Seven Dreams (13 page)

‘
Hopeless,’ muttered Egg after ten minutes of this. She pulled
off the white wig that hid her hair, then stripped off her tunic
and turned it inside out. In the low light down here, nobody would
notice the exposed seams, and it hid the fake LHB insignia that
Serena had painstakingly embroidered into the fabric. Teyo swiftly
followed suit, and looked down at himself with a frown. Their
attire still resembled the Bureau uniform too closely for his
comfort, but perhaps it would pass.

Then the
voice-box in his pocket buzzed and crackled, and he hastily took it
out. Egg dragged him into the shadow of a cluster of overhanging
purple vines and kept watch as he activated the device.

‘
Teyo?’ came Serena’s voice.

‘
Yeah.’

‘
That
woman’s here and she’s got the key.’

Egg muttered
something unfavourable about the woman’s parents, but Teyo merely
sighed. ‘Right. Where is she?’

Serena gave him
the best information she could, but it was difficult for any of
them to get their bearings down here. Teyo foresaw a frustrating
chase around the caverns ahead, and sighed. Serena ended by saying,
‘Careful with her, T. Don’t take any risks.’

He assented to
this, and shut off the box. He stood in thought for a moment or
two, a process which Egg knew better than to interrupt.

‘
She’s
got the stone in the left pocket of her coat,’ he murmured. ‘But, I
don’t think you should try to pickpocket it.’

Egg raised her
brows.

‘
Serena’s right. She’s too dangerous to get close to.’ He dug
his hand into his own trouser pocket as he spoke. Curled up in a
tiny ball at the bottom was Jisp, who grumbled a protest at being
so awoken.

Sorry,
he
apologised.
We need you, Agent Jisp.

She loved it when
he called her that. Snapping awake, she scurried circles around the
palm of his hand, bristling with excitement.
What is my
mission?!
she trilled in his mind.

Teyo related to
her, mostly by way of pictures, the situation at hand. He suffered
some disquiet at using Jisp for such a dangerous task, but his
choices were few. Jisp was swift, silent and extremely adept at
going unnoticed. She was also remarkably good at causing a ruckus
when she needed to.

Egg herself was
not entirely enthused about the plan, he thought. In fact, he might
have said she was miffed at being passed over in favour of a
lizard. He would have to make it up to her later.

He set off in the
direction he hoped would lead him to their target. Egg, apparently
swallowing her displeasure, followed close behind. She made no
verbal protests at all and uttered not even a single acid comment,
which puzzled Teyo. How thoroughly unlike her. She was probably
speechless with indignation, and planning some truly terrible
revenge. He would have to be on his guard for unexpected and
undoubtedly fiendish retaliation.

He was glad, now,
that he had hitched a ride with Lady Fenella down to the Baron’s
underground gallery, Serena’s displeasure notwithstanding. He might
have been in an unusual shape at the time, but at least he had seen
the Lokant woman. He scanned the face of every white-haired person
they approached until Teyo recognised the features of the woman he
sought. He crept up until he was within about ten feet of the
woman, and stopped, screened behind a flourish of
turquoise-and-jade foliage.

She resembled
Lady Glostrum more than a little, he realised with a start. Perhaps
it was merely that their ages appeared to be approximately the
same, and they had similar posture and bearing, in addition to the
characteristic white hair. They were also dressed similarly, in
practical trousers and shirts and sturdy boots. His quarry wore a
long coat, warm against the autumn chill, and Teyo focused his
attention on the pocket Serena had indicated.

Teyo bent slowly
down and let Jisp go. She scampered away at once, and he retired to
watch. Jisp had to cross the distance to her target, climb up the
woman’s fine suede coat, slip into her left pocket, retrieve the
key, climb back down and return to Teyo, all without being
observed. He still thought that she had a better chance of pulling
this off than Egg, but he couldn’t help feeling a little flicker of
concern about the wisdom of the plan.

