Lokant (9 page)

‘Probably more.’

His neck itched, right
on cue. He slapped the gwaystrel away in irritation.

‘Sorry,’ Eva said. She
didn’t sound remotely remorseful. If anything she was trying not to
laugh.

‘If that monster of
yours sucks me dry, I’m holding you responsible.’

‘No danger of that.
He’d explode if he tried it.’

‘It might be worth the
sacrifice, in that case.’

She laughed softly.
Watching the way her mouth dimpled at the corners, he forgot to
speak. The silence stretched.

‘Er, so,’ he said with
a cough. ‘How was your dinner? And what time
is
it,
anyway?’

She glanced briefly at
the uncurtained window. ‘Not moonrise yet. And dinner was
fine.’

He looked at her,
puzzled. She’d obviously stayed the night with Angstrun, yet here
she was home before the moon even rose. It was none of his business
to ask, of course, but...

‘Oh,’ he blurted. ‘I
forgot. Um, one of the books is gone.’

‘Gone.’ She repeated
the word without inflection, gazing at him levelly.

He sighed and rubbed
his eyes, still feeling exhausted in spite of his few hours of
sleep. ‘I hope you are feeling credulous, or I am about to be
fired.’ He told her about his nocturnal visitor and the woman’s
curious disappearance, explaining in some detail in hopes of being
believed. Her expression didn’t change, but he knew his story must
be hard to credit.

He finished speaking
and she said nothing at all.

‘I suppose I’d better
go home,’ he said at last.

‘Must you? I was about
to order breakfast.’ She stood up and dusted off her skirt. ‘Don’t
worry about the book. Not your fault. But it’s interesting. Shall
it be eggs?’

‘Thank you, I-’ He
stopped. She was already gone.

Breakfast was a
leisurely affair. Suffering from a headache and some degree of eye
strain, he was in no hurry to return to the study, and neither did
Eva seem to be. Their conversation was restored more or less to
normal; his vague feeling of awkwardness faded and by the end of
the meal he felt cheered and more like himself. As Eva’s servants
cleared away the remains of their meal, Eva paused at the dining
room door and smiled at him.

‘I have the morning
free, and I think I shall spend it assisting you. If books are
spiriting themselves away, it would be best to take copious notes
as soon as possible.’

The prospect of another
long day at the desk was suddenly desirable. ‘Agreed,’ he said,
stretching the muscles of his arms and neck as he followed her back
to the study.

The desk was empty.

Both stood frozen for
some moments in complete astonishment. They had been absent for an
hour and a half at best; Tren was certain that all of the books had
been on the desk when he had left the room.

‘Tren, did you...?’

‘I have not moved
them.’

She nodded. ‘Milyn must
have been tidying in here while we were at breakfast. I’ll enquire
where she put them.’

Tren had a sick feeling
that Milyn would know nothing about it. Sure enough, Eva returned
to the study looking dismayed.

‘All of my staff have
sworn that they have touched nothing in here. I do not think they
would lie to me, but...’ She trailed off, stared at the empty desk.
Tren was chilled to see her lost for words; she who normally had an
answer for everything.

She shook her head.
‘The house will be searched. In the meantime, you spoke of
cross-referencing your notes at the city library? Perhaps we should
continue there.’

‘Of course,’ he agreed
readily enough. She was taking the event well, he reflected, but
just as he formed the thought her elegant shoulders slumped and her
face took on an expression of stress. A deep sigh came from
her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said
quickly. ‘It’s my fault, I should have guarded them better.’

Her head came up at
that. ‘Your fault? You’ve forgotten that it is my doing that the
books were here in the first place. I insisted on detaining you at
my home instead of the library, because it would be more
secure.
In fact I suppose I was merely being
self-indulgent.’

Tren watched her
uncertainly. ‘No one could blame you for preferring to have them
studied here in your own house, under your eye. You couldn’t
possibly have found time to travel to the city library every time
you wanted a report.’

‘That was part of it,
yes.’ She took a breath and looked him in the face. ‘There was
something else, though, I think. More to do with you.’

‘Uhh. Me? What?’

