Lokant (42 page)

The door clattered open
and Rufin almost fell through it, his enormous feet tripping over
the mat. He cursed loudly, barely managing to catch himself before
he fell headlong to the floor. A mug he’d been carrying dropped and
shattered.

Aysun sighed. If even
Rufin’s regular clumsiness couldn’t wake his ladies, they were
heavily asleep indeed.

‘Still moping?’ Rufin
thrust the surviving mug at Aysun, scowling. The cup contained
strong-smelling soup, the scent of which turned Aysun’s stomach
immediately.

‘I am keeping them
company,’ he replied stiffly. ‘Any moment there could be a change.
Someone should stay with them.’

Rufin snorted. ‘Has it
escaped your notice that we’re under attack? You’re needed out
there. Those creatures aren’t done yet.’

Aysun shrugged. ‘I’m
not the only engineer in Glinnery.’

‘Luckily for us, you’re
the only useless one.’

Aysun said nothing.
Rufin couldn’t rile him, not now.

‘You going to drink
that?’

‘Can’t. Sorry.’

Rufin held out his
hand. ‘Give it back then.’ The gunman reclaimed the mug. He offered
it perfunctorily to Pensould, who mutely shook his head. With a
shrug, Rufin drained the contents in two gulps.

‘Feels like a mausoleum
in here,’ he muttered. He turned to leave.

Blocking his exit was a
tall gentleman, elderly, with a full head of white hair and a
commanding air. Aysun frowned, puzzled. He hadn’t heard the man
come in.

‘Llandry Sanfaer,’ said
the newcomer. ‘Which one is her?’

Aysun stood up and
advanced. ‘Who are you? What do you want with her?’

The man merely brushed
him aside. ‘Never mind that. She must be removed from here, with
the utmost haste. Her well-being depends on it. Which one is Miss
Sanfaer?’ He stared into both sleeping faces for an instant or two
in turn, then pointed to Llandry. ‘This one, I conclude?’

‘Back off,’ Aysun said,
his fits clenching in anger. ‘You’re not taking her anywhere.’

Pensould spoke, for the
first time in some hours. ‘It’s all right. I know this man. He
intends no harm.’

Aysun’s brows snapped
together. ‘What? Then who is he?’

A small, hopeless smile
crossed Pensould’s strange face. ‘It would take far too long to
explain.’

‘And I decline to make
any more explanations at present; there’s been enough of that,’
said the impatient and autocratic old man. ‘Pensould, you’ll help
me.’

‘You will not!’ Aysun
cried as Pensould rose from his chair. ‘Llandry is safe here, with
her family. She stays.’

The old man rounded on
him. ‘She isn’t safe anywhere, you fool. Do you think you can
protect her? You are far out of your depth, whoever you are. The
only way she has a chance is if I take her. She must not be left in
this Cluster of worlds.’

Aysun stared,
dumbfounded, as the man turned his back on him and, with Pensould’s
help, picked up Llandry’s sleeping form. Sigwide whimpered at his
feet: Pensould stooped to collect him, too.

‘Drop the young lady,’
came Rufin’s command. He had drawn a pistol - where he had hidden
it Aysun couldn’t guess, as his weapons were always stripped from
him in the infirmary. The pistol was aimed at the old man’s
head.

‘Gently,’ Aysun
amended.

The old man rolled his
eyes and let out a sigh of pure exasperation. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.
You
drop it. Now.’ He stared the gunman down, his blue eyes
cold as winter.

To Aysun’s complete
amazement, Rufin let the pistol fall.

‘Good. Any other
objections?’ His cold stare turned on Aysun, whose indignation and
anger melted away like butter in the sun. He had tensed himself,
ready to rush the man. Now his muscles relaxed, all desire to
attack withering away.

‘I gather you have some
interest in this young lady’s condition, so Pensould shall keep you
informed,’ the man continued, relentless. ‘But with me she must
indeed go. I assure you, it is the only way to preserve her
life.’

Aysun’s lips fought to
form words, some silent command working to keep him quiet.
‘Wh-where are you taking her?’

‘Somewhere Other,’ was
all the reply he received.

‘Then I go as
well.’

‘That is not
acceptable.’

‘Just try to leave
without me,’ Aysun growled.

The man simply ignored
him.

