Tortall (27 page)

Adria wrapped both hands around the darking, gripping its tail with one hand to keep it from smothering her father. Now it was her turn to back away, toward the door at the rear of the storeroom. “Father, don’t!”

“Do not defy me again. Hand the monster over.”

Adria trembled. It was so hard to keep defying him, but he was finally asking too much. She shook her head. “Lost is my friend.”

Her father swung the lever at her. Adria dodged. Lost took advantage of her distraction to leap free of her hands. It wrapped itself around the lever board and yanked the tool from her father’s grip. The man stumbled, off balance, as Lost flung the board into the shadows. Adria caught the darking as it jumped back to her.

“Master Fairingrove?” a voice, Minter’s voice, called from the door to the clerks’ workroom. “You have visitors. I tried to bar them, but their … creatures managed to open the door.”

Already Adria’s father was collecting himself, straightening his tunic, checking his hair. He advanced to the door to the front offices, smiling. He never showed his angry, roaring self to anyone but family, Adria realized as she shivered near the rear exit. For years she had thought the roaring Father was the false one, the handsome, smiling Father the real one. Suddenly it came to her that the roaring Father was the Father she would always have, the one who waited inside the smiling Father. Even if she somehow cajoled him into letting her continue lessons, sooner or later she would do something to offend him. She would skip a task or drop something. He could take her food, or her few treasures. Worse, now she had Lost, whom he’d sworn to kill.

“Lost, you have to get away,” she whispered. “Go back to Tortall. You can do it. Just get a ride with a caravan. They won’t even know you’re with them. Don’t pretend you’re too silly to work it out. I know you better now.”

“No,” that soft voice said by her ear. “Lost and Adria friends. Darkings never leave friends.”

“He’ll kill you!”

“I hide.”

Adria’s belly surged. She ran into the shadows to vomit, though only water came up. Apart from the breakfast Lost had stolen for them, she’d eaten nothing that day. She waited there, thinking, ignoring the voices by the shop door. Lost was tucked under her ear, its small body warm.

That answers that, she thought wearily. Monsters on the road or no, we have to run. Lost was right. I cannot stay with Father. He will take everything that makes me happy.

Slowly, walking like an old woman, she went out into the light. She had the rear door open when Lost began to bounce on her shoulder. “No, no! Wait! Darkings here!”

“But we have to run away,” whispered Adria. “I have to pack.”

“Help come, Adria! Help here now! Go to Father!” Lost threw itself to the floor and bounced before her.

She sighed. More than anything, she wanted to leave this big, echoing room where she had worked so had, but she owed Lost for saving her a beating. She couldn’t believe her darking friend was a monster who would lead her astray, as Father said, so she followed it toward the collection of people at the shop door.

The sight of a familiar head brought her to a stop
halfway there—not her father’s, whose back was to her, or Minter’s, who had returned to the clerks’ office, but Hillbrand’s. There was something new about her former instructor, she saw. A black blob that glittered with silver dust sat on his shoulder, one tentacle-arm slung over his ear in a friendly way.

Hillbrand’s face lit with a smile when he saw Adria. “But here she is,” he said, looking at Adria’s father. “You told us she had gone home.”

“We
said
he lied,” tiny voices chorused. As Minter and Adria’s father turned to look at her, Adria could see that Keraine Waterstone was there, too. A pair of darkings rode with her, one in the crook of her arm, one on the pack she had slung over her shoulder.

Three more darkings! Adria thought, startled. “How did they get here?” she asked Lost, her lips barely moving. It had jumped up to her wrist.

“What one darking knows, all know,” Lost whispered to Adria. “I told them, bring help.” It twined itself around the length of her arm.

“My daughter’s presence makes no difference,” Adria’s father said coldly. “You can have no possible interest in her. You have retired from the school, Master Hillbrand, and I am taking Adria from it. She is spoiled and unfit. Tomorrow she leaves for my cousin’s farm.”

“Are you mad?” Keraine asked, eyes wide. “Forgive me, we’ve only just met, but is it possible you’re unaware of your daughter’s talents?”

