And then he went to work, impressive in his single-mindedness. He led her in what seemed like swift circles, bypassing closed rooms, a hallway drop cloth weighted down with spackling and plaster buckets, a series of stained glass windows, and several of the bathrooms.
They crossed into a section of the tour path, made obvious by its extra gleam of spit and polish, and through a kitchen, and a smaller room and down several small flights. Ghosts peeked in on them but fled at her notice, finally taking her seriously.
Sklayne bounded along at their heels, and if at times her sense of their goal ran counter to their direction, Sklayne never protested, never faltered — though he, too, must be feeling those ever-flashing trills of pain and now sometimes even fear.
Trevarr, afraid. She hadn’t thought to experience that.
As if you’ve known him for longer than a couple days.
But she did know him better than just those few days. Because somehow, he’d known her.
“Garrie?” Drew stood with his hand on a black doorknob, old and round and set in a short gray door. “Here’s the basement. It’s a warren, but there aren’t any more switchbacks. I’m not totally sure where you’re going, so...”
“Neither am I,” Garrie said. “I just know I have to get there.”
“But why?” Drew stood there, his hand on the knob, effectively blocking the way — perhaps having forgotten the fate of the ghosts not long before. “What’s really going on?”
She shook her head. “I barely know. Trevarr knows. And he’s the one in trouble down here.”
“How?” Frustration crossed his face.
The ground rumbled and the house groaned and creaked around them; they both instinctively ducked. Garrie tried to rein in the frantic in her voice. “The first clue I get, I’ll pass along. You can tell Lucia as much.”
“Sure, I can — hey, wait a minute. You think I’m going back? You think you’re going in alone?” Thunderous scowl, there.
“I know I am,” Garrie told him, as gently as she could — painfully aware that she was doing to Drew just exactly what Trevarr had done to her. Withhold information. Leave him behind. “You’ve already done what I couldn’t — you got us here. Now I need you to go back in case the others made a break for it — help them find the fastest, cleanest way out of this house.”
“But what if —”
She cut him off. “When I’m through here, I’ll find you. The ghosts will take me back if nothing else — it’s where they want me to be, after all.”
Drew scowled down at Sklayne. “But the cat goes with you?”
“Hey,” Garrie said, and smiled rather beatifically. “If I leave him here, then you have to deal with him.”
Sklayne turned to her with a lifted paw, toes spread wide and claws extruded. ::Can hear you.::
“Yeah, yeah,” Garrie told him. She put her hand over Drew’s on the doorknob.
After a moment — a moment of earth grumbling and house moaning and dust settling around them — he pulled his hand out from beneath. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t,” she said. “But hey, this is what I wanted, right? Adventure? And I dragged you guys along. So now I’ve got to deal with it. That seems fair.”
He gave her a strange look. “Not if we’re a team.”
That hit her hard, somewhere deep — but so mixed in with the dread and the sharp, twisting pains that she couldn’t do anything more than wince as she opened the door.
Sklayne shot through the opening as soon as it was wide enough to admit him, feet light on the wooden steps. Limited by human eyes, Garrie fumbled around for the light switch — found it, and turned back to Drew. “Get them out, if you can,” she said. “If the ghosts believe I’m working on the problem, they might give up their hostages.” The rumbling earth underscored her words; from somewhere came that same stench of the glop from the café. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Please, Drew.”
She tried to pretend she didn’t see the surprise on his face as she slipped through the door and closed it behind her. She thought he might follow — she listened for him as she ran down the stairs and into the low space of the cellar. When he didn’t, she wasn’t sure if that feeling in her throat was disappointment or relief.
“Mow!” Sklayne demanded, a strangely muted sound. A pay attention sound.
“Yeah, yeah,” she told him again. Sluggishly intrusive power flowed at her, carrying the same flavor as Trevarr’s but none of the heart. No, this was... rude and dangerous and threatening, and laced around the edges with more familiar breezes.