‘Pensould?’ Aysun
turned to the draykon-man, placing all his hopes of an explanation
in the goodwill of his daughter’s admirer.

‘All will be well, I
swear it,’ Pensould replied.

Aysun grunted.
Remembering the voice-box, he groped in his pocket for it and
tossed it to Pensould.

‘You
will
keep
me informed,’ he growled. ‘If anything happens to her, it’s you I’m
coming after.’

Pensould merely nodded,
storing the device in his own garments.

‘If that’s everything,
it’s past time to go,’ said the white-haired man, his tone dripping
impatience. On Pensould’s nod, he secured his grip on Llandry and
clamped a hand around Pensould’s arm.

Released from the old
man’s stare, Aysun regained his will. He prepared himself, standing
ready to follow the group as they left. He couldn’t be kept from
accompanying Llandry: he refused to be left behind.

But then they
vanished.

Aysun stood dumb with
shock. It was a true vanishment: there one instant, gone the next,
while he had been watching them closely enough to detect any
trickery.

‘Huh?’ Rufin rushed
past him to stand where the three had been only moments before. He
walked in circles, sweeping his hands through the air, as if to
discover by that means some manner of trickery.

Finding nothing, he
stared incredulously at Aysun.

Unease spread rapidly
through Aysun’s body, choking his breath and sending his stomach
clenching with trepidation.

Whatever his Llandry
had got herself into, it was clearly far beyond his power to
comprehend.

‘You’d better keep her
safe,’ he muttered to the empty air, trying desperately to trust in
Pensould’s confident endorsement of the man.

Taking up his seat by
Ynara’s side, Aysun took his wife’s hand. Still cold; still
senseless.

Cold metal touched his
temple, startling him. Rufin stood over him, his pistol retrieved
and once more in his hand. The barrel of it was pointed at Aysun’s
head.

Aysun slowly lifted his
brows at his friend.

‘Can’t let you waste
any more time sitting here like a gormless idiot,’ Rufin explained.
‘I mean, yeah, that was freaky beyond all reason, but you’re
needed.’

‘Ynara needs me,’ he
replied.

Rufin waved the pistol
at her. ‘How? She doesn’t even know you’re there. And what are you
going to do to protect her when the next attack comes?’

‘Put it down, Ruf.
You’re not going to shoot me.’

Rufin hesitated, then
lowered the weapon. ‘Reckon you’re right, though you deserve
it.’

His old friend was
right, of course. Much as it pained him to be torn from Ynara’s
side, he ought to do more. He must do more.

But he wouldn’t leave
Ynara unattended either.

‘One hour, Rufin. Give
me one more hour and I’ll join you.’

Rufin grinned. ‘I’ll be
back if you don’t.’ He swaggered off.

Leaving a final kiss on
his wife’s brow, Aysun stood and left the infirmary room. He needed
to find Nyra. If his father’s house in the Uppers was safe enough
for Orillin Vanse, it was safe enough for Ynara, too. He would ask
Nyra to take them both up to Rheas’s house. He knew he could rely
on her and Mags to tend to his wife and keep her company, and his
father and Eyas would protect them all.

Or they’d better.

If the attack came as
Rufin predicted, he could bear it better knowing that his wife -
and, he hoped, his daughter - were out of harm’s way.

***

Eva paced outside the
door to Tren’s room, afraid to go inside. He was alive, so Limbane
had said, but his condition was not good. It had not been easy to
save him. He had lost a great deal of blood, and while Limbane’s
healing skills were beyond anything seen in her own world, that was
one problem he could not resolve.

It was her fault that
Tren had been so severely weakened. She should have listened to him
to begin with, for he’d been right, entirely right. She was
incapable of healing him. The journey to the Library had been hard
on him, but if she had done it right away, he would probably have
been in better shape for it.

Now she feared the
worst. Tren’s wound had been closed and healed, but he was still
desperately weak, and he would have to rely largely on his own
strength to recover. How strong was he? He was young and fit, true,
but would it be enough?

Steeling herself, she
quietly opened the door and went in. The room was almost completely
dark, though enough faint light was present to allow her sensitive
night-eyes to make out the details of Tren’s form, lying still in a
large bed in the centre of the room. Approaching with care - she
didn’t wish to wake him if he was sleeping - she surveyed his
face.

