‘But I hate it!’ Iyamar yelled. ‘I didn’t ask for it!’
‘We didn’t ask to have our apartment ripped open by a draykon either,’ retorted Egg. ‘You put us all at risk by refusing training.’
‘Then I’ll leave!’
‘If you won’t let Teyo train you, you’ll have to,’ said Egg ruthlessly. ‘Good luck on the streets. You might want to work on your highwaywoman routine a bit.’
Serena winced. Egg could be vicious when she was angry. Teyo’s deep rumble intervened at that point, though she couldn’t hear what he said. She took the opportunity to say to Fabian, ‘Lady Glostrum said she’d be in touch about the key thing.’
Fabian shrugged, an awkward gesture in his current posture. ‘I don’t see that it has a lot to do with us from here on.’
Serena smiled coldly. ‘But it does, because it has a lot to do with the Unspeakables.’
Fabian raised an eyebrow at her.
‘Lady Glostrum thinks that Ylona Duna is using them to find — or steal — the keys. They aren’t exactly for hire like that, so if they’re consenting to help, they must be interested in these keys, too. And that means it’s got to be big.’
‘But I’m not!’ shrieked Iyamar. ‘I’m not a draykon! I’m a human, like everyone else! I refuse to be anything else!’
There followed a crashing sound, which Serena guessed to indicate Egg kicking something.
Fabian said, ‘Anything that’s got Lokants and Unspeakables involved has got to be big. It’s also got to be crazy, dangerous and none of our business.’
‘What advantages?’ shouted Iyamar. ‘It’s brung nothing but trouble! My own gang kicked me out! They acted like I was a monster, and — and they’re right!’
Teyo said something.
‘Of course I don’t think you’re a monster!’ yelled Iyamar.
Teyo said something else, which apparently silenced her.
‘We could make it our business,’ said Serena, taking a sip of creamy cayluch.
‘Why would we?’ said Fabian.
‘Because it would be an adventure!’ she said grandly, with a dazzling smile. ‘Aren’t you intrigued?’
‘Nope.’
Serena gave a small sigh. ‘Well then, because it is our business to oppose the Unspeakables in every possible way, especially when they’re doing something sneaky, underhanded, mysterious, probably dangerous and potentially disastrous.’
‘When aren’t they?’
‘But I can’t,’ wailed Iyamar in tones of utter despair. Teyo was getting somewhere, Serena thought. She’d gone from furious accusations to dramatic and rage-filled denials and now to despairing under-confidence. Resignation would follow soon enough, and after that — progress. Hopefully.
‘You feeling okay, Fabe?’ Serena said cautiously.
‘Fine,’ he said.
She said nothing for a moment, listening to the low drone of Teyo’s voice from the next room. ‘Do you want to visit mother today?’ she said next.
‘Maybe.’
She began to say something else, but Fabian interrupted. ‘I found out something.’
‘Oh?’
He shifted in his seat. ‘About father.’
‘Fabe...’ Serena said slowly. ‘I thought we’d agreed to let it go?’
He directed one swift, angry look at her. ‘You agreed. I didn’t.’
Serena’s heart sank a little. ‘All right,’ she said in a neutral voice. ‘What did you find out?’
‘Bironn Astre,’ said Fabian. ‘We got him, but he wasn’t the only one involved. There was someone else.’
Serena heard this with mixed feelings. Foreboding and dismay warred with concern for Fabian and... and a rising anger. Much as she tried to put it behind her, she wasn’t immune to the feelings that tormented her brother either.
Their father, Thomaso Carterett, had been a small-time landowner in the far south of Irbel, right on the border with Nimdre. He had been able to give his two children a good education, and the family had lived prosperously for some years.
But sometime during those years, he had begun to drink. He drank more, and more, until money was tight and their mother, Theresa, began to wear a perpetually worn, anxious look. One night, Thomaso had got involved with a card game. He’d been very, very drunk, and the game had ended with the total loss of everything he had — their house, land, everything.
Two days later, he’d hanged himself.
