Lokant (38 page)

‘We’ve met, once. At
Ynara Sanfaer’s house.’ Eva stared at Yna’s friend, completely
confused. ‘Are you Byllant?’

‘I don’t know who you
mean,’ Devary replied with another of his charming smiles. ‘Perhaps
you’ve come to the wrong place?’

‘I doubt that. Getting
Byllant’s address wasn’t easy. Finding
you
here, Mr Kant, is
a pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?’

‘Coincidences happen
sometimes.’

Eva shook her head. She
didn’t want to believe that a friend of Yna’s would betray her this
way, but Kant’s protests made no sense. How could he possibly just
happen
to be here, in a house registered to Byllant?

‘I’m sorry you’ve come
all this way for nothing,’ Kant continued. ‘Can I offer you some
refreshment before you leave?’

Eva’s brow contracted.
She hadn’t had much conversation with Devary Kant before, but she
remembered that he spoke with a hint of a Nimdren accent. It had
been attractive. He was speaking her own language now, but without
any trace of Nimdren inflection. Had he merely adopted the accent
before, or was he disguising it now? If anything, his new
intonation was Ullarni.

She nudged Rikbeek with
her thoughts, surreptitiously shaking him out of the folds of her
skirt. Silently, ignoring his protests, she directed his attention
towards the man who claimed to be Devary Kant. The gwaystrel
applied his unique senses to the task, building an image of the man
that had nothing to do with his physical appearance.

‘Thanks, but we can’t
stay,’ she said in the meantime, praying that Devary wouldn’t
notice the black-winged gwaystrel in the darkness. ‘Perhaps you can
help us, though. Have you ever heard the name Iro Byllant
before?’

She wanted him to speak
again, but he merely shook his head.

‘Never? He isn’t a
neighbour, perhaps, or a previous tenant of this property?’

‘I’m so sorry to
disappoint you, but I’ve never heard of him. Now, if we’ve
finished?’ He moved towards the door.

Eva sucked in a breath.
She knew that voice. Rich and mellow, like honey. Where had she
heard it?

Rikbeek was filling in
a new image of the man. Taller than he appeared, bigger across the
shoulders, his nose, ears and hands a different shape... his hair
pale.

Pale.
The words
of the Lawch & Son clerk came back to her.
Your hair colour,
ma’am.

Tren figured it out
first. ‘I don’t know a Devary Kant, but you sound a lot like Griel
Ruart to me.’

Griel! Of course. His
was a distinctive voice, and in her mind’s eye she recognised the
partial image Rikbeek was building. This was Ana’s sorcerer
husband, no doubt about it. But that made no sense. Last time she
had seen him, he’d almost been bitten in two by the draykon she now
knew as Pensould. His wife had taken his corpse away, but she would
never have expected that he could be healed. Not even by
Lokants.

Kant’s face twisted in
disgust. ‘I can never get the voices right.’ The handsome face of
Devary Kant faded, revealing the flatter features, broader figure
and white hair of Griel Ruart.

‘So. You two keep
turning up. You were not much use last time. What do you want
now?’

Eva shook her head in
disbelief. ‘
Last
time, you were somewhat more polite. How
are you not dead?’

‘That’s none of your
business. Are you here from
him?
Perhaps you were working
for him from the beginning.’ Griel’s manner was hostile, his
posture tense, ready to attack. Eva recognised fear in his
eyes.

‘Him? You mean Krays, I
suppose.’

The fear sharpened.
‘Then you are working for him. What do you want?’

Eva decided not to
undeceive him just yet. ‘You remember the name of Lawch & Son,
I imagine?’

‘What?’

‘A light-globe
manufacturer in Orstwych. You supplied them with a new design
utilising draykon bone.’

Griel lifted his chin,
defiant. ‘And?’

‘By that I conclude
that you are indeed Iro Byllant. Lawch & Son aren’t your only
customers, are they?’

He laughed. ‘Course
not. I have dozens of designs out there. It’s lucrative.’

Tren cut in. ‘Where are
you getting the bone?’

‘Ah, well. Somewhere I
shouldn’t. Hence my dismay at finding a white-hair at my door.
Though I can’t figure out what your part in all this is. Krays
doesn’t usually pair partials with humans.’

