There was still no sign of Teyo and Egg, or anybody who was obviously from the LHB. Serena walked about a little, getting her bearings. Leaning close to Fabian, she murmured, ‘We need to split up. If we don’t hurry we’ll be too late.’
He nodded, and Serena quickly dispatched her brother and Iyamar to different parts of the cavern. The thing she sought had been situated on the banks of the glittering black river, but that proved to be larger than she had expected and apparently ran through the whole of the site. What if they were already too late? The only lead that had emerged in weeks and she’d lost it... she sped up, pushing her way through the thick foliage as she followed the river into the depths of the cavern.
Many strange and unfathomable things met her eye as she anxiously scanned the ground. The riverbank was scattered with rocks and stones in all manner of colours, and an occasional object that looked man-made. Many of them interested her exceedingly, but she did not pause to examine them. She pressed on.
Until she rounded a gentle curve in the river’s path and came to a dead stop. Ahead of her, two women stood talking. They both bore the white hair that proclaimed their Lokant heritage, and Serena’s eyes narrowed. One of them, she was almost sure, was the same woman who had invaded Baron Anserval’s private collection and taken the strange key. The other’s face was familiar to her as well, and it took a moment for her to realise why. This woman, dressed in practical shirt and trousers and totally unadorned by any kind of jewellery, was none other than Lady Evastany Glostrum herself: co-founder and chief of the LHB, and a minor celebrity in her own right.
What was she doing talking to the thieving Lokant who’d ruined Serena’s mission?
Her gaze travelled down as far as the ground, and she froze. There at the thief’s feet was the object Serena was looking for: the tiny, insignificant little thing she had seen on the bulletin board.
It was a round little stone, its shape resembling a seashell. This one was cream in colour and threaded with gold, but Serena was almost sure that she was looking at another “key”, if such it was. And the same damned thief had found it first.
She hadn’t claimed it yet, though; why not? Perhaps she hadn’t seen it, or didn’t realise its connection to the first (if there was one). Or perhaps she simply wasn’t interested. Serena stayed back, keeping herself out of sight and hoping fervently that both women would turn and walk away, leaving the stone alone. They talked for a few moments longer, their conversation inaudible to Serena, and then Lady Glostrum nodded a gracious farewell and left, rapidly disappearing into the verdure.
As soon as Lady Glostrum was out of sight, the other woman stooped down, grabbed the cream-and-golden stone and slipped it into her pocket.
Serena swore, and pulled out her voice-box.
***
Teyo and Egg had secured entry to the site easily enough, though the problems had begun soon afterwards. The real LHB was already in residence, and not just guarding the entrance. He’d been prepared to see perhaps one or two stray officials down here, and it wouldn’t have been difficult to avoid them. But they were here in force. Even their leaders were here in person. Teyo couldn’t guess whether Lady Glostrum and Tren Warvel knew every agent of the LHB on sight, and he didn’t want to find out.
Egg’s brows rose when she saw the groups of LHB agents, and she swore a bit under her breath. ‘That complicates things,’ she muttered.
‘Yeah,’ Teyo agreed. He and Egg shrank back against the cavern wall as a group of three agents went past, faces grim, their eyes scanning the cavern for... what? Did they know something about the Lokant woman who’d taken Baron Anserval’s key? Did they know about the second key that might be lying down here? Did they know what the keys were for?
Those were questions for Oliver to answer, he decided, dismissing the problem from his mind. For the present, he and Egg needed to focus on finding the second key before someone else did — either the thieving Lokant woman or the LHB — and without being stopped and questioned by any of the real Bureau agents. Tall order.
But every time he and Egg emerged from their hiding place and attempted to resume the search, barely a minute would pass before another Bureau official (or two, or three) walked past, and they were obliged to duck into hiding again. Once, they turned a corner only to find Lady Glostrum herself just ahead. She was not looking at them, and they were able to dart away without being seen. But it was close.
