Riddle of Fate (19 page)

Rotting From Within

The carriage wheels rumbled along, but Khaya didn’t hear them. Something was familiar about Seb.
The unseen seen
, she mused. It reminded her of something. She couldn’t place her finger on what.

“Can you stop that?” Yarissa said.

Khaya blinked. “What?”

“That tapping will drive me crazy.”

The girl pointed to her hand. Khaya had been unconsciously tapping the wood panelling of the seat. She stilled her hand.

“You look nervous,” Yarissa said. “Asked you to do something you don’t want to do?” Her eyebrow quirked up and her mouth twisted into a smirk.

“You don’t have to pretend you like being their prisoner.”

“I’m not a prisoner.”

“You just do as they say because you want to.”

“I can leave any time I want to,” Yarissa said, folding her arms across her chest.

“Of course you can.” Khaya suddenly remembered a note she’d found when she and Derrin had searched Peater’s office. She couldn’t be sure the note referred to Yarissa. “But what would they do to your mother if you did?”

The girl’s jaw dropped and her face paled. She pulled her feet up onto the seat and hugged her legs to her. “What do you know about my mother?”

So, Khaya had been right. “Not much. Only that they are keeping her alive only to ensure your cooperation.”

“Where is she being kept?”

“I don’t know.”

"Where?” Yarissa roared.

“I really don’t know.”

With a screech, Yarissa launched herself from her seat. She grabbed Khaya by the throat, her grip tightening. “Where is my mother? Tell me!”

In her moment of fury, Yarissa’s control of her ability slipped. Khaya grabbed hold of Yarissa’s body with her Insight. She forced her hands to release their hold and then sat her back down on her seat.

Khaya rubbed her neck, eyeing the girl.

“How did you –” Yarissa started to say, but Khaya closed the girl’s mouth and clamped her jaws together.

“I am not your enemy,” Khaya said, her voice croaky. She cleared her throat. “As I said, I don’t know where your mother is.”

Khaya could feel Yarissa scrabbling around inside her, trying to numb Khaya’s abilities again. Her Insight was no longer a thing apart, though. It was part of every fibre in her body. “Stop that,” Khaya said. “You’ll only exhaust yourself.”

The girl shook her head, unbelieving.

Khaya sighed. Let her try then. “We can help each other.”

“I place one foot wrong and they will kill my mother.”

“How do you even know that she is still alive?” The moment the words were out of Khaya’s mouth she wanted to recall them. “That was harsh. I apologise. But they might be making you dance like a puppet while holding imaginary strings.”

“They let me see her,” she said after a pause. “Every few days.”

“When last did you see her?”

Yarissa’s mouth tightened and she looked out of the carriage window.

“How long has it been?” Khaya asked more softly.

“A week.”

“Where did you meet with her?”

“Do you think that if I knew where she was, I would have been asking you?” she spat, defiant.

“No. But they might not have let you meet at the place where they keep her.”

“Well, they blindfolded me. Drove all sorts of twists and turns so that I had no idea where we were.” Her chin trembled.

“I can’t promise anything, but I will try to help you find your mother.”

Yarissa shook her head, rolling her eyes. “I don’t trust you any more than I trust them.”

Khaya knew there was nothing she could say and she let it lie.                   

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Khaya looked disappointed when Derrin said he didn’t know Seb. She even described him, but she might as well have been describing the baker at the market. “There is just
something
about him,” she said. “There’s more to him than meets the eye. I am sure of it.”

“I can’t imagine he would hold much power. I know all the Masters. If not by sight, then by name. And he is definitely not one of them. Lower level Collectors have scant authority.”

“What do you think of the girl?”

“Yarissa? I don’t know if we can do much for her. We have our own battle to fight. I can see why you’d want to help her, but we have to look at the bigger picture. She’s not in it.”

Khaya put her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m going to try to help her.”

Derrin held up his hands. “That’s fine. Don’t promise her anything, though.” Normally, he’d appreciate – even respect – her compassion, but at this moment, they didn’t need the complication.

“I have to go. I don’t want to be late for my meeting with Zera.”

She nodded and Derrin Leapt to the roof of the cathedral. He was glad she wasn’t there yet. If she'd turned up early and he wasn’t there she would accuse him of being late even if he wasn’t. She was prickly about time keeping.

He sat down at the edge of the roof, letting his feet dangle down. In life, he’d been afraid of heights. Even as a Collector it had taken him a good long while to get used to them. Knowing that if you fell you could transfer yourself safely to the ground was one thing. Fully trusting it was another.

Derrin started when Zera sat down next to him. He’d not heard her approach. She wore beads in her braids this time and they clicked softly as she moved. She stared out over the city in quiet contemplation. He knew better than to ask her anything before she started talking. So he waited.

“The Highest is nervous,” she said.

Such a simple statement, yet it made Derrin’s stomach turn sour. The Highest didn’t get nervous. He didn’t fear, or doubt, or worry. He certainly never got nervous.

“He knows Garelle and Meir are lying to him. That they are scheming about something. He doesn’t know what. He thinks Garelle wants to depose him.”

“Depose him! That’s not possible.”

“Very little in this world of ours is impossible. Improbable. Unlikely. Never been done before. But impossible? No.”

He mulled it over. He couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. This wasn’t some state ruler or monarch. He was the Highest – oldest, wisest, and most powerful of all the Collectors. “Do you know Seb?” he finally asked.

