TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (32 page)

“If you say so, Caz,” he said carefully, as he returned his parchment to his jacket pocket. Caspian let out his breath angrily but he wasn’t done yet.

“I’m working out how far the markers are from each other as well,” he said, as he glared at all of us. “I’ve already tested the formula I designed to work out the distance between markers and I know for a fact that there’s a marker exactly 42 lengths to 40º from the Denboris border marker. It’s at
Delphinius +3570 set 7º
and I can assure you all; once our spies start using my markers, and we defeat the Denborites at their own games, none of you will find my equations amusing then,” he finished crossly, and he frowned angrily as he picked up his book and shoved it into his jacket pocket.

“Don’t forget us when you’re famous then Caspian,” said Dominic with amusement, and Seth laughed.

“Look after your partner at all costs when you’re out on your quests Evangeline. It appears he’s carrying the complete Book of Markers in his pocket,” said Imogen, and there was more laughter at the table.

“It’s not complete yet, but it will be,” muttered Caspian crossly, as he picked up his spoon.

Caspian ate in silence for a while and the others soon moved onto a new topic, but Morgan glanced at Caspian a few times across the table before he spoke to him quietly.

“Do you want to play hand ball after the meal Caz? We can play next door,” he said, and Caspian looked at Morgan carefully across the table before he nodded slowly.

“Alright, but I’m not playing you for money,” he said firmly, and Morgan frowned.

“I’m not asking you to,” he said, and when I folded my arms, Caspian grinned suddenly and Morgan wouldn’t look at me at all. So, that was where some of his coins came from……..

While Morgan played handball with Caspian, I took sword practice with Evangeline. The practice room was only lit dimly at night and the half-light added an extra edge to our competition. Evangeline glanced at Morgan a few times as he played handball against the wall at the other end of the room, and, a few times, she glanced just as thoughtfully at me too. I ignored her though and tried to concentrate on beating her instead, but I managed to win only one round.

We removed our practice vests quickly when Erin informed us the messages had finally arrived from Aldiris, and both Morgan and Caspian followed us as we walked back through the gate in the fence and walked around the edge of the marker towards the Quest house back door.

All of us had received messages. My one and only message though was from my mother and it wished me many happy turns……but it wasn’t in her hand writing. Morgan put his one and only message straight into his pocket, and he didn’t read it at all, while Evangeline sat at the table with her five messages, and was still reading them as the rest of us made our way slowly towards our rooms. It was almost time for lights out.

“Good set, Liv. I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Morgan quietly, and he smiled as he paused beside me in the hallway. “If you can’t sleep, try taking that terrible noise out of your ears,” he added quietly, as the others disappeared. I smiled.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said softly, and Morgan had taken a step towards me when we heard Evangeline on the stairs. He glanced at her and took a step backwards again and we both turned quickly and disappeared into our rooms……

CHAPTER 16
:

The morning dawned with the sound of the house alarm and the house lights came on at the same time, waking me slowly from a very deep sleep. I hadn’t listened to my music at all during the night. I knew what it was I wanted now and I didn’t need the distraction. Surprisingly, I’d fallen asleep relatively quickly, despite having slept during the day, and I sat on my bed now as I did up the laces of my Synthetic Era running shoes. Erin and Imogen had already left the room and I wasn’t surprised when Evangeline sat down suddenly beside me. I
was
surprised though, by the first thing she said to me.

“How well do you know Elijah, Livia?” she asked me quietly, and I looked at her for a moment before I shook my head slightly.

“Err…..oh, you mean Elijah from the Tournament Champion’s ceremony in Aldiris,” I said slowly, and she nodded awkwardly.

“He sent me a message through the marker guards……He wished me well in my finals,” she said, and she hesitated.

“I only met him that night, Evangeline,” I said.

“It’s just that he wouldn’t dance with me, but he sent me a message and I’m not sure what to think. What do you think that means?” she asked me quickly, and she looked flustered. I stared at her in surprise again before I smiled slowly. So, Elijah hadn’t given in to her demands after all. No wonder he’d caught her attention.

“I think it means he really doesn’t like dancing and you might just have to accept that, but I think he might like you,” I said, and she frowned a little.

“What should I do?” she asked me, surprising me yet again.

“Well, if you like him too, you should send a message through the guards to wish him safety in his forthcoming Tournament, and you probably shouldn’t try to make him dance with you when you see him again,” I suggested, and when Evangeline smiled, I hesitated before I spoke to her just as carefully.

“Evangeline, thank you for…… yesterday…..for…..”

Evangeline interrupted me before I could finish.

“Be more careful Livia. It might not have been me who was first to the door,” she said, and she looked at me seriously. I nodded slowly and she nodded too, before we hurried downstairs together to join the others for our run….…..

Morgan didn’t look at me at all as I rushed into the courtyard and I should have realised then that something was wrong.

He didn’t look at me as I fell into step beside him either, but it was only when he didn’t speak at all as we ran together along the track together that I started to suspect that something wasn’t right with him today. Normally, he talked the whole time we were running and he did this to help me forget I was running. Today though, he ran with his eyes focused straight ahead and, when I glanced at him, I could see he was frowning.

“Are you okay?” I asked him in Synthetic Era language.

Morgan loved Synthetic Era phrases and this would usually have made him smile. He didn’t smile this morning though, and when he told me he was fine in the old language, he didn’t smile then either. To make matters worse, I was sure he knew I could tell he was lying but, today, he didn’t seem to care. I didn’t know what to say and I ran beside him in silence too as I wondered if it was something I had said or done. I went through my actions in my head, but he’d been more than fine when I’d left him last night to go to bed.

