Orlind (34 page)

‘
We’re
going to
talk
about this, later,’ she hissed.

‘
Won’t
that be fun.’ Tren strode on, unmoved.

Defeated, Eva
turned her attention to Rikbeek. He was still on the wing,
maintaining a station fifteen or twenty feet ahead of them. His
senses were really marvellous; he was building a picture of his
surroundings in sound, bouncing his high-pitched voice off all the
objects he encountered to determine their shape and distance. That
was why he was such a good spy: no invisibility spell could fool
him. He could “see” her and Tren as well as everything else, in
spite of Tren’s invisibility enchantment.

He was currently
mapping something tall, slender and in motion...

‘
People up ahead,’ she whispered. Instantly she and Tren moved
to the wall, flattening themselves against it without losing their
grip on each other. They waited, breathless, as footsteps became
audible and then two figures appeared at the turn of the corridor,
both male, white-haired and unmistakeably Lokant.

They were walking
two abreast, which was unnerving. The corridor wasn’t that wide.
Eva held her breath in earnest as they passed by, so close that she
feared they couldn’t miss her. It was hard to believe in her own
invisibility when she could still
feel
her own physical form
perfectly well, even if she couldn’t see it.

The one closest
to her was reading something, and to her relief he remained
absorbed in it as he passed. The other was closer to the far side
of the passageway, too far away to be in danger of touching her or
Tren. They moved past without appearing to notice anything, and
disappeared around the next bend in the corridor.

Eva took a shaky
breath.

‘
Close,’ Tren murmured.

‘
Thank
goodness for Rikbeek.’

‘
I’m
getting him a present when we get out of here,’ Tren said, moving
away from the wall and tugging her gently after him.

‘
What
did you have in mind?’

‘
Blood, of course. Pints of it.’

‘
Yours?’

‘
Well... some of it. I don’t think I can spare a few pints all
at once.’

Eva was silent
for a while after that, shivering too much to talk. She wasn’t
afraid,
she told herself. She was... cold. Yes, that was it.
Her coat was thick and warm, but this damned Library seemed to have
no heating at all. Even the brisk pace Tren set wasn’t enough to
combat the chills that repeatedly shook her. She grumbled about
this in her own mind, cursing the name of Krays all over again.
Couldn’t he at least have a
warm
sinister
hideout?

Twice more they
were obliged to evade Lokants wandering past. Both passed without
incident, thanks to Rikbeek’s prior notification, and Eva’s
trepidation quietened down a little. So far, the plan was working
well enough. They had angled north through the Library and steadily
downwards, aiming for the lower levels where Limbane kept the labs
and machine factories in his own Library. Their Lokantor wasn’t
nearly as committed to machinery as Krays, so Eva wasn’t surprised
to find that they reached this part of the Library sooner than she
expected. Where Limbane’s labs gave way to book rooms, Krays simply
had more, and bigger, manufactories. The level of background noise
increased, which was a mixed blessing: on the one hand it would
make it harder for anyone to hear the intruders; on the other, it
made it harder for she and Tren to talk to each other.

Now they ran into
a problem. The manufactories were busy, far busier than either of
them had expected. They looked to be working at top speed. Getting
in wasn’t a problem, because most of the doors were not locked;
then again, most of them had a steady stream of Lokants going in
and out, and the view beyond the doors was not encouraging. Each
workshop was buzzing with activity.

‘
On to
the labs, I think?’ Tren whispered, his breath warm on her ear.
‘Best to look for plans.’

Eva murmured an
agreement. It would be better to get a look at the machines in
operation, but there were too many people around here. Sooner or
later someone would bump into them, and then it would all be
over.

As soon as they
were past the manufactories, the level of activity dropped fast.
This was both encouraging and foreboding, to Eva’s mind. It was
helpful to them, if most of the Lokants were busy in one area of
the Library; they could explore the labs in greater safety. But
why
was there so much activity in Krays’s machine workshops?
Whatever they were building must be needed soon, and in quantity.
It struck her that perhaps the draykon mechs Llandry had described
had been made here. Were they building more? If so, why? For use
against the Seven Realms? That prospect turned her sick with
trepidation.

The laboratory
sector looked similar to Limbane’s. A large, circular hallway was
lined with six metal doors, all closed and probably locked. Eva
followed behind Tren as he approached the first door, glancing
through the small window that was set in the top.

‘
Occupied,’ he whispered, and moved on to the second. This one
was empty. Eva passed him the keys, then turned to locate Rikbeek.
He was circling near the ceiling in the centre of the room,
grumbling.

Watch the main
door, please,
she asked him, directing him towards the entrance
they had just come from. If anyone came into this hallway, she
wanted to know about it.

‘
We’re
in,’ Tren whispered, and she turned back.

If anything, this
laboratory was even colder. She shivered so violently that even
Tren felt it.

‘
Such
sufferings,’ he murmured, wrapping her in a quick hug and chafing
her chilled arms. ‘Suffer on, brave soldier.’

‘
Bastard,’ she muttered. ‘Just because you’re a walking heat
source.’

She couldn’t see
his grin, but she could picture it as he turned away. The layout of
this room was promising: several tall, wide work surfaces marched
the length of the lab, probably designed to accommodate large
sheets of paper (or something like it). The walls were made of the
same glass-like substance as Limbane’s chart room, some areas
displaying complicated diagrams. She could imagine this room full
of engineers, drawing out their plans on the tables and
transferring parts of them to the storage and display system on the
walls.

‘
The
problem with this,’ she said, staring at the walls, ‘is that I have
no idea what any of it indicates.’ The drawings were
incomprehensible to her, and she couldn’t decipher the notations
that came with them either.

