Orlind (23 page)

‘
Evening,’ he said, stepping back to let them in. ‘I apologise.
I didn’t realise you would be looking for me today.’

‘
I
don’t see how you could have,’ Eva said, smiling. ‘Luckily you were
not hard to find.’

Someone else
appeared in the hallway behind Devary: Indren, also looking
rumpled. Eva’s brows rose, but she didn’t say anything.

‘
Anything to report?’ Tren asked to cover the awkward
silence.

‘
Boredom,’ said Devary, smoothing his shirt and his long brown
hair. ‘Boredom, boredom.’

‘
So...
not a lot’s happened then?’

‘
Nothing at all,’ Devary said, conducting them into his
comfortable sitting room. ‘Krays hasn’t been back, and our attempts
to uncover his latest workshops have failed. Not because of
ineptitude, I think, but because there aren’t any.’

‘
Any
workshops?’ Eva repeated, puzzled.

‘
Exactly,’ Devary said. ‘Everybody has been working on it. We
ought to have connections enough to discover these places but
nothing has come up. It’s as if none of it ever
happened.’

Eva exchanged a
look with Tren. She could see he was thinking the same thing she
was: bad news had just got worse. Not only was Krays missing but
his entire operation? That could only mean one thing. Whatever he’d
been developing, it was finished. He didn’t need the workshops
anymore.

‘
We’re
too late,’ she breathed, her heart sinking fast.

Tren squeezed her
hand. ‘Not necessarily. Remember what Dev said before? About
testing the devices in light and dark conditions? It might just be
this phase of his research that’s finished, and the rest has moved
to his Library.’

Devary nodded.
‘The ones I saw were built to work with solar power, but they had
some kind of contingency power system that I didn’t fully
understand. I believe they were built here so that they could be
tested in all light conditions and make sure they will keep
running. Nimdre is ideal for that.’

Nimdre was the
only realm that retained a traditional day-night cycle, so it was
indeed ideal for such a set of experiments. It was the only reason
any of them could think of for Krays’s choice of location. This
theory did not reassure her, however. If his work wasn’t finished,
it could still be far too close to completion.

‘
We
need to move faster,’ she said, ready to jump up then and there and
go straight back to Ana, ask her to take them out to Krays’s
Library right away.

‘
We
will,’ Tren said calmly. ‘It’ll take a few minutes to finish here,
and then we’ll go.’

She nodded,
trying to still her rising panic. This wasn’t right. Usually it was
other
people who panicked and Eva who kept everyone calm.
The strain must be getting to her at last.

‘
What
is it that you’re planning?’ Devary inquired. Indren volunteered
nothing at all; the woman wasn’t even looking at them, instead
staring out of the window. But Eva had the feeling that she was
listening carefully nonetheless.

Eva hesitated.
Should she tell him everything? Could she trust Devary - and Indren
- enough to reveal all their plans? Then she gave herself a mental
kick. She was starting to think like Limbane. They were on the same
side because they had the same goal. If she couldn’t trust even
these allies, she might as well give up.

So she explained
everything. Devary listened without interrupting, and when she had
finished said, ‘You must let me come with you.’

‘
What?
No, no. That isn’t possible.’

‘
Why
not?’

‘
Because Krays will not let any non-Lokant into his Library.
That is why we must disguise Tren.’

‘
But I
am different. I am already a chosen agent of his. He had me
tracered.’

‘
That
tracer has been removed,’ she reminded him, ‘which he’s sure to
notice.’

Tren said, ‘Has
he ever taken you to the Library before?’

Devary frowned.
‘No... but still, he might allow it.’

‘
Don’t
forget,’ Eva said, ‘that he has reason to be suspicious of you.
He’s already caught you poking into his projects. He will not
believe any sudden show of loyalty from you.’

Devary sighed. ‘A
shame. I know more of him than either of you. I might have been of
use.’ His dejection was evident, and Eva thought she understood.
His assignment here had produced nothing helpful, and he felt
useless. And bored.

