Lokant (26 page)

He frowned, letting out
a long sigh. Life had truly become impossibly complicated of late -
dating precisely from his return to the Sanfaer home in
Glinnery.

Though if he could turn
back and undo that action, he still wouldn’t.

He summoned a smile for
Indren, watched her face relax in relief. ‘What of Greyson? Where
did you find him?’

She gave a crooked
smile. ‘The white-hairs aren’t popular within the faculty. Last
year some of the agents formed a co-operative to share information.
The ultimate goal, I suppose, is to be rid of them, though I don’t
see how that is to be achieved. Greyson is their leader.’

‘Oh?’ He looked
narrowly at her. ‘Are you a member?’

‘I joined.’ She paused.
‘Recently.’

He looked a question;
she fixed her gaze on the floor.

‘When I was given the
genealogy project, I realised... it wasn’t hard to guess who was
behind Llandry’s attempted abduction. I felt awful. I might not
have known beforehand but it was me who took the two of you to that
restaurant. I had been serving Krays’s purpose without even
realising it. And I was so full of myself.’ She raised her eyes at
last. ‘I was awful to her, wasn’t I?’

He shrugged one
shoulder slightly. ‘I don’t think I noticed if you were.’

She rolled her eyes and
gave a quick laugh. ‘How like you. Yes, I was perfectly horrid to
her. I can scarcely remember why, only... I hadn’t seen you in so
long, and then for you to arrive with...’

She trailed off, then
shook her head with an air of finality. ‘No matter. I joined soon
after that. I have no love for Krays’s methods or his agenda, and I
am tired of being manipulated by him and his friends.’

He smiled. ‘You’re a
better woman than I thought, Ren.’

‘Thanks.’ She spoke the
word in a flat tone, and he realised the statement hadn’t emerged
as he’d intended.

He hastily changed the
subject. ‘Ah, so, Greyson. He’s trustworthy then?’

Indren shrugged. ‘You
know as well as I do that it’s hard to be sure. But if we can’t
trust Greyson, we can’t trust anyone. He has my confidence, if that
helps at all.’

‘Thank you, Ren.’ He
picked up her hand and kissed it lightly, smiling his thanks. A
light appeared in her eyes for an instant, then faded.

‘Anything for you,
Dev,’ she said lightly.

A few days later,
Devary was walking through Draetre’s eventide market when he felt a
light touch on his arm. Thinking of pickpockets, he was instantly
on his guard. Checking his pockets, he found his money whole and
untouched - and a scrap of paper.

Astendre Wharf 17.

He knew that area,
though not well. It was near the river that marked the city’s
south-eastern boundary. The area was mostly occupied by tradesmen’s
storage buildings.

He stopped and looked
about himself, knowing it was already too late. Nobody waited to
see if he found the message. He saw nothing but crowds of shoppers
moving briskly from stall to stall. Puzzled, he folded the paper
and tucked it back into his pocket.

‘That’s Greyson’s
writing,’ Indren confirmed later.

‘You two have been
writing to each other, have you?’

Her cheeks flushed
slightly and she spoke with infinite dignity. ‘He has communicated
with me on occasion.’

‘Always by letter?’

‘Don’t forget the
tracers,’ she reminded him tartly. ‘It’s unwise to keep too many
meetings with the same agents. It arouses suspicion.’

He grinned at her.
‘You’ve been spending a lot of time with me. Is that not then a
risk?’

‘That is
different.’

‘Is it? How?’

She ignored the
question. ‘Are you going?’

He frowned, smoothing
the paper in his fingers. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘I’ve never heard of it
before. That doesn’t mean much, you understand. I’m viewed in some
circles as a higher-up but I’m not given access to much.’

‘I must investigate,’
he decided.

‘Dev, those tracers
aren’t to be just ignored. If he looks for you while you’re there,
I don’t know what will happen to you but it won’t be good.’

‘Do not be worried
about me,’ he smiled.