‘We’re not part of
Krays’s organisation.’

‘Is that the
truth?’

‘If we were sent by
Krays, I’ve a feeling we wouldn’t be standing here holding a
civilised conversation with you.’

‘Horribly true.’ Some
of the tension went out of the sorcerer’s body, and the suspicion
in his face relaxed a little. ‘But then, what are you here
for?’

Eva smiled. ‘Actually
we’re trying to find out what Krays is up to.’

His head tilted.
‘Why?’

She exchanged a brief
look with Tren. How much to tell him? She read caution in his eyes
and she silently agreed. Best to keep it simple.

‘You remember Llandry
Sanfaer,’ she replied. ‘Krays has been after her. We want to know
why.’

‘Oh, he would be.’ He
stepped closer suddenly, his dark eyes intense. ‘Make sure he
never
finds her.’

‘We’re doing our best.’
She took a breath and gambled, risking everything on the pure
hatred she read in Griel’s eyes when Krays was mentioned. ‘Can you
help us? What can you tell us about him?’

Griel said nothing. He
turned and paced away to the other side of the room, apparently
thinking. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him. She saw what
Ocherly had meant: his movement was off in some subtle way. Not as
if he was injured, exactly, just not quite natural.

‘You want to know what
he’s up to? I’ll show you.’ Griel stood before them again. His hand
moved, fast; he held a long knife, the blade glinting in the
half-light.

Tren gave a startled
cry and pulled her back, out of reach of the weapon. But Griel made
no move to threaten either of them. He pulled off his heavy black
coat and rolled up one sleeve of his dark shirt.

The knife slashed
downwards. A long wound opened in his arm, the flesh cleaved to the
bone.

‘What -
what -’
She could only gasp the word, too shocked to think clearly.

‘Here,’ Griel said
through gritted teeth, holding out his bleeding limb. The
light-globe brightened, drifting down to hover just over the man’s
arm.

Eva steeled herself and
looked closer, expecting to see the white gleam of bone.

A flash of silvered
indigo caught her eye instead.

Tren uttered a choked
curse. ‘Is that... that can’t be.’

‘Draykon bone? That’s
exactly what it is. I almost lost this arm. I
did
lose it.
When I woke up, I felt changed.
Wrong.
This arm, my leg -’
he slapped his left leg as he spoke ‘-some of my ribs, my hand. All
rebuilt. My bones replaced, my flesh regrown... I’m part of a wider
programme.’

Eva swallowed. ‘What
programme?’

‘Krays is looking for
the limits of the draykon bone’s advantages. So far he hasn’t found
any. He’s building devices, crossing technology with magic,
creating terrifyingly powerful things. And he’s playing with
biology, building animals and
humans
with machine parts,
with draykon parts. Like he’s trying to build his own hybrids. The
next step must be to combine everything. Imagine machines with all
the biological advantages of the strongest animals and the
cleverest humans, and wielding draykon magic. Krays did this to me
to find out if it would
take.
Whether an intelligent being
could be made to function this way.’

A shudder ran down
Eva’s back as she listened. What kind of madness was this?

‘Why did he do that to
you?’ she asked. ‘Weren’t you one of his top agents?’

‘
Was,’
Griel
spat. ‘Not that he would feel restrained by that if it suited his
purposes, but for me this is a punishment. I - we - disobeyed him.
If I’d known what the price would be...’

‘Is that why you’re
telling us this?’

Griel looked at her
with so much pain that she felt her heart contract. She was
actually feeling
sorry
for him. She had to remind herself
that this man was responsible for the deaths of several innocent
Glour citizens, including her closest friend and Tren’s.

‘You’ve no idea what
it’s like, the isolation. Working for a man like Krays, with no
hope of help, not even any companionship. He’s made sure of that.
It’s part of my punishment.’

Eva wondered how Krays
had contrived to keep Ana away from her husband, but she didn’t
dare ask about that.

‘Why the light-globes?’
she asked instead. ‘And the rest?’

‘I get my revenge as I
can,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been careful, finding hidden ways of
getting my devices out. Frittering away his hard-won draykon bone.
Someday I may be rich enough to find a way out of this
slavery.’

Eva sighed inwardly.
Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t find it in herself to condemn
him for that. She probably would have done the same in his
position.

