Orlind

by Charlotte E. English

  Avane nodded, not looking hopeful. Llandry didn’t feel hopeful on that score either, but she made herself appear so.

  ‘Let’s see what the Commander wants,’ she said, drawing Avane to her feet.

  Leaving the cottage, Llan suffered a moment’s severe apprehension about trekking back across the city to the Commander’s base. She toyed with the idea of shape-shifting into a small bird’s body and winging her way there, but since most of the conflict was taking place in the air this struck her as a singularly bad idea. If a draykoni didn’t spot her, she’d be lucky to avoid the streams of bullets her father’s machines were once again spraying into the air.

  But on foot, they’d be all the more visible; and what of the whurthag mechs? Had Limbane’s people dealt with those, or had some of them reached the city? Llan had suffered injuries enough at the hands of a real whurthag; the prospect of facing one or more of the chilling mechanical ones was a paralysing thought.

  But these fears vanished when she found two Lokants waiting outside, one of whom was Avane’s friend Yora.

  ‘Limbane sent us to fetch you,’ she said. ‘We’re to spirit you past the mess.’ Catching sight of Avane’s tear-stained face, she wrapped an arm around her friend’s shoulders. ‘Lyerd’s fine, Avane,’ she assured her. ‘I left him with my grandmother. Some of us had to stay with the Library, after all. They’re getting along swimmingly.’

  Avane looked so relieved Llandry feared she might dissolve into tears again, but she mastered herself. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered with deep gratitude. Then, to Llandry’s admiration she squared up her shoulders, swallowed her distress and adopted a look of determination. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’

  A few moments more brought all six of them into the Commander’s presence. The second Lokant - a man Llandry didn’t recognise - released the hold he had on her wrist and stepped away with a polite nod. Thanking him, Llandry went straight to Limbane.

  ‘My parents?’ she asked at once.

  He nodded briskly. ‘Located successfully. Your mother and her friend are in Irbel, and your father is back in this city.’

  Llandry let out a long sigh of relief, welcoming the release of tension that this news brought her. ‘Thank you, Limbane,’ she said with grave sincerity.

  Limbane waved a hand. ‘Your father tells me that there is a fair chance that his home realm will send aid. If that is the case, then it was worth the diversion. In the meantime, I need the four of you to assist me.’

  Limbane’s motives were, as always, odd. His words implied that it would not have been worth the effort if there hadn’t been the possibility that Ynara would bring help. Never rely on the friendship of Lokants, she thought with some bitterness.

  Llandry directed an enquiring look at Commander Iver, who was standing slightly to one side. He looked haggard, and she could only imagine his state of mind. Men and machines lost, and command taken out of his hands by a stranger... but a hint of relief lurked in his eyes, too.

  ‘Listen closely,’ Limbane said, drawing the four of them to him. ‘Those draykon mechs are your biggest problem. They haven’t been belching flame for some time now, so I believe Pensould was right about the solar power and the regeneration time. But they’re protecting the live draykoni and we can’t get near them. We need to take them down as soon as possible - certainly before they regain enough energy to resume burning your trees.’

  ‘How many of them are there now, sir?’ Ori enquired.

  ‘Four. The biggest difficulty is getting near them. Some of Iver’s soldiers have tried it, but they can’t fly fast enough. They’re being picked off far too easily, if not by the mechs then by the living draykoni. What we want to do is get these up there.’ He showed them a box small enough to rest in the palm of his hand. ‘Highly explosive. Nothing’s penetrating that cursed hide of theirs, so the only approach we can come up with is to blow the damn things up. We need you to shape-shift; something winged, big enough to carry this but no bigger. You’ve got to get in without being seen by the draykoni, deposit these and get out of there, fast. I’ll have people on the ground setting them off once they can see you’re clear. Got that?’

  Limbane rattled this off in such a hurry that Llan struggled to keep up. He spoke to them as though they were his own people, used to his manner of instructions.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, sounding anything but sure.

  Limbane eyed her. ‘Any questions, out with them now.’