She snorted. ‘Someday,
Mr Kant, that abominable overconfidence will get you killed. I am
coming with you.’

His smile faded. ‘Two
tracered agents in the same - very secret - building? Will that not
merely double the chances of our
both
being caught?’

She glared at him. ‘Two
of us can cover the area faster, meaning we can be out again
sooner.’

‘Flawed logic.’

She was adamant,
immoveable and would not be argued down.

In the end, he simply
left without telling her.

The seventeenth
building on Astendre Wharf was tall, narrow and squashed
haphazardly between two much larger warehouses. No windows adorned
the front, so he couldn’t immediately tell whether the building was
occupied.

He paused to check the
position of his weapons. He had given up carrying them for a time;
having learnt about the tracer, he’d felt such hopelessness about
his situation that he’d lost faith in his ability to control his
own fate. But he shouldn’t have allowed those events to affect him
that way. His daggers, sometimes so repulsive to his essentially
pacifistic nature, now imparted a feeling of confidence that he
hadn’t felt in some time.

He jogged down the
street, darted through the first alley he found and circled around
to the back of the buildings. He had opted to go at night in the
hopes of finding the area deserted, and so far he was in luck.

The darkness, though,
was a problem. Heavy clouds covered the sky, hiding the light of
the moon, and this part of Draetre wasn’t worth the trouble of
lighting at night. It took him a few minutes to find his way to the
rear door of building number seventeen.

It was, as he expected,
firmly locked. Far from feeling discouraged, he felt a thrill of
anticipation. Something important was here; no sense in using locks
otherwise.

He hadn’t picked a lock
in at least a year, but the skill hadn’t faded. He had it open
inside a minute. He entered, moving with soft, silent steps into
the building.

The interior was so
dark he could see nothing at all. With an inward curse, he fished a
small, portable light-globe from the pack he carried. He had no
wish to draw attention to his presence, but he could investigate
nothing without light. He activated it with a swift thought,
dampening its radiance down to a gentle flicker of white light. It
was just enough to illuminate his surroundings, but it wouldn’t
carry far. Or so he hoped.

His heart sank on
finding himself standing in nothing but a cramped and empty
antechamber. Ahead of him loomed another door, bigger and no doubt
much more securely locked. He released the globe, guiding it to
hover a few inches above his head, and set to work.

Half an hour later,
tense and sweating, Devary finally found his way through the
maddening door. No less than three locks secured the portal, two of
which were operated by codes rather than keys. More evidence that
something here was not intended for general access.

The building was bigger
than it had appeared from the outside. A long hall stretched before
him, and he guessed that three more storeys of similar size rose
above. The room in which he stood was furnished with benches set at
regular intervals, each spacious and, he guessed, well-lit when
they were in use. The exterior looked ramshackle, but the interior
had the polished air of a professional setup.

All of the benches bore
clusters of objects. Devary bent over the first, drawing his
light-globe down close to the surface. It didn’t avail him much; he
recognised nothing in the complex structures of metal and glass
that he saw.

But he did recognise
the smooth indigo substance that was securely clamped into place in
the centre of the contraption. Opaque and glowing faintly silver
under his light, it was undoubtedly draykon bone.

Moving as fast as he
dared, he checked the other benches. The constructs varied widely
but all bore a piece of draykon bone locked into place somewhere in
the convoluted machinery. He received the impression that the bones
were integral to the workings of each one; could they be powering
the devices in some way?

If only he had a better
knowledge of engineering. He had no chance of understanding the
workings of these horrifically complicated objects, so he didn’t
waste time trying. He climbed instead up to the next floor, and the
next. Each held the same layout and contents, though on the third
storey he received a shock.

Happening to glance
down, he discovered that the floor beneath his feet was virtually
transparent.

He jumped back with a
soft cry, then silenced himself with a swift inner curse. Fool. He
may be able to see straight down into the floor below, but the
strange, clear substance was obviously firm enough to hold his
weight securely.

