The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) (7 page)

“Who said that?” a guard standing nearby asked, hearing the raised voice, as the two invisible beings grew silent.  Alec tugged on Kecil’s hand, and cautiously led her out of the stadium confines.  They carefully strolled close to the stadium walls, out of the flow of the departing crowd, and away from any guards stationed nearby.

“I journeyed from this land to yours once before,” Alec said proudly.  “I can do it again, easily.  We just need to figure out how we can make it possible for you to travel through the land without being taken captive again.”  He pondered the question silently, while he watched the crowd grow thinner before him.

Chapter 5

The journey offered a challenge.  While he wanted to travel alone, he found a spark within himself that wanted to travel with the lacerta, to find the challenge of smuggling her out of Witten and across the entire width of the empire, and then beyond.   It would put spice in the meal, liven the game, make the trip an adventure.

“We can do this,” he muttered emphatically.

“I can’t imagine what makes you want to do this for me,” Kecil replied.

“I think that in fact, I’m doing it for you, and for me.  I’ll do this for both of us,” he told her, looking over at her.

“If you say so,” she answered uncertainly, not understanding his meaning.

“Let’s go; the crowd is thinning,” Alec suggested.  “Stay very close to me; put your hand here and keep it on me,” he planted her long fingers on the middle of his back, then began to slowly weave his way out into the plaza around the stadium, and into the stream of traffic.

The two of them circled around the arena to the far side, the side that Alec’s inn was located on, and then they walked through the streets and the alleys, dodging other travelers along the way.

Alec stopped abruptly as they came around a corner.

“What’s wrong?” Kecil asked.

“There’s a shop,” he replied shortly.

“So what?  Shops are everywhere in cities,” she answered tersely.

“I want to see if we can get some things to cover you up,” Alec told her.  “This will be tricky.  I can step out of the invisible space, and still keep you invisible, but you have to stay just the right distance away from me.

“If I give you directions, will you follow them?” he spoke directly to the girl, staring into her golden brown eyes.

“If you give me good directions, I’ll follow them,” she tossed the responsibility back to him.

“Stand still,” Alec said.  He stopped and his eyes briefly lost their focus as he concentrated on adjusting his cloak of invisibility to meet his needs.  He was growing strained from having exercised the Light powers for such a stretch of time, more than he had used Light energy in decades, it seemed.

He stepped aside.

“Here now, where did you come from?” a voice on the sidewalk called, and Alec turned to see a servant carrying an armful of goods staring at him from the far side of the intersection.

“I just moved out of the shadows,” he dismissed the man, and looked critically behind him; Kecil was not visible.

“Now, this is the distance.  Stay just this far behind me,” he told her.  “I’ll move slowly, and you match my steps.  Can you do that?”

“I’m not a child,” she snapped, displaying the tension she felt.  “Let’s get going.”

Alec turned, and with small, deliberate steps he went into the used clothing store, then down the center aisle.  The shop was nearly deserted, except for a pair of clerks who appeared ready to close and go home.

“What’s that?” one of them spoke.

Alec ignored the question, as he stopped at a shelf of sloppily piled clothing items, and began to dig through them.

“What are you talking about?  He’s a customer,” the taller clerk replied to the first.  “We’re going to close in five minutes mister,” the clerk added in a louder voice for Alec’s benefit.

“Not him.  I saw something else, behind him,” the first clerk insisted.

“I don’t see anything.  Do you see anything now?” his companion replied.

Alec continued to paw through the clothing while the two began to squabble.  He pulled out a hooded cloak, and held it up, judging its length, then tucked it under his arm.

“Do you have gloves?” he asked the clerks.

“Up here in this case,” the shorter clerk replied, and then the two lapsed into silence, as Alec slowly walked towards them.

“Are your feet sore?  Why are you so slow?” the tall clerk none-too-subtly urged Alec to hurry.

Alec stopped and picked a scarf off a pile of items, then moved towards the gloves, and sorted through them before selecting two pairs.

“Those won’t fit your hands,” the clerk closest to him pointed out.  “They’re too small.”

Alec pulled out some of his coins, and laid a pair on the counter top.

“What kind of money is this?” the tall clerk asked, looking at the Dominion-minted coins.  “We can’t take this.”

“It’s good silver.  The shops down in Raysing took it,” Alec replied.  He hadn’t yet bothered to exchange his Dominion coins for Avonellene tender.  He’d found that most merchants accepted gold and silver regardless of the face on the coin.

“It looks funny.  How do we know it’s enough?” the other clerk asked.

Alec pulled out an additional coin, and then another.  “Here’s a little extra silver – one for you and one for you.  It adds up to more than enough, doesn’t it?” he asked.

The clerks shrugged and took the coins off the counter, while Alec picked up his goods, and turned to leave, then gave the clerks a surprise as he momentarily disappeared while he passed through the space of invisibility that hid Kecil.

He ignored their exclamations and left the store, then turned around the corner outside, and entered the alley, to disappear within the invisible space once again with his lacerta ward.

“Here, put these on,” he told her, holding out the cloak first.  He helped arrange it, then wrapped the scarf around her throat and mouth, and pulled the hood up.

“Put the gloves on,” he gave her first one pair to try, then the other.

“Now,” he seemed satisfied.  “Keep your head down, and walk behind me.”  He released his use of the Light power, and sighed deeply in appreciation.

“It’s good to finally have some clothing,” Kecil disparaged the tattered rags she had worn.  “But this is very warm.”

“When we get to the inn you can take them off in our room,” Alec assured her, and he started walking again, leading her through the twists and turns of the city streets as the evening settled over the city.

“Where are you taking me?” Kecil asked dubiously after they turned down yet another dark alley.

“Just right up there,” Alec pointed at stables ahead, and he led his young companion into the stable yard behind his inn. They circled around the corner of the building, and entered the kitchen door.

