Evastany

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘We will catch up with him again soon enough,’ Tren said, correctly guessing the reason for my brief dismay.

  I could only hope so, for we have no idea where Gio and Ori are. I do have this nice mental map of the Library, now, but its layout assumes a certain familiarity with the place. It is pretty bare. There are no handy labels saying things like, zone allocated to the nefarious and untrustworthy followers of Krays, or even more helpfully, Dwinal’s Lair. The Library is huge, and where in it Ylona might be hiding I cannot guess. I do not know where Susa or Faronni might be, and since Gio said nothing about them, I have to assume he has yet to discover their whereabouts either.

  Never mind. It is now time to be intrepid, courageous and just a little bit reckless. There are risks involved with wandering off, of course. Whoever is wearing Limbane’s face expects us to be here, and may come back at any time; how can we guess how long he will take?

  I’m concerned for Gio. If they find us gone, it will not take them long to realise who helped us. So, Tren and I agreed to proceed with caution. Meanwhile, I am privately hoping that Gio had sense enough to cover his tracks, and to protect himself — if he can.

  But we could not simply wait to be retrieved. It is one thing to retire to bed when one is genuinely helpless to achieve anything of use. It is quite another to do nothing when one is empowered to get up to all kinds of (useful, productive and entirely blameless) mischief. And we do, after all, have missing people to find.

  And so out we ventured.

  Exploration at that time was not quite as risky as it may sound. We were both of us suitably white-haired (Tren’s hairdo might have been fake, but it was convincing). I had wandered Lokant Libraries enough in the past to know that they really are huge. Most people know most other people, but not all; it’s not uncommon to see unfamiliar Lokant faces rambling the corridors. So, if one dresses the part and acts like one belongs, people are not too quick to challenge. Provided one does not get too close to anywhere they consider to be especially secret or important, anyway.

  So, Tren and I donned our best grave, wise, we-are-very-knowing-people-engaged-upon-important-business faces, adopted confident postures matched with twin airs of pomposity, and ventured forth.

  The first thing we did, of course, was to search the immediate area for Susa and Faronni. Since Limbane-not-really had dumped Tren and I into adjoining suites, it would make sense that the others would be somewhere nearby, too. But not every room had a translocation point, and we could not access most of them. We were unwilling to make too much noise, but tapped upon doors and called for the missing girls as loudly as we dared. No signs of life did we detect in response. Our suites were situated halfway along a corridor of several doors, most of them presumably leading to other, similar accommodation. The area seemed to be deserted, as far as we could tell; we had been placed at a distance from the main, populated areas of the Library, and if our fellow abductees had been housed anywhere near us, they were not presently at home.

  ‘What next, then?’ murmured Tren, kindly deferring to my authority.

  Kindly? Not a bit of it. I felt a sudden, suffocating pressure. All right: I was the partial Lokant here. I was the one with the implant and the ability to use it. In our relationship, I have always been the one with the greater power, the greater influence, the habit of command. I was used to leading, and Tren was used to following. It has always worked well for us. We make a splendid team.

  But in that moment, under those circumstances, I suddenly felt utterly inadequate to the demands of the occasion. When it came down to it, what did I really know about Lokants or their Libraries? No more than Tren did, certainly. By what right was I better placed to decide how to proceed? How could I be trustfully relied upon not to mess everything up? What if I did exactly the wrong thing, went the wrong way, followed the wrong ideas, and got all of us into deep trouble?

  I am not accustomed to self-doubt. It is a horrendously unpleasant feeling, and I felt a stab of sympathy for poor Llandry, to whom the state is sadly familiar. I also felt a new admiration for her courage, for I can tell you: it is far, far harder to lift your chin, put your best foot forward, and stride away into the unknown when you feel acutely aware of everything that can go wrong, and hopelessly inadequate to prevent any of those myriad disasters from coming to pass.

  Well, enough of that. Am I Lady Glostrum or am I not?