Jisp quickly
disappeared from sight in the midst of the thick velvety grass, and
he followed her with his thoughts instead. She took great care in
transferring herself from the grass to the hem of the woman’s coat,
and paused there for several long seconds, waiting to see if she
had been observed. The woman made no movement, and Jisp began to
climb.

Teyo and Egg
stood side-by-side, barely breathing, as they watched Jisp’s tiny,
bright form inch her way up the coat and into the pocket that held
the key. Teyo’s heart began to thump a little bit harder somewhere
in the middle of this process. What if they key wasn’t there? He
knew better than to imagine that Serena might have got the pocket
wrong, but perhaps the woman had transferred it somewhere else in
the meantime.

His mind was soon
put at rest on that score, as Jisp gleefully reported the presence
of the key. In another second, though, her satisfaction turned to
dismay.

It’s too
big,
she told him, and he received a brief vision of her trying
unsuccessfully to fit her jaws around the stone.

That brought him
up short. Having never had the chance to examine one of these
key-things closely, he’d had to guess at its size. When the woman
had taken the first one, he’d received the impression that it was
tiny indeed, fully small enough for him to carry off himself if
need be. But he had sized himself a little bigger than
Jisp.

Get out of
there,
he ordered Jisp, who obediently began the descent —
though not without transmitting her abject disappointment to
Teyo.

Egg cast him a
questioning look.

‘
She
can’t carry it,’ he told her in the barest whisper. ‘I’m going to
try.’ He began at once the process of shifting himself into his
Jispish form, but Egg stopped him with a hand on his
arm.

‘
Wig
back on,’ she murmured very softly.

He didn’t waste
time asking questions; he had to trust Egg. Retrieving the wig from
the capacious pocket he’d stuffed it into, he restored it to his
head. Egg adjusted it for him — hers required no alteration at all,
of course — and they effected a hasty inversion of their inside-out
shirts. Then Egg nodded significantly at something over his left
shoulder.

He looked. A
small group of university academics had just turned the corner and
were approaching their hiding place. A tall, grey-haired man of
fiftyish years shepherded a dumpy woman perhaps ten years younger,
while a male student showed them something with the eagerness of
the young. So convincing a picture did they make, it took him a
moment to remember who they were. He shook his head slightly,
marvelling. Fabian and Serena’s ability to transform themselves
into somebody else entirely never ceased to amaze him; their
talents in that direction far outstripped his own, or Egg’s, for
that matter. And it looked as though Iyamar was a worthy student of
theirs.

He exchanged a
look with Egg, who nodded. Their target was walking away, but
slowly, apparently absorbed in the consideration of something Teyo
couldn’t see and didn’t care about. Serena, Fabian and Iyamar
drifted steadily in her direction, talking animatedly amongst
themselves.

Teyo moved.
Without a word, she left their hiding place and headed straight for
their target, her forged LHB badge in her hand. She reached the
woman a little before Serena’s group, and cleared her throat to
catch the woman’s attention.

‘
Excuse me, ma’am,’ she said, scrupulously polite, and showed
her badge. ‘Only full members of the LHB or an accredited
university are permitted down here at this time. May I see your
identification?’

The woman’s brows
snapped together with annoyance, a scowl that deepened as Serena,
Fabian and Iyamar arrived and she found herself surrounded with
chattering academics. ‘It has already been checked and approved,’
she said stiffly. She spoke Irbellian well, but her accent was
peculiar. Teyo couldn’t recall ever hearing such an intonation
before.

Teyo hastily
caught up to them. ‘My apologies,’ he said with a conciliating
smile. ‘We’ve received word that there’s been an infiltration and
we’ve got some people down here who shouldn’t be. Lady Glostrum
sent a bunch of us out to double check.’ Jisp began at that very
moment to climb up the inside of his trouser leg, and he fought to
keep his composure. Her tail tickled.

The woman
stiffened visibly. ‘I am here at Lady Glostrum’s
request.’

That gave him
pause. Lady Glostrum knew this woman? What was she, some kind of
consultant with the LHB? And if so, what was she doing stealing
from the aristocracy of Irbel? He didn’t like to imagine that the
leader of the LHB might have put her up to it.

