Seven Dreams (15 page)

‘
With
zero information,’ Egg said dryly. ‘The first site was hidden in a
hillside near Balbater. What are we going to do, search every inch
of every Realm?’

‘
Anyway, if it’s the first site of seven that’s been found, how
is it that Anserval had one of the stones?’ put in Teyo.

Lady Glostrum
sighed. ‘Too many questions, and I can’t answer any of them. Yet.
We’ll need more information.’ She looked at Teyo, and he nodded to
her.

‘
I’ll
do what I can with the Unspeakables,’ he confirmed.

‘
And
I’ll do what I can with Ylona.’

‘
I’ll
see Oliver,’ Serena added. ‘He might get the Agency on it, if he
thinks it’s important.’

Lady Glostrum
smiled. ‘Ylona is the leader of a Library I’ve dealt with before,
and it wasn’t much fun last time. If they are involved, then it is
important. And likely to involve a number of things we’d prefer to
interfere with.’

‘
Not
only that,’ Egg added, ‘it seems as though the Unspeakables are
heavily involved, too, and they always need a good
thwarting.’

Lady Glostrum
opened her mouth to say something else, but a sound like a muffled
roar crossed with a scream drowned out whatever it might have been.
Teyo sat up, dropping his knitting. The scream had been human, but
the rest sounded more like draykoni.

Fabian’s head
appeared around the door. Ignoring the extra company, he barked,
‘Teyo, get here,’ and vanished again.

Teyo ran to the
hallway. There was no further sign of Fabian, but he didn’t need to
be told that Iyamar was in trouble. He went straight to her room,
where he found Fabian blocking the doorway.

‘
Move,’ growled Teyo, and Fabian backed away.

Iya was
half-standing, half-crouched in the middle of her room. She was
mid-shift, somewhere between human and draykoni; her body had
already taken on the polished amber scales and some of the expanded
proportions of her draykon form, and her wings were beginning to
sprout. What was she
doing,
trying to shift in here? The
room wasn’t nearly big enough to accommodate her as a draykon. She
would break it to pieces.

In another second
he realised that she was fighting the change. Her face briefly
reappeared, pale and distraught, but the long muzzle, sharp teeth
and glittering eyes of the draykon soon reasserted themselves. And
she was growing.

With horror, Teyo
realised that she had never yet learned to control the
shift.

Iya was obviously
panicking, and Teyo began to feel panicked himself. Fabian had
summoned him because he was the only one who had even the smallest
chance of helping her. But what could he do? She had to shift back
herself, he couldn’t do it for her.

Iya, breathe
slowly and focus on your human shape,
he told her.
Don’t let
the draykon distract you. You’re a human girl, with pale blonde
hair and blue eyes...

He talked on in
similar fashion, but it wasn’t working. He couldn’t even tell
whether she was hearing him. She grew so big that her back brushed
the ceiling; her panic grew in proportion, and she began thrashing
wildly. Teyo heard the splintering of furniture and the crash of
objects striking the ground.

Then he was
roughly shoved out of the way, and Lady Glostrum strode into the
room. She took a brief, appraising look at the stricken Iya and
then shouted: ‘
Look at me.
’ Her voice rang with authority,
and Teyo found that he couldn’t help obeying her command, even
though it had not been directed at him. He stared at her,
transfixed.

‘
You
are a human,’ said Lady Glostrum firmly. ‘You will not shift
here.’

Teyo did not
seriously imagine that such an approach would work; if it was as
simple as speaking to her, he would have done that himself. But...
but the draykon was shrinking, disappearing. A minute or two passed
agonisingly slowly as Iyamar gradually regained control of herself,
her human form appearing more and more solid as the moments passed.
She stood, trembling with shock and fear and exhaustion, her thin
face stark white. Feeling shaken himself, Teyo went to her at once,
gently bade her sit down upon her bed, and wrapped her in a
blanket.

‘
What
was that?’ whispered Iyamar, staring at Lady Glostrum with a
mixture of relief, awe and horror in her young face.

