the
result was one of those crises that sometimes affected people in
the middle phase of their lives. Perhaps it would pass.

She fervently hoped so,
for this uncertainty and doubt did not suit her at all. She
straightened her shoulders, dismissing the problem. Sanguine
confidence was much more comfortable: she pulled the semblance of
it around herself like a well-loved gown and went in search of
Vale.

She found him in the
conservatory. He was stretched out in her rocking chair, a paper in
his hand and the ambient light-globes turned up to their brightest
radiance. She blinked a few times as she entered, surprised by the
strong light.

‘Eyde,’ she greeted,
bending to kiss his cheek. ‘I’ve a question for you.’

‘You were a long time.’
Vale pulled her onto his lap, heedless of the fate of his
newspaper, and proceeded to kiss her thoroughly. Rikbeek gave a
squeak of protest as Vale’s embrace squashed his hiding place in
the folds of Eva’s skirt. She ignored him.

‘A question,’ she
repeated when she could speak again. ‘Tren works for you sometimes.
Did you send him on an errand lately?’

‘How lately?’ Vale had
that misty smile he often wore when he looked at her.

‘As in, the day before
yesterday.’

Vale shook his head.
‘He was working with you, wasn’t he?’

Eva wrinkled her nose,
disgruntled. ‘He
was
. He’s taken himself off somewhere on an
“urgent” errand. I was wondering if he’d been seconded away from
his secondment.’

‘Nothing to do with
me,’ Vale said. ‘But if we’re getting back to business, then here.
I have something for you.’ He rescued the crumpled newspaper and
handed it to her. She took one glance at the paper and all thoughts
of Vale, Tren and her upcoming wedding flew out of Eva’s head.

The front page boasted
an enormous picture of a patch of Glinnery forest. The wide caps of
glissenwol trees were depicted, and ghosting through the well-lit
skies above was a very large beast. The picture had only caught
part of the creature, but the general nature of it was obvious.
Scaled hide, clawed feet, wings of improbable size...

Skies Darken Over
Glinnery

The skies darkened over
Glinnery today when two winged reptilian creatures were spotted
flying over the city of Waeverleyne. Multiple sightings have been
reported, describing the creatures as larger than any other known
species. One of the beasts (pictured) was grey in colour and its
companion - an even larger animal! - was blue-green. The sightings
have caused widespread panic in the Glinnish capital, though there
has been no response at all from the Summoner Guild as yet. Do they
know more than they’re saying about these mysterious monsters?