by Joseph Heck
“If EAST Group was involved in the theft, I would not be surprised if Gavril was a part of it.”
“And this feeling of yours,” Zak said, watching her closely. “Elvish premonition?”
Well, yeah.” she said as she idly stroked Ke’aira’s coat.
“Of course.” Zak sighed. “You do realize that even Elvish premonition is not infallible?”
“I know that!”
He watched her for several silent moments. Her concern and fear for her friend acted like a catalyst, stirring his desire to help. The pain on her face failed to detract from her natural beauty, but he didn’t like seeing it there. His mind was made up before he realized it.
“Right, then let’s go visit your friend, Samarah, and see what we can find out.”
Megan cheered up noticeably at his suggestion, but Ke’aira voiced her disappointment that Zak and Megan were leaving, and that she was being excluded from the outing. She whined scratching at the elevator gate as the lift began its descent to the ground floor.
“You know, it’s really weird how Ke’aira has taken to you so quickly,” Zak said as his loft disappeared from sight. “She usually doesn’t take to people.”
14
“This bad feeling you got. Is there anything specific?”
“No, it is not like that. It is just a feeling, nothing concrete.”
They had taken Megan’s Pegasus again. The sun was setting somewhere deep in the west, still completely hidden by thick black clouds. Although it was only early evening, it was already dark. Fortunately, the rain had once again subsided to nothing more than a persistent drizzle. Megan drove at ground level and too fast, as usual. They headed east on Slough Street with very little traffic to deal with.
“So, you’re friends... Have you known them long?”
“Samarah and I grew up together in Port of Velsalador.”
“You grew up in a fishing village?” He knew that she hadn’t, but he had no intention of letting her find out just how much he knew about the daughter of Duke Teranika. Besides, he found himself curious about the more personal things about her, things that were not necessarily included in an intelligence dossier.
“Not entirely,” Megan said. “When I was younger, we lived part of the year in Port of Velsalador and part of the year in Telendera, because of my father’s work. How do you know my father?”
“I told you, I don’t.” He was certain that his answer sounded as awkward as it felt. He quickly changed the subject. “So, which home did you prefer?”
Megan remained silent, as though she was considering why he avoided the subject of her father. He could almost see the question in her expression, but finally she let it go. “Daddy had to sit on the Council in Telendera six months of the year. I really didn’t like it there.”
When he did not comment she said, “Is something wrong?”
“What?” His distraction had been spawned by the recurring guilt that had been dogging him ever since he learned of her identity. He had once come very close to irrevocably destroying this woman’s life. “No. No, nothing’s wrong.”
The silence that followed felt awkward until Megan decided to end it with her never-ending questions. “So, why do you hate the Orkensha so?”
He considered not answering her, but found himself saying, “When I was thirteen, my mother and I went on holiday to Nanticoke, in the northern part of the Ghan Je'n Province. Right across the street from the hotel where we were staying was a bakery that had the best elrolls I had ever tasted. We were there for two weeks. On the day we were to leave I wanted my mother to buy some elrolls for our trip home. She kept saying that there was no time. We’d gotten up late that morning and had to hurry to catch our flight. I begged and pleaded with her until she finally gave in. I wanted to go with her, but she insisted that I stay and finish packing. A few minutes after she left, there was an explosion. It shook the hotel, shattering every window in the place.
“The blast knocked me clean off my feet. When I got up and looked out the window to see what had happened... There was nothing left of the bakery across the street. The Dhoraz claimed responsibility.”
“I am so sorry,” Megan said.
“It was a long time ago.” Zak fought back his bitterness. “I have not eaten an elroll since that day.”
After another long pause, Megan asked, “What about your father?”
“Oh, you’ve probably heard of the great legend,” Zak said with sarcastic admiration. “Commander Gabriale Milliandur of the Te’n Kha.”
“No way!” She looked over at him, unable to contain her excitement. “Your father was Commander Milliandur of Faolan?”
“Yeah, the one and only,” he muttered. “I really think you should slow down.”
“That is incredible!” she said, ignoring his request.
“Yeah, I’ve always thought so.” His voice was flat and emotionless.
Megan studied him long enough for him to become uncomfortable under the scrutiny.
“Watch the road, will you?”
She turned her attention back to the road, but said, “I take it that you did not get along with your father?”
“That’s probably the world’s biggest understatement.”
“Why?”
“Listen, I really would rather not talk about it, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Yeah, sure. No problem. We are almost at Samarah’s anyway.”
She made a left onto Braquemar Road, pulled up in front of an empty storefront just beyond the corner and parked the car. The drizzle had once again turned into a downpour. Zak was pleasantly surprised when he got out of the car and found Megan had included him in a weather protection spell she had cast. He was grateful to be out of the vehicle and to have the question and answer session over. The discomfort from Megan’s questions lingered, but at least now that they were out of the close confines of the vehicle he could regain a professional distance from her.
A cracked and broken sidewalk ran parallel to a street covered in grime in spite of the rain that had fallen over the past several days. Rows of dilapidated two-story buildings ran as far as the eye could see in both directions. Even with this degree of neglect the neighborhood seemed upscale compared to the Zone.