So pale, and his eyes
smudged with shadows. But he breathed still, and his face lacked
the pallor of death.

‘You’re too late,’ he
murmured without opening his eyes. ‘For I am dead and gone, slain
by wayward pride.’

Eva flinched and
stepped back. She knew she deserved some recrimination, but it
still hurt to hear it.

‘Tren, I’m sorry. I
feared for the journey -’

He opened his eyes and
looked at her gravely. ‘That might be true, but is it also fair to
say you were competing with yourself? I know how you dislike to
fail.’

She took a pained
breath. ‘Yes,’ she said shakily. ‘I really thought that I could
make it work, somehow. I was determined.’

He gazed at her for a
moment longer with that detestable gravity. Then, suddenly, he
grinned.

‘You did it because you
care. Aren’t I right? Admit it.’

Relief weakened her
knees. She pulled up a chair and sat at his side.

‘Perfectly true: it
cannot be denied.’ She took his hand and folded it in her own.

‘You’ll have to make it
up to me,’ he said, returning the pressure of her fingers.

‘How would you like me
to atone?’

He made a show of
thinking it over.

‘I think I have earned
a kiss,’ he decided. ‘I wasn’t in a position to properly enjoy the
last one.’

Eva complied,
thoroughly and without hesitation.

‘Curse my weakness,’ he
said somewhat later. ‘Now would be the perfect time to - well, to
-’

She opened her eyes
very wide. ‘To what?’

‘Uh. Never mind,’ he
said lamely.

‘Later,’ she promised.
‘You’d better work on getting well, as fast as you can.’

His eyes widened. ‘I
wasn’t - I mean I
was
serious but not - I didn’t think you’d
– um.’ He blinked a few times. ‘Why the change of heart?’

She countered that with
another question. ‘Why did you get yourself stabbed?’

He tried to shrug but
it obviously hurt somewhere, for he winced in pain. ‘If one of us
is going to get stabbed, it had better be me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because your being
hurt is not an option.’

She smiled at that. ‘I
find it hard to believe that even I could mesmerise someone into
risking their life for me. It occurred to me that maybe you weren’t
talking complete nonsense after all.’

‘Hey. I know my own
mind,
my lady.
You’re insulting.’

‘Of course you do.’ She
adopted the soothing tone that adults use to reassure children.

Tren scowled at her. ‘I
can’t think
why
I love you. You’re perfectly horrible.’

‘I know,’ she said
placidly. Abandoning her chair, she lay down next to him. They lay
in silence for a while as Tren gathered his strength and regained
his breath.

‘So,’ he murmured
eventually. ‘What are we doing next?’

‘You’re getting well,’
she replied. ‘Then we’re going with Limbane to Ullarn. He’s after
Krays’s workshops.’

‘Right. Excellent. But
what I actually meant was, what are
we
doing next? Is it too
soon to think about children? Because I think our babies would be
too gorgeous for this world.’

She laughed at that and
kissed him. ‘Ask me again when you’re well.’

A week or so after the
removal of his wife from Glinnery, Aysun Sanfaer stood at the top
of the tallest glissenwol tree in Waeverleyne. A structure had been
hastily erected, large and sturdy enough to accommodate the
considerable bulk and weight of his new war machines.

The monstrous
contraptions were wrought from steel and pale tayn wood brought
from Irbel. It was the hardest, strongest wood available and it
needed to be, for these machines were built to hurl the heaviest of
missiles at intruders from the air.

One was equipped to
hurl rocks. Ammunition was being brought up by pulley; a stack of
at least thirty waited to be loaded into the machine.

The other was fitted to
hurl something more deadly. Globes of hide rested, seemingly
innocuous, in a great container at the base of the machine. They
were designed to break on impact: inside was a chemical concoction
that would burst into flame when disturbed, engulfing the enemy in
a conflagration.

Or so he hoped.

Similar towers had been
erected all over Glinnery. Every major settlement had at least
three towers, and many of the smaller ones now had one at their
defence. But they were not working fast enough. Aysun knew that the
delay was far from promising. While they worked feverishly to
prepare their defences, the draykoni were doubtless working to
improve their numbers. It was impossible to guess how many would
eventually come at them: the best they could do was work fast and
hard and hope for the best.