Ylona hadn’t fallen for the decoys either. She was prowling around, ignoring the ghost-keys that filled the air. She didn’t know where to look, then, but she might guess sooner than they would. Teyo stopped watching her. She was a distraction.
‘Somewhere innocuous,’ murmured Fabian.
‘You know what,’ Teyo said softly. ‘I wouldn’t put it in here at all.’
The siblings gazed at him with almost identically thoughtful expressions. They looked eerily alike, when they did that. ‘Genius, Tey,’ whispered Serena. ‘It’s outside, isn’t it? We all ran straight past it, distracted to a man by that shiny, lovely door-thing.’
‘However,’ said Fabian, ‘how do we get out again?’
Good question, though Teyo. There was no apparent means of exit, now that he thought to look.
‘Where did we come in?’ he murmured. He’d got himself turned around a bit in his search of the floor, but he headed back in roughly the direction he thought he had travelled in.
There was a place where the colours faded slightly, the lights dimmed, and no keys floated in the air. Teyo headed straight for it —
— and he was outside again in the blink of an eye. The platform of branches was empty and silent, until Serena and Fabian followed him through. And then Egg, who announced herself with a characteristic curse.
‘Damned riddles and games,’ she muttered. ‘So glad we are nearly finished with this rubbish.’
‘I thought you said it would be fun,’ Teyo murmured.
‘It isn’t.’
Teyo couldn’t help smiling. Egg so often said what he was secretly thinking, but wouldn’t speak aloud.
The four of them divided up the circular platform between them, and each took one quarter to search. It wasn’t long before Fabian gave a cry of discovery. Teyo turned to see him holding up something small. his triumph palpable.
‘Got it!’ He handed the thing to Serena, who showed it to Teyo. This key was unlike the others. Instead of stone it appeared to be made from glass, and was perfectly clear and untouched by any trace of colour. Its appearance was oddly simple and subtle, given the extraordinary vividness of its surroundings.
‘Right,’ said Serena. ‘We need to get this thing out of here before —’
‘Ah!’ came a strong female voice from behind them. ‘Very good work. Mae was right to hire you, wasn’t she?’
Ylona approached at speed, flanked by three of her hirelings. Teyo couldn’t tell if they were Yllandu, or scholars, or something else entirely, as they were dressed in bland uniforms and bore no identifying characteristics. Whatever they were, they did not look very friendly.
‘I’ll buy it from you,’ Ylona said, stopping before them with a winning smile. ‘You’re for hire, aren’t you? I’ll double whatever Mae is paying you.’
‘That’s not how it works,’ Serena said coolly. ‘The agency gets paid; we just do as we’re told. And what we’ve been told is to support Lady Glostrum, not Mae.’
This wasn’t quite true. They chose most of their assignments, and if the fees were increased for whatever reason, they all received a share. But it was a solid enough rebuff. Teyo folded his arms, and waited for Ylona’s response.
‘Then I’m bribing you,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Nobody needs to know that you found it first. We can just say that I did, and you will all become significantly richer. Without having to share your fee with the agency.’
This cunning proposal was met with complete silence.
Ylona sighed. ‘I’ll get them one way or another, you know. All four of the keys you’re currently withholding. You can have no notion how important this is to me, and I will stop at nothing.’
‘Is it about your father?’ said Serena, in a tone of mild curiosity.
Ylona went still. ‘Who told you about my father? Mae?’
Serena nodded once.
‘You can know nothing of him,’ she said coldly. ‘Not truly. Mae is an ignorant fool, and I will brook no meddling in my personal affairs.’
‘We have been obliged to brook a great deal of meddling in our world,’ Fabian pointed out. ‘You’ve set the Seven buzzing with this riddle business of yours, and you’ve shown no regard for the impact it might have on everything we care about. We aren’t puppets. We can choose to assist you, or choose not to.’
Teyo expected another cold response to this sally, but Ylona merely gazed at Fabian thoughtfully, and finally nodded. ‘A fair point,’ she said. ‘I have been ruthless, but it was the only way. Who better to find the lost Dreams of the Seven Realms than the people who live here?’