‘
Never
mind those,’ Tren said, his voice coming from somewhere near the
floor. Looking down, she saw that the tables were actually
cabinets, with lockable doors on the front. Tren had got one of
them unlocked; as she watched, the doors opened as if by
themselves. Inside was a large, complicated-looking
machine.

‘
It’s
heavy,’ Tren grunted as he lifted it out. ‘What do you think this
is, a prototype?’

‘
Makes
sense,’ she agreed. Here they would experiment with the design
until they’d got it right. Then the plans would be transferred to
the manufactories for construction, leaving the original prototype
behind.

‘
This
doesn’t make
much
more sense to me, I admit,’ she said,
directing a frown at the odd thing that now sat atop the cabinet.
It was a few feet wide and a couple tall, consisting of a sturdy
metal base and a series of conduits made from that same strange
type of glass. ‘Is that drayk bone?’

‘
Looks
like it, Tren said. The bone was fitted into a set of clamps at
what she took to be the front of the machine. At the other end
there was... nothing significant. It looked as though the system of
conduits simply stopped.

‘
Looks
like part of something bigger,’ Tren said, confirming her guess.
She followed as he worked his way around the rest of the cabinets,
opening all the doors. Inside each was another similar contraption,
each bearing a piece of draykon bone, each terminating abruptly at
the back end.

‘
They
fit together,’ Tren said. ‘Look - see that bracket on the end of
this one? I bet it would connect to one of the others.’

Eva nodded, then
remembered that she was invisible. ‘I see what you mean. But why
not just make one device? I don’t see the use of building it in
separate parts.’

‘
It
would be easier to transport,’ Tren pointed out. ‘If this was one
huge machine, it would be virtually impossible to move.’

‘
Good
point, yes.’

‘
I
reckon this is the sort of thing Dev saw. And remember what Griel
said? They were building energy collectors! I bet that’s what these
are.’

‘
The
bone serves as a catalyst of some kind,’ Eva mused. ‘It draws the
energy, channels it through the conduits, and... does what with
it?’

‘
Good
question,’ Tren murmured. ‘But, remember what Indren told us? She’s
been set to research the Off-Worlds, specifically why they’re so
unsettled lately. We now know - or suspect - that it’s a disruption
in the energy flows that’s causing the trouble, and that’s
happening because the draykoni are shaking things up.’

Eva caught on.
‘These are the devices that Griel’s teams were
building.’

‘
Right,’ Tren said grimly. ‘These are designed to collect
Off-World energy in some way, channelling it somewhere else. But as
to
where
, or why, or what a person might be able to do with
such a thing, I’m stumped.’

Eva shivered a
little, but not with cold this time. She’d felt the ferocious
energies surging through Iskyr not long ago, even more volatile
than the Lowers had been last time she’d visited. If it was
possible to collect and store it, it would make for a powerful
energy source indeed. What might an ambitious Lokant like Krays do
with it? All she could think of was Limbane’s Library; maybe it was
designed to be turned on him in some way. But she was no longer
convinced that all this was aimed at Limbane.

‘
This
doesn’t bring us any closer to the real goal,’ she said. ‘We’ve
confirmed an earlier theory - unfortunately - but we still have no
real idea why this is being done. We need to carry on
searching.’

Tren began
restoring the devices to their cupboards. ‘We do, though I’m not
sure where.’

Eva thought fast.
They could search the rest of the laboratories, but she didn’t
expect to gain much by it. Perhaps it had been naive of her to come
down here, expecting to find a clear explanation of what each
machine did and why it was being built. All they were finding here
was the means, not the purpose.

‘
I
know you hate this, Tren,’ she said, ‘but I can’t think of anywhere
more likely to hold answers than Krays’s study. We could waste
hours down here without finding what we’re looking for.’

‘
And
why do you think we’ll find anything useful in there? He’ll have it
all locked up behind Lokant technologies that we don’t know how to
operate, and I doubt any of it’s conveniently written down
anyway.’

‘
That’s true, but...’ It occurred to her that Tren’s voice was
a little strained. ‘Are you getting tired, Tren?’

‘
A
bit. Invisibility takes it out of me.’

‘
Right. Let’s hurry, then. We could spend all day combing
through the rest of the Library and find nothing. We have to try
for the study.’

Tren made a sound
of disgust, and didn’t answer.

‘
Do
you have a better idea, Tren? Because if you do, I would love to
hear it.’

Silence. Then,
‘No,’ Tren said with a sigh. ‘I thought about trying to talk to
someone, but nobody would share secrets with supposed “new
recruits”, and if we tried duress they’d just Travel away and our
cover would be blown.’

‘
Agreed,’ Eva sighed. ‘I don’t like it either, but we’re
running out of time.’

Tren came up next
to her and linked hands again. ‘How are we going to get
in?’

‘
Let’s
find it first,’ she suggested. ‘Then we’ll deal with that
problem.’

‘
All
right.’ Tren took the lead again as they passed back into the
hallway. Rikbeek’s excellent vision revealed an empty passage out,
so they took it, almost running through the corridors now. It took
a few minutes of hard walking to reach the upper levels where
Krays’s study would be; this Library may be smaller than Limbane’s
but that didn’t make it
small
by any means.

‘
Right,’ Tren whispered at last, stopping at another plain
metal door. ‘This has to be it.’

‘
All
right. I don’t see a keyhole.’

‘
None
of them have keyholes. With the other ones I just held the keys
against this panel thing here and sooner or later one of them
worked.’

‘
They
won’t work here. Krays would never give Ana access to his own study
- or if he did once, he’d have revoked it by now.’

‘
True,
but we could try them anyway.’ The keys jangled in mid-air and
approached the door, then stopped. ‘Eva. Why aren’t there guards
here?’