Lokant (25 page)

To her horror, Orillin
walked freely towards it. He was actually holding out his hand, as
though he expected to make friends. She wanted to cry out, but the
words froze in her throat.

The orboe slowed its
charge, shaking its head as though confused. After another moment
it stopped before Orillin and then - to her complete amazement - it
butted its head against the boy’s chest, hard enough to knock him
to the ground. Ynara felt another spasm of alarm, but the boy was
actually laughing.

‘Want to keep him?’ he
called merrily. ‘His name is Graaf.’

Eyas was staring at the
boy in flabbergasted silence.

‘What... in the
Lowers... was that?’ he said at last.

‘Weirdest thing I’ve
ever seen,’ said Rufin, shouldering his gun again.

Orillin grinned a
little apologetically. ‘I’ve always been good with the bigger
animals.’

‘
Good?
’ Eyas
almost shrieked the word. ‘That’s not even possible!’

Ynara swooped down to
land next to Aysun. ‘I wonder if Llan would’ve been like that.’

If she’d been
summoner trained.
She didn’t add those words; she didn’t want
it to seem like an accusation.

Aysun merely
grunted.

The orboe was now
accepting chunks of fruit from Orillin’s hands.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘It’s
a herbivore?’

‘Omnivore,’ he
corrected, petting the creature’s massive shaggy head. ‘But he
doesn’t think of any of you as food anymore.’

Anymore?
She
shuddered and decided not to ask.

When the company
travelled onwards again, they did so with Graaf ambling along at
Orillin’s heels like an overgrown dog.

Rheas and Aysun were so
alike in face and manner that Ynara felt a foreboding chill.

Please, don’t let Aysun
turn into his father when he reaches that age.

They sat glaring at
each other with identical expressions of stubborn dislike.

‘Led us into an orboe,’
Aysun said accusingly.

‘That was my fault, was
it?’

‘We were following your
lead.’

‘Didn’t mean you didn’t
have to look out for yourselves. I’m not a nanny.’

‘Don’t require a nanny.
Just some basic concern for our welfare.’

‘If you think I’m
careless, why did you bring the boy?’

‘He’s not safe in the
Seven.’

Rheas snorted.
‘According to you, he’s not safe up here with me either.’

‘You planning to take
proper care of him? Because if you wanted to make up for your
earlier neglect, here’s your chance.’

That older, grey-headed
version of her husband scowled at his son. ‘He’ll be all right with
me,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Not that he seems to need much
protecting.’

Ynara glanced outside,
where Orillin was still playing with Graaf. ‘That’s true
enough.’

Rheas’s cold blue eyes
turned on her. He’d shown her distant politeness but nothing more;
she’d responded with an icy coolness of manner that was barely
civil. Let him work for his forgiveness.

‘You staying?’

It didn’t sound
anything like an invitation. ‘No,’ she returned. ‘Much as I’d love
to accept your generous offer, I’ve duties to attend to.’

Rheas didn’t reply,
only turned his stare back on his son. ‘You?’

Aysun nodded. ‘Rufin
and Eyas too. The boy needs a proper guard, until this is
over.’

Rheas accepted this
news with extremely ill grace. ‘You wouldn’t think peace and quiet
would be so much to ask for,’ he said petulantly.

Aysun shrugged with
complete indifference. ‘Please yourself. Anything happens to that
boy while you’re napping, though, and I’ll kill you myself.’ She’d
rarely seen him looking so grim.

‘Seconded,’ she added
in her iciest tone.

Rheas chuckled. ‘You
two are as warm as twin blocks of ice.’

Ynara stood up. ‘Time
for me to get back,’ she said to Aysun. He jumped up instantly and
followed her into the hallway. She didn’t bother to say goodbye to
Rheas.

‘Keep this with you.’
Aysun produced a small metal box from somewhere and tucked it into
her hand. It was the device he’d used to talk to Rufin. ‘You
remember how to work it?’

She nodded. The process
hadn’t looked complicated.

‘It’ll make a sound if
I’m trying to contact you on it. I don’t know if it will work
between the Uppers and Glinnery, but we’ll try it. All right?’

She kissed him. ‘How
would I manage without you?’

