Lokant (34 page)

‘Tren?’

He reluctantly turned
his face to her.

‘There were reasons why
I wanted you to stay behind last night.’

‘So I imagine.’ He
turned back to the window.

The conversation seemed
to be over with that, but a moment later he spoke again.

‘An old paramour, I
suppose?’

‘I suppose so.
Yes.’

‘How many of those have
there been?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t
count.’

He turned cold eyes on
her. ‘Do you have any affection for them or is it all
practicality?’

She pondered that.
‘Would it make it worse or better if I did?’

‘Worse,’ he said
promptly. ‘No, better. I don’t know.’

‘I don’t really have
any affection for Recender. He’s not that type of man. But we
understand each other.’

Tren snorted. ‘I’m
sure.’

She welcomed the flash
of irritation that burned away her guilt. ‘You’re telling me you’ve
never bedded anyone without feeling affection for them?’

‘That’s different.’

‘How can it possibly be
different?

‘I wasn’t using them
for anything!’

‘You were using them
for your own entertainment. They were using you for the same. Just
now I’m using Brun to advance our cause; his contacts will get the
job done much faster than we could alone. He in turn uses me to
amuse himself for a day or two. Is it different?’

Tren looked bewildered.
‘I’m just surprised.’

‘I thought you said you
knew
me. Everything about me.’

‘I thought I did.’ He
turned away from her and in this gesture she recognised
rejection.

Well,
she
thought.
That solves that problem.

She turned her face to
the traffic as well, resolutely swallowing the lump that rose in
her throat.

The warehouse had an
unpromising air of abandonment about it. Eva checked the address
for the third time, her hopes sinking. Wynn Street, Wirllen South.
Number eight. Windowless and boarded up it might be, but this was
indeed the right building.

Tren had pulled himself
together as they left the carriage. He was back to his normal self,
or something near it. It was a fragile facade, but one she was
grateful for. They had work to do.

‘What’s the plan?’ Tren
stood looking up at the roughly boarded windows doubtfully.

‘Search it. In a
moment.’ She nudged Rikbeek with her thoughts, instructing him to
check for threats.

He didn’t move.

Rikbeek. Budge.

His miniscule brain
registered stubborn refusal. He was cocooned somewhere in her
skirts, determined to be asleep.

‘Sorry,’ she said
aloud. ‘Not an option.’ Finding his small, dark-furred body, she
plucked him off the fabric and tossed him into the air. His wings
opened just in time to catch himself and he flew off, blazing
indignation.

‘Don’t tell me there’s
insubordination in the ranks?’ Tren had watched the exchange with a
grin on his face.

Eva snorted in reply.
‘Always.’

They waited for the few
minutes it took for her gwaystrel to make a circuit of the
building. He didn’t detect any other humans nearby.

‘Okay. We can go.’ Eva
walked around the building until she found a door that didn’t have
planks nailed over it. It was locked, of course.

Tren pushed her gently
out of the way, and bowed. ‘Allow me.’

She stood back,
puzzled. Tren had never mentioned a talent for picking locks.

Apparently he scorned
such delicacy. Instead he simply ran at the door and kicked the
hell out of it. It took him a few tries before the door fell
in.

She walked past him as
he stood, breathing hard and looking slightly dazed.

‘Feel better?’

‘Much,’ he panted.

‘Excellent.’

The interior was in
full darkness. Tren produced a tiny light-globe from somewhere and
activated it. It was the portable type that resourceful people hung
on their belts or kept in their handbags; Eva was glad to find that
Tren was one such practical-minded soul as she hadn’t thought of it
herself.

She was less impressed
when she saw the feeble glow it emitted.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘You
made an awful lot of noise back there so we’d better be quick. Try
not to crash into anything.’

‘Ma’am.’ Tren found his
way back to the door, taking the globe with him. She waited, trying
not to feel unnerved by the darkness. It was almost absolute; even
her night eyes could barely see anything.

The sound of a lever
being pulled broke the silence, and a light came on in the ceiling
far above.

‘Lights still work,’
Tren observed redundantly.

