nostril cleaners if a fire kicked up again as a result. So, with a gentle
rrrh
of respect, he left the body where it was and spiralled to the ground again to make his report.
By now, the girl Rosa had started to
recover. She was sitting up against the wall of the eyrie, being closely attended by David. Aurielle and Aleron were perched on a window ledge nearby. Azkiar landed in the daisy field, staying well away from the man he’d once attacked.
Rrrh!
he called, to get Aurielle’s
attention.
I’ve found Aubrey. He’s dead.
Upstairs.
“Uh?” The sound of Rosa’s voice madeall three firebirds look her way. Pushing David aside, she scrabbled to her feet andtook a pace towards Azkiar. The redfirebird poddled back, looking confused.
“Hey, Rosa. Sit down. What are youdoing? You need to rest.” David was ather shoulder in a moment.
“I heard it,” she said.
“Heard what?”
“Heard it talk.”
David glanced at the birds. All three had taken off by now and were flying for a window ledge higher up the building.
“Level 12,” Rosa muttered, counting the floors. She turned towards the librarium door.
“Rosa, wait. Slow down.” David
twisted her round.
“Get off,” she responded, flinging him aside. “Did I ask you to come back and start interfering?”
“Look,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets, “I know you hate me for running off, but I
had
to leave the way I did. My father passed me secret information, something I could only see on his computer. If the Aunts had found it, I would have been sent to the Dead Lands
with him.”
“And this is a bad thing?”
“That’s not fair.” He took an angry step forward. It brought him closer to her than he’d meant to be. So close that his breath
made waves in her hair. “I care about the librarium, just as much as I care about… ” But there the sentiments seemed to fail him and his words trailed off into silent
ambiguity.
Rosa gulped and turned her face a little further from his. After a pause that seemed like forever she said, “One of the birds is dead.”
“How do you know?”
“The red one told the others. I
understood what it said.”
“How?”
“I don’t
know
. But I’m going in to find
them whether you come or not.” And away she went again.
Together, they hurtled through the librarium, letting it guide them to Level 12. As they burst into the room where Aubrey lay, the firebirds scattered away from the body. Azkiar was quick to spread his muscular wings and make himself look as fearsome as possible.
“It’s all right,” Rosa said, raising her hands for calm. She made a
rhhh
-ing noise in the back of her throat. All three firebirds sat up straight, their ear tufts springing out like antennae.
“Well, that got their attention,” David muttered. He knelt by the body, keeping a wary eye on Azkiar. “Ask them how this happened.”
“David, I’m not exactly fluent.”
“Just try,” he said, checking Aubrey’s
eye.
What followed was a kind of bird call
at dusk. For several moments the room
was filled with every manner of click and rasp. When it was done, Rosa pressed her fingertips together and said, “They don’t know. But its very unnatural. The creamcoloured one is frightened. She says the last time she saw this bird it was black.”
David raised his gaze towards Aurielle, who spoke to him.
“What did she say?”
“She wants us to go upstairs with her.”
Rrrh!
“She’s got something important to show us.”
Rrrh-rruurr-rrrh!
There was a pause. David said, “That
sounded intense.”
“She was just asking… if my arm was
all right.”
“And is it?”
Rosa let her fingers hover over thescars. They were raw, but healingremarkably quickly. “Just sore,” shemuttered.
“You should get to one of the restrooms and treat it. How did it happen?”
She told him briefly – all that sheremembered.
He took her hand a moment and looked
at the pattern. “This is what we saw in your dragon book. Did they do it deliberately?”
“I don’t know,” Rosa said, and took her hand back.
David slipped his under Aubrey’s body
and lifted the firebird off the floor. “Tell these guys to organise a watch. Until we know what killed this bird, we should be on our guard.”
Rosa looked to one side. While she
didn’t like the way he’d assumed command, she had to agree that his motives were right. She communicated his words to Aurielle. Azkiar and Aleron
were immediately dispatched from the
room.
“Tell her we’ll come upstairs, but not
until we’ve taken care of this.” He
showed Aurielle the body and gestured to the window.
Aurielle chattered a short response.
Rosa said, a little huffily, “She wants to know if she can stay with us.”
“She’s got wings. We can hardly stop
her.”
“She was being polite, David. She wants your permission. The birds are calling you the new curator.”
“Me? How did I get elect… ?” He stopped there, knowing that nothing he could say would come out favourably. “Fine,” he said finally, and turned towards the door.
The descent to the ground was slower thanusual. When David stepped out into thesunlit daisy fields, he looked for a spotwhere the flowers were plentiful andpretty, then dropped to one knee and put Aubrey down. As he stood up heimagineered a spade. In one movement heswung it round and started to dig. Whenthe hole was made, he laid the body in it
and stood back so that Aurielle could see. The firebird made a little croaking sound but did not seem to object to the ritual.
“Do you want to say anything?”
Rosa was standing a couple of feet away. She shook her head and couldn’t speak.
“Will you ask her what colour he was?”
Another short dialogue established that Aubrey had been blue, like the sky.
