Evastany

11 IV

11 IV

We asked Gio, of course, but he had no information for us.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, when we had finished telling him everything we knew. ‘I know of nobody who might want a child like Susa, and without a clearer description I can have no way of guessing who the woman is.’

‘Can you find out anything?’ asked Ori. ‘The girl is only ten! We have to help her somehow.’

Gio shifted in his seat, looking most uncomfortable. ‘I fear you have an inaccurate idea of Lokant society. You have only come into contact with one or two of our Libraries, I gather, so it may seem as though there are only a few. From there, it is easy to assume that we all know each other’s business. I’m afraid that is far from the case. There are many Libraries I know nothing of.’

I thought I could guess the source of his concern. ‘Our expectations of you are not of crushing proportions,’ I told Gio. ‘If you can discover nothing of use, we shall not hold it to be your fault.’

‘No, no!’ Ori hastened to agree with me. ‘Only do what you can, dearest.’

Gio sighed, and rubbed at his eyes. ‘I want to recover the missing child as much as you do, I assure you. I will be glad to make enquiries at Sulayn Phay, only… I have rather parted ways with them, and I have treated one or two of them pretty badly at that. It will be difficult to convince them to trust me enough to confide, if indeed they have any involvement in this business.’

Personally I doubt that the woman who took Susa was Dwinal. Firstly because Dwinal is of advanced age and I think it more likely that our second witness was correct: the abductor was a younger woman. Secondly because it would be far too easy if our kidnapper was the same person I am already charged to investigate, and when is life ever that?

That does not rule out the possibility that someone else of Sulayn Phay took Susa, however. We know from Llandry’s account, as well as Gio’s information, that Phay is divided into factions these days, and who knows what nefarious business they are all getting up to?

I could sympathise with Gio’s problem, though. Was he to go wandering around his former home Library, casually asking all he met whether they had happened to kidnap a part-Lokant child recently? And when he spoke of having treated some of them badly, I could guess what he meant. By Llandry’s account, he had carved an implant out of the living flesh of one of his former colleagues, in order to gain access to his grandmother’s personal chambers.

This is the kind of thing that tends to irritate people.

I would not be in a hurry to send him back there, and judging from the look on Ori’s face, I would have him to contend with if I tried.

There is always the possibility that we are dealing with a mere partial Lokant, of course, and Susa is not far away. With this in mind, I submitted the details of the case to Glour City’s Investigative Office.

I was outraged to find that they doubted me. Me! The notion that it is possible for our abductress to so convincingly mimic someone else’s appearance is too far-fetched for credulity, I am to understand, and I could spend all day explaining Lokant abilities for all the good it would do. I was displeased. The more so when told that, with so few details of the mystery woman’s appearance to go on (and conflicting accounts at that), there would be little they could do to find her.

I did not receive the impression that the fate of Susa was of any great concern to them. Is it because she is an orphan child, with no family to miss her? How detestable, if so! It only made me the more determined to find her myself. Though I cannot help admitting that they are right about one thing: with no real information to work with, we begin at a grave disadvantage.

I am not without my resources, however, even if the Investigative Office is disinclined to lend me theirs. I and my Summoner days have parted ways lately, but I have not lost my abilities there; nor have I lost the various animal friends I made during my years as High Summoner of Glour.

Chief among them is Rikbeek, my gwaystrel. Tiny creature. Black fur, webby wings, a tendency to bite. He is difficult to love, I will admit, but we have been friends for so long that I tend to forgive him his faults. He is a marvellous spy, too, being both difficult to spot and almost impossible to deceive. I make use of him a lot, when I want to find things out.

He only grows grumpier with the passage of time, alas. Rikbeek, I said to him this morning. We seek a missing child. If you spot her, inform me at once. With this command I conveyed to him a mental picture of Susa, as far as I remembered her. It has been a few moons since I last saw the girl.

I received by way of reply the sound of tiny teeth snapping, and the faint scent of blood drifted across my senses.

I am glad we are in agreement, I told him, unmoved by this display of insubordination.

Perhaps it is unwise to let him live in the folds of my skirt. Usually he drapes himself among the outer layers of fabric, but in colder weather (or when he is upset about something) he burrows under and suspends himself, upside-down, directly next to my legs. I can well believe that it is warmer, and therefore more comforting, underneath, but since it also gives him unimpeded access to my poor skin, I sometimes regret my leniency. I was given cause to do so this morning.

I made a mental note to see about having sturdier stockings made.

Besides Rikbeek I have also befriended a shortig hound, to whom Tren has given the fine name of Bartel. Shortigs have a fine sense of smell, and can track anything. I have had cause to test Bartel before, and found him to be unbeatable in this respect. Tren and I went to the Academy this morning and took Bartel with us. I walked into Angstrun’s office with tiny Bartel tucked under one arm, and presented him to the High Sorcerer with a smug smile.

Darae gazed upon my little shortig hound in confusion. ‘No thank you,’ he said.

I frowned. Setting aside for the moment the absurdity of Angstrun imagining I might offer him a gift, why should he object to poor Bart? The very cutest of creatures! Small enough to be easily carted about with one hand, all silky black fur and paws and ears, and the friendliest nature!

