I stopped. Gio had taken a step back and surveyed the sheer face of the castle with an air of purpose, and then actually cracked his knuckles in preparation to do... what?
That question was soon answered when a door appeared in the stone.
It was misshapen and shaky, and his first attempt wavered and vanished after a mere few seconds. But it happened.
His next attempt was much better. A plain wooden door appeared, square at the corners and hung upon simple iron hinges and, by all appearances, perfectly functional.
Gio knocked again, and the sound echoed weirdly through the hall.
He waited.
Galy won’t let him in, I said again, though my confidence was wavering. How had Gio made the door? Gracious, had he been telling the truth about something? Was he half drayk after all? Why had Galy allowed it?
He never felt like a drayk to me. I’d probed him repeatedly with my magnificent magical senses and never felt a whisker of the drayk about him.
‘Did you do that, Galy?’ I asked the air.
I felt his no shiver through the floor beneath my feet.
Oh, dear.
‘Don’t let him in,’ said Meriall. She stood, arms folded, watching Gio with a scowl.
‘Let him in!’ said Ori urgently. He had been watching through the wall for a while, and something he had seen was distressing him.
What’s the matter, Ori? I asked him.
While we were talking, Gio had a massive fight with his grandmother. I thought they were going to hurt him. I need to talk to him!
The door creaked open. Gio dashed inside, and the door not only slammed behind him but disappeared as well.
We stared at Gio, and he stared back.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Um. Any chance of shelter for a homeless ex-Librarian?’
Nobody knew what to say to that, least of all me. There had been too many surprises, and I was too tired. My brain refused to process his words for several long seconds and then I hardly knew how to feel. What in the world was he up to now?
Gio’s eyes shifted from drayk to drayk, probably looking for somebody he recognised. He grew steadily less comfortable under my eyes, his customary composure fraying by the second. I realised he was upset, genuinely so.
Ori shifted human in a flash and ran for Gio. To my further surprise, the two engulfed each other in a tight hug and held it, oblivious in that moment to the scrutiny of their audience. After a while, Ori drew back and gave Gio a searching look. ‘Is this the truth?’ he said softly.
Gio nodded. His eyes were huge, and he looked petrified. ‘I swear it.’
Ori’s smile could have put the suns to shame.
I exchanged a look with Pense.
What exactly is going on here? Pense said.
Um. Looks to me like the question of Gio matters a lot more to Ori than to the rest of us...
I Changed back to human as well, and collected my sleepy orting on my way through to Ori and Gio. I deposited Sigwide in Gio’s arms, to his surprise, though he instinctively curled his arms around the dozy bundle of fur, his fingers gently stroking. I approved of that as a good sign.
‘You look like you need a hug,’ I told him.
I turned to Ori. What’s going on? I asked him silently.
Gio’s all right, he said, repeating his earlier assertion. He’s had a terrible time with them, Llan. His family are appalling and they’ve used him all his life. He needs us.
Ori’s mental voice shook with emotion, and I felt a sense of foreboding grow, because it was obvious that my sweet, cheery, bright and lovely Ori had fallen in love. What’s more, it appeared to be mutual.
I surveyed Gio anew, making no secret of my scrutiny. He bore it patiently, though I thought he looked more tired than resigned. He fully expected to be rejected; I read it in the slump of his shoulders, the shadows under his eyes, and the way he found it so difficult to meet my gaze.
‘If your grandmother wanted a spy in here, you’d be the perfect person to send,’ I said flatly. ‘And what better way than to stage a fight and pretend you have switched sides?’
‘I realise it must look that way,’ said Gio softly. ‘But it’s not like that. I swear.’
And once again, it came down to a simple choice: were we going to trust him, or not? Would we choose to have faith in another person and help him, whatever his background, or would we choose suspicion and cynicism in order to protect ourselves?
Thoughts? I directed the question at Pense, Ori and Avane.
I believe him, said Ori, not at all to my surprise. Please help him, he added, so forlornly that my heart bled a little.
It clearly affected Avane as well, for she melted at once. I say we give him a chance. We can keep an eye on him... Ori can keep an eye on him.