Run, for sure. But away, or toward?
Pipes and joists brushed the top of Garrie’s head as she straightened her shoulders, setting herself strong and grounded before moving forward, ducking the dim bare bulbs that lit the space.
Sklayne trotted along ahead — one room after another, sometimes with little roomlets off to the side, always with the pipes and the stacks of neatly stored supplies from an age gone by, not to mention the occasional large object she couldn’t begin to figure out. Coal furnace? Old ice box? Ancient torture device?
::Take care,:: Sklayne told her. ::Quiet, now.::
“I am quiet.” She’d practically been tip-toeing at that.
::All of you,:: he retorted, and a faint sheen of sparks washed over his coat.
“I’m not —” Not sparking, she’d been about to say. But maybe to him, she was. And if to him... maybe to whatever awaited them down here. She stopped moving, checked herself — centered in, bringing her energies in tight. Shields up and dark running!
Not something that had ever mattered, other than in matters of courtesy.
Garrie cast an inquiring glance at Sklayne, who offered approval with the mere twitch of his tail as he moved on. The intrusive power beat around them, thicker, heavier — filling her head with a pulse not her own and all but burying her sense of Trevarr.
Now and then it surged slightly. A beat behind each surge, the earth rumbled around them.
::Warping,:: Sklayne said, his mental voice partially obscured by the noise of it all. ::Not for long.::
Relief brushed through her — until she realized. Not for long meant not that it would end soon, but that the circumstances weren’t stable enough to continue without dire results.
As if fires blooming in the sky and unending earthquake rumbles and belching ground and black ooze and beetles and Bob the hulk hadn’t been clue enough. All things that everyone had seen — not just the ethereal, not just for Garrie’s eyes. All things she hadn’t been able to affect.
So what am I even doing here?
Because without Trevarr, she had no chance to clean up this mess. Because he needed help, and she was the only one with a chance of offering it.
Not to mention that the thought of him enduring such pain hurt her in a place she hadn’t known was there to hurt.
You’d better be all right, she told him, cobbling thoughts together in spite of the way her entire being pulsed with the throbbing beat — expanding, collapsing, expanding again, a buzz of incompatible power turning into sandpaper against her nerves and sparking reflected pain. She mustered a smidge of mental perspicacity. And if I find you, you’d farking well better be able to deal with this thing.
She didn’t need Sklayne’s suddenly stiff posture to confirm that this thing was just ahead, nor his puffed-up tail sticking straight out behind him. She didn’t even need the flickering nature of the light ahead.
The waves of power told her enough. Pulsing, pounding... slamming within her. Her barriers, no matter how she strengthened them, did nothing against it. On impulse, she reached inside for the energy that Trevarr had left behind, the taste and feel of which had sunk into her bones. She spun it up, drawing breath against the alluring feel of it — and attempting, in some clumsy fashion, to shape it.
::No!:: Sklayne turned back to her, ears flat and fangs bared, soundless. ::They can feel that!::
Gah! Garrie floundered to
release what she’d built without losing the tight hold on the rest of her energy. “Sorry,” she started to say, but stopped herself from that, too. Because they probably had ears while they were at it.
Sklayne relaxed, if only slightly. ::Think it.::
You’re kidding.
::Not kidding.::
Great. And just how many of her thoughts had he been listening in on?
He cast her an annoyed look. ::Think it loud, then not my fault.::
Okay. Think quietly went onto the list along with everything else she was trying to process in this moment. She eased up to the thick timber frame of the doorless opening, where she saw...
Nothing.
Sklayne snagged her shoe when she would have taken another step. ::Not nothing.::
She look more closely, though half the room was out of view. This one, too, was taller than most of the spaces down here — tall enough so even Trevarr could have stood straight, had he been here.
And no, not nothing. There, in the corner, she discovered a small bench, and around it a pile of ugly sacks, and on it a familiar satchel.
::Trevarr’s.::
Trevarr’s. They were in the right place.