  Why, I am! Dauntless Lady Glostrum! She who always knows what to do, even when she has no idea. She who has led others, confidently and successfully, since she was fifteen. She who never lets her doubts show, even on the rare occasions she actually feels them.

  I am equal to anything, I told myself.

  And I am. I really am.

  So up went my chin, back went my shoulders, and on we went.

  We found Faronni.

  This came about in an odd way. See, it only belatedly occurred to us that we had no idea what she looked like, but there we were bumbling through Sulayn Phay trying to find her anyway. What were we expecting to encounter? A mysteriously locked but conveniently penetrable door, behind which a woman would lie, bound and gagged and obviously kidnapped?

  ‘You must be Faronni Nallay!’ we would say, as we breathlessly worked to unbind her poor hands and feet.

  She would look meltingly at Tren while he removed her gag, and then say, with the deepest gratitude, ‘My rescuers! Thank goodness!’

  After which we would all be best friends for life.

  That’s not what happened.

  We wandered away from the cluster of prison-suites and, after venturing down a few more corridors and turning a corner or two, we encountered what appeared to be a collection of classrooms all arranged around a central parlour. We took some care here, braced to encounter company, but the area seemed to be deserted, so we relaxed.

  Well, it was deserted until it wasn’t, of course. Seated in a chair in a corner of that parlour, so neatly tucked away that we’d failed to see her, was a woman in her twenties. White-haired of course, clad in a simple red cotton dress, she sat with a huge book open upon her lap and a cup of some warm beverage in hand. We had obviously disturbed her studies, for the first sign of her presence we received was the kind of annoyed cough that strives to come across as polite.

  ‘This is a private area,’ she informed us, scowling. ‘Quiet zone. Learning in progress.’

  ‘Our apologies,’ murmured I.

  She had barely glanced at us before, her attention focused upon her book. But upon these words of mine, she looked up. Her face brightened.

  ‘Lady Glostrum!’ she said in delight. ‘How kind of you to visit! I mean, I know you are busy, I hardly imagined you would come to check on my progress. I am busily employed, as you see, and doing great justice to the bursary.’ She smiled at me, and tried to get up and curtsey without dropping her enormous book.

  I could see that this venture could only end in disaster, but fortunately Tren contrived to collect the book from her before it could tumble to the floor.

  All of this took me by surprise, as you might imagine. The last thing I’d expected was to encounter somebody all the way out here that I knew (besides Gio of course). But it did not take me long to understand what had happened.

  We knew that Dwinal — or Ylona, or whoever — had been using my visage when they approached my students, the better to lull them into conveniently trusting, docile behaviour. I hadn’t quite anticipated that they would carry the charade still further.

  Faronni was being trained! I do not know what I had expected our abductors would do with her or Susa, but diligently schooling them in the very arts I had proposed (but struggled) to teach them myself was definitely not it. Furthermore, they had taken the simple expedient of pretending that their classrooms were my school. As far as Faronni knew, nothing had ever gone awry; she had ended up exactly where she had expected to go, and appeared to be quite happy with everything.

  Very clever indeed. I was impressed, I admit, with the efficie
ncy and smoothness of the whole operation. But, what was the point?

  I tried not to let on that I had never set eyes on Faronni in my life before, because it did not seem quite the right moment to explain to the poor, perfectly happy woman that she had been abducted and deceived. And besides, I may yet be able to make use of this unexpected advantage. So I expressed my delight at seeing her so studiously occupied and, apparently, so happily contented (none of which was feigned, I really was pleased. And relieved. I had never had real cause to imagine she was being poorly treated, but to have this belief in her essentially decent treatment confirmed was good news indeed).

