Lokant (3 page)

‘I’m sorry to have
abandoned you to the job,’ she said. ‘I might have come in sooner,
only I was expecting a visit from you.’ Her gaze grew questioning
and he coughed, uncomfortable. He had asked her permission to visit
her at home, and she had granted it, but her obvious surprise at
the request had dismayed him. In the end, he had not had the
courage to go.

‘I was - well, busy. I
wanted to be able to bring you a stack of information to
peruse.’

‘Admirable focus, but
you ought to eat once in a while as well. Somebody once told me
that’s a good idea.’ She smiled and he smiled back, remembering how
he’d had to encourage her to eat at the end of their adventures.
‘Why don’t you dine with me today?’ she continued.

‘Oh... that’s kind of
you, but I really couldn’t.’

‘Please,’ she
interrupted. ‘Don’t think I’m taking pity on you. Vale is out of
the city this week and I’m terribly lonely.’

He knew that was
nonsense. A woman of her popularity could have any number of
companions at her disposal whenever she chose. But it was a
kindness, and with those beautiful dark blue eyes fixed on him he
couldn’t possibly refuse.

‘Magnificent,’ she
enthused. ‘I’ll send the carriage for you. Shall we say an hour
before moonset?’

‘No!’ he said,
horrified. ‘I mean, thank you but that won’t be necessary. I am
quite capable of walking.’

She waved a hand
dismissively. ‘As you wish. But don’t be late! I’ve much to discuss
with you.’ He watched as she walked to the door and left, taking
her perfect figure and her distressingly beautiful face with her.
He let out a slow breath, then set about returning all the books to
their shelves. If he was to have time to clean himself up properly,
he had to hurry.

Tren arrived at Lady
Glostrum’s mansion promptly an hour before moonset. In fact he had
been at least half an hour early, but he’d walked twice around
Fifth Circle before presenting himself at his hostess’s door. He
wouldn’t wish to appear too eager.

He was thoroughly
groomed and dressed in his best coat, a dark blue garment that had
attracted the praise of more than one of his female acquaintances.
Having warred with himself for some time over whether or not to
take flowers, he had at length settled on taking a modest bunch of
elegant white dusk lilies. He did his best to stifle a flutter of
nerves as he rang the bell of the extremely handsome, four-storey
house.

He waited, trying to
suppress a feeling of inadequacy. He had no business appearing at
houses like this; his mother was a shop keeper and his father had
been only a minor sorcerer who had worked as a lamp-lighter for
most of his life, maintaining the light-globes that lit the streets
of their home town of Glaynasser. Tren’s powerful talent for
sorcery had been a surprise, and they had worked tirelessly to
finance his training. Now he was among Glour City’s strongest
sorcerers, with a well-paid job as an aide to Lord Angstrun, the
Chief Sorcerer. But in terms of lineage he was nothing; he had very
little real status. And now he was mixing with Glour’s highest and
finest citizens, a fact which delighted his mother but which
troubled him. He was finding it increasingly hard to determine
where he belonged.

It certainly wasn’t
here. He might have left, save that Eva’s face rose in his mind,
wearing an expression of welcome, and his resolution dissolved.
Before he had time to consider the idea further, the door finally
opened and Lady Glostrum herself appeared.

‘I’m so terribly
sorry,’ she said, ushering him inside. ‘Most of my servants have a
few hours off today, but I thought Miriom was in this part of the
house. Never mind. Will you have tea?’ Her face softened into a
surprised smile as he awkwardly presented her with the lilies.

‘How kind,’ she
murmured, putting them up to her nose. ‘I wasn’t expecting
gifts.’

Moments later he found
himself seated in a handsome drawing room, sipping tea out of an
expensive porcelain cup and trying not to stare at his hostess. He
couldn’t go so far as to conclude that she had dressed up for his
benefit, but she had changed out of her earlier, most practical
attire and her gown was now decidedly finer. Her shoulders were
largely bare and she appeared to be wearing some kind of
waist-defining corset. Her unusual snow-white hair was, as ever,
perfectly arranged and her slightly slanted eyes were animated as
she talked. In this grand attire she was more alluring than
ever.