‘It’s all perfectly logical, certainly,’ said Fabian. ‘But the people who’ve done all the work for you will gain nothing by it. They won’t even learn what it was all about. The promise of secret doors and mysterious prizes will never be fulfilled.’
Ylona raised her brows. ‘Won’t they? Mae intends to seal up the repository, yes, but I do not. Its contents will be released to the people of the Seven Realms, as you call this world. You will all be the richer for it, I assure you.’
That silenced them. Teyo’s mind reeled, remembering the visions of untold knowledge Mae had shown them and trying to guess at what it might include. If even travel through time was possible, what else might they gain by it?
He could feel Fabian’s uncertainty, and Serena’s too. Could they be responsible for denying their world so much knowledge? The lives of everyone in the realms could be immeasurably improved. Lives could be saved.
On the other hand... some knowledge was dangerous. Mae was right about that. Did they want everything that the repository contained? Ylona could be offering a poisoned fruit; the contents of Teoricq could transform their societies for the worse, not for the better.
It was an insoluble problem. Teyo felt hopelessly ill-equipped to make such a momentous decision, and so did Serena; the glance she cast at him was despairing. Even Fabian, forthright before, was silent now.
Ylona’s voice broke the silence. ‘How about an incentive? I’m willing to bet that Mae didn’t tell you where to find the door. Did she?’
‘No,’ Serena admitted.
‘As proof of my sincerity, I will tell you immediately. There is a tiny island off the coast of the place you call Nimdre. South-easterly in direction. It is so small that it would not appear on any of your maps, but there you will find the door to the repository.’
A clever move, Teyo thought. Mae had explained a lot, but grudgingly and only under duress. The information she had given was mere background data, interesting but not vital. She hadn’t advanced anything that might give them an advantage, or allow them to oppose her goals. But Ylona just had. What was her motive? Had she done it purely in hopes of securing the outstanding keys, knowing all the while that they would never be able to use the information? Or was she indeed bargaining in good faith? They only had Mae’s word for it that Ylona wasn’t to be trusted.
‘Ah, Ylona,’ said Mae from about three feet away. Teyo jumped, startled; he hadn’t noticed her approach. ‘Trying to subvert my excellent team, are you? They are far too sensible and far too loyal to be tempted by your offers.’
Ylona smiled faintly. ‘I think they were tempted, in fact. Shall I hire them away from you? I could convince their Oliver Tullen, I’m sure.’
‘I doubt it. Lady Glostrum’s contract is secure.’
Ylona shrugged, and turned back to Serena. ‘Is it to be?’ she said.
Serena hesitated, and finally shook her head.
Ylona sighed. ‘I will get those keys. You can be enriched by it, or you can suffer by it. Final choice, now.’
‘Choice made,’ said Serena.
Ylona nodded once. ‘So be it.’ She vanished.
Mae gave one of her alarmingly bright smiles. ‘Good girl!’ she said. ‘Very well done, all of you. I take it you’ve secured the key?’
Serena held it out. It looked tiny in the palm of her hand, its transparency rendering it almost invisible.
Mae put out her hand to take it, but Serena closed her fingers around the stone, hiding it from sight. ‘We’ve trusted you. I want a mark of trust in return,’ she said firmly. ‘This one stays with me.’
Annoyance flashed briefly across Mae’s face. ‘Fine, fine,’ she said, waving a hand. ‘When you have secured the other keys, I will receive them all at once.’
Serena said nothing. Teyo couldn’t guess at her reasoning, but he applauded her tactics. If they couldn’t trust either Lokant, then it helped to retain an advantage, and in keeping one of the keys, Serena had just secured one.
Chapter Twenty
Two days later, Serena and her team were ensconced, more or less comfortably, in a tiny inn just outside of Draetre, in northern Nimdre. The inn was owned by the Torwyne Agency. It operated as a fully functional waystation, but its agents had priority, and it always kept rooms free for them.