::Krevata,:: Sklayne informed her.
She didn’t see a thing.
::Rekherra... seen as they want to be. Use the Trevarr energy.:: Sklayne sounded reluctant, even through the power slamming around in Garrie’s head. ::Only a little bit of little,:: he told her. ::Use it. See through it.::
Only a little bit of little. Right.
Garrie withdrew, tucked up against the old stone wall and surrounded by the scents of damp earth and faintly musty cellar. She reached for the touch of Trevarr within... just the merest whisper of it, trickling in to tickle her from the inside out. She closed her eyes to let it wash through her — and when she felt she’d stabilized it, she dug deep for nerve and peeked around the corner again.
Oh God. Krevata.
What the HELL, Sklayne? she thought.
He hissed in squinty-eyed aggravation. ::LOUD!::
And then, more sullenly, ::Maybe not from this place.::
You THINK?
::Still LOUD!::
Oh God. Krevata.
They were most definitely not of this place, these lumbering beings of skin mud and clay and viscous green skin, camel-nosed faces looming over barrel chests, arms bulky and legs on first glance stickish and bent all backwards. Some of them more distinct than others, some fading around the edges.
Garrie felt a squeak in her throat; she threw herself back around the corner and against the wall, both hands clapped over her mouth. For an instant, her gorge rose; she fought it back down.
Retching, they’d hear for sure.
Not of this place.
And, so obviously, neither was Sklayne.
Or... Trevarr.
So very obviously.
Not just a different kind of reckoner with a different kind of energy handling different kinds of entities. Oh, no.
Sklayne sat beside her with his tail curled around his front feet, ignoring the trickle of dust that settled on his head just as he ignored her inner turmoil. ::Strong, they are. Poison on claws.::
Claws? She didn’t remember claws. Then again, she didn’t want to remember any of it.
She peeked again. Wow... yes, claws. Every one of those four fingers, tipped with a pointed nail that definitely counted as a claw. And a fifth, more of a spur — not a useable digit so much as a dedicated weapon.
They wore plenty of jewelry, clunky and colorful. Cabochons sat in thick hide between small eyes and below sparse, bristly forehead hairs, emphasizing each impressive sweep of nose. Chunks hung in necklaces around exaggeratedly broad shoulders, and smoothly polished stones made up belts below highly colorful vests, all interlocking triangles of different hues.
And then there were the loin cloths, which weren’t so much flaps as well-defined bundles with decorative rings securing them directly over those parts that darned well ought to be covered.
Way too much sharing.
::Vain,:: Sklayne agreed. ::But powerful. Also stupid. Watch now.::
It meant another look. Garrie wasn’t sure just how much looking she could do before one of them noticed her, but then again... their tiny little eyes didn’t look terribly effective.
She hoped.
So she checked again, this time looking for something stupid.
What she found was incomprehensible enough so she’d simply not processed it before: a little pond in the floor.
No, not a pond.
Little flares of energy licked across its surface, bursting upward in irregular flight. There were no light bulbs here in this dead end of a room, she realized; the flickering illumination came only from this... pond thing. Its surface shimmered in a way that looked simply wrong; even the attempt to focus on it nauseated her.
The Krevata — in deep conversation over something, huddled together as close as their massive probisci allowed, their fat fingers moving in patterns that had to be part of that conversation — took up the greater part of the space. Then there was the rickety bench that held Trevarr’s satchel, and the pile of what Garrie might have called duffel bags if they’d been a little smaller and a little more stylish and just possibly not made out of what appeared to be the badly tanned hide of some creature with lumpy porous skin.
Where’s Trevarr?
::Look not for something. Look for nothing.::
Oh, because that made so much sense. But Garrie obediently did just that. Look for nothing.
Whoa.
Like the nothing there just on the other side of the threshold and toward the corner? It was barely visible from this angle, but still distinctly diminished the hard-packed dirt, the stone wall beyond... the very air it occupied.