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘Then get to it. Yora will equip you with the explosives. I don’t need to tell you that it’s imperative to keep hold of them once you’ve picked them up. Don’t drop them on the city!’

  Chapter Twenty One

  ‘Is everything prepared?’ Krays phrased it as a question, but his manner was confident. Offensively so.

  ‘We are ready to take you to Limbane’s study,’ Eva confirmed, working hard to sound as confident and unconcerned as he did. But at her answer, Krays’s manner changed from expectant to outright smug; he even smiled, a little bit. Seeing him in good spirits was far more unnerving than any threatening behaviour. Eva couldn’t shake the feeling that they had just played directly into his hands, in some manner she wasn’t aware of.

  But it was too late to back out.

  ‘Then do so now,’ Krays said coldly.

  Suppressing a shudder, Eva forced herself to hold out a hand to Krays, wrapping her fingers around his wrist with a feeling of acute revulsion. Tren took her other hand. She paused long enough to utter a silent but fervent hope that they were doing the right thing.

  Then she accessed the Map. Having grown used to manipulating this strange piece of magic, it was a simple matter for her to locate Limbane’s private and very secure reading room. With a final pang of misgiving, she completed the Travel process and deposited the three of them in Limbane’s jealously protected space.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Krays with another of his chillingly good-humoured smiles.

  Eva made no reply save a curt nod, and stood back with Tren as Krays looked around the room. They had made careful preparations before bringing Krays here. For one thing, Tren had designed a complex illusion to conceal the door. If Krays was hoping to go from here into the rest of the Library, he would have a difficult time locating the exit. Even Eva couldn’t tell where it was.

  They had also spoken with the handful of Lokants who remained in the Library. Those few had colluded with Eva to make it seem as though the Library still operated on full capacity, in case Krays did escape the reading room.

  And finally, Eva knew well that Limbane’s alarm system was part of the test. Krays had asked them to prove their power in Limbane’s domain by finding a way for him to visit the reading room safely. If she and Tren wanted to convince him of their usefulness, they had to find a way to turn the alarms off.

  So they had. The alarms on Krays’s room had been silenced, not without considerable trouble on the part of the other Lokants. Now she watched, heart beating too fast, as Krays prowled around, poking into bookshelves and opening up chests, cupboards and Limbane’s desk. He seemed comfortable enough so far, a fact which gave her vague hope that they might pass this test.

  Then Krays stopped before a glass-fronted bookcase, surveying it closely. The glass was more of the strange stuff that Eva saw everywhere in the Library: the same material, or so she thought, that filled the lenses in her daylight-proof glasses and made up the surface of the walls in the chart room. Krays began to manipulate the bookcase’s glass doors in ways she couldn’t understand, touching some areas, drawing his fingers over the transparent surface. To her astonishment, the books that she could see through the glass changed: the worn leather-and-cloth spines faded away and stacks of compact boxes appeared, like the ones she had seen in Krays’s Library.

  Krays kept on with this for some time. Finally, he made a small sound of satisfaction, unhooked a set of diminutive tools from his belt and went to work on the keyhole. He got it open with minimal
effort, extracted a single box, then shut the doors again. A quick check of the box revealed a thin slice of some kind of metal or crystal or - in fact, she had no idea what it was. But that it contained some kind of information she didn’t doubt.

  Krays looked up with another of those satisfied smiles. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he said. The words were polite, but the tone in which he uttered them was mocking.

  Then he vanished.

  ‘Um,’ Tren said. ‘He’s... gone?’

  Eva suffered a moment’s paralysing panic that he had got into the rest of the Library somehow, in spite of their efforts. Maybe she was wrong to think he couldn’t Travel inside the Library. If so, he could be anywhere, with nobody to stop him from taking control of Limbane’s domain...

  But no. That was not a reasonable fear. The other Lokants had assured her - several times - that the Library was protected against this kind of problem. Each Lokant had to have an implant in order to use the PsiMap, and the Library’s wards specifically blocked all implants save those of Limbane’s own people. Eva hadn’t understood precisely how, but she didn’t need to: as long as the Lokants were sure of it, that was fine with her. And they had been sure. She’d got the uncomfortable impression that this theory had been tested, and proved, many times over.