I looked at Pense. He stared back at me, his eyes dark with worry. He looked at Ori, then at Gio, then back at me. All right. We give him one more chance.
I felt proud of Pense just then. Even after everything he had just heard, and in the midst of his justifiable rage, he could still have mercy upon Gio.
Could I?
I stepped closer to Gio, and looked him in the eye. ‘If this is a trick, you will be sorry,’ I said. ‘If you betray us, I will take it upon myself to make you regret it. And if you hurt my Ori, you’ll follow your grandfather down Pensould’s gullet. Is that clear?’
Gio blinked at me in total disbelief. ‘You’re... not kicking me out.’
‘Nope. Though, I do want the truth, and all of it. How did you make that door?’
Gio sighed, and looked wearier than ever. ‘I am not half draykon,’ he said in a subdued tone. ‘My mother was a Lokant, like all my relatives. I have no other heritage.’
That did not surprise me. The story had rung hollow from the beginning. ‘But then how did you manipulate the Library?’
Gio bit his lip, hesitated. ‘I was not born with draykon heritage, but I was... given it.’
I felt cold, as the weight of Gio’s meaning settled upon me. Given it. My thoughts flew back to Krays… and to Griel, Krays’s partial-Lokant thrall. One of Krays’s more chilling ideas had been to take the bones of shapeshifted draykoni and transplant them into Lokants, thus conferring upon them limited access to draykoni powers. I had thought he had managed to accomplish this only on himself and one or two of his more unfortunate allies...
‘Your bones?’ I whispered.
Gio grimaced, and nodded. He handed Siggy back to me with endearing tenderness, and pulled up his sleeves. There were the scars, scars of the same kind of incisions I had seen on Griel’s arms. ‘I have draykon parts enough to attempt some limited arts, but... I don’t. I try not to. It is repellent to me, employing arts stolen from the literal flesh of another...’ He trailed off, looking nauseated and so downhearted I couldn’t blame Ori at all for catching him in another hug.
Gio returned the embrace, and steadied himself. ‘I was sent to Nuwelin,’ he admitted. ‘Grandmother insisted. She said she’d do worse to me if I refused, and I believed her. She is ruthless enough for anything. But... I wanted to be there, too. I was curious about all of you. I watched you for a while before I dared to approach you, and I saw... the kind of bond I have never experienced before. You... care about each other, even the newest among you. I was astounded. I... wanted to be part of it.’
Even Meri looked softened by this narrative, for her scowl disappeared and she stopped looking like she wanted to punch Gio.
Pense, though, focused on a different aspect of the tale. ‘What were you supposed to do in Nuwelin?’
‘Two things. I was to find out as much as I could about your arts in general, for Grandmother knew by then that our supposedly extensive knowledge of Galywis’s creations was by no means exhaustive. You’ve advanced a great deal since the days of the original project, and much of it is a surprise. Especially the humans amongst you who can shift draykon, rather than the other way around. That electrified everybody, particularly since there prove to be s
o many more of you than we thought there would be. There were supposed to be only three with enough draykon blood...’
True, that. Limbane and his Librarians had been involved in manipulating that heritage, trying to keep the draykon bloodlines alive, but even he had got it wrong. Me, Ori and Avane: only we three had been identified as capable of the Change. This hall was full of evidence to the contrary.
‘And the other thing?’ Pense said, grim and apparently unmoved by Gio’s suffering. But I knew better. I could feel his pain, pain that he was adding to his store of rage.
‘I was to find out if there were any alyndim among you. Um, originals. Elders, you are calling them? Grandmother overreached herself with that, for I cannot identify who is alyndim and who is not. But I told her nothing of that. I told her you had no Elders, and she looked elsewhere.’
So, Dwinal was the one looking for Elders. I had been right to think that Lokants were behind the trouble, though the thought gave me no satisfaction. If not for Gio’s deception, Nyden might have been targeted — perhaps killed.
Gio sighed deeply. ‘I wish I had told you everything at the time, but... I thought you would never believe me. I thought you would lynch me, actually. Especially you.’ He looked at me.