‘
It is
a Lokant ability,’ said her ladyship. ‘A compulsion. I am sorry. It
was brutal, but necessary.’

‘
That
was terrible,’ said Iyamar bleakly. ‘But... thank you.’

Lady Glostrum
nodded, and turned to leave. She was brought up short by the sight
of Serena, Fabian, Egg and her husband all gathered just outside
the room, staring at her in horror.

‘
Oh,
no,’ she said. ‘Did you all feel it?’

‘
I
should
say
so,’ said Egg acidly. ‘Can you all do
that?’

‘
Any
full Lokant can, though the degree of talent varies. Very few
Partials can.’

Nobody
spoke.

‘
It
probably wouldn’t have worked if the young lady had been actively
trying to shift,’ said her ladyship. ‘Draykoni aren’t so easily
persuaded as that, in fact! All I have done is to reinforce her own
will.’

This explanation
did not do very much to settle the alarms of her ladyship’s
audience, Teyo’s included. The silence continued, and Lady Glostrum
began to look a little uncomfortable.

Then Serena came
forward, smiling. ‘You’ve saved the roof of our apartment and
Iyamar’s peace of mind besides. And we are grateful. Just a bit...
surprised.’

‘
Horrified,’ corrected Egg. ‘Is Ylona the one training
you?’

Lady Glostrum
nodded.

‘
So
she can do all that?’

‘
I’m
afraid so.’

‘
Brilliant,’ muttered Egg. She spun around, as though literally
turning her back on the whole mess, and stalked away.

Iyamar, Egg and
Teyo were arguing. Loudly.

Serena sat with
Fabian in the parlour of their apartment, she sipping from a large
mug of steaming cayluch, Fabian half-lying in his armchair with his
long legs stretched out before him and his eyes directed
ceilingward. His dark hair, unbound, spilled messily over the
cushions; Serena guessed that he hadn’t brushed it for a day or
two. She itched to neaten it for him, but knew better than to
interfere.

The raised voices
emanating from the next room belonged mostly to Iyamar and, to a
lesser extent, Egg. Teyo she barely heard, which surprised her not
at all. He rarely spoke above a normal volume, and never
shouted.

‘
But I
hate it!’ Iyamar yelled. ‘I didn’t
ask
for it!’

‘
We
didn’t ask to have our apartment ripped open by a draykon either,’
retorted Egg. ‘You put us all at risk by refusing
training.’

‘
Then
I’ll leave!’

‘
If
you won’t let Teyo train you, you’ll have to,’ said Egg ruthlessly.
‘Good luck on the streets. You might want to work on your
highwaywoman routine a bit.’

Serena winced.
Egg could be vicious when she was angry. Teyo’s deep rumble
intervened at that point, though she couldn’t hear what he said.
She took the opportunity to say to Fabian, ‘Lady Glostrum said
she’d be in touch about the key thing.’

Fabian shrugged,
an awkward gesture in his current posture. ‘I don’t see that it has
a lot to do with us from here on.’

Serena smiled
coldly. ‘But it does, because it has a lot to do with the
Unspeakables.’

Fabian raised an
eyebrow at her.

‘
Lady
Glostrum thinks that Ylona Duna is using them to find — or steal —
the keys. They aren’t exactly for hire like that, so if they’re
consenting to help, they must be interested in these keys, too. And
that means it’s got to be big.’

‘
But
I’m
not
!’ shrieked Iyamar. ‘I’m not a draykon! I’m a human,
like everyone else! I
refuse
to be anything
else!’

There followed a
crashing sound, which Serena guessed to indicate Egg kicking
something.

Fabian said,
‘Anything that’s got Lokants
and
Unspeakables involved has
got to be big. It’s also got to be crazy, dangerous and none of our
business.’

‘
What
advantages?’ shouted Iyamar. ‘It’s brung nothing
but trouble! My own gang kicked me out! They acted like I was a
monster, and — and they’re right!’