‘He is not for you,’ I informed Angstrun with strong displeasure. ‘Particularly if you are going to be so abominable as to reject him anyway! He is here to help us.’

Angstrun cast a glowering look at Tren, and did not reply.

‘We need access to Susa’s things,’ I persevered, ignoring this display of manly rivalry. ‘Bartel will take her scent and attempt to track her. Where was she sleeping?’

Angstrun sighed, and to my relief he set aside his sour mood and bent himself to the task of being much more helpful. ‘She has a room in the attic, somewhere in the servants’ quarters. I will have somebody take you up.’

“Somebody” proved to be another girl of around Susa’s age, dark-haired and wearing an expensive dress. They were clearly friends, in spite of the apparent difference in social status, for our little guide questioned us at length about Susa’s whereabouts as she led us up flights of stairs into the attic. ‘She said nothing about going away,’ said the little girl with a mighty frown. ‘And it is my birthday soon, too! She must come back, and attend the party.’

‘We are doing our best to bring her back in time,’ Tren promised, with a reassuring smile for the girl.

I decline to waste my time trying to please children, on the whole. Not that my fondness for fine gowns does not find its fair share of concordant enthusiasm, especially from little girls. But my manner, I must sorrowfully own, is forbidding, and they tend to shrink from me, however attracted they might be to the glitter of my attire. I blessed Tren for being so much less awful a figure, and left him to talk to the child.

She had nothing of use to tell us, of course. ‘Twas but a small hope that she might. Susa had never mentioned any new acquaintance, and nothing seemed to have changed in her life prior to her disappearance. Her friend was as confused as the rest of us.

She did lead us straight to Susa’s tiny, featureless room, however, and assisted us in searching the girl’s meagre possessions. Susa’s belongings appeared to consist of one spare dress, threadbare and shabby, and a discarded hat.

‘Surely she had more than this?’ Tren said.

Susa’s friend nodded. ‘Three dresses! One blue, one red, and that one.’ She nodded towards the closet in which the abandoned dress hung. ‘And a coat and gloves and a scarf.’

‘Is there any chance that somebody might have stolen them?’ I put in.

The girl glowered at me. ‘No one would do that.’

Well, I’m sorry, little girl, but people thieve all the time. I admired her naive reliance upon the goodness of humanity, even as I speculated wearily as to how long it would last. Perhaps she had a few years of such fond imaginings left.

‘The door was locked,’ Tren pointed out.

True. Our guide secured the key from a housekeeper or something before we came up, and certainly used it to unlock the door. And since there were no signs that anyone had forced their way in, a robbery did not seem likely. Who would go out of their way to steal a key to this little attic chamber, in order to steal a shabby child’s dress?

Susa had been given the opportunity to pack her belongings, then. I was unsure how to feel about this. It was an unusually civilised kidnapper that gave her victims chance to prepare themselves for a trip. Could I therefore conclude that Susa was being well-treated in general? I hoped so, though the circumstances puzzled me.

I took down the discarded dress and let it slip off its hanger onto the floor. Bartel I placed beside it, and silently gave him to understand that he was to immerse himself in its aromas forthwith. Our tiny guide, overcome with instant love for my shortig, would have fallen upon the beast at once and smothered him in affection, if she had been permitted. Judging from the gleam of ferocious delight in her pale blue eyes, I would consider Bartel fortunate if he had survived the experience.

Happily for us both, Tren intervened. ‘Bart is going to help us find Susa,’ he told the disappointed girl. ‘He needs to find out what she smells like, so he can follow her trail. He is getting it from the dress, look.’

To her credit, the girl did not object, but held her peace and watched while Bartel stuffed his face into the folds of the shabby dress and noisily inhaled. I gave him the sorry little hat Susa had left behind as well, and he repeated the process.

Smells like child, he informed me when he had finished.

It is difficult to put anything past you, I responded. Bartel gave me a tongue-lolling houndish grin and stood, tail wagging, ready to proceed.

‘And now we follow,’ said Tren, doing a fine job once again of remembering that children are people and that speaking to them is an option.

I opened the door, and Bartel shot out into the corridor beyond. Once he gets a scent there is no stopping him, and the two of us — er, three, childchildchild — had to hasten to keep up with him.

He charged straight for the nearest staircase and rattled down it, a pattern he repeated down the next few flights of stairs until he reached the ground floor. No diversions of any kind, no sidelines; he went for the front door, and the moment I opened it he bounded on through and into the street.

I hoped he would disappear up the street in merry pursuit of a satisfyingly long trail, tail wagging and ears flying all the way. To my dismay — though not, I admit, to my surprise — he merely dashed around a corner, galloped several feet up a narrow alleyway in between the Academy building and its next neighbour, and stopped.

End, he said.

And I sighed, because so abrupt an ending to the trail could only mean one thing.

Susa’s abductor might be a partial or full-blooded Lokant, but either way she had access to a Lokant Library. She had taken the girl downstairs — presumably prepared to convince anybody she encountered that it was me they saw, in order to preserve the illusion that Susa had merely transferred into my school.

But the moment she was outside, she had translocated off-world into some Lokant Library somewhere, taking poor Susa with her. The girl was far, far away by now, and how could we possibly guess where?