Megan quickly led him to an entrance located beside the deserted store. The door opened into a dingy stairway leading up to a second floor apartment. The stairs were worn and creaked with age. The white painted walls were dirty and peeling, as was the lime green door to the apartment at the top of the stairs.
“Your friends live here?”
“Gavril walked away from his inheritance when he decided to come to the Aragne Commonwealth,” Megan said. “And Samarah’s father disowned her for marrying Gavril against his wishes. They have had a rough time of it ever since.”
She knocked once and waited.
The Elf woman who opened the door was slightly taller than Megan and sickly thin. She looked as though she had aged unnaturally beyond her years. Her face was lined with worry, her skin ghostly pale even for an Elf, and her dark hair was unkempt with streaks of white running through it. She wasn’t wearing make-up and her eyes were red and swollen from crying.
“Oh Megan, I am so glad you came!” Samarah threw her arms around her friend, her body convulsing with sobs.
“Sshhh... Honey, it is going to be okay.” Megan returned the hug in an attempt to comfort the woman. They held their embrace for some time before Megan pulled herself away and led Samarah back into the apartment. Zak followed along, feeling fairly forgotten and useless for the moment.
The apartment was small and grungy. A coat of paint would have helped, but it would take more than some color to get the place up to any acceptable standard. Samarah could have been too worried to keep up with the housework since her boyfriend’s disappearance, but Zak suspected otherwise. The clothes and other clutter lying around simply looked too settled to have been recent occurrences, as did the dust and grime.
Megan was obviously familiar w
ith the layout of the apartment. She led the way into a small kitchen and planted Samarah on a chair at a cluttered table. She then made herself busy making a pot of herbal tea. She introduced Zak to Samarah while she put the kettle of water on the stove. No automated food processor here. Zak nodded silently to the woman and sat down at the table across from her. He felt awkward and out of place. Emotional women were not something Zak was particularly good at dealing with.
“So, tell us what happened,” Megan said. She leaned back against the counter top to wait for the water to boil, ignoring what was obviously several days of dirty dishes piled along the length of the countertop. “Did you two have a fight?”
“No,” Samarah sniffed. “Everything is good between us. At least, as far as I know, everything is good.”
“Did you notice anything unusual?” Zak asked her. When she looked at him blankly he added, “About his behavior before he left?”
“I do not know what you mean,” she sniffed.
“Was he acting different than he normally acted. Like, going out more than usual, staying out later, acting more secretive or nervous, that kind of thing?” Megan said.
“Well, he did start going to EAST meetings an awfully lot,” she said thoughtfully. “Almost every night. He told me that he was part of some committee.”
“What sort of committee?” Zak asked.
“I do not know. He did not say.”
The water on the stove began to boil and Megan went back to making the tea. When she was finished she joined Zak and Samarah at the table. Megan chatted with Samarah while they drank their tea, doing her best to reassure her friend that everything would be alright. But Samarah’s worry remained constant. She told them that Gavril had been neglecting his business lately. Megan interrupted her friend long enough to explain to Zak that Gavril worked as a handyman, doing odd jobs for the residents of the neighborhood.
“He became so preoccupied with EAST Group over the past several weeks that he started to skip job appointments,” Samarah said. “He was never like that before. Sure, he tended to take off at times, but never like this. If he agreed to do something for someone, he would do it. He would never just not show up.”
Zak met Megan’s gaze. He could tell she was thinking the same thing he was; Gavril was definitely involved in something. The question was; what exactly was he involved in and what had happened to him?
“Honey, can we go through Gavril’s things, see if we can find a clue to where he might be?” Megan asked Samarah.
“Yes, of course.”
Samarah led them to a spare bedroom that served as Gavril’s office and then left them alone. This room was even more cluttered than the rest of the apartment. Old furniture and boxes of broken lamps, comm units, food processors and the like were piled and stacked everywhere. Megan explained that Gavril stored the stuff until he could fix them up and then he would sell the items at various on-line auctions. As he looked around, it all looked like junk to Zak.
There was a small desk against one wall with a file cabinet next to it. The area seemed to be Gavril’s primary work area, so they concentrated their attention there, Zak searching through the desk while Megan looked through the file cabinet next to it. After finding nothing, they expanded their search to the rest of the room. At the end of their efforts, they still had nothing.
“I can’t believe it,” Zak said. “There isn’t a hint of what this guy has been up to!”
He caught himself staring at Megan as she stood across the room with her hands on her hips. She was beautiful to the point of distraction. He smiled to himself as he watched her pucker her lips in thought, her brow furrowing with the same frustration he felt. He was becoming so used to her unorthodox appearance that he now found it almost appealing somehow. It certainly suited her defiant personality. As he became aware of his thoughts, he forced them away. She was an Elf, damn it. And not just any Elf. And that fact added a whole mountain of complication to things.
Megan began looking around the room again in a desperate attempt to find something they might have missed. Suddenly she noticed that something. It was laying on the floor between the desk and the file cabinet, the leg of the cabinet nearly blocking it from view. Reaching down she retrieved a folded slip of paper.