  So, Krays almost certainly wasn’t in the Library anymore. He had most likely gone back to his own.

  ‘Wasn’t he meant to take us with him?’ Tren asked weakly.

  Eva sighed, feeling bone-weary. ‘I fear he would have if he honestly had a use for us.’

  Tren nodded. ‘You think we’ve been had?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. Perhaps Ana was right: it’s hard to fool Krays.’

  Tren spent several moments wandering about the room kicking at things. Finally he said, ‘Doesn’t bode well for Ana.’

  Eva shrugged. ‘She’s cunning. She’ll tell him she brought us in because she knew we could be useful to him. She was stringing us along, etc etc.’

  Tren lifted his hands to comb back his hair, remembered he was wearing a wig and dropped them again. ‘So. If the whole point was to get in here, what did he take that was so important?’

  Eva shrugged again. ‘I tried to get a look at the box, but there was nothing on it that looked like writing. I suppose Limbane will know, or he could guess.’

  ‘But he’s a tiny bit busy.’

  Eva crossed to the bookcase and looked it over. Whatever Krays had seen in the glass was either gone or invisible to her eyes: it just looked like glass, with books behind. When she opened the doors, she still saw books. Whatever magic or technology Limbane was using here was beyond her.

  ‘You know,’ she mused, ‘it’s odd. This Library - in fact, this room - is full of advanced tech and enchantments, yet Limbane uses a mere key lock on bookcase like this?’

  ‘Good point,’ Tren said, moving to stand next to her. ‘Wow, something else odd and nonsensical. Who would’ve thought.’

  She couldn’t help grinning, in spite of her chagrin. ‘I missed you.’

  Tren looked surprised. ‘I’ve been right here.’

  ‘Physically perhaps, but the Tren part of Tren wasn’t here.’

  ‘You don’t like me as an arrogant bastard? Surprising.’

  Recognising that as a reference to her erstwhile dalliance with Recender, ambassador for Ullarn, Eva let that pass. ‘Just to be sure, you’re seeing glass and books, yes?’

  Tren cast a quick eye over the bookcase, top to bottom. ‘Glass. Books. Yep.’

  ‘Very well. We’re wasting our time here. What’s the next plan?’

  ‘The main objective hasn’t changed,’ Tren said, leaning against her shoulder. ‘We still need a look inside that Library. But we may as well accept that Krays isn’t going to give us access, at least not in any useful timeframe.’

  ‘Agreed. The only other options, then, are to storm the place by force or infiltrate by stealth.’

  ‘Force isn’t an option, of course, with almost all the Lokants busy elsewhere. So stealth it is.’

  They both spoke calmly, as if they were discussing a matter of no great import, but Eva knew that exploring Krays’s Library without even the semblance of permission was a more dangerous plan by far than any they had yet attempted. Tren knew it, too. But what other choice was there?

  ‘Let’s list the obstacles,’ Tren said. ‘Krays’s alarm system is the biggest one. There’s also the problem of the whurthag mechs, plus getting access to the right places. Whatever those are.’

  ‘And of course, we need to... not be seen. And we need a good cover story in case we are.’

  ‘Back to sorcery, then,’ Tren smiled. ‘I can invis us pretty well for an hour or so before it’ll start to wear on me. If we’re still spotted - by anybody but Krays - then our story is that we’re the Lokantor’s newest recruits. I can keep my Lokant disguise. Hopefully it’ll take them a while to figure out that we aren’t supposed to be there.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that last part,’ Eva said. ‘Identifying accepted Lokants has to be more complicated than whether or not they have white hair.’

  ‘Probably true. And we can’t solve the alarm problem on our own either.’

  ‘We need to talk to Limbane,’ Eva concluded.

  Tren groaned. ‘How much is he going to hate us for bringing Krays here?’