Between the
distractions of his questioning and the chatter of Serena, Fabian
and Iyamar as they enthused over every single thing they saw, Egg’s
job was accomplished without incident. She gave him a barely
perceptible nod, and he turned his smile from conciliating to
ingratiating and made the woman a servile bow. ‘My apologies,’ he
said. ‘We meant no offence.’

The woman gave
him only the coldest nod in return, and instantly walked away. Teyo
and Egg immediately left in the opposite direction, followed, he
trusted, by the rest of their team. Jisp, her climb incomplete,
rode his hip with a clinging grip as he quickened his pace. It
wouldn’t take long for the woman to notice that the stone was gone,
and he didn’t imagine that it would be difficult for her to guess
who might have taken it.

Their progress
back through the cavern was slower than he would like. Always there
were milling academics in their path, or LHB agents still making
their patrols. He dragged off his wig again, hoping not to attract
their attention, and all but held his breath until the exit came
into sight. He and Egg dashed for it, breaking into a near run as
they reached the stairs.

They knew better
than to wait for Serena. Egg darted out of the cavern ahead of him
and immediately began to shove her way through the bustling throng
towards the cart-stop. Only a single cart waited there, which Egg
spared no efforts to secure. It was Teyo’s task to keep an eye out
behind — or, indeed, in front, given the Lokant woman’s strange
translocation abilities — for any sign of pursuit, of which,
fortunately, there was none. A few minutes more and he and Egg were
ensconced in the cart and on their way back to Balbater, their wigs
and tunics discarded. With their own hair showing and clad only in
plain, nondescript white shirts, he hoped they would be
unrecognisable as the two LHB officials of a few minutes
before.

He also hoped
that Serena, Fabian and Iyamar had got out safely, but it would be
some time before he would find out. His task now, and Egg’s, was to
protect the stone and get it safely to Oliver Tullen.

‘
So,’
said Serena some hours later, when at last she and the rest of the
team had made it back to their apartment. ‘What happened back
there?’

Teyo eyed her
warily from his seat in an overstuffed armchair in their lounge.
She was wearing a carefully pleasant expression, but he wasn’t
fooled. She had a steely look in her eye. All had not gone well, he
guessed, after he and Egg had left the site. Was it his doing? She
had told him not to get too close to the Lokant woman, and he
had.

‘
I
sent Jisp in,’ he said in a neutral voice, ‘but she wasn’t big
enough. So we had to do it the other way.’

Serena said
nothing, only stared at him with no particular expression that he
could discern. He had no idea of what was going on in her head,
which made him uncomfortable, and she was unhappy about something,
which made him even more uncomfortable. He hated it when she did
this. He waited her out, returning stare for stare, until she
looked away and sighed, and he realised she was tired. Tired and
worried about something.

‘
Took
you a long time to get home,’ he observed. ‘Was there a
problem?’

Serena crooked an
ironic, annoyed smile at him and flopped into a chair. She hadn’t
even taken off her wig and make-up yet, and thus still looked
wholly unfamiliar to him. Egg was seated not far away, though she
was (for once) keeping her thoughts to herself. Fabe and Iyamar had
looked in briefly and gone to change.

‘
Our
thief wasn’t happy at being thieved from,’ Serena said. Dragging
off the fluffy brown wig she wore, she threw it on the floor. Egg
scowled and immediately scooted over to pick it up. ‘Sorry, Egg,’
murmured Serena. ‘She pinned us down and caused a ruckus, brought
the LHB down on us. We had to submit to a full search before she
was satisfied that we didn’t have the stone. I’m not sure if our
identities held up, entirely.’ She reached under her shirt and
pulled out some padded stuff that had given her the dumpy
appearance of middle age. Teyo watched her with some interest, his
knitting abandoned in his lap. She rarely permitted anyone to
witness her transformations into the characters she played; the
best he could get was to watch it in reverse.