She retreated farther this time, tucked away in the corner with her back up against the solid stone and her feet propped against the solid earth, feeling it rumble through her bones. “What is that?” she whispered, forming words to which she gave no real voice.
Sklayne spoke only after a long pause during which his whiskers gave a hard-thinking twitch. ::Trap-thing,:: he pronounced. He lifted his front paw for a quick series of token licks, then stopped himself with some obvious annoyance. ::Not cat,:: he reminded himself, then told her, ::Nasty trap thing. Pocket of sucks-life. You need to go there.::
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Sound nearly slipped out on that last one; Garrie made the effort to regain self-control. Nasty? Sucks-life? And you want me to go there?
His silent stare was clear enough.
Crammed in the corner, she spread her hands wide, balancing in a half-crouch to indicate herself. “And just how am I supposed to do that? That was the whole point of keeping all your secrets, wasn’t it?” Farking not from this place! “I’m here to handle the ghosts — the rest is Trevarr’s job.”
Sklayne put his paw on her ankle, pushing. Pushing harder, while she glared. Finally, extruding deliberate claws. Garrie clapped her hands over another squeak, and Sklayne, apparently satisfied that he had her true attention, withdrew. ::Take his things to him. He does his job.::
His things — the satchel? “How do you know he’s even in any shape — ?” She couldn’t make herself finish the question. Not when she could still feel those diminishing echoes of him, scraping along the energies he’d given her. The connection he’d given her.
Sklayne withdrew his claws and looked away. ::Don’t know.:: He looked back at her, deep green eyes unreadable. ::Hope.::
Cold reality clutched at Garrie. Dive headfirst into a nothingness from which she might or might not ever escape, for the sake of Trevarr. For the sake of a city.
::A world,:: Sklayne said, breathtaking in his audacity. He slitted his eyes at her. ::Shouting!::
No, THIS IS SHOUTING.
“Mow!” Sklayne said, opening his mouth on a barely voiced cat-yelp. After a sullen moment, he admitted, ::Yes, shouting.::
“I was having a moment,
” Garrie informed him. “A private moment. A little respect, please.” For she hadn’t finished the moment. She hadn’t finished the part that was for the sake of Trevarr.
She hadn’t admitted to herself what she already knew — that if his pain had diminished, it was because the sense of him had weakened. Because he had weakened.
“Oh, crap,” she breathed.
Sklayne wisely said nothing.
“But how am I supposed to reach —”
::My job. Be ready.::
“But — ?”
::The nothing will take you.::
How reassuring.
::Be ready.::
“But —” she said. How will it take me? Why will it take me? Would it take just anyone, or just me, or anyone who has the bag — ?
But Sklayne was gone. Just that fast, the whole room seemed to shuffle with alarm. The Krevata lumbered past, one after another — all fully visible, swinging their heads, flicking their ear discs... bent to avoid the lower ceiling and hop-loping with the vigorous resentment of creatures defending their turf against intrusion.
Garrie found herself rooted to the spot.
The creatures scented her — their nostrils flared as they essayed rapid little huffing-and-snort breaths — and then they turned to stare at her.
A soft furry invisible weight hit her chest; she stumbled back.
::Get it!:: Sklayne told her, more than a hint of frantic there, bouncing away again and still invisible. ::In here!::
The satchel. Now just on the other side of the door, out of sight of the glowering Krevata. In between her and the sucks-life.
::Sucks-life, only way out,:: Sklayne pointed out, from somewhere inside the room, still impossibly invisible.
Right. Because the room was a dead end and the Krevata blocked the meandering maze to the exit. They moved closer, shifting their heavy noses to build a scent picture of her. And even as she steeled herself for sucks-life, she realized the significance of the rising musky smell — that the colorful loin bundles had suddenly taken on a life of their own.
“Oh, no,” she said, flat denial bursting out in spite of what should have been silence. “No, no, no. That is just not right. Stop that. All of you!”
The Reckoners Page 29