My lungs started to burn, but I hardly noticed. I was too busy worrying about what could have happened overnight to have caused this sudden silence between us. When we finished the run, Morgan still didn’t speak and, after we returned to our rooms to change, he was late to the morning meal, which was even more worrying. Morgan was never late when there was food involved and Marko frowned at him too as he waited for him by the meal trolley. He sat down beside me and tried to smile as if nothing was wrong, but he still didn’t look me in the eyes. I looked at him carefully and he looked tired; like he hadn’t slept at all during the night, and, eventually, I asked him what Era we were going to today, just to try to force him to talk.

“Discovery,” he said quietly. Caspian had mentioned +1770 last night so I knew that already, but I asked him what turn we’d be visiting anyway.

“+1770,” he said, with his eyes on his meal bowl, and suddenly, I’d had enough of his one word answers, and I left him to eat his morning meal in the silence he obviously preferred.

Morgan disappeared into his room when the meal was done, and when he didn’t reappear, I went next door to take bow practice with Erin, Imogen and Evangeline. Dominic and Seth played handball at the other end of the weapons room and the sound of their ball hitting the wall started to give me a headache. I frowned as I shot arrow after arrow into the targets and when Erin, Evangeline and Imogen went back to the Quest house, I stayed in the practice room by myself in the hope Morgan would come and find me…….but he didn’t, and I ended up cursing him silently as I loaded more arrows into my bow. I didn’t miss once.

I resharpened all the practice arrows in the small weapons storage room after I was done with my practice and, when Morgan still didn’t appear, I challenged the off duty guards to sword practice. I beat each of them in three rounds only and I gritted my teeth as my anger towards Morgan built.

As soon as I saw Morgan at the midday meal though, my anger disappeared suddenly and, just as quickly, it was replaced with despair. He looked almost as miserable as I felt and I wondered why he couldn’t just tell me what it was that was wrong.

Almost worse than his silence though was his behaviour after we finished the meal. He decided to pretend nothing was wrong and he asked me into the sitting room to look through the Discovery Era parchments with him in preparation for our quest. I had to sit beside him on the sofa while he tried to make jokes about Discovery Era customs, but I didn’t laugh and he still didn’t look into my eyes. When I leant close to him to read over his shoulder, he moved away from me quickly and I sat back against the leather sofa cushions and folded my arms.

By the time we stood out in the front courtyard, I’d decided he must have spent the night thinking about the consequences of starting any kind of relationship with me. Even once we’d passed our finals and joined the Quest, our pendants could be removed by the Quest supervisors in Aldiris if they thought we were getting too close……and then, there were the unfortunate circumstances of my birth. Maybe, Seth had talked about my mother in their dorm room last night. That wouldn’t have helped.

Zurina wasn’t in the courtyard this afternoon to check our exits. It was obviously up to us today to leave at the required time, and I asked Morgan for our setting straight away in the hope that he’d talk to me once we were alone in +1770.

We needed no packs, and weapons weren’t allowed on this quest. It was only to last two clock turns, and I’d only changed my boots and put my emergency cylinder in my inside jacket pocket. I was still wearing the same light jacket I’d put on this morning and I saw Morgan hadn’t bothered to change his jacket either. At this hour, it was likely to be cool in the Discovery Era, but today, I just didn’t care about the weather.

“
Andromeda +1770 set 81º”
said Morgan, and he hesitated slightly before he read out our setting from the small parchment Zurina had handed to him yesterday. Of course, he still didn’t look at me, and I decided to set my pendant without repeating the setting back to him like I usually did…..I did double check it myself though.

We travelled through the painful darkness together, and when the colours merged into a landscape around us, we stood on the edge of fast flowing river surrounded by trees and thick, green grass. The breeze was cold, just as I’d predicted, and I shivered slightly as I watched the water beside me tumbling down the slope. There were rocks in the river, and rapids, and somewhere in the trees, a bird called out to me with a mournful whistle. The sky was a pale blue and a few high, pale grey clouds spread themselves thinly across it.

I sighed and looked at Morgan but he still didn’t tell me what was wrong. Instead, he pulled his pendant from beneath his shirt and I watched him turn slightly to his right as he held his pendant out directly in front of him.

There was a compass built into the centre of our pendants, and the compass needle sat beneath the blue crystal needle which pointed to our marker. I could just see the blue crystal needle spinning clockwise in the centre of Morgan’s pendant. It was spinning because we were still standing in the middle of the +1770 marker. Morgan looked around him. We stood on a patch of short, course grass, halfway down a steep hill and, below us to the south, the river rolled and cascaded down a steep hillside. Downstream, I could see crops sewn in neat rows and there were a few stone farm buildings dotted here and there among fields. In the distance, to the south, there were mountains, and the river flowed from the direction of more mountains which rose steeply almost above us to the north.

“We go northeast. Our bearing is 30 lengths to 120º,” said Morgan quietly, and he began walking upriver. I watched him go for a moment before I followed him reluctantly. I didn’t care where our bearing was. He could find it himself, and I deliberately left my pendant beneath my shirt as I followed him along what looked like a goat or deer track that followed the steep bank of the river.

Morgan set a fast pace and, a few times, I had to almost run to keep up with him as he strode briskly up the steep, grassy slope. I frowned, but at least I wasn’t cold anymore. After a while, we had to climb between rocks and, after almost half a clock turn of silent climbing, we left the river bank and Morgan lead us downhill for a while.

I walked behind him across course grass and I drove myself crazy trying to guess what he was thinking. The trouble was, I was new to this. I’d never felt like this about anyone before, and maybe, that
was
the problem. Maybe, Morgan went around kissing girls in every time segment he lived in, and it meant nothing to him. Maybe, I’d been so consumed by my feelings for him, I hadn’t realised he didn’t have the same feelings for me. I glanced at him as he strode along the grass beside me and I let out my breath.