“Who’s there?” the cook asked as the door appeared to swing open on its own.

Alec and Kecil crept in and avoided the cook and the staff as they went to the servants’ stairs and climbed up the dark, empty passage to the upper floor hallway where the guest rooms sat.

“Here,” Alec gave a sigh of relief, as he approached a door and opened it.  “This is my room; step in.”  The two of them entered the room, and Alec closed the door, then altered the use of his Light energy, and caused a small ball of light to glow by pulling together all the random small specks of light that seeped into the room through the door frame and the window.

“How do you do that?” Kecil asked.  “Never mind; I know you can make us invisible, so I can’t be surprised by balls of light.

“May I take these things off?” she held up her hands to display her gloves.

“Yes, go right ahead.  Make yourself comfortable,” Alec said reassuringly as he sat down and then closed his eyes.

“My lord, what is your name?” the girl asked in a muffled voice, as she pulling the scarf away from her face, and then removed her gloves.

“Alec,” he said with a smile.  “You can call me Alec.  Not ‘my lord’.”

“Alec,” he heard Kecil test the sound of the name.  “My lord Alec,” she spoke louder, “I have not eaten in days, and we came through the kitchen – it smelled very good.  Can I have something – anything – to eat?”

Alec had just lifted his leg to pull his boot off his foot, but stopped, then lowered his foot.  He was hungry too, he realized.  “I’ll go downstairs to get some food for both of us.  You stay here,” he commanded.

“I won’t try to go anywhere,” Kecil assured him with the lacerta equivalent of a smile, the thin-lipped display of the pointed teeth that Alec found slightly unnerving.

Alec slipped out of the door and pulled it quietly shut behind himself, then walked downstairs to the dining hall, and took a seat.  He ordered two bowls of stew and a loaf of bread, then handed over coins and waited for the delivery.  The crowd was quiet and orderly in the inn, with no music or entertainment to draw a crowd or energize one.  It was precisely the type of place Alec had chosen to stay – an orderly place where any prosperous merchant would want to stay, a place unlikely to draw trouble.  Or now, he hoped, attention – it was too calm to have any guards or police calling upon it, which was the last thing he wanted.

The thought was no sooner coursing through his mind than he heard the main door open, and the voice of the servant at the front desk called out.  “Good evening officers.  How may I help you?”

Alec’s shoulders slumped.  He felt tired from all energy he had used in the course of his adventures that afternoon, and he had no wish to delve into the energy realm once more.  He kept his head down, and listened as the sound of boots told of the approach of the police patrol.

“Has anyone here seen anything suspicious?” a woman’s voice asked.

Alec looked up and turned to inspect the speaker.  He saw a brunette woman, one with the same apparent age that he held, flanked by a pair of patrol guards.

There were grunts and murmurs from the crowd, but nothing positive.

“You, stand up,” the woman nodded at Alec.

The Avonellene Empire had been a very male-dominated society when Alec had first arrived in it, more than two centuries prior.  He would have never expected to see a woman as an officer in a police or military organization, other than through the anomalous society at Black Crag.  But change had apparently come over time.

He obeyed the officer and pushed his stool back, then stood up.

“We’re looking for two people,” the officer said.  She walked over next to Alec, and sauntered around him in a tight circle.  “One of them looks like this fellow here – about his height, about his color,” she told the others.

“Maybe it’s him,” one of the other patrons in the room uncharacteristically spoke up and joked to the officer.

The woman looked in the direction of the voice for a moment, and there was silence.

“The other fugitive is a monster from the stadium.  The man stole the monster from the battle grounds,” her diction slowed as she tried to find the right words to describe what had happened, without describing the scene in a manner that would sound as preposterously implausible as it had been.

“Do you have a monster with you?” the officer asked Alec.

“She’s up in my room,” Alec tried to gest, hoping to defuse the scenario with humor.

“Well mister comedian, as it happens, we’re going to search the rooms,” the officer answered mildly.  “You can sit down,” she said, looking directly at him, signaling that he should sit, when her words had suddenly given him reason to want to go up to his room immediately.

As he stood hesitantly, then began to stoop down into his seat, the servant came out with the two bowls of stew he had ordered.

“Have an appetite, do you?” the officer asked, looking at him sharply.

“I have to feed that monster in the room,” Alec said weakly once again.  “Would you like for me to go show one of your men?”

“Gruy, take him up to his room and check on his monster, then check the other rooms while you’re up there,” the officer told one of the guards who accompanied her, a man who had been standing idly in the background behind her up to that moment.

Gruy immediately stood straight, and walked over to join the officer and Alec.

“We’re going this way,” Alec said.  He picked up the two bowls, and balanced the bread on top, then started walking slowly towards the hallway of guest rooms.  He had to find a way to solve the impending problem he knew.  There was a simple way, but it relied on Kecil guessing and acting the right way, and he had no idea how the lacerta would react to the appearance of the new human.

Alec sent his spirit into the energy realm as they climbed the stairs.  He grasped the Light power once again, and carefully projected it into the guest room as he and the guard approached the door.  He didn’t know where in the room Kecil was located, but he hoped that she would act sensibly cautious as she heard the two of them approach, and remain still.

“So you plan to search every room?” Alec said loudly to the guard as the two of them came to a stop at his door.  “You’re going to go into every room and look for some sign of the missing monster from the arena?  How long will that take?  Are you going to search each room for a long time?” he kept up his list of questions long enough and loudly enough to feel confident that Kecil heard them all.

He shifted his load of food, then opened the door narrowly, and looked in.  Kecil was standing, staring at him, a stricken look on her face.  Alec twitched his head to the left, towards the portion of the room shielded by his bubble of invisibility, then twitched it again.