Me. Me! I had spent most of our acquaintance feeling uncomfortable and inadequate around him, as I did with so many people. I could only gape at him.
He smiled faintly in response. ‘I do not speak out of ingratitude,’ he assured me. ‘I know that I would never have been tolerated as long as I was, without your support. But you... are more fearsome than you know, when it comes to the ones you care about. I realised how severe would be the consequences if my duplicity was discovered. I was quite frightened of you, and Pensould.’ His eyes flicked to Pense and back to me, and he reconsidered. ‘I am quite frightened of you and Pensould.’
‘They won’t hurt you,’ said Ori quickly. ‘Llan looks grim and forbidding sometimes but she’s lovely. She only does it when she’s afraid, and she’s probably been more afraid of you than you were of her.’ He smiled encouragingly at Gio, and I tried to stifle my desire to smack him.
Gio’s brows rose. ‘Afraid of me?’ he said, incredulous.
‘People worry me,’ I said shortly. ‘Strangers especially. Odd, unaccountable strangers most of all. It’s a trait of mine. Can’t help it.’
‘I’m not sure that it’s true anymore,’ said Ori with an apologetic smile for me. ‘When did you last feel that way, Llan? When did you last have time?’
Ehhh, so. Nothing like a series of world-shaking disasters to improve your social skills, right?
Gio was still staring at me as though he couldn’t believe anybody would be afraid of him. That feeling was mutual. How could a man like him fear me?
It made no sense, but I will be honest with you: I enjoyed the feeling, just a little. I have gone through my whole life feeling so helplessly, unaccountably afraid of everyone else, it is… nice, to feel on the other side of that power relationship for once. A tiny bit nice. I don’t actually want to scare people, I swear.
‘I might, though,’ said Pense. He had taken up his human shape at some point during the discussion and now stood watching Gio with folded arms, his face impassive. Not forbidding, but not welcoming either.
‘Might… um, hurt me?’ said Gio, eyeing Pensould uneasily.
Pense nodded once. I thought he would not speak, but he added as if by afterthought: ‘Your grandfather tasted terrible. I would not like to have to repeat that experience.’
Gio swallowed, but he rallied himself enough to reply: ‘I hated him, you know. You did all of us a service in removing him.’
A muscle twitched in Pense’s cheek. I had no trouble guessing at his feelings: he had not expected to be thanked for killing Krays, particularly by the man’s own grandson. Especially when he had just been threatening that same grandson with a similar fate.
‘Nobody will be eaten,’ I said firmly. A stray thought wandered through my mind, and I frowned. ‘Gio. If you were sent to us by your grandmother, why were you so afraid of discovery when you took us to Sulayn Phay?’
He looked slightly abashed. ‘I, um, did not have her permission to do that. I wasn’t supposed to help you, just watch you.’
Knowing that he had broken Dwinal’s rules and risked punishment in order to help us made me feel a bit better about trusting him now. ‘Thank you for that,’ I said, and he rewarded me with a surprised, delighted smile which broke my heart a little bit. ‘We are going to need your help again, if you are with us.’
‘I am with you,’ he assured me earnestly. Ori leaned closer to him and took his hand, a gesture of support which Gio seemed to appreciate. ‘Anything I can do,’ he added, and smiled at me.
I smiled back. ‘Thank you. We need to get those energy collectors back off your grandmother, to start with. They removed some of them from this island, did they not?’
Gio nodded, and grimaced. ‘We spent a few happy days searching, and it was dirty work unearthing the things. I don’t think Grandmother got them all in the end, but enough.’
That was probably one of the things that had so agitated poor Galywis. ‘Did they know what they were doing to the island by removing them?’
‘They knew they were important in some way but not how, exactly. I don’t think they cared.’ His head tilted at me in a question. ‘Come to think of it, I have no idea either. What were they doing?’
I eyed him speculatively. ‘Do those bones you carry give you much by way of draykoni senses?’
He hesitated, and shut his eyes. ‘Not… not much, I think. What am I looking for?’