‘Hopeless,’ muttered Egg after ten minutes of this. She pulled off the white wig that hid her hair, then stripped off her tunic and turned it inside out. In the low light down here, nobody would notice the exposed seams, and it hid the fake LHB insignia that Serena had painstakingly embroidered into the fabric. Teyo swiftly followed suit, and looked down at himself with a frown. Their attire still resembled the Bureau uniform too closely for his comfort, but perhaps it would pass.
Then the voice-box in his pocket buzzed and crackled, and he hastily took it out. Egg dragged him into the shadow of a cluster of overhanging purple vines and kept watch as he activated the device.
‘Teyo?’ came Serena’s voice.
‘Yeah.’
‘That woman’s here and she’s got the key.’
Egg muttered something unfavourable about the woman’s parents, but Teyo merely sighed. ‘Right. Where is she?’
Serena gave him the best information she could, but it was difficult for any of them to get their bearings down here. Teyo foresaw a frustrating chase around the caverns ahead, and sighed. Serena ended by saying, ‘Careful with her, T. Don’t take any risks.’
He assented to this, and shut off the box. He stood in thought for a moment or two, a process which Egg knew better than to interrupt.
‘She’s got the stone in the left pocket of her coat,’ he murmured. ‘But, I don’t think you should try to pickpocket it.’
Egg raised her brows.
‘Serena’s right. She’s too dangerous to get close to.’ He dug his hand into his own trouser pocket as he spoke. Curled up in a tiny ball at the bottom was Jisp, who grumbled a protest at being so awoken.
Sorry, he apologised. We need you, Agent Jisp.
She loved it when he called her that. Snapping awake, she scurried circles around the palm of his hand, bristling with excitement. What is my mission?! she trilled in his mind.
Teyo related to her, mostly by way of pictures, the situation at hand. He suffered some disquiet at using Jisp for such a dangerous task, but his choices were few. Jisp was swift, silent and extremely adept at going unnoticed. She was also remarkably good at causing a ruckus when she needed to.
Egg herself was not entirely enthused about the plan, he thought. In fact, he might have said she was miffed at being passed over in favour of a lizard. He would have to make it up to her later.
He set off in the direction he hoped would lead him to their target. Egg, apparently swallowing her displeasure, followed close behind. She made no verbal protests at all and uttered not even a single acid comment, which puzzled Teyo. How thoroughly unlike her. She was probably speechless with indignation, and planning some truly terrible revenge. He would have to be on his guard for unexpected and undoubtedly fiendish retaliation.
He was glad, now, that he had hitched a ride with Lady Fenella down to the Baron’s underground gallery, Serena’s displeasure notwithstanding. He might have been in an unusual shape at the time, but at least he had seen the Lokant woman. He scanned the face of every white-haired person they approached until Teyo recognised the features of the woman he sought. He crept up until he was within about ten feet of the woman, and stopped, screened behind a flourish of turquoise-and-jade foliage.
She resembled Lady Glostrum more than a little, he realised with a start. Perhaps it was merely that their ages appeared to be approximately the same, and they had similar posture and bearing, in addition to the characteristic white hair. They were also dressed similarly, in practical trousers and shirts and sturdy boots. His quarry wore a long coat, warm against th
e autumn chill, and Teyo focused his attention on the pocket Serena had indicated.
Teyo bent slowly down and let Jisp go. She scampered away at once, and he retired to watch. Jisp had to cross the distance to her target, climb up the woman’s fine suede coat, slip into her left pocket, retrieve the key, climb back down and return to Teyo, all without being observed. He still thought that she had a better chance of pulling this off than Egg, but he couldn’t help feeling a little flicker of concern about the wisdom of the plan.
Jisp quickly disappeared from sight in the midst of the thick velvety grass, and he followed her with his thoughts instead. She took great care in transferring herself from the grass to the hem of the woman’s coat, and paused there for several long seconds, waiting to see if she had been observed. The woman made no movement, and Jisp began to climb.