Fabian and Serena had never completed their expensive education. Obliged to work as they could to support their increasingly ailing mother, they had learned to rely more and more upon each other, and upon their shared gift for acting. They had worked as players for some years, taking jobs with theatres across Irbel and Nimdre, and all the while they sought to learn the truth about the card game that had ended so disastrously for their father.
At length, they had learned a name: Bironn Astre. He hadn’t just been lucky, they found. He had deliberately targeted Thomaso as an easy mark. He was a member of the Yllandu organisation, a fresh recruit, and he’d manipulated the game — cheated, in other words — in order to ensure that Thomaso lost. The Unspeakables required each applicant to complete some kind of con or theft or cheat in order to prove their worthiness, and Astre’s had been sufficient to secure his membership. The proceeds of his efforts — Serena and Fabian’s family home — had been handed over to the Yllandu by way of an entrance fee, and he’d gone on to perform many more cons as part of the organisation.
Until Serena and Fabian, now members of the Torwyne Agency, had succeeded in catching him. He had been in prison for four years already, and would not be released for many more.
Serena had hoped that was the last of it, though more for Fabian’s sake than for her own. While she felt anger, indignation, sadness and a host of other emotions over the fate of her poor father and their family lands, she wanted more than anything to put it behind her and move on. Surely the last thing their father would have wanted was for his family to suffer for his mistakes.
Fabian, though, had been obsessed with it from the day of their father’s death, and he possessed a burning need to exact some kind of revenge. It was, she thought, the source of the black moods which sometimes assailed him. Jailing Bironn Astre had been enough, for a little while. Serena was not surprised, though she was dismayed, to learn that he had taken up the matter once more.
She didn’t say any of this out loud, of course. Fabian reacted badly to any suggestion that he ought to let it lie. Instead, she merely said: ‘Who was this other person?’
‘A woman,’ he said. ‘Her name was Valore Trebel at the time, though I don’t think it is any more. I can’t find any trace of her.’
A renewed howl of misery from the next room interrupted Serena’s train of thought, and she looked to the door, feeling the first twinges of annoyance with the disruption.
‘I can’t, I can’t!’ wept Iyamar. ‘Stop pushing me!’
Serena tried to school herself to patience. She didn’t think that Iyamar was naturally melodramatic or difficult; nothing she had seen until today had suggested it. But the girl was very young, and bitter, and very, very afraid.
‘I think it’s time to intervene,’ Serena muttered, setting aside her cup. She strode to the door and threw it open.
A little parlour lay beyond, much of the cramped room taken up with a table and six chairs. Teyo was sitting at his ease in one of the chairs, his feet set upon the table. Egg stalked about at the back of the room, scowling fiercely. She was probably working herself up to kicking something again.
Iyamar huddled in a corner, clutching herself and sobbing.
‘Iyamar,’ said Serena. ‘You do know that Teyo can shift into other forms besides the draykon?’
Iyamar made no response for a few moments. Then, she lifted her head and stared at Serena. ‘You mean like... like Jisp?’
Serena smiled inwardly; she’d hoped that would get Iya’s attention. The girl adored Jisp, and frequently a
bducted the little lizard from Teyo’s care. The prospect of being able to join her tiny playmate in a similar shape couldn’t fail to appeal to her.
‘If you learn to shift between human and draykoni, you’ll also be learning to shift into other forms,’ Serena continued. ‘It’s the same thing.’
Iyamar said nothing, but her tears had dried up and she appeared much struck by the idea.
Serena turned her attention to Egg. ‘You’d better come in here, Egg,’ she said coolly. ‘The furniture cannot bear very much more violence today, I think.’
She turned and swept back into the living room, disposing herself comfortably upon the divan once more. A moment later, Egg came trailing in.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Only it’s just so — so very—’
‘I know,’ said Serena.
Egg nodded and went to the door. ‘Got to say, though,’ she added, pausing on the threshold. ‘Kid doesn’t let anybody push her around. I like that.’ She left.
Fabian said, ‘I’m going to chase it up.’