  I pumped her for information, without seeming to do so. To be fair, this kind of subtle interrogation is almost second nature to me by now. It is an art that has frequently come in handy in my political life. Faronni innocently relayed all kinds of fascinating things. We learned that she had received a great deal of training in her Lokant abilities (she excelled at the more medical arts and domination, apparently, while showing little aptitude for translocation). She did not know much about her teachers; she knew them merely as “Miss” and “Sir”, and apparently had no social contact with them at all. She got on well with the other students (students! Plural! I felt reasonably confident that Susa would be one of them, but who was the other? Or others? Apparently they had discovered some partials of which we were unaware after all, but it was difficult to enquire into the matter when I, Lady Glostrum, was supposedly acquainted with them all. I had to lay it aside for later investigation).

  Then Faronni said: ‘Lady Glostrum, forgive me if I seem over-eager, but I am more than ready to begin with the other programme. Is there a tutor found?’

  Erm. Help! What other programme? What tutor??

  ‘Not yet,’ said I — stalling magnificently, as I’m sure you will agree. ‘We are hard at work upon the problem, I assure you. Er — what is it about the new programme you’re especially looking forward to, if I may ask?’

  Not too shabby, right? Faronni became enthusiastic at once. ‘Well — it’s been so fascinating to learn of my Lokant heritage, and I could not be more interested in developing my abilities. But my other nature! My… failure disappointed my mother so terribly, and I have always wished for an opportunity to try again. I can do better, I know it.’

  Reading between the lines there… somebody proposed to teach her sorcery, and Faronni was eager to learn. What had Ori said? At school, she had shown aptitude for sorcery but no application. How reformed a student she now appeared to be.

  Interesting. We had stumbled over a fine little programme which proposed to turn out well-rounded Lokant-Sorcerers. Why? Good question. No Lokant ever did anything for unselfish reasons, so I am sure they expect to benefit by it at some point. In the meantime, though, Faronni is receiving decided advantages which I and my fledgling school cannot, alas, give her.

  It’s growing harder to resent these abductions, though I still deplore the deceitful nature of the operation, and question its usefulness besides. If their goals were much the same as mine (at least as far as training these people up is concerned), why not seek to form an alliance with me? Why not do as Apparently-Limbane claimed to desire, and pool our resources? I don’t understand the secrecy, the deception, the manipulation. Even Faronni would clearly have come out here full willingly, if she had been told the truth about where she was going.

  I exchanged an uncertain look with Tren, and read in his face a lot of the same kinds of thoughts. We would need to discuss all this, and soon.

  ‘We will secure a tutor very soon,’ I assured Faronni, and I felt I could say that with impunity, for no doubt our Lokant hosts would seek to fill that particular post as soon as possible. Which begged a few interesting questions. Where were they expecting to get a fully trained sorcerer from? Who did they plan to approach?

  ‘Where are your fellow students today?’ I asked Faronni.

  ‘They are in class.’ She blushed faintly. ‘I was excused from transloc because I am hopeless at it.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said, moved to a little pity by her obvious embarrassment. ‘I am terrible at mending myself, which clearly you excel at.’

  She looked briefly delighted by the idea, though her demeanour soon turned to scepticism. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  She smiled. I tried not to feel too disturbed by her obvious joy in my failures.

  Her attention turned to Tren. Or rather, to Archivere. ‘Is this a new student?’ The smile she gave him was very welcoming, which raised my hackles a fraction. Ah well, who can blame her? He looks excessively handsome with the white hair. And the black hair. He’d look excessively handsome bald, come to that.

  ‘Archivere Dalsy,’ Tren introduced himself, and made her a bow.

  ‘Welcome!’ she enthused. ‘Erm, did you only just arrive? Shall I show you around?’

  Tren looked at me, and I gave him a gracious nod. I didn’t altogether love the idea of leaving the two of them alone together, not considering how overjoyed Faronni clearly was at the prospect. But I shoved the jealousy aside. What better way to investigate than to receive a tour of the operation from someone who was thoroughly familiar with it? It was a little risky, of course; if the other lessons ended before the tour was concluded, Tren might be caught out. He was not, after all, supposed to be out of his suite. But needs must. I trusted him to figure this out for himself, and to take all due care.