He began to feel that
his coming might have been a mistake.

She was speaking of
Lord Vale, Glour’s Chief Investigator and her fiance. With an
effort of will, he smiled and asked, ‘So, when is the wedding to
be?’

Her smile faded
immediately. ‘It has not been possible to set a date. I am too much
engaged with business and Eyde also is busy. At present he is
following up some leads that have emerged about the istore thefts
that occurred last moon. We are hoping he may uncover something to
lead us back to Ana and Griel.’

The subject change was
so smoothly done it was impossible to track backwards from it. Tren
resigned himself to a great deal of talk about business and very
little conversation about her.

They were halfway
through the second course of a magnificent dinner when Eva began to
speak of Glinnery. What she said electrified him.

‘How can you possibly
have been in Glinnery for a few
days?
’ He stopped eating to
stare at her.

‘There are some new
technologies emerging from Irbel,’ she replied. ‘Unfortunately I
have already sent the spectacles back to Ynara; I would have liked
to show them to you. However, more importantly I learned some few
interesting things.’ He didn’t interrupt as she related her
conversations with Ynara and the Elder’s guest, Devary Kant.

‘I’ve a new task for
you, if you’ll accept it,’ she said when she’d finished.

‘Anything.’

‘The books we took from
Griel’s hall. I had hoped to have time to study them thoroughly
myself, but so far that hasn’t been the case. I’d like you to take
over.’

That caught his
attention. When they had searched the hall that had held the
draykon skeleton, they had discovered some unusual books that
neither had ever heard of before. Tren had carried them away, but
it was Eva who had taken them home. He hadn’t seen them since.
‘With the greatest pleasure,’ he said, then winced inwardly. He was
instinctively mimicking Eva’s smooth, high class speech, which was
intolerable. Talking like her would not make him part of her set.
‘I’d love to,’ he added. ‘I’ve been dying to find out what’s in
them.’

‘Excellent! I’ve put
them in the study. We’ll look at them after dinner.’

He nodded, wishing
dinner was already over. He felt uncomfortable in this large, grand
dining room, and it was hard to enjoy the meal when he was far too
reprehensibly preoccupied with watching her eat. She did so with
great delicacy and correctness, as if he was somebody of rank,
worth impressing. But what really absorbed his attention was the
way her full lips closed around the silver fork as she took each
piece of food. She caught him watching and he cursed his face as it
immediately flushed with embarrassment.

‘Are you not hungry?’
She gestured at his virtually untouched plate.

‘No,’ he admitted.
‘What I need, I think, is sleep.’ Eva immediately rang a bell, and
when a neatly-dressed servant appeared she whispered a few words in
the girl’s ear. The food was swiftly cleared away and Eva rose from
the table.

‘I’m sorry,’ he
started. ‘I didn’t mean you should -’

‘I know,’ she said
briskly. ‘I should have realised you’d be tired. Follow me, please.
I shan’t keep you long.’

She took him into a
high-ceilinged room lined with bookshelves. A large desk dominated
the centre of the study, its surface strewn with paperwork.

‘They’re keeping you
busy,’ he murmured, indicating the papers.

‘Horribly,’ she said,
rolling her eyes. ‘The onslaught of rogue gates is slowing at last,
but we’re still dealing with the volume of beasts that have already
come through from the Lowers. Merely cataloguing them is a large
task in itself. Already we’ve found eight previously extinct
species wandering the woods of Glour.’

‘You have sufficient
help, I suppose?’ He took a seat on a brown leather sofa that lived
on one side of the room, while Eva went to a locked cupboard
opposite. A moment later he jumped up again, yelping at a sudden
pain in his fingers.

Eva looked up. ‘What?
Oh. I’m sorry. Rikbeek has adopted the sofa as his own; I should
have remembered to warn you.’ She bent over the sofa in question
and removed a dark bundle of fur and wings. Tren grimaced. The
gwaystrel was a useful beast - it had helped them to find Edwae,
though sadly not soon enough to save his friend’s life. But the
creature was antisocial, to say the least, and its teeth were
horribly sharp. He sucked away the blood that leaked out of the
small but painful wound on his hand.

