Given the outcome of their previous attempt, Ana was understandably reluctant to take Eva and Tren to Krays's Library again. They had to waste precious time talking the stubborn and frightened woman into granting them a return passage. In the end, Eva had to promise that this would be the last time. She did so with discomfort. Only one more chance at Krays's secrets? They would have to make sure that nothing went wrong this time.
Maintaining a stubborn, disapproving silence, Ana took them to a quiet, little-used room in the Library. The chamber was deserted, but still the woman was extremely tense. She kept hold of their wrists for a full minute after they arrived, standing still and alert as she listened for alarms.
To Eva's relief, nothing happened. She, too, had suffered doubts about the efficacy of the devices she and Tren carried. After all, Iwa had said they "should" be up to date, but hadn't been able to confirm that with perfect certainty. A sigh of relief escaped her when another minute passed without the alarms sounding.
'I'd be fast,' Ana said, speaking in a half-whisper. 'Krays isn't the only dangerous one around here.'
'Superfast,' Tren agreed.
Ana chewed on her lip, staring at each of them in turn in some kind of indecision. Then she reached into her cloak, unfastened something from her belt and handed it to Eva. It was a collection of small metal objects like the ones Krays had worn. They didn't look like any keys she had ever seen, but somehow she recognised their function.
'That's it, now,' Ana said, looking like she already regretted the action. 'If you're found with those, it's all over for me.'
'Thank you,' Eva said, with true gratitude. Ana was taking a risk indeed, and a useful one, for they wouldn't get far in here without keys.
'They won't get you in to everything, mind,' Ana warned. 'You will have to find your own way into the more secret areas.'
She vanished without waiting for a reply.
'Hold still,' Tren said. 'I'm doing the invis.'
Eva held still, watching with fascination as her own body gradually disappeared. Then Tren faded out too.
'The difficult part will be keeping together,' she mused. 'Already I have no idea where you are.'
Tren's hand slid into hers and gripped tight. 'Stay close,' he said, and she could hear the smile in his words. 'That's the best way. Ready to go?'
'Almost. Can you hide Rikbeek too?'
'Ah, good thinking.'
Eva plucked the gwaystrel off the fabric of her coat and held him out. His small, fur-dusted black body hovered weirdly atop her invisible hands, until he too disappeared.
I need you to check for dangers, she said to him.
His refusal was immediate, and emphatic. He was busy... sleeping.
Not negotiable, Beek. She threw him into the air, unsettled by the fact that she couldn't see if he took flight or not.
A quick, sharp pain lanced through her ear. Putting up her fingers, she found the dampness of blood.
Yep, he was on the wing.
Be alert, Beek. We'd like to stay alive, if at all possible.
He sent her his grudging assent, bit her once more for good measure and winged away. She kept part of her mind with him, tracking his progress as he headed for the door.
'He's in flight,' she told Tren. 'He'll warn me if he sees any mechs. Or people.'
'So what's the plan?'
'Limbane said this Library is smaller, but otherwise a faithful replica of his, didn't he?'
'I remember something like that, yes.'
'Then we know where to go.' Eva started walking, but Tren's grip on her hand held her back.
'Eva, wait. You're not thinking of the reading room, are you?'
'Why not? I wouldn't be surprised if his study is in the same place as Limbane's, and that would be where to find the best information.'
'Probably, but it's also the most dangerous place for us to go, because the chances of finding Krays there are high. Also, how are we going to get in? Even if we manage to enter the room, Krays will have separate locks on anything important, and there's no way Ana's keys will work on those. It would be futile, and borderline suicidal.'
Frustrated as she was, Eva couldn't argue with that. He was quite right. 'What else do you suggest?'
'Well, all of this began because of Krays's machine design projects. That's what Limbane wanted to look at. If he's moved them all here, they'll probably be in the labs and the workshops. Why don't we head there?'
'Agreed. Let's go then, quickly.'
By the time they reached the door, Tren had somehow managed to get in front of her. He kept her behind him as he opened the door and checked the corridor outside. Then he led her out of the room, still maintaining his protective stance in front.
'You don't have to do that,' she whispered, annoyed.
'Yes I do.'
'I'm quite capable of-'
'Don't bother arguing,' he muttered. 'If we run into a whurthag mech, it will have to go through me to get to you.'
'But-'
'I'm not budging!'
One of the downsides to being female was her relative lack of height. She was tall, but Tren was several inches taller, and he had a stride to match. Trying to get ahead of him was futile.
'We're going to talk about this, later,' she hissed.