I closed my eyes too, the better to try to describe the experience. I felt for the undercurrents of energy that swirled around me. ‘The energy of these worlds, what we call amasku. Galywis used it to make us, and bound us into its currents. It is like… a sense of pressure, and a flow, like water but, um, not.’ Glib as ever, that. I frowned, and tried again. ‘You can’t see it or touch it but it’s there. A pattern…’ Actually not much of a pattern there, it was too disordered. The currents wavered and rippled oddly, never quite able to settle into the coherent state they naturally assumed. Outside the Library it was far worse: the flows tossed and frothed like a stormy sea, dizzying and nauseating.
I had described nothing useful, but perhaps it was enough, for Gio gasped and said, ‘I… there is something. It’s not… right, is it?’
‘It is a terrible mess,’ Meriall said bluntly.
‘Thanks to Krays and Limbane and their people,’ Ori put in. He squeezed Gio’s hand as he spoke, reassuring him that he meant no reflection upon Gio.
‘It is a huge problem,’ I said. ‘When our world is in such a state, all is chaos. The disorder affects everything: animals, people, plants. It is why this island is so dead. It has been broken by it. Those machines were keeping the flow in check, thanks to Galy, and the corruption didn’t spread beyond the borders of Orlind. But with the machines removed, that’s disrupted, and it’s moving into the Off-worlds. If we don’t fix it, those realms will ultimately end up like this place. It could even happen to the Seven.’
Gio stared at me, shocked. ‘Um, I don’t think Grandmother realised that.’
‘Whether she did or not, we have to solve this problem. And we want to do more: we want this place healed, flourishing again. To start with, we must get those collectors back. Maybe you can help us there. Where are they keeping the machines, and how can we get at them?’
Gio chewed his lip thoughtfully. ‘They are kept at Sulayn Phay, when they are not in use. I have broken with the lot of them, and it won’t be long before they revoke my access to the Library, so we had better move fast if you want to get them back.’
I nodded. ‘Right. Ori, Pense and I are with you.’ I could say this with confidence even without asking Ori or Pense — no prizes for guessing where they would prefer to be. ‘And… Meri? Larion? There are probably several of them and they are big, heavy.
I doubt we can carry more than one each.’ I thought about that for a second. ‘Or not. Gio, can you carry five of us?’
Gio eyed us doubtfully. ‘I can try. If I cannot take all at once, I will take us in two groups.’
Meriall and Larion exchanged glances, and finally nodded to me. ‘What’s another mad adventure, after all?’ said Meri, and grinned at me. ‘Let’s try not to die though, right?’
I grinned back. ‘That’s always a priority. While we are at it…’ I looked around at the assembled draykoni. Most of them had lost interest in the discussion some time back and had wandered off to other parts of the hall. They crouched in small groups, conferring amongst themselves.
‘We need to find out who’s been feeding information to Sulayn Phay about the Elders,’ I said, lowering my voice. This part was trickier, because we honestly didn’t know where to look. I had a strong hunch that it must be another Elder, but I could be wrong. Even if I was right, that only helped us so far. I was going to have to gamble a little.
I doubted that it was a rogue Elder wandering around alone. Whoever it was needed to stay close to groups of draykoni in order to learn who to target. There was only one place to go looking for a group of Elders, and that was Eterna’s colony.
‘Nyden,’ I said.
He was leaning close to Avane, unnoticed by her. It sounds predatory of him, especially given Ny’s undeniable advantages of size and bulk compared to Avane. But his manner was surprisingly tender, and he just seemed… happy to be near her.
Albeit a bit guilty, for he snapped to attention when I called his name and took a hasty step away from Avane. ‘Yes, boss!’
‘How do you feel about an espionage mission?’
His eyes gleamed, and he sat straighter still. ‘I was born for espionage,’ he purred.
I refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t been born, exactly, as he had no parents. ‘You’re a treasure,’ I informed him. ‘How do you feel about turning turncoat on your turncoat?’
‘I have always been afflicted with grave fickleness,’ Ny said, swaying mournfully from side to side. ‘I never could make up my mind. Now I come to think of it, Miss Llandry, I do not think Nuwelin is for me after all. I feel a powerful desire to return to the sheltering womb of Eterna, so to speak, and embrace my pure-blooded heritage once more.’
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