‘Griel,’ she said,
trying to ignore the fact that his arm was still pouring blood on
the floor. He didn’t seem to notice or care about it himself. ‘Why
is Krays doing all of this? What’s the purpose of it?’

Griel shrugged. ‘Just
because he can? I don’t know. He doesn’t exactly share his private
thoughts with me. Didn’t even before I was disgraced. But you don’t
build super-machines for any good purpose, and that man - if he is
a man - hasn’t a decent bone in his body. Whatever he’s planning,
it’s bad news.’

Krays was undoubtedly
dangerous.

It was his
inventiveness that made him formidable. Lokant he may be, but his
mind worked in some unique ways. Long ago, before he’d defected
from the Library, he had been one of its most brilliant
inventors.

But Krays could also be
delightfully, conveniently predictable. Wandering through the
hallways of the Sulayn Phay Library, Limbane enjoyed a pleasing
glow of superiority. As an architect, the rogue Lokant wholly
lacked imagination. When Krays had founded his splinter group, he’d
made no secret of the fact that he intended it to rival Limbane’s
Library someday. To that end, he had slavishly imitated almost
every feature of the original design, albeit on a smaller
scale.

Krays had deviated only
in extending the levels below the book rooms and turning the lower
halls into a kind of prison complex. His methods always had been
more direct than Limbane’s.

It did make
infiltration so gloriously easy. Especially since his one attempt
at misdirection was so pitiful. Like Limbane’s Library, Sulayn Phay
was built on an island. The smaller one had the advantage of being
more easily moved and more easily concealed; it rarely stayed in
the same place for very long.

But Limbane never had
any difficulty locating his rival’s headquarters. He’d found
Krays’s island floating a few miles off the coast of Ullarn,
concealed within a shroud of mist. Attractive, but ineffectual.

Krays would have to
work harder to outwit him.

Limbane’s good feelings
lasted right up until he reached the outer door of Krays’s little
prison project. Patrolling the corridor beyond it was something...
other.

Five full Lokants were
assembled behind Limbane, brought to deal with just these sorts of
problems. Krays was, after all, predictable. He always left toys in
the same places: machines, quite sophisticated ones, stationed to
keep people like Limbane out.

And Limbane’s teams
always succeeded in disabling them. It was a game that had gone on
for some centuries.

Until now, at least.
Limbane inspected the ambulatory device that guarded the door
today, using both his eyes and his mental senses to ascertain the
nature of the thing. It wasn’t as large as some of Krays’s earlier
creations: this one stood only as high as Limbane’s waist. Previous
machines had usually been fully robotic, equipped with
knife-blades, guns and shields, that type of thing.

This one was
undoubtedly a work of machinery, but it looked like an animal. If
it resembled any particular beast in nature, it was the whurthag:
it featured the same night-black colour, though its hide was not
strictly biological in substance. It had the same lean,
steel-muscled build and heavy jaws. Those jaws featured metal teeth
- of an alloy stronger than the original calcium-built fangs might
have been - and claws of similar construction.

Despite these
mechanical curiosities, there was undoubtedly biological matter
inside the thing. That frame looked so convincing because it was
built over real muscle.

Worse, while the thing
lacked a consciousness it definitely possessed some kind of
awareness. Not a manufactured one, with limitations frequently
outnumbering the strengths. It was alert for intruders. It knew
what it was expected to do if it encountered any. It had desires,
of a sort.

The thing had some few
of the advantages of a real whurthag, but being still essentially a
construct it was considerably more biddable. This one was wholly
under Krays’s control.

‘What in the name
of...’ That soft exclamation came from behind him; at least one of
his Lokants was as shocked as he.

‘All right, let’s deal
with it,’ Limbane said. Time enough later to speculate about how or
why Krays had done it. ‘Egren, Rael - take its measure. I want to
know everything about it, quick as you can. Yora, Melle - you’re
going to need to modify those tools. Iwa, you’re with me. I need
you to immobilise its consciousness, such as it is, so I can
reverse its instructions.’ The whurthag-thing had finished its
patrol at the other end of the long corridor; now it prowled back
towards them. Horror, for there was definitely some kind of mind at
work behind those icy glass eyes; Limbane could feel it assessing
them.