'Won't that be fun.' Tren strode on, unmoved.
Defeated, Eva turned her attention to Rikbeek. He was still on the wing, maintaining a station fifteen or twenty feet ahead of them. His senses were really marvellous; he was building a picture of his surroundings in sound, bouncing his high-pitched voice off all the objects he encountered to determine their shape and distance. That was why he was such a good spy: no invisibility spell could fool him. He could "see" her and Tren as well as everything else, in spite of Tren's invisibility enchantment.
He was currently mapping something tall, slender and in motion...
'People up ahead,' she whispered. Instantly she and Tren moved to the wall, flattening themselves against it without losing their grip on each other. They waited, breathless, as footsteps became audible and then two figures appeared at the turn of the corridor, both male, white-haired and unmistakeably Lokant.
They were walking two abreast, which was unnerving. The corridor wasn't that wide. Eva held her breath in earnest as they passed by, so close that she feared they couldn't miss her. It was hard to believe in her own invisibility when she could still feel her own physical form perfectly well, even if she couldn't see it.
The one closest to her was reading something, and to her relief he remained absorbed in it as he passed. The other was closer to the far side of the passageway, too far away to be in danger of touching her or Tren. They moved past without appearing to notice anything, and disappeared around the next bend in the corridor.
Eva took a shaky breath.
'Close,' Tren murmured.
'Thank goodness for Rikbeek.'
'I'm getting him a present when we get out of here,' Tren said, moving away from the wall and tugging her gently after him.
'What did you have in mind?'
'Blood, of course. Pints of it.'
'Yours?'
'Well... some of it. I don't think I can spare a few pints all at once.'
Eva was silent for a while after that, shivering too much to talk. She wasn't afraid, she told herself. She was... cold. Yes, that was it. Her coat was thick and warm, but this damned Library seemed to have no heating at all. Even the brisk pace Tren set wasn't enough to combat the chills that repeatedly shook her. She grumbled about this in her own mind, cursing the name of Krays all over again. Couldn't he at least have a warm sinister hideout?
Twice more they were obliged to evade Lokants wandering past. Both passed without incident, thanks to Rikbeek's prior notification, and Eva's trepidation quietened down a little. So far, the plan was working well enough. They had angled north through the Library and steadily downwards, aiming for the lower levels where Limbane kept the labs and machine factories in his own Library. Their Lokantor wasn't nearly as committed to machinery as Krays, so Eva wasn't surprised to find that they reached this part of the Library sooner than she expected. Where Limbane's labs gave way to book rooms, Krays simply had more, and bigger, manufactories. The level of background noise increased, which was a mixed blessing: on the one hand it would make it harder for anyone to hear the intruders; on the other, it made it harder for she and Tren to talk to each other.
Now they ran into a problem. The manufactories were busy, far busier than either of them had expected. They looked to be working at top speed. Getting in wasn't a problem, because most of the doors were not locked; then again, most of them had a steady stream of Lokants going in and out, and the view beyond the doors was not encouraging. Each workshop was buzzing with activity.
'On to the labs, I think?' Tren whispered, his breath warm on her ear. 'Best to look for plans.'
Eva murmured an agreement. It would be better to get a look at the machines in operation, but there were too many people around here. Sooner or later someone would bump into them, and then it would all be over.
As soon as they were past the manufactories, the level of activity dropped fast. This was both encouraging and foreboding, to Eva's mind. It was helpful to them, if most of the Lokants were busy in one area of the Library; they could explore the labs in greater safety. But why was there so much activity in Krays's machine workshops? Whatever they were building must be needed soon, and in quantity. It struck her that perhaps the draykon mechs Llandry had described had been made here. Were they building more? If so, why? For use against the Seven Realms? That prospect turned her sick with trepidation.
The laboratory sector looked similar to Limbane's. A large, circular hallway was lined with six metal doors, all closed and probably locked. Eva followed behind Tren as he approached the first door, glancing through the small window that was set in the top.
'Occupied,' he whispered, and moved on to the second. This one was empty. Eva passed him the keys, then turned to locate Rikbeek. He was circling near the ceiling in the centre of the room, grumbling.
Watch the main door, please, she asked him, directing him towards the entrance they had just come from. If anyone came into this hallway, she wanted to know about it.
'We're in,' Tren whispered, and she turned back.
If anything, this laboratory was even colder. She shivered so violently that even Tren felt it.
'Such sufferings,' he murmured, wrapping her in a quick hug and chafing her chilled arms. 'Suffer on, brave soldier.'
'Bastard,' she muttered. 'Just because you're a walking heat source.'
