Silas should have been delighted with the find. He kept the book in his bedroom that night, leafing through it and reading passages aloud until the first gray streaks appeared in the sky. But he could not shake a sense of foreboding. Karik’s footprints had made it clear he’d walked into the river. Drowned himself.
Now there was this strange business of the book.
Why had he kept such a secret?
In the morning Silas reluctantly turned the book over to the library. In a society that lacks the printing press, a library is necessarily a facility whose primary concern is security. Users are permitted access to books only under close supervision, and nobody ever takes one home.
The custodians thanked him effusively, gushed and burbled as he must have to Chaka Milana the previous evening. The Director came out and assured Silas that the board would not forget his services, and they were all still poring over the volume when he left.
His morning was free and he was still too excited to sleep, so he paid a second visit to Flojian, finding him at his waterfront shipping dock. He was supervising a half-dozen workmen who were constructing a new ferry. He wore a yellow cotton shirt and gray workpants. “They don’t get anything right unless you watch them every minute,” he told Silas. “When we started this business, you could trust people to do an honest day’s work for a day’s pay.” He squinted, shook his head, and sighed. “What can I do for you?”
The ferry was going to be a large double-deck barge. When finished, it would use sail, poles, and a bank of oarsmen to cross the river to Westlok. After unloading, it would be hauled upstream by a team of horses to a dock almost two miles north of its east bank point of departure. There it would reload and begin its return voyage cross-river.
Silas expressed his admiration for the vessel, and switched quickly to the subject at hand. “Flojian, I can’t imagine why your father never told anyone about the Mark Twain.”
“Let’s go inside,” said Flojian. He led the way into a battered cubicle piled high with ledgers, and pointed Silas to a chair. “When he showed it to me, I pleaded with him to make it public. For one thing, it would have gone a long way to restoring his reputation.”
“What did he say?”
“He said no. Then he said the only reason he was showing it to me was to make sure I understood the bequest: that the book was to be given to the woman, no questions asked.”
“Which means that he wanted it out, but he didn’t want to do it himself.”
“Didn’t want it done during his lifetime, I’d say.”
“But why?”
Flojian shrugged. “Wish I knew.” There was pain in his eyes. “It hurts to have been locked out like that. I was his son, Silas. I never did anything to cause him grief. Or to give him reason not to trust me.” He looked tired. “Look, I thought I’d find out what was going on in due time. Just be patient and wait for him to tell me. It never occurred to me he was getting ready to take his life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe I could have helped if he’d said something.” They were seated in worn but comfortable fabric chairs. looking at each other across a table. Silas pressed his fingers against his temples. “Was there anything unusual in the anuma?” he asked.
“No. Just personal items. Clothes, his pen, his hourglass, Things like that.”
“No map?”
“No.”
“No journal? Notebooks? Diary? Records of any kind?”
“No. Just mundane stuff.”
“You’re sure?”
Flojian hesitated. His eyes glanced momentarily away. “I’m sure. I packed it myself.”
Silas looked at him.
Flojian squirmed. “Okay. There was a copy of something purporting to be The Notebooks of Showron Voyager. But it was a fake.”
Silas felt a rush of despair. “And you burned it?” Showron was the Baranji scholar who, according to tradition, had been the last known person to visit Haven. He had spoken with its guardians, had examined some of the manuscripts, had even left sketches. “How do you know it was a fake?” he demanded.
“Because my father tried to use it to find the place. And he never got there, did he?” He looked at Silas, challenging him to deny the truth of the statement. “Look, don’t you think I know what my father’s reputation is? People think he was a coward because he was the only person to come back. He had to live with that. I had to live with it.” He got up, walked to the window, and stared out at the dock. “It’s no secret I didn’t like him very much. He was tyrannical, self-centered, secretive. He had a short temper, and he didn’t worry unduly about other people’s feelings. You know that.”
Silas nodded.