Eva threw the gwaystrel
into the air, watching with some severity as it flew up and settled
near the ceiling. Only after Rikbeek was securely out of the way
did she turn back to her cabinet.

‘We were talking of
help, I think? I’ve many summoners working at the task, indeed,’
she resumed as she searched through a bunch of keys. ‘It’s not
enough, though. It’s frustrating to be tied down with these
essentially mundane duties when there are more pressing matters to
be dealt with. Like the draykons.’ She fitted a key into the lock
and swung open the doors. ‘I’m wondering if I ought to hand the
post on to someone else, and concentrate on unravelling our mystery
instead.’

Tren blinked. Evastany
Glostrum had been High Summoner since he was a child. It was
virtually impossible to imagine the city government without
her.

Then again, if she were
to concentrate on their shared endeavour full time, it could mean
he would see her more often.

She began pulling books
out of her cupboard and piling them up. Remembering how heavy they
were, he went to assist. His fingers brushed the bare skin of her
arms as he took the books from her, and he quickly turned back to
the sofa. The books made a satisfying pile on the cushions.

‘I didn’t want to
entrust these to the city library,’ she said. ‘If Angstrun gets his
hands on them, we might never see them again.’

He liked that she had
said “we”. He picked up the topmost book and opened it. This was a
series of memoirs written by Andraly Winnier; the title declared
her to be a Savant and a Lokant, though he had no idea what that
meant. This was the book they had discovered in an isolated tower
in the Lower Realms, apparently the home of at least one of the two
individuals who had woken the draykon. Tren had been waiting with
anticipation to discover why Griel had wanted this book. Handling
it with care, for it was very old and fragile, he scanned the first
few pages.

Eva settled on the arm
of the sofa, reading over his shoulder. She was barely two inches
away, close enough for him to feel her warmth and smell the light
perfume that she wore. Her breath stirred his hair.

‘I think I’ll study
these at home,’ he said abruptly, closing the volume and standing
up. ‘I really need to get some sleep now, if I may be excused.’

Eva blinked at him in
mild surprise. ‘You may certainly be excused, but I must oppose the
plan to take these books home. It’s a matter of security, you see.
Griel may be gone, but we have no idea what has become of Ana. If
she wishes to recover these books, I’ve no doubt she will attempt
to do so with all due force. This house is well guarded and
protected, more so than yours. I would prefer for you to come here
to study them.’

Tren looked at her for
a long moment, trying to read the truth of her motives. It was the
sort of scheme he might have concocted in order to compel the
regular presence of someone he very much wanted to see; could he
hope that any such thoughts influenced her?

No. Her expression was
friendly but no more than that; she looked upon him with an air of
polite solicitude mingled with brisk pragmatism. Her concern was
for the books, and for his continued health; not for his
proximity.

Studying the books in
her house, especially if she herself was present, would be much
harder, but her reasoning was impossible to argue with. ‘As you
wish,’ he said finally. She rose with a smile and gave him her
hand; finding himself obliged to kiss it, he attempted to do so
with an air of easy nonchalance, which he suspected failed
completely.

‘Thank you for coming,’
she said as she withdrew her hand. ‘I was disappointed when you did
not come before.’

And with that she
nodded pleasantly to him and left, leaving him to enjoy the
sensations of confused gratification that her words excited.

Lying in bed in a house
not his own, Devary Kant could not help reflecting that the last
few weeks had not gone particularly well.

He did not enjoy
fighting for its own sake. Indeed, he would rather avoid it and he
had always felt that way. But he was, once in a while, called upon
to defend himself and so he had dutifully committed many hours of
his life to the development of considerable combat ability.

He was also
periodically required to defend others. This, he felt, was the more
important duty. To fail so completely to defend a woman committed
to his care was intolerable; worse when that charge had been
Llandry Sanfaer, daughter of his oldest friend. That he himself had
been injured almost to the point of death in her defence was no
consolation. He should have died rather than allow her to be
taken.