The building really was
empty. It didn’t even have furniture. The large expanse of bare
floor stretched before them, devoid of clues.

‘Fake address?’

She sighed in
annoyance. ‘Must be. Curse it, I really hoped for something here.
Brun had better deliver.’

She turned to leave,
but Tren stopped, dropping into a crouch on the hard floor. He ran
his hands over the cold stone, then rubbed his fingers
together.

‘What have you found?’
She crossed to him and crouched down beside him.

‘Hold out your hand.’
She did so and he sprinkled dust into her palm.

‘Dust.’

‘Look more closely.’ He
sent the tiny light-globe to hover directly over her palm.

Eva gasped as indigo
lights shone from her skin. ‘Dusted draykon bone?’

Tren nodded. ‘I reckon
so. That globe at Lawch & Son? I bet that’s how they made it.
Mixed this with the glass formula.’

‘Hmm. I wonder how they
discovered that.’

‘And what else they’ve
discovered.’

An interesting thought.
The Seven Realms could be flooded with small technologies like the
light-globe, things that were unlikely to reach the attention of
the authorities. And if they did, Mr Byllant had an old,
long-abandoned address to cover his tracks.

Whoever Byllant was, he
must be making a fortune at this venture.

‘He
has
to be
linked to Krays,’ Eva said. ‘How else could he be getting
quantities of draykon bone?’

‘But why would Krays be
gathering draykon bone just to spread it around like this? Can
someone like him care about money? Why would he need it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she
admitted.

‘We shouldn’t get fixed
on that theory. There’s nothing here to link any of this to
Krays.’

‘True.’ She thought
back over all the information they’d gained. She had nothing but a
name and this address, and no way to access any of Ullarn’s
bureaucratic records to find out the rest. She would have to trust
Brun for that.

And she had nothing
else. Nothing on Byllant, nothing on Ana and Griel. She didn’t even
have last names for the latter two.

‘Brun had better
deliver,’ she said again. If he didn’t find something for them to
go on, they had hit a dead end.

Aysun dropped his
voice-box back onto the desk with a grunt of irritation. Three days
he had been trying to reach her, and his wife hadn’t accepted the
call.

She had forgotten to
carry it around with her, he supposed. It lay somewhere in the
house, out of hearing so she never knew when he was trying to get
through. Or the box was broken. That was a possibility.

Or perhaps she had
actively decided not to answer. She was avoiding him for some
reason. His irritation grew greater at the mere thought.

All of these
conclusions he drew and steadfastly clung to in favour of the
notion that something had gone wrong. He was of a protective
nature, and frequently over the years he’d been gripped with fear
when his wife had been late or absent and he’d become convinced
that some catastrophe had befallen her.

She’d laughed at him
for it. Every time.

He gave the call one
last try, listening sadly as it beeped on without Ynara’s beloved
voice cutting in. At last he set the voice box aside and left the
room, sore at heart.

Through the window he
could see Orillin in the garden with Graaf. The orboe had never
left, sticking to the tousle-headed boy with endearing
stubbornness. If you could call it endearing. The creature was as
enormous as ever and looked just as unfriendly to Aysun’s eye. He
still had to restrain himself from rushing to the boy’s aid when
his slight form disappeared under Graaf’s huge, shaggy body. But
always the maddening boy emerged unscathed, laughing his
irrepressible laugh, tumbling on with the orboe as if he hadn’t a
care in the world.

He would lose that
carefree nature as he grew older. When he had a daughter out in the
worlds somewhere alone, and a wife who refused to answer his calls,
he would know about cares.

Aysun grouched his way
back to the main room of Rheas’s house. He collected a mug of beer
for himself, refusing to acknowledge the grey-haired man in the
rocking chair. But when he turned to leave, he only made it halfway
across the room before Rheas spoke.

‘No answer again, I
take it.’

‘What do you know of
it?’ He glowered heavily at his abominable parent, fiercely glad to
have a target for his irritation.

‘Were you planning to
do something about it, or will you settle for stamping about my
house all day?’

‘Like what?’ Aysun
demanded. ‘I’m stuck here for the present, playing nurse-maid to
that child out there.’