Flojian’s gaze turned inward. “When he came back, he withdrew from me as well as from the world. He sat in his wing of the house and almost never came out. That was his territory. Okay. I learned to live with it. But I’d be less than honest, Silas, if I didn’t admit that his death has lifted a lot of weight from my shoulders.” He took a deep breath. “I’m glad he’s gone. But I don’t care what anybody says: He wouldn’t have abandoned anyone.”
A long silence drew itself around them. “I agree,” said Silas at last. “But that doesn’t explain where the Connecticut Yankee came from. Have you noticed anything unusual around the house?”
“Unusual in what way?”
Damn the man. Was he, after all, naturally obtuse? Or was he hiding something? “Anything that might tell us where he got it. For all we know, there might even be other stuff hidden somewhere.”
Flojian’s mouth hardened. “There are no other unaccounted-for books.”
Silas wanted to point out that the Mark Twain was a major find, that there was a serious enigma here, and that a hundred years from now people would still be trying to understand what happened. We’re close to it, so we ought to get some answers. But he knew it would sound ridiculous in Flojian’s ears.
“I tell you what,” Flojian said. “I’m leaving this afternoon for Masandik. I’ll be back in a couple of days. When I return, I’ll look through my father’s things. If there’s anything there, I’ll let you know.”
Quait Esterhok was a senator’s son. Years ago, he had been one of Silas’s prime students. He’d been blessed with a good intellect and an enthusiasm for scholarship that suggested great potential as a researcher. Silas had hoped he would stay with the Imperium, and had even persuaded the board to offer a position. But Quait, pressured by his father, had declined and instead accepted a military commission.
That was six years ago. Quait had returned from time to time, had sat in on a few seminars, and had even treated his old master to dinner occasionally. It was consequently no surprise when Silas found a note from him in his mail, and the man himself waiting in a nearby pub favored by the faculty.
The boyish features had hardened somewhat, and Silas saw at once that he’d acquired a new level of self-assurance. Quait rose from a corner stall as he entered, smiled broadly, and embraced him. “Master Silas,” he said, “it’s good to see you again.”
They wandered over to the cookery and collected slices of roast chicken and corn, called for a bottle of wine, and fell to reminiscing. Quait talked about the changes in the military
that had come with the foundation of the League. “Everyone does not profit from peace,” he laughed. The wine flowed freely, and Silas was feeling quite ebullient when his companion surprised him by putting down the chicken leg he’d been chewing and asking what he knew about the Mark Twain.
“You know about that?” asked Silas.
“I think the whole world knows by now. Is it true?”
“Yes,” he said. “As far as I can judge.”
Quait bent over the table so they could not be overheard, although the loud conversation around them all but precluded that possibility. “Where did he find it? Do you know?”
“No. No one seems to know.”
“Isn’t that strange? Where could he possibly have got it?”
Silas shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“I had a thought.”
“Go ahead.”
“It occurred to me that Karik might have found what he was looking for.”
The possibility had occurred to Silas. But it raised even bigger questions. If Karik Endine had found Haven, he could have deflected much of the disgrace that had settled about his name. “I don’t see how it could be,” he said.
“You mean, why he didn’t say anything? He lost everybody. Maybe his mind went.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you conceive of any sequence of events that would lead him to keep such a discovery secret?”
“No,” said Silas. “Which is why I think the Mark Twain has nothing to do with Haven.” Quait’s gray eyes had grown relentless. There was a quality in this man that the boy had not possessed. “Look, Quait, if they found Haven, don’t you think he’d have brought back more than one book?”
“But why did he keep it quiet? If you found something like that, Silas, would you not mention it to someone?”
“I’d tell the world,” Silas said.
“As would I. As would any rational person.” He speared a piece of white meat and examined it absentmindedly. “Are we sure there are no more of these things lying around?”
The wine was good. Silas drank deep, let its taste linger on his tongue. “I’ve invited Flojian to look for more.”
“Who’s Flojian?”
“His son.”
“Silas—” Quait shook his head. “If I were his son, and I found, say, a Shakespearean collection, I’d burn it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was his son. If there’s anything there, Karik was hiding it for a reason. I’d honor that reason.”