She couldn't see his grin, but she could picture it as he turned away. The layout of this room was promising: several tall, wide work surfaces marched the length of the lab, probably designed to accommodate large sheets of paper (or something like it). The walls were made of the same glass-like substance as Limbane's chart room, some areas displaying complicated diagrams. She could imagine this room full of engineers, drawing out their plans on the tables and transferring parts of them to the storage and display system on the walls.
'The problem with this,' she said, staring at the walls, 'is that I have no idea what any of it indicates.' The drawings were incomprehensible to her, and she couldn't decipher the notations that came with them either.
'Never mind those,' Tren said, his voice coming from somewhere near the floor. Looking down, she saw that the tables were actually cabinets, with lockable doors on the front. Tren had got one of them unlocked; as she watched, the doors opened as if by themselves. Inside was a large, complicated-looking machine.
'It's heavy,' Tren grunted as he lifted it out. 'What do you think this is, a prototype?'
'Makes sense,' she agreed. Here they would experiment with the design until they'd got it right. Then the plans would be transferred to the manufactories for construction, leaving the original prototype behind.
'This doesn't make much more sense to me, I admit,' she said, directing a frown at the odd thing that now sat atop the cabinet. It was a few feet wide and a couple tall, consisting of a sturdy metal base and a series of conduits made from that same strange type of glass. 'Is that drayk bone?'
'Looks like it, Tren said. The bone was fitted into a set of clamps at what she took to be the front of the machine. At the other end there was... nothing significant. It looked as though the system of conduits simply stopped.
'Looks like part of something bigger,' Tren said, confirming her guess. She followed as he worked his way around the rest of the cabinets, opening all the doors. Inside each was another similar contraption, each bearing a piece of draykon bone, each terminating abruptly at the back end.
'They fit together,' Tren said. 'Look - see that bracket on the end of this one? I bet it would connect to one of the others.'
Eva nodded, then remembered that she was invisible. 'I see what you mean. But why not just make one device? I don't see the use of building it in separate parts.'
'It would be easier to transport,' Tren pointed out. 'If this was one huge machine, it would be virtually impossible to move.'
'Good point, yes.'
'I reckon this is the sort of thing Dev saw. And remember what Griel said? They were building energy collectors! I bet that's what these are.'
'The bone serves as a catalyst of some kind,' Eva mused. 'It draws the energy, channels it through the conduits, and... does what with it?'
'Good question,' Tren murmured. 'But, remember what Indren told us? She's been set to research the Off-Worlds, specifically why they're so unsettled lately. We now know - or suspect - that it's a disruption in the energy flows that's causing the trouble, and that's happening because the draykoni are shaking things up.'
Eva caught on. 'These are the devices that Griel's teams were building.'
'Right,' Tren said grimly. 'These are designed to collect Off-World energy in some way, channelling it somewhere else. But as to where, or why, or what a person might be able to do with such a thing, I'm stumped.'
Eva shivered a little, but not with cold this time. She'd felt the ferocious energies surging through Iskyr not long ago, even more volatile than the Lowers had been last time she'd visited. If it was possible to collect and store it, it would make for a powerful energy source indeed. What might an ambitious Lokant like Krays do with it? All she could think of was Limbane's Library; maybe it was designed to be turned on him in some way. But she was no longer convinced that all this was aimed at Limbane.
'This doesn't bring us any closer to the real goal,' she said. 'We've confirmed an earlier theory - unfortunately - but we still have no real idea why this is being done. We need to carry on searching.'
Tren began restoring the devices to their cupboards. 'We do, though I'm not sure where.'
Eva thought fast. They could search the rest of the laboratories, but she didn't expect to gain much by it. Perhaps it had been naive of her to come down here, expecting to find a clear explanation of what each machine did and why it was being built. All they were finding here was the means, not the purpose.
'I know you hate this, Tren,' she said, 'but I can't think of anywhere more likely to hold answers than Krays's study. We could waste hours down here without finding what we're looking for.'
'And why do you think we'll find anything useful in there? He'll have it all locked up behind Lokant technologies that we don't know how to operate, and I doubt any of it's conveniently written down anyway.'
'That's true, but...' It occurred to her that Tren's voice was a little strained. 'Are you getting tired, Tren?'
'A bit. Invisibility takes it out of me.'
'Right. Let's hurry, then. We could spend all day combing through the rest of the Library and find nothing. We have to try for the study.'
Tren made a sound of disgust, and didn't answer.
'Do you have a better idea, Tren? Because if you do, I would love to hear it.'