‘
I
have another idea, Devary,’ she said. ‘I’d like to take you to
Ynara. She will be grateful for some assistance and support, and
you’ll form a line of communication between Indren here and Llandry
in Waeverleyne. Llandry will, in turn, keep me informed via the
voice-box.’

She knew Devary
would be interested the moment she mentioned Ynara’s name. She was
right; he agreed immediately.

‘
I’m
to be left here, then,’ Indren said sourly. ‘Excellent.’

Eva stared her
down, unimpressed with this petulance. ‘There may be renewed
activity here, or something may be uncovered that’s been missed up
to now. We need someone here to collate any emerging information
and get it to us.’

‘
It is
important, Indren,’ Devary said, persuading her with a gentle
smile. ‘We will keep closely in touch with one another.’

Indren turned her
face away with a sigh, and didn’t answer.

‘
Now
that we’re agreed,’ Tren said, standing up, ‘we’d better get on
with it. Eva is right: we need to move faster.’

Devary stood up,
too. ‘I need only a moment to prepare. Please excuse me.’ He left
the room.

Eva leaned
against Tren, panic welling up once more. A series of brief moments
was all that stood between her and the immense challenge of
deceiving Krays, infiltrating his jealously guarded Library and
attempting to wrest his secrets from him. After that, they would
have to find a way to thwart him - or at least to keep him from
damaging their world any further. So much depended on them. She had
thought she was used to pressure, but this was something else
again.

‘
It
will be all right,’ Tren said. ‘We can do it.’

Eva could only
hope he was right.

Chapter Sixteen

Llandry had tried
the shape of almost every type of creature she could think of. It
came easily to her, once she had the trick of it; borrowing the
appearance of beast after beast scarcely even wearied
her.

Taking the shape
was one thing, but using it proved to be another. For a girl used
to walking on two legs, it was no easy task to accustom herself to
walking on four, or even none. Flight, too, was difficult; she may
be winged in her human form but bird flight worked
differently.

She and the other
hereditaries worked hard at it. This new skill had to be mastered -
not merely because it delighted them to do it (although it did),
but because, properly employed, it was another weapon at their
disposal. Llandry was intrigued to notice that Sigwide always knew
her, no matter which shape she was wearing. That called to mind
something Pensould had said once:
I know who you are because you
feel like my Minchu. It has nothing to do with your face.
Apparently animals operated in similar ways; only humans were
reliant on outward appearances.

The shape Llandry
kept returning to was that of the orting. It thrilled and confused
Sigwide in equal measures, and she enjoyed his excitement. The
orting shape also proved to be rather comfortable. They were
efficient creatures, essentially placid, given to enjoying their
lives. At the end of a day of shape-shifting, when the Daycloak was
coming in to block out the dark hours, five ortings huddled in a
comfortable group in a patch of untouched forest on the edges of
Waeverleyne.

Any observer
would have noticed that something was odd about these five. Their
colours varied. Avane had been the first to realise that she could
tailor her animal shapes to her tastes, and had promptly taken to
painting all her beast-shapes purple. Ori, on the other hand,
amused himself by taking orting shape and then acting like he was
still human. His golden-furred orting stood before them now,
propped on his hind legs, acting out a comedy that had been popular
in Waeverleyne before the attacks started. Laughing was difficult
around sharp orting teeth. Llan’s whiskers wrinkled until they
tickled and her pink tongue stuck out, tasting the air. She smelled
fruit on the wind, and sweet nectar, and had to suppress the urge
to go in search of it. No wonder Siggy was so fixated on
food.

This was a
bittersweet interlude. Theirs was a fevered sort of hilarity, born
of the knowledge that soon, these skills they were learning would
have to be enough, one way or another, to save Waeverleyne. Soon
they would be putting aside the innocence of the ortings and taking
instead those forms most conducive to warfare. They would be
fighting their own kind, and they would be outnumbered. The
awareness of it flickered at the back of Llandry’s mind, never
wholly forgotten.