Serena just looked at him. He stared back, unrepentant and uncowed.
She struggled with herself. It wasn’t good for him to wear out his life and his youth in bitterness and schemes of revenge, and she wished so very much that she could do something to change his heart. But she couldn’t, and it mattered to him more than anything else in the world.
Fabian added, ‘We might... we might get it all back.’
He meant the house and the land. As though returning to the place of their childhood would make everything better; that it would reverse, somehow, the effects of their father’s ruin and suicide and their mother’s madness. Serena didn’t think that it would, but Fabian... Fabian believed it with all his heart.
‘I’ll help you,’ she said.
Fabian smiled.
‘But!’ she added, her lips curving into a mischievous smile, ‘I want your help with the keys, too.’
Fabian grinned. ‘It’s to be a bargain, is it? That’s my sister.’ He stood up and stretched, looking suddenly better. She watched him with a mixture of gladness and concern. If only it had been something else — anything else — returning that lively sparkle to his eyes! But he was interested in nothing else. He was as he was, and Serena would have to do what she did best: damage control.
She only hoped she could rein Fabian in enough to avert the total disaster she feared lay ahead. If Fabian felt that something lay between him and his notions of justice — obstacles, people, anything —- no power could stop him. He would do whatever it took to remove them, at any risk to himself. And though he never willingly endangered either his sister or his team, his actions couldn’t help but affect them, too, sometimes.
Serena finished the last of her cayluch, watching as Fabian left the room with a new bounce in his step. She stood up and wandered to the window, wrapping her shawl tightly around herself. Outside, the sun hung low in the sky, golden and shining with that peculiar autumnal radiance that she loved. The mist of the early morning had gone, the clouds had dissipated, and the day was fine, if chill. The edge of the city was spread before her, and beyond it, fields recently harvested of their bounty. She gazed at all this goodness for some time, reflecting with some little concern on the many complications that were suddenly cropping up in her life. There was Iyamar’s training to attend to, if she would permit it; Fabian was on the trail of a second Bironn Astre, and like to grow obsessive over it; full Lokants and partial Lokants and the LHB wandering in and out of her life; mysterious artefacts and strange archaeological discoveries cropping up all over the place; Halavere Morann and Ylona Duna’s questionable loyalties; and all of that on top of her regular job. At least Teyo and Egg were stable, steady and reliable, and needed little of her help or guidance.
She hoped, with a long, inward sigh, that the next few weeks would prove to be quiet ones, and that Fabian would soon resolve this new mission and move on.
A glitter of something dark caught her eye, and she raised her gaze to the sky. It was a bird of some kind, or probably a small flock of them. Their behaviour was odd; they were hovering in a tight cluster in the sky, in a fashion wholly incompatible with typical birdly behaviour.
No. It was not a bird, nor anything like. Her unbelieving eyes discerned the shape of a letter forming in the sky, an S, in glittering, inky black. More followed, until a word appeared.
Seven.
She watched, transfixed, her heart pounding. More words appeared, bit by bit, as though someone were writing each letter one at a time upon the sky.
Seven mortal Realms I saw and seven keys had I.
The sentence was written clearly, like dark, silvered ink upon blue parchment. More came.
Seven Dreams I wrought anew and cast them sea to sky.
Find the treasures, win the games and all the world explore,
Live the fables, be the tales, and you will find the door.
There followed a symbol, a round glyph of some kind, which it took Serena a moment to decipher. It was, she realised, a representation of the seashell spiral pattern that characterised the strange stone they had found at the dig site.
‘Wha...’ she murmured, stunned.
The door opened behind her, and Egg’s voice interrupted her stupor. ‘Er, Serena? There are words in the air.’
‘I know,’ she said faintly.
‘Any idea what that’s all about?’
‘No idea.’
‘Should be fun,’ said Egg, and disappeared again. Serena listened absently to her footsteps fading away, her brain struggling to make sense of what she saw.
One thing only was clear to her: all hope of a quiet few weeks must be abandoned. Things were about to become... complicated.