“My daughter does tricks with numbers that make her think she may do as she pleases,” replied the man Adria
decided to think of as Master Fairingrove, not Father. “It was amusing when she was a child. I indulged her, and now she does not attend classes, she defies her teacher. She lies. She disobeys. She is completely out of hand.”

“Sir—Master Fairingrove, I am Keraine Waterstone,” Keraine said. “I am an advisor engineer for the company that is building a drawbridge over your canal. I have studied in Carthak and in Corus. I know a powerful talent when I see one. I met Adria late this morning. She and I worked on equations I’ve been doing for a series of bridges.”

“Ridiculous!” scoffed Master Fairingrove. “You expect me to believe such a lie?”

Keraine’s cheeks turned crimson. She grabbed a chain at her neck and hauled it over her head, then held it out to Adria’s father. A gold disk swung at the chain’s end. “I am a master of the guild of builders,” she told him hotly. “If you wish to contest my judgment, you may do so before the Guildmaster, when the guild convenes on Wednesday!”

“Ha ha!” chuckled Lost to itself.

Adria swallowed a gasp. The guilds frowned on anyone who accused their masters without evidence. Her father had standing in the merchants’ guild, but his rank was bronze. The merchants would not back him the way the builders would protect one of their own who wore gold, even if that one was a stranger.

“Well!” Keraine said when it was plain that Master Fairingrove would neither touch her medal nor answer her. She draped the chain over her head once more, but this time she did not tuck her insignia under her clothes. “You say you mean to send Adria to some farm?”

“She may have bedazzled you, but
I
am her father. I will see to it she learns proper behavior,” Master Fairingrove said, his voice tight. “The old man spoiled her”—he glared at Hillbrand—“and now she will not heed her betters.”

Hillbrand snorted. “Instructor Park is not Adria’s better,” he said with scorn. “He is a third-rater who teaches here instead of Carthak because he has neither ability nor patrons. I fear I did not help you with him, Adria,” he explained, meeting her eyes. “I told him that he should let you work ahead and come to me for special instruction. My friends at the school have let me know he took against you instead. The more he saw you could do, the more jealous he became.”

Adria tried to smile, to tell her old friend she understood, though she
didn’t
understand. It made no sense for a teacher—an adult, a university graduate!—to dislike her.

“Jealous! Of a child!” scoffed Master Fairingrove.

“Bad man,” said the glitter-covered darking on Hillbrand’s shoulder.

Master Fairingrove flinched. Hillbrand reached up to stroke the small creature. “Now, Silvery, that was rude,” he chided gently.

“True,” piped the darking in the crook of Keraine’s arm. “True,” echoed the one in her pack.

Adria saw Master Fairingrove’s hands clench into fists. “Please hush,” she begged, afraid of what her father might do. He seemed to have taken against all darkings, not only Lost. “Darkings, please.” Lost made an arm and patted Adria’s cheek gently with it.

“Adria doesn’t need a
farm,
” Keraine announced. “She
needs the university in Corus. They’ll be able to keep up with her there. I know several good families who will be glad to take her in.”

“You raise her hopes for nothing,” Master Fairingrove said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I will not pay for a
girl
to attend university, not the fees, not whatever these people will ask to clothe, house, and feed her. In any event, she is far too young. The masters there would never accept her.”

“But they will,” Hillbrand said gently. “She has two graduates in good standing to vouch for her—Keraine and me—and she will pass the examinations easily. As for expense, I have no children, and quite a large sum in savings. I always meant to leave it to Adria. I will just do it sooner. In fact, I believe I will take her to Corus myself.”

“You will
not,
” Adria’s father said, his voice thick with fury. “She is
mine.
”

“Adria no slave!” cried Lost, raising its head from Adria’s shoulder. “Adria belong to Adria!”

“No slavery here,” called the darking seated on Keraine’s elbow. “You not own her.”

Adria barely heard them. She was thinking, working on the solution of her life. This was an equation made up of feelings and knowledge of Master Fairingrove. She had been prepared to run away to nothing. Now she had something, if she found a way to change her father’s mind. Her old self, the one who would do anything to please him, struggled and failed under the weight of all she had learned about him today. If she had been ready to run away with nothing, surely she could fight for this gift of her dreams.