“Flojian didn’t like him very much.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll protect his father’s name. It’s too late to come forward with new finds. Look at the way we’re reacting to the Mark Twain. It smells too much of conspiracy.”
Silas thought it over. “I think you’re wrong. If he felt that protective, he wouldn’t have turned the Mark Twain over to Chaka.”
“Maybe he hadn’t put things together,” said Quait. “He might have needed you to do that for him. Now he knows his father’s reputation, such as it is, is at stake. Has it occurred to you he might have murdered the others?”
Silas laughed. “No, it hasn’t. That’s out of the question.”
“You’re sure.”
“I’m sure. I knew the man.”
“Maybe something happened out there. Maybe he thought he could keep everything for himself.”
“Quait, you’ve been chasing too many bandits.”
“Maybe. But I’ll guarantee you, Flojian’s search won’t turn up anything.”
Silas finished off the last of his roast chicken. ‘Well,” he said, “Flojian’s going to be out of town for a couple of days. We could consider burglary.”
The culture that had developed in the valley of the Mississippi was male-dominated. Women were treated with courtly respect, but were traditionally relegated to domestic chores. The major professions, save the clergy, were dosed to them. They could own, but not transmit, property. The villa granted to Chaka Milana by her younger brother, Sauk, would revert to him in the event of either her marriage or her death.
That Chaka remained unattached in her twenty-fifth year led many of her acquaintances to suspect she was more interested in retaining her home than in establishing a family. Chaka herself wondered about the truth of the charge.
Her father, Tarbul, had been a farmer and (like everyone in the tumultuous times before the League) a soldier. He’d returned from one campaign with a beautiful young captive who was repatriated after the war, and whom he later courted and won. This was Lia of Masandik, a merchant’s daughter, and a born revolutionary. “High-spirited,” Tarbul had said of her.
Lia had been appalled by the arbitrary chaos of constant warfare, mostly brought on, she thought, by male idiocy. She had consequently invested heavily in the education of all her children, determined to give them the best possible chance at independence. This was not a strategy with which her husband had concurred, but he was interested enough in keeping the peace to avoid opposing his determined wife. Ironically, his firstborn, Ann, showed little aptitude for the farm or for the hunting expeditions that were the lifeblood of the father’s existence. The boy was given to art and debate and draughts. Not the sort of qualities to make a father proud.
In the end it had been Chaka who’d joined her father in the hunt, and who managed the farm in his absence. On one memorable occasion, during a raid by a Makar force, she had led the defense. “Your mother would have been proud of you,” he’d told her. It was the ultimate compliment.
Lia had died after contracting a virulent illness as Chaka approached adolescence. Her father was killed seven years later in a gunfight with poachers. The farm went to Sauk, while she moved eventually to the villa and established a living as a silversmith and jewelry designer.
Chaka wanted a family. She wanted a good spouse, a man who could engage her emotions, whose spirit she would be pleased to pass on to her children. But she simply hadn’t found anyone like that yet. And, living in a society in which most girls were married by seventeen, she was beginning to feel a sense of urgency. And of fear. Although she would not admit it to herself, this was why Raney was now prominent in her life. She was, at long last, prepared to settle.
The sundial at the foot of Calagua Hill registered the third afternoon hour. Chaka took time to wander through the bazaar.
She had no competitors among the city jewelry shops, who appealed to those customers who were primarily interested in economy and glitter. Chaka had established her reputation as an artist, from whom one could either buy fine pieces off the shelf. or have them custom made. Nevertheless, she knew the people who ran the other businesses and enjoyed spending time with them. So she whiled away an afternoon that seemed strangely restless. Toward the end of the day she stopped by the library and basked in the admiration and gratitude that Connecticut Yankee generated. She was delighted to discover she’d acquired a considerable degree of celebrity.