“What do you make of this?” she asked Zak after unfolding the paper and reading it.
There was only an address: 78 Venmuroo Road.
“Venmuroo Road,” Zak said. “That’s near the river, down in the Zone.”
“Do you think it means something?”
“Could be nothing more than a client’s address,” Zak shrugged.
“Yeah, except nothing else that I have found here was so cryptic,” she said looking up at him. “Any notes concerning jobs included the client’s name and a description of the job, as well as the address. It is odd that he would change the way he made notations on only one job.”
“You’re right,” Zak agreed. “I found the same consistency with the papers I went through. In fact, everything he wrote was overflowing with detail. He doesn’t seem to be a cryptic type of guy. Besides, it’s all we have right now. Let’s go check it out.”
Samarah was waiting for them in the cramped living room. She thanked them both for their help and Megan promised her that she would let her know the minute she knew anything. They left the building to find a full-blown storm in progress. The rain was falling in torrents and the wind gusts were powerful enough to nearly blow them over. Zak was at least thankful that the storm forced Megan to drive a bit slower, although she still drove too fast in his opinion.
“I think your friend is on the verge of losing it big time,” Zak observed as they headed for the Zone. “Is she always that emotional?”
“Yeah, she can be,” Megan answered as she hunched forward, concentrating on trying to see the road through the downpour. “She has not had a very happy life. Even when she was back home. And I really do not think Gavril is a good match for her. She needs someone who is willing to settle down and give her stability. Someone who will be there for her.”
“I take it that Gavril isn’t the settling down type?”
“No, not at all,” she said. “Gavril gets bored easily. He is always looking for something new and exciting. He talked Samarah into moving here in the first place. She wanted to stay in Mythnol Forest. But Gavril would have none of that. He wanted to come live among the Humans, to become somebody.” She shook her head as she slowed the vehicle and made a right at the corner. “They were both better off back home.”
“What about you?” Zak asked, catching himself staring at her again. “Dr. Raghnall said something about the sister’s sent you to the Institute. Is that why you came to Sol Kappur?”
Megan blushed. “I was not really very popular among the Sisters. They felt that I was a little too...free spirited...for the Circle. I seemed always to be getting into trouble for one thing or another. The Reverend Mother asked Daddy to speak with me, to see if he could get me to fall into line. I think he knew, even before he came to see me, that it was a lost cause. I was just being me. It is how I have been all my life, ever since I was a little girl.”
“And how is that?”
“Free spirited,” she said with a smile and then broke into laughter.
Zak found her laugh delightful. Smiling to himself, he said to her, “I must admit, you’re not exactly what I would expect a Sister of the Seventh Circle to be like.”
That made her laugh all the more. Zak decided he liked watching her laugh. It was intoxicating. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, the golden flecks in them shimmering.
“The Sisters felt much the same way,” she said. “Anyway, Reverend Mother arranged for me to be appointed to the Institute as a paranormal researcher. I suspect my father was in on it as well, in order to relieve him from the obligation of trying to change me. I like it here well enough, but there are times that I really miss home. There is nothing more beautiful than the Mythnol Forest.”
Zak continued
to watch her, his guilt over past sins nibbling at him again.
Megan became aware of his steady gaze and her laugh was nervous this time. “What did you expect, an old maid veiled and robed?”
“Well,” he said. “I did expect someone a little more...pious.”
“My father was hoping for that, too.” Her smile turned almost sad. “He is like many of the older generation. He believes the old ways are best and that they should be followed out of respect for our heritage. How much do you know about the Tah-Kna, anyway?”
“Not much,” he admitted. “Never been very religious.”
“Now that remark shows that you know nothing about it,” Megan said, turning another corner. “Tah-Kna is not a religion. Not in the way Humans think of religion, anyway. Do you not know anything about Elvish culture?”
“Yeah, I know some,” he said defensively.
He kept Megan in his peripheral vision as he made a show of looking out the window. He didn’t want her to know that he was studying her, but he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. She was one attractive woman. And the fact that she was an Elf seemed less important at the moment. After several minutes Zak broke his own silence. “Do you really believe that stuff about foretelling and all?”
“Of course, all Seers possess special insight into the T’eh.”
“Yeah well, you may think your destiny is locked into some grand scheme, but mine isn’t. I choose my own destiny.”
“You are bound to your destiny whether you believe in it or not,” Megan told him patiently.
“So you think that some cosmic plan brought us together?”
There was no chance of misinterpreting the sarcasm that went along with his question. Megan looked over at him, her smile holding a hint of a reprimand. “Yes.”
They both settled into the silence that followed. As they entered into the Zone the neighborhoods they passed through became more deserted. Zak couldn’t help but wonder if it was the violence of the storm that had so completely cleared the streets, or was it the violent predators who hunted there.
Rain was still falling heavily when Megan turned onto Venmuroo Road and Zak had a difficult time reading the street numbers. He figured seventy-eight to be pretty close to the waterfront, since street numbers in the city generally began at the Serpent River and increased eastward.