David nodded. He filled in the hole and
de:constructed the spade. During the dig, he’d been careful not to crush too many of the daisies. When he laid the main sod
back, most of the flowers were still intact. As the first breeze took them, the petals rippled and changed their colour from white to sky blue. He glanced at Rosa. There were tear tracks on her cheeks. He
went over and slipped his arm around her.
And there they stood, completely unaware that from a window on the ninth floor of the librarium, Aunt Gwyneth was watching.
“Tell me,” she said, to the Ix she was hosting. “What happens if David dies?”
The Ix will gain control of the nexus.
“So why haven’t you done it? You must have had countless opportunities to kill him?”
He is strong
, said the Ix.
The timepoint protects him
.
“In what way?”
He can call upon the power of dragons – and other beasts
.
Aunt Gwyneth pondered this carefully. She ran a finger along the claw. “Tell memore about this artefact. What use is it to
us?”
The creat:or can only function in the hands of those who resonate with dragons. It must be destroyed.
“I will be the judge of that,” she said coldly. “What if he was to get it – David, I mean?”
There was a pause as the Ix swamround her mind.
All of the nexus would bevisible to him. He would see the othertime points to Earth and Ki:mera.
“And thereby hold the balance ofpower,” mused the Aunt. “Well, we can’thave that.”
Kill him
, said the Cluster, trying toassert itself.
The Aunt:Ix could neutralise
David now
.
“Not yet,” she growled, beating itdown. “Let the boy work for us first. He
will show us to the upper floors and
The Book of Agawin
. When the moment comes, he will be no match for me.”
He is strong,
the Ix repeated.
How will
it be done?
“He’s a construct,” she said. “And the one thing constructs have is a template. I treated the boy once. I flowed into his auma. I know his strengths – which are considerable, I admit – but I also know his weakness.”
You will share this
, said the Ix.
“And you will be quiet!” the Aunthissed loudly. She pulled back from thewindow, fearful that her outburst mighthave been heard. Tossing her head, shehissed once more. An irritating tic haddeveloped in one eyelid. A result offighting for dominance with the Cluster.
To punish the Ix, she morphed into theblack and white katt again, a form itconsidered agile but vulnerable. “Hisweakness is love – for the girl, for hisfather, even for his own imperfect katt. The way to defeat him is to squeeze hisheart. And there is no one better at that
than an Aunt… ”
2
From his position by the grave, Davidturned and stared at the librarium
windows. “Did you hear something then?”
Rosa followed his gaze. “What kind of something?”
“A hiss, like someone being shushed?”
“There’s no one here but us and the
birds.”
All the same, David squinted hard at the windows. He had scrutinised a dozen or more when Rosa grew tired and poked him in the ribs. “What are you doing?”
“Probing for traces of anything irregular.”
“Such as?”
He clicked his tongue and looked at
Aurielle, who was waiting patiently forwhatever happened next. “I told you Dadgave me secret information?”
“Yes,” she sighed, not wanting to bereminded of that parting moment.
“It was a film of his time rift
experiment. You remember the portal he
told us about?”
“Vaguely.”
“I’m pretty sure something came through it. Not a physical entity, more a surge of fain. I’m concerned it was responsible for the bird we just buried.”
Rosa looked at the building again. “Alien
fain
? In the librarium?”
“Something turned that firebird black. For all we know, it was—”
“Is that a katt?” Rosa gasped suddenly.
David panned his gaze sideways and
saw it sitting as calmly as a cloud, on a ledge some nine floors up. The black and white katt from Bushley Common. “Oh, no,” he groaned. “I thought I’d left that on a bench in Bushley. It must have followed me off the common and hid itself under the seat of my taxicar.”
“I don’t care how it got here,” Rosa said. “It’s a
katt
, in a building full of birds. Now we know what happened to the one we just buried! If the red one sees that, there’s going to be carnage.” She looked at Aurielle, who was already sitting up, puffing out her feathers. With an uncomfortable
rrrh!
she took off and flew
away.
“Oh, great!” Rosa threw out a hand. “I
think that cancels our trip upstairs.”
David sighed and looked at the katt. It
was washing its paws, totally unfazed. “OK, I’ll deal with it. Upstairs can wait. We need to tidy up after the fire, anyway. I’ll see you in that room. Five minits, max.”
“Why did you
ever
come back?” she grumbled.
He chose to ignore that and hurried on inside.
When he caught up with her at the sceneof the blaze, he was holding the kattagainst his shoulder, gently stroking theback of its neck. It was purring loudly,shut-eyed, content.
“David, get that out of here,” Rosa saidat once. She had found a broom in one of
the utility cupboards and was brushing
loose debris and ash into a pile.
“Don’t you like them?”
“That’s hardly the point.”
“I’m not convinced it killed the bird. I
know they like to chase them, but there are no signs of feathers or blood in its claws. It’s such a friendly little thing. Probably quite old. I reckon it’s… ”
Rosa rested her weight on the broom. She was glaring at him now, her whole body language telling him he was wasting his time.