Chapter Ten
‘I want to hire you,’ said Lady Glostrum, and smiled.
It was two days later. Serena and her entire team — even Iyamar, who had mostly recovered from her agonies — were assembled in Oliver Tullen’s office. They had been peremptorily summoned by note, and urged to make all due haste. That had alarmed Serena, just a little. Oliver was never in a hurry.
On reaching his office, however, she had swiftly discovered that it was not Oliver who wished to see them, but Lady Glostrum. Her ladyship and her husband were comfortably ensconced in Oliver’s better chairs, though neither of them looked especially relaxed. They were conferring together in hushed undertones as Serena’s team walked in, while Oliver watched the play of images on a portable bulletin board he possessed. Serena felt more than a little covetousness for that device. They were fabulously expensive and had to be given regular maintenance by the sorcerer’s guild of Irbel; very few people could contrive to own one.
‘Excellent!’ her ladyship had said upon seeing them arrive. The smile she had bestowed upon them had been very friendly, but also a little bit calculating. ‘That was quick, indeed. Excellent. I do so like promptitude.’
Egg’s body had stiffened with displeasure and suspicion upon seeing Oliver’s visitors. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘And what are we doing here?’
‘You are here at my request, Ms. Rutherby,’ Oliver had said briefly, without looking up from his board.
Egg had folded her arms and glared. When her ladyship spoke the word “hire”, Egg’s suspicions hardened into serious displeasure. ‘Ohhh,’ she said with appalling sarcasm, ‘of course you do! It’s lucky that we’re available to every random person who finds their way in here. Oh, no, wait. We’re not.’
Oliver ignored this outburst. Addressing himself to Serena, he looked up briefly from his perusal of the news and said, ‘I imagine you will have guessed the nature of the job, Ms. Carterett.’
‘Something to do with the riddle?’ said Serena. She could not entirely suppress the note of hope that crept into her voice. In spite of Fabian’s indifference and Egg’s loudly-voiced disapproval, she would like nothing better than to find herself involved with this adventure.
The boards had been full of no
thing else since the glittering words had appeared in the sky. The riddle had captured the imagination, and excited the curiosity, of the whole world, or so it seemed. It was talked of everywhere Serena went; everyone had some theory to share; and everyone wanted to know what the keys were, and where the mysterious door might lead.
It hadn’t taken the boards’ journalists long to make the connection between the Balbater dig site and the riddle that had appeared so soon afterwards, either. Teams of scholars, adventurers and treasure-seekers had quickly assembled and set out to seek more sites like it. Nobody had yet discovered any new site, that she had heard.
Oliver nodded his head at Lady Glostrum, ceding the floor to her. ‘It is about the riddle!’ said her ladyship. ‘However did you guess?’
Serena smiled. ‘But how can we help? We are not academics or explorers.’
‘But I have plenty of those,’ she said. ‘Team LHB, as some are inclined to call it, already sports a full cast of historians, geographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, cartographers, explorers, linguists and assorted others who all think they can find another site like Balbater dig. I don’t need any more of those.’
‘What do you need?’
‘I need a small group of resourceful people with many unusual skills, and who are accustomed to working together. And I do not think it will hurt at all if two of them happen to be shapeshifters.’
Serena glanced at her colleagues. Fabian stood to her right with his hands in his pockets, looking as though his mind was only half occupied with the conversation. The other half, she supposed, was mulling over the problem of Valore Trebel. Iyamar hung back near the door, a trace of a frown creasing her young brow — probably prompted by the word “shapeshifter”, Serena guessed. Teyo stood with silent attention, showing no sign of either approval or disapproval.
Egg gave a scornful laugh. ‘So you just want to pick us up and make use of us at your convenience, is that it? We’ve got those interesting, slightly illegal skills and you never know when you might need them.’ She paced in a tiny circle, working herself up into a fine rant. ‘You aristocrats! As if owning half the world wasn’t enough, you think you can pick up and drop the rest whenever it suits you!’
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