Eva gave him one of her
warm, bright smiles, the ones he’d seen her direct at Vale but
never before at him. ‘I like having you around.’

Tren blinked, trying to
decipher her tone. ‘Wait, you did that because of me? – I mean,
because you – um, no. That can’t be true.’ He ran a hand through
his hair, feeling hopelessly confused. ‘I, um, like being around
you too. I don’t even need to say that I guess because it’s
obvious, and, um.’ Eva was staring blankly at him, her smile gone,
and he realised he must sound like an idiot. Adopting what he hoped
was his usual friendly smile, he tried again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sleep
deprived. What exactly are you saying?’

A tap came at the
door.

‘Enter,’ Eva called,
without taking her eyes from his face. The door creaked open and a
soft female voice with a broad west city accent spoke.

‘Milady, I was
wondering if you’d noticed Lord Vale’s carriage has just drawn
up.’

Eva blinked as if
coming out of a trance, turning to stare at her maid with apparent
incomprehension. ‘Oh,’ she said at last. Then, more firmly, ‘Yes.
Thank you, Milyn.’

The girl bobbed a
curtsey and, flicking a brief glance at Tren, she left.

Eva looked back at him,
and in an instant she was all business once more. ‘I will be at the
library later on. Perhaps I’ll see you there?’

‘Yes, um. I’ll be
there.’

With a nod but
absolutely without a smile, she was gone.

Tren realised with
distant interest that his hands were shaking. Stuffing them into
his pockets he ventured out into the hallway, then immediately
regretted it. Lord Vale stood near the staircase, his grey hair
damp from the rain and his powerful frame swathed in a magnificent
great-coat. His arms were around Eva and he held her very
close.

‘Eva,’ Tren heard him
say softly, ‘I’ve had enough of waiting. Never mind the grand
wedding; we don’t need it. Just marry me. This week. Tomorrow,
even.’

Tren found that he
badly needed some air.

He passed many long
hours at the city library, but Eva did not arrive. He found nothing
relating to the mysterious Eterna Conflict, and nothing about
Ayrien, but that was much as he expected. It was clear by now that
this area of research was, for whatever reason, beyond the capacity
of the city resources.

Sometime after moonset
he abandoned his hope of seeing Eva and went home. There he found a
note lying on the floor.

Mr Warvel,

I apologise for my
failure to appear at the library today. Vale and I have decided to
proceed at once with the wedding. It is another outstanding
obligation that I am anxious to remove, that I may focus entirely
on our joint venture. We both hope you will attend our modest
ceremony at the City Hall on the 12
^th
of this moon.

E. Glostrum.

For a moment he
struggled to breath as a cold, sick feeling settled somewhere in
the pit of his stomach. The twelfth was five days away. Five! And
the coldness of the address hurt. She’d stopped calling him Mr
Warvel some time ago; to resurrect it now placed him at an
insurmountable distance from her.

He found a chair and
sat down. For some minutes he merely sat and tried to breathe,
reading the note over and over again. The twelfth. Five days.

Then, with shaky
composure, he sat at his desk and wrote a reply to her ladyship. It
was not a particularly long response, but it took him some time to
form the words.

He posted the letter at
the nearest post box. Lady Glostrum had dispatched hers by the
expedited messenger service, but he was in no hurry for her to read
his reply.

When he returned home,
he drew his sturdy travelling bag out of the depths of his wardrobe
and began to pack.

***

Carefully,
experimentally, Devary Kant flexed his left arm. Most of the left
side of his body had been badly injured during his fight with the
white-haired sorcerer and his inexplicable escort of whurthag
beasts, but now he was whole and hale; not even a scar remained as
a souvenir of his ordeal. The muscles of his arm responded
perfectly. Encouraged, he went through a few experimental blocks
and strikes and stretches, slowly at first then with increasing
speed as he pulled off each move perfectly.

His body, then, was
fully recovered, even if his mind remained perturbed. His superiors
obviously didn’t trust him, as he had been locked into his recovery
room ever since he had been deposited here. Presumably he was to be
released and sent on his errand at their pleasure. He would rather
do it at his own.