  ‘Chances of our being eviscerated are quite high,’ Eva agreed glumly.

  ‘No sense delaying then,’ Tren said with false cheer. ‘On with the disembowelling!’

  Eva grinned. ‘One kiss, in case we’re to die.’

  ‘How romantic,’ Tren murmured, happy to oblige. ‘A joint evisceration.’

  Eva bit his lip.

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Right, glasses on and let’s go.’

  Limbane heard their story with more patience than Eva had expected, especially since they found him in the middle of taking reports from a number of small Lokant teams.

  ‘We can only apologise,’ Eva finished by saying. ‘I hope Krays’s theft won’t prove to be too big a problem for you.’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ Limbane said in the most dismissive manner. Was that even a hint of a smile? Eva stared, her suspicions rising by the second.

  ‘Do you know what it is he’d have taken?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  Eva’s eyes narrowed. That answer was too flippant, and he showed no sign of concern at all. That he knew exactly what Krays had taken seemed indubitable, but as usual he wasn’t saying. Her thoughts strayed back to that simple key... was Krays supposed to be able to get into that bookcase? What in the world for? And wouldn’t he have been suspicious to find a straightforward lock instead of the complicated coded locks the Lokants used everywhere else?

  Probably not, she concluded with growing annoyance. Limbane knew that Krays would find a way into his reading room; he’d probably expected that Eva and Tren would end up serving this role. And Krays likewise knew that Limbane would play games with him in return. These people, she reflected grumpily, were utterly maddening.

  But why wasn’t Limbane more worried about Krays being in his Library? After all his apparent conviction that Krays sought to wrest his Library from him, that knowledge ought to unsettle him a bit. If Eva had still doubted before, now she was certain: Krays wasn’t after Limbane’s Library, and Limbane knew it.

  Andraly was right, damn her. They were being played from both sides. She understood in a flash of sudden conviction that Limbane had set that little trap for Krays. Whatever he’d taken, he was meant to take it.

  But Limbane wouldn’t tell, no matter how much she asked.

  Concealing her anger with difficulty, Eva forced herself back into her usual semblance of calm. ‘We are still eager to explore Krays’s Library. Can you help us with this?’

  Limbane eyed her. ‘Why do you still want to do this?’

  Eva pondered that question. The original point, of course, was that they were to discover Krays’s
secret plans. But she was increasingly certain that Limbane already knew what those plans were. He had probably known all along. So where did that leave her and Tren? Still in the dark. Limbane wasn’t going to share what he knew, so Eva would have to find out what was going on for herself.

  But if Limbane was keeping secrets, she could too. She didn’t have to tell him that she knew about his deeper games.

  ‘Nothing has changed,’ she replied. ‘We still need access to that Library if we’re to uncover what Krays is doing. It’s just the approach that will have to change.’

  Limbane looked at her for a moment without speaking. She was learning to decode Limbane’s manner and expressions; once, this particular demeanour would have struck her as thoughtful. Now she recognised it as calculating.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you wish to do.’

  Eva explained their plans, with an occasional aside from Tren. When the whole had been told, Limbane honoured them with an impatient nod. ‘Fine, but I can’t spare too many people for this. Take Iwa back with you. She’ll fix you up with the necessary devices.’

  A serene-looking female Lokant separated from a knot of her colleagues and stepped up to them. ‘Yes, Lokantor,’ she said, her manner icily cool.

  ‘Come back as soon as possible, Iwa,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll need you soon.’

  ‘Yes, Lokantor.’ Iwa turned her attention to Eva and Tren. ‘Lab Seventeen,’ she said, and vanished.

  ‘Thanks, Limbane,’ Eva said, managing to sound grateful. He waved her away.

  Eva took Tren back to her room in the Library first, wanting a few moments’ private discussion.

  ‘So what do you reckon is going on between Limbane and Krays? Two-way con?’ Tren said without preamble.

  ‘At this point I’ve no idea who is conning who. Or rather, I don’t know whether Limbane is deliberately conning us or whether we’re just getting caught up in his on-going Krays-con.’