Teyo said
something.

‘
Of
course I don’t think
you’re
a monster!’ yelled
Iyamar.

Teyo said
something else, which apparently silenced her.

‘
We
could make it our business,’ said Serena, taking a sip of creamy
cayluch.

‘
Why
would we?’ said Fabian.

‘
Because it would be an adventure!’ she said grandly, with a
dazzling smile. ‘Aren’t you intrigued?’

‘
Nope.’

Serena gave a
small sigh. ‘Well then, because it is our business to oppose the
Unspeakables in every possible way,
especially
when they’re
doing something sneaky, underhanded, mysterious, probably dangerous
and potentially disastrous.’

‘
When
aren’t they?’

‘
But I
can’t
,’ wailed Iyamar in tones of utter despair. Teyo was
getting somewhere, Serena thought. She’d gone from furious
accusations to dramatic and rage-filled denials and now to
despairing under-confidence. Resignation would follow soon enough,
and after that — progress. Hopefully.

‘
You
feeling okay, Fabe?’ Serena said cautiously.

‘
Fine,’ he said.

She said nothing
for a moment, listening to the low drone of Teyo’s voice from the
next room. ‘Do you want to visit mother today?’ she said
next.

‘
Maybe.’

She began to say
something else, but Fabian interrupted. ‘I found out
something.’

‘
Oh?’

He shifted in his
seat. ‘About father.’

‘
Fabe...’ Serena said slowly. ‘I thought we’d agreed to let it
go?’

He directed one
swift, angry look at her. ‘You agreed. I didn’t.’

Serena’s heart
sank a little. ‘All right,’ she said in a neutral voice. ‘What did
you find out?’

‘
Bironn Astre,’ said Fabian. ‘We got
him
, but he wasn’t
the only one involved. There was someone else.’

Serena heard this
with mixed feelings. Foreboding and dismay warred with concern for
Fabian and... and a rising anger. Much as she tried to put it
behind her, she wasn’t immune to the feelings that tormented her
brother either.

Their father,
Thomaso Carterett, had been a small-time landowner in the far south
of Irbel, right on the border with Nimdre. He had been able to give
his two children a good education, and the family had lived
prosperously for some years.

But sometime
during those years, he had begun to drink. He drank more, and more,
until money was tight and their mother, Theresa, began to wear a
perpetually worn, anxious look. One night, Thomaso had got involved
with a card game. He’d been very, very drunk, and the game had
ended with the total loss of everything he had — their house, land,
everything.

Two days later,
he’d hanged himself.

Fabian and Serena
had never completed their expensive education. Obliged to work as
they could to support their increasingly ailing mother, they had
learned to rely more and more upon each other, and upon their
shared gift for acting. They had worked as players for some years,
taking jobs with theatres across Irbel and Nimdre, and all the
while they sought to learn the truth about the card game that had
ended so disastrously for their father.

At length, they
had learned a name: Bironn Astre. He hadn’t just been lucky, they
found. He had deliberately targeted Thomaso as an easy mark. He was
a member of the Yllandu organisation, a fresh recruit, and he’d
manipulated the game — cheated, in other words — in order to ensure
that Thomaso lost. The Unspeakables required each applicant to
complete some kind of con or theft or cheat in order to prove their
worthiness, and Astre’s had been sufficient to secure his
membership. The proceeds of his efforts — Serena and Fabian’s
family home — had been handed over to the Yllandu by way of an
entrance fee, and he’d gone on to perform many more cons as part of
the organisation.

Until Serena and
Fabian, now members of the Torwyne Agency, had succeeded in
catching him. He had been in prison for four years already, and
would not be released for many more.

Serena had hoped
that was the last of it, though more for Fabian’s sake than for her
own. While she felt anger, indignation, sadness and a host of other
emotions over the fate of her poor father and their family lands,
she wanted more than anything to put it behind her and move on.
Surely the last thing their father would have wanted was for his
family to suffer for his mistakes.