Llandry Sanfaer. He
knew from Ynara that she had last been located in the Upper Realms.
How long ago that had been he couldn’t say; it had been impossible
to measure the passage of time in this stark room where the light
levels never varied and he never caught a glimpse of the sky.
Llandry might be anywhere by now.

Nonetheless, he would
follow the only clue that he had. And if he found her, well... he
would handle that when it happened.

He collected the few
possessions of his that remained in this room. His clothes had been
taken shortly after he arrived, but to his relief they had
reappeared, laundered and mended, sometime while he slept. His
daggers were gone, of course, and that loss pained him, for they
were expensive, perfectly balanced weapons that had been designed
for him years ago. But no matter. He would acquire another
pair.

The matter of escaping
from this place would be no small feat. There were no doors or
windows in the bare walls. The one time he had caught sight of his
captor, the man had appeared apparently out of the air, as he had
done at Ynara’s house. Devary could not render himself
insubstantial, but he was capable of another kind of translocation.
Just barely.

Closing his eyes, he
reached for the boundary between the worlds. It always took him
some time to find the divide, for he was a sorcerer of no
particular talent. He was prepared for that, but today the
endeavour took still longer than it should have. He searched
diligently, visualising the pathways in his mind, but he found
nothing.

Puzzled, he took a few
slow breaths and then began again. True, he did not absolutely know
whether he currently stood in the Daylands or the Darklands or
somewhere in the Seven Realms in between. He kept his mind open,
casting for any hint of a route into either the Uppers or the Lower
Realms. Still, nothing emerged. The spaces between the worlds
yawned before his anxious mind, empty and silent.

This he had not
anticipated. True, it was a risky prospect to escape through one of
the Off-Worlds. Both were perilous, and without his daggers he
would be placing himself at risk. But he trusted his erstwhile
employers still less than they apparently trusted him, and he found
this desperate option preferable to that of awaiting their next
appearance.

If it was denied him,
he had nothing; no alternative but to sit and wait and hope that
they had no worse plans for him than they had already expressed.
But how could it fail? Had he somehow lost even his limited
sensitivity to the boundaries while he lay ill?

He took a breath to
calm himself and began again. This time, he searched not for the
familiar shades of possibility that usually hovered just within
reach, but for anything that beckoned, however distantly. And at
length, he found something.

It was almost nothing
at all; merely the barest whisper of a way. It appeared hazy in his
mind’s eye, as if muffled or shrouded behind something else.
Straining, he sought to grasp it before it vanished, but his mind
encountered an obstruction.

It
felt
like he
came up against a wall of gauze, fine but infinitely layered. He
could sense, increasingly clearly, the opening that lay behind it,
but he couldn’t reach it. He beat at the bindings in frustration,
but only succeeded in giving himself a headache.

He withdrew, and sat
upon his narrow bed to think. He could not force his way through,
that was clear enough. But if he could make only the smallest hole
in its surface, perhaps he could widen that gap until it was
possible for him to slip through.

He tried this. It took
all of his power of concentration, and at length it was indeed only
the very smallest of gaps he created, but it was enough; the
boundary was breached. Sweating and gritting his teeth with the
effort, he pulled and worried at that gap until he had worked his
way through all the layers, and a hole opened wide enough for him
to pass through. Then he paused, gasping for air as he explored the
possibilities revealed.

Beyond it stretched not
just one pathway, but many.

Staggered, he reeled
under the onslaught of so many rends in the boundaries of the
worlds. They crowded together, kept apart only by some force of
energy that Devary couldn’t understand. He felt that, without it,
they would merge together into an impossible chaos. For a moment he
panicked; how could he determine where to go?

But he swiftly found
that it was simple. A glance through each gate sent his vision
soaring into the world that lay beyond. Some of the paths led into
the Seven Realms: he saw a sun-drenched Glinnery landscape and
wondered briefly whether it lay near to the city of Waeverleyne.
Ynara would have been left without any knowledge of where (or
indeed how) he had gone; for a moment he was sorely tempted to go
to her and explain. But he pushed the thought aside. Llandry’s need
was more immediate.