Teyo and Egg stood side-by-side, barely breathing, as they watched Jisp’s tiny, bright form inch her way up the coat and into the pocket that held the key. Teyo’s heart began to thump a little bit harder somewhere in the middle of this process. What if they key wasn’t there? He knew better than to imagine that Serena might have got the pocket wrong, but perhaps the woman had transferred it somewhere else in the meantime.
His mind was soon put at rest on that score, as Jisp gleefully reported the presence of the key. In another second, though, her satisfaction turned to dismay.
It’s too big, she told him, and he received a brief vision of her trying unsuccessfully to fit her jaws around the stone.
That brought him up short. Having never had the chance to examine one of these key-things closely, he’d had to guess at its size. When the woman had taken the first one, he’d received the impression that it was tiny indeed, fully small enough for him to carry off himself if need be. But he had sized himself a little bigger than Jisp.
Get out of there, he ordered Jisp, who obediently began the descent — though not without transmitting her abject disappointment to Teyo.
Egg cast him a questioning look.
‘She can’t carry it,’ he told her in the barest whisper. ‘I’m going to try.’ He began at once the process of shifting himself into his Jispish form, but Egg stopped him with a hand on his arm.
‘Wig back on,’ she murmured very softly.
He didn’t waste time asking questions; he had to trust Egg. Retrieving the wig from the capacious pocket he’d stuffed it into, he restored it to his head. Egg adjusted it for him — hers required no alteration at all, of course — and they effected a hasty inversion of their inside-out shirts. Then Egg nodded significantly at something over his left shoulder.
He looked. A small group of university academics had just turned the corner and were approaching their hiding place. A tall, grey-haired man of fiftyish years shepherded a dumpy woman perhaps ten years younger, while a male student showed them something with the eagerness of the young. So convincing a picture did they make, it took him a moment to remember who they were. He shook his head slightly, marvelling. Fabian and Serena’s ability to transform themselves into somebody else entirely never ceased to amaze him; their talents in that direction far outstripped his own, or Egg’s, for that matter. And it looked as though Iyamar was a worthy student of theirs.
He exchanged a look with Egg, who nodded. Their target was walking away, but slowly, apparently absorbed in the consideration of something Teyo couldn’t see and didn’t care about. Serena, Fabian and Iyamar drifted steadily in her direction, talking animatedly amongst themselves.
Teyo moved. Without a word, she left their hiding place and headed straight for their target, her forged LHB badge in her hand. She reached the woman a little before Serena’s group, and cleared her throat to catch the woman’s attention.
‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ she said, scrupulously polite, and showed her badge. ‘Only full members of the LHB or an accredited university are permitted down here at this time. May I see your identification?’
The woman’s brows snapped together with annoyance, a scowl that deepened as Serena, Fabian and Iyamar arrived and she found herself surrounded with chattering academics. ‘It has already been checked and approved,’ she said stiffly. She spoke Irbellian well, but her accent was peculiar. Teyo couldn’t recall ever hearing such an intonation before.
Teyo hastily caught up to them. ‘My apologies,’ he said with a conciliating smile. ‘We’ve received word that there’s been an infiltration and we’ve got some people down here who shouldn’t be. Lady Glostrum sent a bunch of us out to double check.’ Jisp began at that very moment to climb up the inside of his trouser leg, and he fought to keep his composure. Her tail tickled.
The woman stiffened visibly. ‘I am here at Lady Glostrum’s request.’
That gave him pause. Lady Glostrum knew this woman? What was she, some kind of consultant with the LHB? And if so, what was she doing stealing from the aristocracy of Irbel? He didn’t like to imagine that the leader of the LHB might have put her up to it.
Between the distractions of his questioning and the chatter of Serena, Fabian and Iyamar as they enthused over every single thing they saw, Egg’s job was accomplished without incident. She gave him a barely perceptible nod, and he turned his smile from conciliating to ingratiating and made the woman a servile bow. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘We meant no offence.’
The woman gave him only the coldest nod in return, and instantly walked away. Teyo and Egg immediately left in the opposite direction, followed, he trusted, by the rest of their team. Jisp, her climb incomplete, rode his hip with a clinging grip as he quickened his pace. It wouldn’t take long for the woman to notice that the stone was gone, and he didn’t imagine that it would be difficult for her to guess who might have taken it.