She bit her lip, then forced herself to cry gaily, “Don’t
worry, Father!” She ran to the shadowed area by the stair to the old storeroom and retrieved the account book she had hidden there.

“This help?” Lost asked, concerned.

“Don’t know,” Adria replied in a whisper. Back she went, going all the way to the adults this time. She offered the volume to her father. “Father, it’s all right. I finished checking the books. You don’t need me to help anymore! Unless you want me to have the guild auditors review my work?”

She met her father’s eyes, keeping her own wide and innocent. He stared first at her, then, frowning, at the account book. He turned pale when he realized that it had a black cover. He realized she was threatening to take his secret to the guild.

“I’ll have that, my girl,” he said at last.

Lost rolled onto the book. “Adria goes free,” it said. “Or all darkings in city know what we know now.”

“What one darking knows, all know,” called the one that rode on Keraine’s shoulder.

Lost put out an arm and tapped the book. “All know.”

Master Fairingrove took a deep breath. Adria could tell he was fighting to contain his temper. “I had not known your work was … done, Adria. That is … 
very
different. Go with your educated new friends, if you like. You get no blessing from me.”

Lost rolled back to Adria’s arm, whispering “Huzza, huzza, huzza!” as she gave the book to her father. Once she was free of it, she went over to Keraine and Hillbrand.

“May she go home to say goodbye to her mother and siblings?” asked Hillbrand.

“She may not,” said Fairingrove. “I will have her things sent to your home in the morning. She is no longer a member of my family.” He looked at them as if they were beggars. “I will thank all of you, including your monsters, to leave my property. The back way.” He pointed to the rear door.

As they walked out, Keraine put an arm around Adria’s shoulders. “I am so sorry,” she whispered. Her darkings hung down, chattering softly with Lost. “I never thought he would be so …”

Adria shook her head. “It’s all right,” she whispered. She would have Lost take a note to her mother, warning her about her father’s smuggling.

“No, it isn’t all right,” Hillbrand said, stealing the torch that lit the storeroom entrance. “But it will be, eventually.”

Five days later, three travelers got onto the ferry to Tortall. The two women wore scarves against the strong wind that came downriver from the north, while the man who traveled with them wore the hood of his coat up over his head. One of the ferrymen, trying to coax a horse aboard, told the man to watch where he went. The ferryman reaped a surprise when a black blob the size of two fists put together, covered with silver dust, popped out of the man’s hood and piped that they
were
minding where they went! Hillbrand apologized hurriedly for his companion and sat in a protected corner with Adria and Keraine. The four darkings pooled in Adria’s lap, chuckling over the start that Silvery had given the ferryman, while Keraine dug in her pack.

Looking at the darkings, Adria had to smile. It was impossible to mope in their presence, and she loved them for
coming to her aid. From them she had learned that Lost had asked friends to find Keraine and tell her that Adria needed help. Keraine had thought it would be better to bring in Master Hillbrand, who Master Fairingrove already knew. When she mentioned her idea to the darkings who had found her, they had called for a third, Silvery, to fetch Hillbrand.

In the time Adria, Keraine, and Hillbrand had spent with the four darkings, they had not gotten a straight answer as to how many others of their kind were actually in the city. The answer that gave all of them goose bumps was “Enough.” That was when Keraine decided to quickly finish her work on the bridge so she could leave for Corus with Hillbrand and Adria.

“If something is brewing, it may be better that any Tortallans are gone when it boils,” Hillbrand had remarked when Keraine announced her decision to come with them.

“Ah!” the engineer said now, producing the item she searched for. “Something to read during your journey to a
proper
school.”

Hillbrand took the book from Keraine. “It was a guild school that educated you for university,” he said mildly. “You never complained before. Ah. Yasmadad’s
Principles of Trigonometry
. Aren’t you rushing things?”

“
Rushing
things?” cried Keraine. “With snippets she picked up somewhere, she was reinventing trigonometry right in front of me, I told you!”

While the older pair talked, Adria opened the tattered book to the first page. There were the symbols, what she’d thought of as runes, for sine and cosine. Four black knobs on
long necks arranged themselves around the edges of the book as the darkings looked on. “What trig’nom’ry good for?” asked the one called Puff, who managed to hold a cloudweed puff in its body.