Their conversation with Oliver himself had been interesting. Typically, he had shared none of his thoughts regarding the competing interference of Mae and Ylona. But he had not chosen to throw in his lot with either side, either. Lady Glostrum’s contract was considered to be complete, and had been closed. He had declined Mae’s and Ylona’s subsequent attempts to hire them.
Instead, their new assignment was to acquire the two keys Ylona held and deliver them to Oliver himself. This was an arrangement which appealed to Serena, and the whole of her team. The prospect of having to decide which side to support, purely on the basis of the stories they each told, was unpleasant in the extreme. Used as she was to making difficult decisions quickly, she had balked at that one. Let Oliver deal with it. He was older, wiser and infinitely sensible, and he probably had more information than they did, to boot.
Serena had been less delighted to discover that Bron was to be temporarily assigned to their team.
‘I’m sorry,’ Oliver had said in response to Serena’s indignant protests. ‘G.A.9 have informed me that they would like one of their people along, and I can’t refuse them.’
Serena had been forced to fume over it in impotent silence. Even Oliver couldn’t refuse G.A.9! What an interfering, power-tripping bunch of busybodies they were. Worse, Bron had behaved as though he expected her to be delighted. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that she might feel anything else. On beholding her evident lack of rapture, he had simply put it down to resentment.
‘I know it’s hard, having to work with someone who’s better equipped, better trained and more experienced than your people, but it’s for the best. I can help you.’ He’d given what he apparently thought was an encouraging smile. ‘I won’t rub your faces in it, I promise.’
Too late, thought Serena sourly. She didn’t think he was more experienced than her team (excepting Iyamar), but that G.A.9 gave more comprehensive training and offered superior equipment could hardly be denied. He hadn’t lost any time throwing that in her face.
Oliver had given her private instructions, too: On no account whatsoever was she to permit Bron access to the keys, once they were secured. The glass one from Glour was hidden, and she was confident that Bron knew nothing of it; she had allowed him to think that Mae had taken it. The Orlind key was safe with it. Eva still held three, so that left two in Ylona’s possession.
Or in the possession of the Unspeakables. Teyo didn’t think that the Yllandu would consent to be used as errand boys. If they were involved, they’d expect to be treated like equal partners, and that meant they’d be holding at least one of the two outstanding keys.
Bron agreed. More than that, he asserted that G.A.9 had received positive intelligence to that effect. In this one respect, Serena begrudgingly allowed him some leeway. With all their superior resources, G.A.9 probably held more information about the Yllandu than anyone else, even the Torwyne. Galling, but true.
And so, to the Unspeakables they must go. The organisation had long since spread itself across the Seven, and possessed headquarters in every Realm. The chief of them all was in Nimdre, for in Nimdre alone could they receive both Daylanders and Darklanders with tolerable ease.
Halavere Morann was based in the Yllandu’s Nimdren offices, and Ylona was known to frequent the place, too. Not that it could rightly be called an office; only the street-level entrance, a law office, could be so named. The rest lay underground. It spread beneath several streets in the port city of Tinudren.
The assignment would be hard on Teyo, Serena knew, but they were relying on his connections for entrance. Trying to masquerade their way inside would be futile; the Yllandu knew their members all too well for that. Teyo had contacted a former associate within the organisation, and she had consented to get them inside.
What they did after that was up to them. Serena was heartily glad that they now had two draykoni among the team, for she expected to rely heavily upon their shapeshifting talents.
In the hours before their departure, tensions ran high. Iyamar was not ready. Serena knew it, and so did Iyamar herself. Their youngest member veered back and forth between towering over-confidence and crippling self-doubt. At present she was wallowing in the latter phase, and her nerves were infecting the whole team. Egg repeatedly threatened to bang her head against some obligingly solid object, but only because her own nerves (which she would never admit to feeling) were frayed to shreds by Iyamar’s pacing and fretting. Teyo, meanwhile, walked about with his usual calm, but Serena could see the signs of strain. He was facing a much harder task than the rest of them, and Serena was proud of him for his composure — and more than a little bit worried about him.