“Seb? Oh, perhaps you mean Sebrian. He is a fairly recent recruit. Maybe in the last ten years or so. Why do you ask?”

“Khaya thinks he is dangerous.”

“Sebrian? Maybe that isn't who you meant. He's as dull as dishwater. He never says anything out of line, never does anything unexpected. Never even does anything without being told what to do. Not a great attribute to have, but there you go.”

“Has he been spending time with Garelle or Meir?”

Zera sucked in a corner of her mouth. “Mmm. I’m not sure. Perhaps. Not so much so that I’ve noticed it. But then I’ve not paid particular attention to them until now.”

“Khaya is pretty convinced. I think we should investigate it.”

“You mean I should.”

“Yes, well,” he stumbled, but she waved a dismissive hand.

“I agree.”

“You do?”

“As I’ve said to you before: This isn’t about you any longer. The Collectors as a group are being threatened.” Her eyes narrowed. “There was one thing, now that you mention Sebrian. I make a point of it to look into the life of any new recruits. We’ve had a few over the centuries who try to return to loved ones. And we can’t have that. You know, there was this one –”

“Zera,” Derrin broke in, “you said you noticed something about Seb.”

She clicked her tongue and mumbled under her breath about rudeness of young ones, but said, “Yes, Seb. When I first looked into him, he didn’t have a file. Most peculiar. I’ve never before come across such an oversight.”

“But you found it?”

“Well, I spoke to the intake overseer at the time – it escapes me now who that was, I think they were moved on fairly soon after – and they didn’t recognise the name. It was just an error, though, because the next day the file was delivered to me. Everything seemed in order and I left it at that.”

When you say the overseer was moved on, you mean to a different role in the Collectors?”

“No. I believe they were judged on a different matter and sent to damnation. I wasn’t involved in the case specifically.”

“Can you get that file again?”

“Of course. I access the records frequently. No one would even lift an eyebrow.”

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

“Tell me again why we are sneaking into the library?” Khaya whispered as they hurried down the dark road.

“I needed to come here to go through property records,” Derrin said. “You shouldn’t be here at all.”

“But I thought Zera didn’t find the file.”

“She didn’t. All she remembers from it was that Seb was supposedly from Vaile and that he ran some sort of small business.”

Khaya gritted her teeth. “Can you put those two pieces together for me? Because I fail to see the connection.”

  “Vaile is a tiny village,” Derrin said, with – what looked to Khaya like – exaggerated patience. “It doesn’t have a library. Arroe is the closest town that does. Ergo, the property records for Vaile will be kept here.”

With the moon hidden behind a layer of cloud, the night was dark. Khaya tripped for the third time and cursed under her breath. Derrin Leapt inside the library entrance and opened the door for her. She slipped in and locked the door again behind her. At the top of the stairs, she avoided looking at her old workplace.
I’m never going to return there
, she promised herself.

“Why do we need to know what Seb did in life?” Khaya asked as she closed the library door behind her.

“We don’t,” he said. “We need to find out if he really had a life here. Or at least that the file the Collectors had was correct.”

“What if they made a mistake? It could happen. They were humans once. Besides, running a business doesn’t mean that he owned the building.”

“There are no mistakes in those files. Trust me. As for the latter, in Vaile, if you were rich enough to run a business, you owned the building or at least a home.”

They located the property records fairly easily and Derrin leafed through them until he found those specific to Vaile. “Do you know his family name?” she asked.

“Zera wasn’t sure. She thinks his full name is Sebrian Novair, or something like that.”

“Brilliant,” she muttered, “that should make it even easier.”

Derrin handed her a stack of files. A cloud of dust swirled into the air making Khaya sneeze. “These date from between ten to twenty years ago. I’ll take thirty to forty years.”

“Why not the last decade?”

“Unlikely. Zera thinks he’s been a Collector for at least ten years.”

It was drudgery. Khaya hummed to keep herself focused and to avoid having the names, dates and places melt into one. She ignored the strange looks Derrin gave her.

After going through the records dating back sixty years, they combed through the last decade’s files. “How sure is Zera of what she does remember?”

“She wouldn’t have mentioned details that she wasn’t convinced about. The only thing she wasn’t confident about was the surname. But I haven’t found a single Sebrian or Seb. I’m going to go up to a century.”

She groaned.

“If we don’t, I’ll keep thinking there is a chance we missed him.”

Of course, he
was
right. That didn’t make it any less dull.

Closing the last file, she sighed. “All for nothing.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Now we know his records were falsified.”

“How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know. Zera had never come across anything of the like.”

“Do you think he even is a Collector?”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “If all Collectors have files and his was falsified, it could only mean that he didn’t have a file to begin with.”

“Or that someone wanted to conceal what he was during life,” he said, frowning.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “From what I understand about the Collectors, the whole point is to atone for one’s actions during one’s life. It doesn’t make any sense for them to conceal a person’s past.”

“Which brings us back to your first question: Is he a Collector?” He grinned, putting a hand to Khaya’s cheek. “You are a genius!”

The moment he touched her face, the day of her accident flashed before her. She remembered falling and striking her head. Everything had gone black and when she opened her eyes, she’d been staring up at him. He was holding her, his hand on her forehead, heat spreading out from under his palm and down her neck.

She’d broken her neck then.