He gave her the boyish
grin that still made her heart flutter, even after so many years.
‘No idea.’

Devary opened the note
hastily, almost tearing it in his anxiety to know the contents. It
was addressed in Ynara’s hand; he couldn’t remember the last time
she had written to him.

To his disappointment,
the note was very brief.

He is safe.

He sighed in
frustration, rubbing at his tired eyes. It was good to know that
she had got Orillin away safely, but the extreme brevity of the
communication was frustrating. Was she well? Had she forgiven him
for losing Llandry - at all? Even the faintest note of warmth and
support would have lifted his spirits enormously.

No matter. He would
have to manage without her approval. He burned the paper, then
stood up. He had an appointment to keep.

Indren had put him in
touch with one of the faculty’s longest-serving members. Ern
Greyson proved to be in his sixties, a man as grey as his name and
with an uncompromising frankness of manner. He surveyed Devary with
suspicion as the younger man sat down opposite his table in one of
Draetre’s smaller eating houses.

‘I’d better tell you
right now,’ Devary began immediately. ‘I’m tracered. We’d better
make this quick.’

Greyson’s eyes
sharpened. ‘Tracered means Krays’s boy. You expect me to trust
you?’

‘Yes,’ Dev said
bluntly. ‘I’m not promoted, just a minor information agent.’

‘Then why the
tracer.’

‘Have you heard the
name Llandry Sanfaer?’

‘Huh,’ Greyson spat.
‘That name’s coming up an awful lot lately.’

‘I’m a friend of her
mother’s,’ Devary said quickly. ‘I was tracered because Krays is
trying to find her and he knew she would find
me.
I need to
know what’s being said about her.’

‘Word is she’s
draykon-kind,’ Greyson countered. ‘That true?’

‘Word travels fast.
Does that mean something to you?’

Greyson drained the
contents of his earthenware mug in one enormous gulp, then set it
down. Devary grew irritated at his leisurely manner, but he made
himself sit patiently waiting for the answer.

‘It means something to
Krays,’ Greyson said at last. ‘Which means something to me.’

Devary waited for more.
Indren had told him that Greyson had no love for Krays, but unlike
Indren he obviously didn’t fear the man either. He had been
steadily collecting information about the new masters of the
faculty for the last few years.

‘Couple of moons back,’
Greyson continued, ‘masters issued a general order. All promoted
agents - white-hairs, most of them - were sent to Glinnery to
investigate Llandry Sanfaer’s enigmatic istore stone. They came
back with several examples of the stuff, and to a man they were
raving about it. Full of stories about its magical properties and
what have you. Soon as Krays got his hands on a piece he was
obsessed with it. Diverted all faculty resources onto it on the
spot. And I heard that he had his two pet agents on the case.’

‘Who were they?’

‘Woman, a white-hair.
Calls herself Ana. Her husband too, also a white-hair.’

Ana again. This
corresponded with what Indren had told him about the faculty’s new
bosses. And he had used the same term to describe her.

‘Why do you call them
white-hairs?’

‘Because Krays’s type
always are. Him and his colleagues and their most trusted agents.
Only, I got the feeling Ana and her hubby aren’t so trusted
nowadays.’

‘Because?’

‘Used to be in and out
of the faculty all the time. Haven’t seen either of them in a
while, and Krays is grooming some new favourites. Whatever they did
with that stone, it wasn’t what Krays ordered.’

Devary turned that
information over for a moment. ‘You know what it is they did?’

Greyson shot him a
look. ‘Krays’s top agents disappear. Next thing I hear, Krays is
acting like they never existed and there are draykons on the scene.
Can’t be a coincidence.’

Devary nodded. ‘She and
her husband, Griel, took those stones - draykon bones - and
resurrected the beast. You’re saying that wasn’t Krays’s
intention?’

‘I’m pretty sure not.’
Greyson was looking at him with increased respect. ‘How do you know
all that?’

‘I’ve talked with an
eye witness.’ His source was more complicated than that, in fact;
he’d heard Lady Glostrum’s account from Ynara. But it amounted to
the same thing.

‘Nice,’ Greyson
approved. Then he frowned. ‘You sure Griel was the name?’

‘Pretty sure, yes.’

