Part 16 (1/2)
”Just tell me what you found out, please,” he urged in his gentlest, most rea.s.suring voice, hiding every other emotion.
Cordstick straightened. Or at least, he made a failed attempt at it. ”My Lord, there is nothing new on where the Princess has gone or what she is doing.” He held up one bandaged hand as Laphroig started to vent. ”However, that is not to say that our efforts have been totally unsuccessful.”
Laphroig stared. ”Exactly what does that mean?”
”It means that we know one more thing that we didn't know before I set out to find the Princess, although I'm not sure it's worth the price I had to pay to discover it. The Princess Mistaya has not disappeared for the reasons we thought. Nothing bad has happened to her. No abduction, no spiriting away, nothing like that. Apparently, she had a falling-out with her parents and left of her own volition. Because of the nature of the falling-out, it is thought she has no immediate intention of returning.”
Laphroig shrugged. ”Forgive me, Cordstick, but I don't see how that helps us.”
”It helps, my Lord, because she is seeking sanctuary with an understanding third party. Her grandfather, the River Master, turned her down. She must be looking elsewhere.” He paused. ”Do you happen to know anyone who might be willing to grant her sanctuary, should I eventually find her and have a chance to speak with her?”
”Ah,” said Laphroig, the light beginning to dawn. ”So you think she might come here to live?”
”Beggars can't be choosers.” Cordstick rubbed his bandaged hands and then winced. ”If she agrees to let you act as her guardian, she becomes your ward and you gain legal status in determining her future. As her guardian, you will have ample opportunities to ...” He trailed off, cleared his throat, and smiled. ”To persuade her to your cause.”
”Indeed, indeed!” Laphroig sounded positively enthusiastic at the prospect. He began to pace, as if by doing so he were actually getting somewhere. ”Well, then, we must find her right away before she has a change of heart!” He wheeled on Cordstick. ”You ”You must find her!” must find her!”
”I must?” His scribe did not sound in the least convinced.
”Yes, of course! Who else can I depend upon?” He dropped his voice to a near whisper. ”Who else, but my future Minister of State?”
Cordstick gave him a calculating look. ”I was just about to hand in my resignation and retire to the countryside, my Lord.”
”No, no, we can't have that sort of talk.” Laphroig was at his side instantly, patting him on his good shoulder. Gently, he walked him over to the window, where they could look out over the countryside together. ”That sort of talk is for weaklings and quitters, not for future Ministers of State!”
His scribe frowned. ”Would you care to put that in writing?”
Laphroig gritted his teeth. ”I would be happy to do so.” He could always deny he'd written it.
”Witnessed by two n.o.bles of the realm?”
The teeth gritting turned to teeth grinding. ”Of course.” He could always have the n.o.bles put to death.
”With copies to be sent to a personal designate for delivery to the King should anything unfortunate happen to me?”
”You are starting to irritate me, Cordstick!” Laphroig hissed. But he saw the look on the other's face and quickly held up his hands. ”All right, all right, whatever you say. Is there anything else you require?”
Cordstick was edging toward the doorway. ”I will find the Princess, my Lord. You have my word. But this time I will require a personal guard so as to avoid all the unpleasantness of this past outing. I think perhaps fifty or sixty armed men would ...”
He ducked through the doorway just as the bra.s.s candlestick Laphroig had flung flew past his head and crashed into the wall beyond. The padding of his limping feet could be heard receding into the distance.
Laphroig closed his eyes in an effort to calm himself, and he unclenched his teeth long enough to whisper, ”Just find her, you idiot!”
THE VOICE IN THE SHADOWS.
Mistaya returned to work in the Stacks the following morning and did not speak to Thom even once of the voice. She listened for it carefully, but the hours pa.s.sed, and no one called out to her. The longer she waited, the more uncertain she became about what she had heard. Perhaps she had only imagined it after all. Perhaps the shadows and the overall creepiness of the Stacks had combined to make her think she was hearing a voice that wasn't there.
By midday, she was feeling so disillusioned about it that when Thom declared almost an hour early that it was lunchtime, she didn't even bother to argue.
Seated across from each other at the wooden table in the otherwise empty kitchen, they ate their soup and bread and drank their milk in silence.
Finally, Thom said, ”You're not still mad at me for yesterday, are you?”
She stared at him, uncomprehending. Yesterday? Had he done something?
”When I told you I didn't want you going back into the Stacks by yourself?” he added helpfully.