Llan, watch
out for Sigwide!
Ori’s words, still full of laughter. Feeling
the tickle of whiskers against her fur she turned her head to see
Siggy approaching.

Attractive
haunches
, he told her, nuzzling at the area in
question.

Er, thanks
Siggy.
Llandry inched away.

Don’t
leave!
Sigwide ran in pursuit. Pensould, Ori and the
purple-furred Avane tore off after him, and for a few minutes all
was running and tumbling and laughing.

Llandry fetched
up at the base of a tall boulder, tall enough to blot out the sun.
Looking up, she realised it was not a boulder; it lived and moved.
From it there came a distinct air of disapproval. She wasted a
moment or two staring up into the sky, trying to discern the
features of the human that stood in her way.

Then she realised
she didn’t need to. This was unmistakeably Papa. His aura was made
up of fierce intelligence, a sneaking vein of hidden humour, grim
determination, the smell of machine-smoke and the tang of oil. And
love; plenty of it. Was this, then, how Pensould identified people?
Instantly she felt curious to know how she felt to him.

Apparently he
sensed her curiosity, for he answered it right away.
You are a
strange mix, Minchu. Shyness and bravery, big-heart, shivering
fear, coloured with creativity and sparkling things and loyalty.
And to me you smell of nectar and dreams.

Shifting back to
her human shape, Llan mulled that over without coming up with a
suitable reply. Nectar and dreams? Obviously it made sense to
him.

‘
Pa,’
she said, relieved to find him much less intimidating once she was
restored to her correct size. ‘Is everything well?’

He shrugged, his
eyes on the four ortings that still wandered among the moss. ‘Hard
to say. I need you all to come out to the village, Llan. It’s time
to plan.’

She nodded,
bending to scoop up Sigwide as three humans materialised around
her. ‘What are we planning?’

‘
We’ll
need to co-ordinate your attacks with ours, or our weapons will be
hitting you four as well.’

This mention of
warfare wiped away the last of Llandry’s good humour, and a small
sigh escaped her. She was grateful for Pensould’s arm around her
shoulders as Aysun led them through the swaying trees to the tiny
village that had become headquarters for a city council.

The whole council
was waiting for them, crammed into the largest of the small
buildings that made up the tiny settlement. There were no steps
leading to the tree-top dwellings, of course; Aysun had to be
carried up, a process he bore in suffering silence. Ynara had
reserved a seat for her daughter, and Llandry went straight to her,
accepting her embrace with a long sigh. Mamma brushed Llandry’s
black hair out of her face with a smile, but she didn’t say
anything.

Everybody was
there: Laylan Westry, leader of Glinnery’s sorcerers, sat on her
mother’s other side, with Elder Ilae Shuly; Elders Wies and Ryurn
were present, both looking tired; the Chief Summoner and Chief
Investigator were here, along with Commander Iver, leader of the
realm’s defensive forces and his two seconds-in-command. Aysun was
here for the engineers. Llandry felt odd, participating in such an
exalted council-of-war with her three fellow draykoni. For the
first time she realised that their unique abilities put them in a
powerful position in the Seven Realms.

Her father spoke
first, presenting a series of detailed drawings of his team’s
machine weapons. Drawing after drawing went up on the
hastily-erected war board, each machine more complex and
specialised than the last. The volume of work achieved by his team
in recent days was astonishing.

He described a
device like a giant harpoon-launcher- ‘with a specialised tip,
proven to punch through draykon-hide’ - and after that a modified,
improved version of his exploding missile catapult. He had machines
to throw enormous nets that would secure themselves to glissenwol
trunks, forming elaborate traps for skyborne enemies. His pride and
joy was presented last: a machine that would fire hundreds of small
missiles per minute, built to be flexible and mobile. His drawing
showed a brutally efficient killing machine; the toneless way in
which he described its capabilities sent chills snaking over
Llandry’s skin. This was her kind and gentle Papa, reduced to
designing the most advanced, destructive weapons their world had
yet seen. She knew the risks he was taking. If they won the war,
what would become of these machines? Were they destined to be used
on human foes next?