Rheas smirked. ‘I could
do that without your help.’

‘Ynara asked it of
me.’

Rheas shook his head.
‘You’re a pushover.’

Aysun’s fists clenched.
‘Shut up, old man. You forfeited your right to criticise my doings
long ago.’

Rheas shrugged. ‘I was
going to suggest a solution, but if that’s the way you feel about
it I’ll stay out of it.’

‘Oh, for the love
of...’ Aysun massaged his temples. Never was anybody cursed with
such an irritating, reprehensible, aggravating excuse for a sire.
‘Fine, make your suggestion.’

Rheas’s eyes glinted.
‘It means accessing those summoner abilities you’ve been busy
denying, my boy. Still interested?’

Aysun took a long
breath. ‘All right. Yes.’

‘Good. You haven’t
forgotten Prink, I’m sure.’

Prink? Aysun didn’t
recognise the name, but he did recognise the colourful bundle of
fur and wings that zipped past his nose.

‘Odd name.’

‘Your daughter’s
choice, not mine. Prink will take you as a passenger for a short
time, if you’re good and don’t snap at him.’

Aysun frowned harder
than ever. ‘A passenger? You’re talking nonsense.’

‘If I am, it’s
remarkably effective nonsense. I’ve kept a close eye on our Llandry
for years by this very method. And before you object, I’m the
reason she survived that fight. I got her out, and that was due to
the help of Prink here sticking to your girl like a burr. Still
want to argue?’

Aysun shook his head,
mute.

‘Right. You’re going to
have to do something pretty uncharacteristic for you. You’re going
to have to forget yourself. For the next hour, you and Prink are
the same. Now reach out to him. Not with your eyes or your ears;
use those summoner senses you pretend you don’t have.’

This came hard. Used to
brutal denial of this traitorous, dangerous part of himself, Aysun
struggled with the command to open himself to it.

In the end, though, it
wasn’t that hard. The very strength of his summoner nature was part
of the fear. It rested just below the surface of his conscious
mind, always threatening to break free of his ruthless control. No
matter how hard he tried to be an ordinary engineer, magicless and
safe, he had never managed it.

He felt Prink’s mind
like the touch of a feather on his skin. The little beast was
enjoying the sensation of air across its wings, welcoming the
room’s draughts like caresses.

‘Good,’ Rheas approved.
‘We don’t have time to muck about with this so I’m going to help
you out. All right?’

Aysun didn’t have time
to reply before a mental blow struck him. He reeled in confusion as
his befuddled mind divided between defending itself, fighting back
and understanding what had happened.

Juicy.

The thought flitted
across his own mind, but he knew it wasn’t his. Then he tasted
something crunchy in his mouth - his mouth that remained, he was
certain, empty - and a hot, sharp liquid ran over his tongue. He
crunched the insect down, swallowing it with satisfaction. His
wings beat frantically multiple times per second, but he didn’t
need to concentrate on that; they took care of their own
rhythm.

And alongside all this
he was still Aysun, a tall human with two arms and two legs and a
deeply confused brain.

‘Talk to me,’ came
Rheas’s voice. Looking his way, Aysun saw him through Prink’s eyes:
enormous, hairy in the wrong places and imposing. But, oddly
enough, the irilapter felt a pulse of affection for the man.

‘Hello?’ Aysun’s lips
formed the word clearly; for a moment he’d been afraid he wouldn’t
be able to manage speech anymore.

‘Good. Getting the hang
of it?’

‘Mhm.’ Aysun’s
attention was only half on the conversation. The rest of his brain
experienced Prink’s world with fascination.

He was almost jolted
out of Prink’s consciousness when Rheas opened his mouth and
bellowed a single word. ‘
MAGS!’

‘Yes, dear.’ The little
woman’s answering cry came merrily down the stairs and she herself
soon followed.

‘Gate,’ Rheas barked.
‘Quickly.’ He pointed at Prink.

‘Right,’ said Mags
placidly. She worked fast. Almost immediately a gate opened right
in front of Prink’s long proboscis and, with a small cry of
indignation, the irilapter was sucked into it.