”Oh, that!” she declared, remembering now. ”No, I'm not mad about that. I wasn't mad then, either. I just wanted to have a look at what was back there because I thought I heard something.” She shook her head in disgust. ”But I think I must have imagined it.”
He was quiet a moment. Then he said, ”What do you think you heard, Ellice?”
His face was so serious, his eyes fixed on her as if she might reveal mysteries about which he could only wonder, that she grinned despite herself. ”Actually, I thought I heard someone calling.”
He didn't laugh at her, didn't crack a smile, didn't change expression at all. ”Did the voice say, 'Help me'?”
Her eyes widened, and she reached impulsively for his hand. ”You heard it, too?”
He nodded slowly, his shock of dark hair falling down over his eyes. He brushed it away in that familiar gesture. A lot about him was getting familiar to her by now. ”I heard it. But not yesterday when you did. I heard it a few weeks ago, before you came.”
She leaned forward eagerly, lowering her voice. ”Did you go back into the Stacks to see if someone was there?”
”I did. That was when I found myself in the trouble I warned you about yesterday. We were supposed to talk about it last night, but you forgot. I think you were still wondering about the voice when you left me. Am I right?”
She nodded quickly. ”I thought about it all night. And I did forget to ask you what happened. Will you tell me now?”
He leaned close as well, taking a careful look about the kitchen. ”Two weeks ago, around midday, I heard the voice. Not for the first time, you understand. I'd heard it before, very faint, very far away. I was always alone, working on cataloging the books. I'd made myself believe I was hearing things. But this time, I couldn't ignore it. I went back into the darkest corners of the Stacks when everyone else was eating lunch or off doing something.” He had dropped his own voice to a whisper to match hers. ”I have good eyesight, so I didn't take any kind of light that might give me away to Pinch. You know how he's always lurking around. Anyway, I had heard the voice very clearly this time. It was saying the same thing, over and over. 'Help me! Help me!' You can imagine how I felt, hearing it pleading like that. I decided to try to track it down.”
He paused, glancing left and right once more. ”There were Throg Monkeys back there, dozens of them. But they weren't paying any attention to me. They were carrying books, but they didn't seem to be going anywhere. Some of them glanced my way before disappearing back into the shelving. One or two hissed at me. But they do that all the time, and I keep them under control with the whistle. So they let me pa.s.s without trying to stop me. It got darker and more shadowy as I went, and everything seemed to lose shape. Like it was all underwater, except it wasn't, of course. But the Stacks seemed to ripple and s.h.i.+mmer as if they were.”
”Did you hear the voice while you were back there?” she interrupted.
He shook his head. ”Not once. I listened for it, but didn't hear anything. The farther back I went, the deeper the Stacks seemed to go. I couldn't find the end. I don't mind telling you that it gave me the s.h.i.+vers. But I kept going anyway. I thought I was being silly feeling scared like that. After all, I hadn't been attacked or anything. Nothing had threatened me.”
He took a deep breath. ”But then something happened. Something grabbed at me. Not like a hand or anything. More like a suction of some kind, pulling at me with tremendous force. It happened all at once, and I lost my footing and fell down. I was being dragged along the floor toward this darkness that looked like a huge tunnel. I started screaming, but it didn't help. I managed to catch hold of one of the legs of the shelving and pull myself up against it. I clung to it with everything I had. Finally, I was able to pull myself back along the shelves until I was out of its grip. It took a long time, and no one came to help me. Which was probably a good thing, because if I'd been caught snooping I don't think I would still be here and I wouldn't have met you.”
Mistaya rested her chin in her hands. ”So you never did find out about the voice? Or any of the rest of it?”
He shook his head. ”I didn't. And I didn't hear it again, either. I kept thinking I would, but I didn't. So I ended up doing what you did. I convinced myself I was mistaken. I knew I wasn't supposed to go back into the Stacks in the first place-His Eminence and Pinch had made that pretty clear. I just chalked the whole thing up to not doing what I had been told and almost paying the penalty for my disobedience. Not that I didn't wonder; I just didn't know what I should do.”
”So what do you think we should do now?” she asked him. ”Now that I've heard the voice, too. Now that we know something is back there.” She watched his face as she said it, curious to measure his response. ”Shouldn't we do something?”
He gave her a momentary look of disbelief, and then he grinned. ”Of course we should do something. But we have to do it together, and we have to be very careful.”
”We should have a better chance if there are two of us,” she declared excitedly. ”We can protect each other.”
”We'd better go in at night, when everyone is asleep. Maybe whatever is back there will be sleeping, too.”