Silence. Then, 'No,' Tren said with a sigh. 'I thought about trying to talk to someone, but nobody would share secrets with supposed "new recruits", and if we tried duress they'd just Travel away and our cover would be blown.'
'Agreed,' Eva sighed. 'I don't like it either, but we're running out of time.'
Tren came up next to her and linked hands again. 'How are we going to get in?'
'Let's find it first,' she suggested. 'Then we'll deal with that problem.'
'All right.' Tren took the lead again as they passed back into the hallway. Rikbeek's excellent vision revealed an empty passage out, so they took it, almost running through the corridors now. It took a few minutes of hard walking to reach the upper levels where Krays's study would be; this Library may be smaller than Limbane's but that didn't make it small by any means.
'Right,' Tren whispered at last, stopping at another plain metal door. 'This has to be it.'
'All right. I don't see a keyhole.'
'None of them have keyholes. With the other ones I just held the keys against this panel thing here and sooner or later one of them worked.'
'They won't work here. Krays would never give Ana access to his own study - or if he did once, he'd have revoked it by now.'
'True, but we could try them anyway.' The keys jangled in mid-air and approached the door, then stopped. 'Eva. Why aren't there guards here?'
He had a point. She would have expected to see whurthag-mechs outside the door. In fact, it now occurred to her that they hadn't seen a single one anywhere in the Library. 'No idea, but there's no time to ponder it. Consider it a gift.'
Tren went back to work with the keys. But the moment he touched one of them to the panel, everything began to go wrong. An alarm sounded at top volume, and almost instantly three Lokants appeared in the passage. Each held a weapon: some kind of firearm, Eva guessed, though they didn't look like any gun she'd ever seen. All three weapons were pointed at Krays's door.
'Reveal yourself,' said one of them.
For a moment, Eva stood frozen in panic. This was about as bad as it could get. The three Lokants blocked all possible exits; there was no way she and Tren could sneak past without being caught. And as she formed that thought, four more ran up, all carrying similar weapons.
They were caught, well and truly.
Tren, surprisingly, squeezed her hand, his thumb lightly stroking her fingers. An odd gesture to make under these circumstances, she thought, but before she had time to ponder it further Tren released her and his invisibility dissolved. He held up his hands, signalling that he was unarmed.
'Who are you?' demanded one of the Lokants, voice hard.
Tren said nothing. He didn't move as his would-be captors approached, weapons ready.
Eva felt sudden tears start to her eyes. The foolish boy was offering himself to appease Krays's people, hoping that they wouldn't realise he had an associate. That is what his little affectionate gesture had meant. But would she let him do it? She watched, stricken, as one of the Lokants secured Tren's hands. The rest kept their weapons trained on him, cutting off all possibility of escape.
'Check there's no one else,' said the woman to her colleagues.
Decision time. Eva suffered a brief, wild impulse to give herself up deliberately, make sure she was taken along with him. They'd get out together, later.
But that was foolish. Tren's heroics may be stupid, but he'd done it to protect her, and she'd have a better chance of freeing him later if she remained at liberty. She would have to be stronger than that, and practical - no matter how hard it was to leave him behind.
All of this passed through her mind in a split second. Decision made, she darted forward as the impenetrable line of Lokants broke, three of them stepping forward to check Tren's vicinity for accomplices. She stepped sideways and around, blessing the soft shoes she'd worn that masked her footsteps. One of the Lokants came so close she was sure she was caught, and stopped; but someone else shouted something and her near assailant brushed past, oblivious to her.
What had got his attention? Eva refused to be distracted until she was clear of the muddle of bodies; then she cast a brief glance over her shoulder.
'There's something here,' someone said, clutching at the air over his head. Then a black winged shape appeared in the air, swooping in circles over the heads of the assembled white-hairs.
Rikbeek, she called, touched by this display of loyalty but terrified lest he should be caught. For once he obeyed her summons first time and shot in her direction.
Eva paused only to cast one last, anguished glance at Tren, handcuffed and guarded by seven of the enemy. It broke her heart to run away, but she made herself do it, because he was right: if they were both captured, the chances of either of them escaping were about nil. She remembered Dev's tales of Krays's prison cells.
Forcing herself to turn her back on Tren, she ran down the passage as fast as she could, not slowing until she was well out of sight or hearing of the seven Lokants. Her invisibility was fading by this time, as she put distance between herself and Tren.
Rikbeek, she called again, packing it with the force of urgency. The gwaystrel dived for her, grabbing her coat just as she accessed the Map and travelled away.
She was going to need Limbane's help.