  I could help out a bit, though. ‘It’s a little unorthodox,’ I said with a confiding air. ‘Mr. Dalsy has yet to be enrolled. He hasn’t even met the tutors, yet, and I’d rather he do so via the official channels.’

  ‘I’ll keep it quiet,’ she promised, and flashed Tren another smile.

  Excellent. With that, and feeling only a little bit heroically martyred, I returned a gracious nod to Faronni’s curtsey and Tren’s bow and watched as she led him away.

  So. Turned loose in Sulayn Phay, by myself and equipped with a shiny new translocational device, what did I do?

  Well, I went to dinner.

  My logic was as follows. I have already noted that lots of interesting and useful things seem to happen over meals. This is because mealtimes gather people together, and when people get together they do fabulously interesting things like talk. A lot. If I wanted to find out what kinds of people lived here, and what sorts of questionable and fascinating things they were getting up to, it wouldn’t hurt to present myself at the nearest dining table.

  I’ve already said that it wouldn’t be unusual for them to see a stranger wandering around. And it might prove to be handy. I could pose as a newcomer to the Library, and it therefore wouldn’t seem odd if I asked questions. Famous as I might be at home, I didn’t expect to be recognised in Sulayn Phay. I’m pretty sure the ordinary, day-to-day life of the average Sulayn Librarian doesn’t include reading the gossip papers of the Seven Realms.

  I was also hungry. Hunger is an unpleasant state in which to exist, and I never see any reason to bear it if I do not have to.

  I did not know where to find a dining room, of course, but the map in my head was not without its uses here. It did not have anything helpfully marked as kitchens, or dining parlours, or any such delights. But I could identify spaces which contained larger rooms, sized to accommodate such activities as group cooking and eating, and I made for those.

  After a while I was able to follow my nose, for I began to smell something delicious cooking.

  You may wonder how I was so sure that such activities as being fed would prove to be communal. After all, we may call these places Libraries because the nearest translation we have for the word Lokant is Librarian; even so it’s not unfair to suggest that they could more reasonably be compared to a village or perhaps a small town. People live in their own quarters and go about their own lives.

  In Limbane’s Library, though, there were central kitchens which supplied a few dining areas. People were free to live entirely separately from everyone else if th
ey so wished, but they were strongly encouraged to share mealtimes and some recreational activities as a group. It worked pretty well for Limbane, for it kept everybody in touch with one another and helped to discourage exactly the kinds of factional disputes which were dividing Sulayn Phay.

  Seeing as Sulayn was modelled upon Estinor, I fully expected to find its day-to-day workings largely reminiscent thereof, too. Even if (one might reasonably conclude) they had not been quite so successful at maintaining such comfortable things as basic social order and general harmony.

  So it proved. I discovered a large, airy, thoroughly delightful dining room, filled with succulent things to eat, and well-supplied with other diners.

  Perfect.

  As satisfactory as this was, my fond hopes of going unrecognised were almost immediately dashed. No sooner had I walked in, mustering all my confidence in order to appear as though I belonged, than I was spotted and stared hard at by a whole table full of people situated several feet to my left. There were lots of tables with lots of people sitting at them — a veritable sea of colourfully-dressed people with sleek white hair, it was an attractive sight — but to this particular set, my appearance was apparently significant.

  So I stared back with a questioning air, but I did not stop. I went straight for the food. (It was my primary motive in seeking the dining parlour, after all. Hunger does not conveniently vanish just because one has other things to do!) Then, having chosen an array of tempting things, I drifted back in the direction of the table full of curious people.

  As I’d hoped, I was invited to join them.

  The flaw in this otherwise splendid plan was soon revealed, for though they chattered, they were not chattering in my own language, nor in any other that I recognised. I don’t know why this surprised me. Perhaps because Limbane and others have always talked to me so comfortably in the languages of the Seven, I have fallen into the habit of assuming they are as natural to Lokantkind as they are to us. They did make us, after all; it is not unreasonable to imagine that they also gifted us with their languages.