He climbed steadily up
more long flights of stairs, noting that each storey bore the same
transparent floors and ceilings. Reaching the top floor, he found
that the roof was also clear and obviously well-tended, for he saw
no dirt obscuring the clarity of the glass-like cover.

Light, he realised,
would pass straight through those clear expanses and stream
uninhibited all the way to the bottom of the building. In which
case, light must be as important a component in those curious
technologies as the draykon bone. That made sense, as far as it
went: many of the Daylands technologies used sunlight as a power
source. But then, why build a workshop in Nimdre rather than one of
the Daylands realms, where there was always good light?

Perhaps some of them
were intended to function without light as well, in which case
Nimdre was the only option for development and testing. It was the
only one of the Seven Realms that experienced both conditions in
equal measure.

He passed silently
between the benches that lined the walls of this room, pausing to
examine each machine. The appearance of these differed somewhat
from the ones on the lower storeys. He was hard pressed to define
precisely how, but that some of the parts eerily resembled human
limbs was difficult to ignore. He shuddered, staring at a device
that looked like some kind of robotic arm...

A faint noise startled
him, sent him backing away from the machine and searching for a
hiding place. He had spent too much time here, distracted by the
puzzle of the peculiar machines that surrounded him. If Krays found
him here -

A cold voice
interrupted his thoughts. ‘I’d invite you to participate, but it is
clear that you cannot be trusted.’

Krays. His heart leapt
into frenzied activity and he began to run, tearing for the
stairs.

His flight was useless.
Krays caught him up easily and grabbed him in a ferociously painful
grip. He didn’t say anything else, merely stared at Devary with
complete coldness.

An instant later,
Devary found himself back in prison, in a room similar to the tiny
cubicle that he had woken in after his recovery. The same narrow
bed dominated the cramped space, the same small sink and chamber
pot the only other items present.

Krays said nothing
more. He released Devary, dropping him to the floor. Then he
vanished.

Frantic, Devary picked
himself up and searched the room. One door, a massive thing that he
knew would be unbreakable, its lock unpickable. No window, no
weaknesses or openings in floor, walls or ceiling. No way out.

Heart pounding, he
sought with his mind for the mode of escape that had saved him last
time. As he feared, it was gone. The area was shrouded in an
enchantment that muffled everything he tried to do and obscured any
means of outward travel. He could not break through, no matter how
violently he hurled himself against the misty walls in his
mind.

At length he was
obliged to give up. He collapsed on the bed, spent and in
despair.

He was stuck,
thoroughly so, and this time he had no doubt that there would be no
escape.

Time passed strangely
in this strangest of places. In point of fact, time didn’t pass at
all, or so Limbane claimed. Llandry didn’t know how to believe or
understand him on that point.

Nor, indeed, on any
other topic on which he’d spoken since she had been brought
here.

It didn’t help that he
frequently spoke in enigmatic riddles and refused to explain
himself. Lady Glostrum was right: he was keeping a great deal of
information from them, for reasons she did not know and did not
trust.

But it didn’t matter
whether or not she trusted him, or the equally reticent Andraly.
Her thorough exploration of the “Library” had merely revealed more
of it; more and more and more rooms and halls and corridors and
silent people intent on alarmingly big books, and never any hint of
an exit.

She couldn’t even tell
where in the worlds this Library was. Neither could Pensould.

The four of them - Tren
and Lady Glostrum as well - had taken to congregating in the chart
room. It was a peculiar place, so packed with information that it
made her dizzy just looking at it. But the group attempt to
decipher the puzzle themselves, instead of waiting for Limbane to
explain it, kept her occupied.

It kept her wayward
mind from imagining red-scaled Isand descending on Glinnery with an
army of draykons behind, intent on taking back Arvale.

All in good time,
Miss Sanfaer.
That was all Limbane had said when she had
questioned him about it.

I need to go home!
Glinnery must be warned!

All in good time, Miss
Sanfaer.