Only Fabian was untouched by the doubts and fears which assailed the rest of his team. The prospect of infiltrating the closely-guarded headquarters of the most ruthless criminal organisation in the Realms caused him no qualms whatsoever; on the contrary, he was delighted, and looking forward to it with alarming fervour.
He cherished hopes of finding the elusive Valore Trebel somewhere down there. Serena had the extra task of keeping him on track, his mind on the job at hand. She wasn’t at all sure that she could do it. Fabian had detached himself almost completely from the matter of the keys; he’d stopped even pretending to care about it, or even to pay any attention to it. All his thoughts were for Thomaso Carterett and the woman who’d caused his suicide.
As the time finally arrived to depart for Tinudren, Serena felt a headache approaching. She loved her team, and felt the greatest confidence in their abilities, but they had never felt so disparate, so little together. She’d lost Fabian completely; Teyo was inflexibly lost in his own thoughts; and Egg and Iya bickered all the long way to Tinudren, stopping only when Teyo (surprisingly) threatened to throw them into the road. And there was Bron, an intruder in their midst, wholly unwelcome and offensively critical. His presence only added to the general discomfort, Serena’s most of all.
She had wanted to take only two with her on this assignment, but that hadn’t worked out. She would need Iya and Teyo’s shapeshifting abilities, and possibly Egg’s talent for lock-picking and thieving. Bron simply refused to be left out, and her orders were to include him in all possible respects anyway. As for Fabian, she didn’t dare leave him unattended. There was no telling what he might get up to if left alone for too long, and she didn’t want to have to worry about him while she was supposed to be focusing on the job. Not that he would consent to be left behind, not when their destination was the one place he could hope to find news of Valore Trebel.
She could have left herself behind, of course, but that didn’t work either. Teyo absolutely declined the job of leading the team on this mission, and she couldn’t trust Fabian to do it with his current abstraction from reality. And so, all of them must go, and she must merely hope to providence that they could keep it together long enough to complete the job.
All she could do was ensure that her discomfort didn’t show. She found herself play-acting as the calmly unruffled and effortlessly competent Serena she knew they needed. It was a shame that the act didn’t work ne
arly so well on herself as it appeared to on the rest of her team.
Nightfall over Tinudren. Having arrived early, they had passed the time in a nearby eatery. A more cheerless gathering Serena had rarely endured, for Teyo and Fabian were still engrossed by their own thoughts, Egg and Iya were not speaking to each other (or to anybody else, much), and Bron’s nose was too high in the air to allow for conversation.
‘Time to go,’ Serena said at last, gratefully abandoning the remains of the cake she hadn’t really eaten.
Darkness blanketed the city like a comforting cloak as they regained the street. Serena checked her timepiece: ninth hour of the afternoon and a quarter. Perfect. Teyo lead them past the front entrance to the law offices which masked the Yllandu’s lair, and around to the back. He had arranged for significant help getting inside. If all had gone well, one of the rear exits ought to be occupied only by Teyo’s contact.
They hung back and waited while Teyo went up to the door and knocked. Serena couldn’t see what followed, for the darkness was too complete. In half a minute, though, Teyo was back.
‘All’s clear,’ he whispered.
Moments later, they were inside and the door was closed behind them by Teyo’s erstwhile friend. She was about Teyo’s age, Serena judged, or perhaps a little younger. Full-figured and stately, she was undeniably attractive, with long black hair and dark eyes. She greeted Teyo with a degree of intimacy which left Serena wondering about the precise nature of their shared history.
Something else caught her eye. The woman had closed the door with every appearance of complacency, but something was slightly off. Perhaps it was the hard lines of tension about her mouth, or the way her eyes darted to the door and back to Teyo. Serena caught his eye, her own asking a question, but she could read nothing useful in the glance he gave her.
‘This way,’ he said softly. Pausing only to clasp the woman’s hand in thanks, he led them down a flight of stairs and farther into the heart of the Yllandu’s domain. The way was clear, as promised, but still they took the precaution of sending Iyamar ahead as scout. She shapeshifted into a tiny furred meerel, camouflaged in black, and scampered away.
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