‘Haven’t heard it. But
then I saw less of that one. Didn’t mix with the rest of us as the
lady did.’ His face as he said it suggested that the lady’s
interactions with the faculty agents hadn’t been pleasant.

‘Greyson,’ said Devary
seriously. ‘If Krays wasn’t looking to wake up a draykon, what
was
he doing with those bones?’

The older man was
silent for a minute. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last, ‘but I got a
few leads I can share. What’re you looking to do with them?’

‘Krays is after
Llandry,’ Devary replied. ‘And possibly others like her. I’m set to
find out why, and then - somehow - I have to stop him.’

Greyson’s lips
twitched. ‘Large task you’ve set yourself there.’

‘I know,’ Dev said
heavily.

‘Indren couldn’t help
you with that?’

‘She knows nothing of
it. Which makes me think Krays knew what the stone was immediately;
if not, it would have been Indren’s job to study it. The only piece
she ever saw, though, came from me.’

Greyson nodded slowly.
‘Ullarn,’ he said cryptically. ‘Lot of the bones were shipping out
to there. Reckon that’s where the imperious Ana hails from also,
maybe her husband too. Can’t tell you more than that, I’m afraid. I
never was posted out that way.’

Ullarn. That was it?
Ullarn was the largest of the Darklands realms and certainly the
most mysterious. If that was all he had to go on, he was very much
out of luck.

‘Thank you,’ he said
anyway. Greyson had been useful, even if he couldn’t answer every
question Devary had.

‘How are you going to
pursue this with a tracer on you? You can’t just go to Ullarn.’

And that was the other
problem. ‘Maybe there’s more I can do here,’ he said. ‘There has to
be something around here to tell me what Krays is up to.’

‘I find anything, I’ll
let you know.’

Devary shook the older
man’s hand. ‘Thanks.’

Five days passed and
Devary heard nothing from Greyson. He spent that period of time
combing Indren’s library and the more public collections at the
faculty building. The most interesting find was a tumbled stack of
research notes without a title or any indication of the author, but
what caught Devary’s attention was the repeated use of the word
“istore”.

When he showed them to
Indren, she merely nodded. ‘Those are the records from my brief
research project on that stone you brought me. I wanted to pursue
it further, even after you took back the pendant, but Krays
cancelled it.’

‘Did he? Why?’ Sifting
through the papers, he found three pages of scrawled notes on the
so-called stone’s magical properties. It enhanced summoning
ability, amplified sorcerous talents and imparted a sense of
well-being even to those humans without a shred of magical
talent.

‘He said it was a waste
of time. Like I told you, I don’t think it was ever a mystery to
him.’

An unpleasant thought
occurred to Devary’s habitually suspicious mind. ‘Indren. Greyson
told me that Krays’s two favourite agents were sent to take the
draykon bone. That would’ve been well before I arrived here with
the pendant - and Llandry. Did you know about that?’ He remembered
her manner when he’d turned up with that stone. She had been
enthused about the project - and, apparently, shocked when Llandry
was attacked over it. Had she been acting a part? He now recalled
that visiting that restaurant had been her idea; it sickened him to
think that she might have colluded with Krays to get Llandry away
from her guards.

If she had, then she
was still acting a part now.

‘No!’ Indren blurted.
‘I swear, I knew nothing about it at the time save what I heard in
the papers. And I had precious little time even to read the news
during those weeks. Whatever Krays and his friends were doing at
that time, I wasn’t involved in it. Not until later.’

Her face was white with
alarm and she stared at him with such horror that he was inclined
to believe her. Indren was one of those women who was rarely
discomposed, and it took a lot to shake her.

‘When were you
involved?’

‘Only recently, truly.
This genealogy project is the first assignment I’ve been given that
has any direct relationship to the draykon bone.’

Devary sighed. It was
becoming harder than ever to choose allies that he could trust.

‘You wouldn’t lie, Ren,
would you?’ They had been closer friends, once, before Indren had
been promoted so far above him and he had been sent across the
Seven. Ren was the name he used to have for her. He hoped it would
encourage her to be sincere.

‘I lie, Dev. All the
time, these days - I have to. But I wouldn’t lie to you. Please
believe me.’ She caught his hand in a pleading gesture.