Their progress back through the cavern was slower than he would like. Always there were milling academics in their path, or LHB agents still making their patrols. He dragged off his wig again, hoping not to attract their attention, and all but held his breath until the exit came into sight. He and Egg dashed for it, breaking into a near run as they reached the stairs.
They knew better than to wait for Serena. Egg darted out of the cavern ahead of him and immediately began to shove her way through the bustling throng towards the cart-stop. Only a single cart waited there, which Egg spared no efforts to secure. It was Teyo’s task to keep an eye out behind — or, indeed, in front, given the Lokant woman’s strange translocation abilities — for any sign of pursuit, of which, fortunately, there was none. A few minutes more and he and Egg were ensconced in the cart and on their way back to Balbater, their wigs and tunics discarded. With their own hair showing and clad only in plain, nondescript white shirts, he hoped they would be unrecognisable as the two LHB officials of a few minutes before.
He also hoped that Serena, Fabian and Iyamar had got out safely, but it would be some time before he would find out. His task now, and Egg’s, was to protect the stone and get it safely to Oliver Tullen.
Chapter Eight
‘So,’ said Serena some hours later, when at last she and the rest of the team had made it back to their apartment. ‘What happened back there?’
Teyo eyed her warily from his seat in an overstuffed armchair in their lounge. She was wearing a carefully pleasant expression, but he wasn’t fooled. She had a steely look in her eye. All had not gone well, he guessed, after he and Egg had left the site. Was it his doing? She had told him not to get too close to the Lokant woman, and he had.
‘I sent Jisp in,’ he said in a neutral voice, ‘but she wasn’t big enough. So we had to do it the other way.’
Serena said nothing, only stared at him with no particular expression that he could discern. He had no idea of what was going on in her head, which made him uncomfortable, and she was unhappy about something, which made him even more uncomfortable. He hated it when she did this. He waited her out, returning stare for stare, until she looked away and sighed, and he realised she was tired. Tired and worried about something.
‘Took you a long time
to get home,’ he observed. ‘Was there a problem?’
Serena crooked an ironic, annoyed smile at him and flopped into a chair. She hadn’t even taken off her wig and make-up yet, and thus still looked wholly unfamiliar to him. Egg was seated not far away, though she was (for once) keeping her thoughts to herself. Fabe and Iyamar had looked in briefly and gone to change.
‘Our thief wasn’t happy at being thieved from,’ Serena said. Dragging off the fluffy brown wig she wore, she threw it on the floor. Egg scowled and immediately scooted over to pick it up. ‘Sorry, Egg,’ murmured Serena. ‘She pinned us down and caused a ruckus, brought the LHB down on us. We had to submit to a full search before she was satisfied that we didn’t have the stone. I’m not sure if our identities held up, entirely.’ She reached under her shirt and pulled out some padded stuff that had given her the dumpy appearance of middle age. Teyo watched her with some interest, his knitting abandoned in his lap. She rarely permitted anyone to witness her transformations into the characters she played; the best he could get was to watch it in reverse.
‘I could’ve wished for a more peaceful start for Iya,’ Serena continued, dumping the padding heedlessly on the floor, ‘but she bore it well, to give her due credit. She’s going to be great.’
Teyo nodded. He was struggling with a mild feeling of guilt, remembering the way he and Egg had dashed out of there without a thought for the rest of their team. He knew they’d done the right thing — they had got the stone out, which was more important than anything else — but he didn’t like to see Serena looking so strained.
‘Oliver’s got it,’ he said in response to her questioning look. ‘We took it straight up to the office.’
Serena nodded. ‘I knew you’d get through. Any instructions for us?’
Teyo shook his head. He picked up his needles and began knitting more purple yarn into the half-finished blanket that lay, warm and snug, in his lap. ‘He’ll be in touch. I get the impression that even Oliver doesn’t know a lot about these stones yet.’
Seven Dreams Page 9