Silas came in while she was there. He was in a jovial mood and joked about how he and a former student had considered burglarizing Flojian’s place. “He’s out of town, and the militia could go through the house without waking up Toko,” he said. Still, at sundown, she returned to Piper, her mount, feeling out of sorts. This should have been a good time for her, a time to celebrate her fortune. Yet she had never felt more alone. Raney was waiting at the west gate. He looked good on a horse, far more graceful than one would normally expect from a shopkeeper. He was handsome, and she did not want to let him get away. He was reasonably intelligent, he treated her well, and he would be a good provider. Furthermore, Chaka lived in a society which tended to dismiss romantic notions as so much petty nonsense. Mar-stage was for procreation and mutual support and economic stability. Her father had summed up this philosophy when he realized she was imbibing some of her mother’s ill-advised emotions. Marry a friend, and preferably a friend with means, he had said. You cannot do better than that. He would have approved heartily of Raney.
“I think you’re right about the book,” she said, as they rode out of the city. “Eventually, I’ll sell it. For now, I’ve turned it over to the Senatorial Library for safekeeping.”
“Good.” His congenial features showed that he heartily approved of this common-sense decision. Take your time with it, find out what it’ll bring, and get the best price you can. Having the library put it on display’s a smart idea. That can’t hurt.” He grinned. It was a good smile, warm and genuine, the smile of a man at peace with the world. His soft blue eyes were almost feminine. They lingered on her, and expressed more clearly than words ever could his devotion to her. He’d proposed marriage several weeks ago, and she had put him off, told him she was not ready. She’d expected he would sulk or withdraw, but to her surprise he’d laughed and told her she was worth waiting for and he would be patient. “I’ll try again,” he’d assured her.
His rich brown hair hung to his shoulders. Like most of the young men of the period, he was clean-shaven. He rode silently at her side and there was no tension between them.
Maybe it was time.
She straightened herself in the saddle. “I’d like very much to know where it came from,” she said.
“I can’t see that it matters, Chaka.” He commented idly on the weather, noting how extremely pleasant it was. He looked around, surveying the sunlight and the river, and his glance took in the Iron Pyramid, rising in the south. “He probably found it in a ruin somewhere.”
“Maybe.” The road wound into thick, lush forest. It began its long climb up the series of ridges that formed the eastern bank. A military patrol cantered past, resplendent in blue uniforms and white plumes. Their officer saluted Chaka.
“What else?” asked Raney, swinging around in his saddle to watch the horsemen ride away.
“I don’t know. I think there’s more to this than Flojian’s telling.”
Raney’s eyes came to rest on her. “I can’t imagine what it could be,” he said patiently.
“Nor can I. But I just don’t understand what happened.”
“Look, the truth is probably very simple. He felt guilty about being the only survivor of the expedition. Anybody would. So he gave you his most valuable possession. It’s an offering, an act of penance. He was trying to soothe his conscience. I don’t think there’s anything very mysterious about it.”
“Why did he wait until he died?”
“What do you mean?”
“If he was trying to soothe his conscience, why didn’t he soothe it while he was alive?”
“That’s easy, Chaka. Because he didn’t want to let go of the book. So you become an heir. That way, he wins all the way around. He can be generous with you, and it doesn’t cost him anything. We know he didn’t like his son, so he makes a statement there too.”
The conversation drifted to other, more mundane, topics. One of the senators had been caught in a tax scandal. Business at Raney’s establishment was picking up. One of Chaka’s friends had begun studying for the priesthood.
“What I can’t understand,” she said, as they rode through Baffle’s Pass, where the trees intertwine and form a green tunnel almost a hundred yards long, “is that Karik didn’t tell anybody about this. Not anybody.”
When he saw it was hopeless to try to save the animal, Ann let it go aid swam for shore. We thought he’d make it, but every time he got close, the current pushed him out again.
She could not get the image clear in her mind: Ann’s clumsy stroke fighting the rushing waters.
Afterward, Chaka was never certain precisely when she made up her mind to break into Flojian’s villa. She went to bed that night with a picture of the north wing in her mind, and her stomach churning. Sleep did not come. She progressed from contemplating the ferry operator’s secret to considering the consequences of getting caught. She thought about spending the rest of her life wondering why Karik Endine had concealed his recovery. The mechanics of actually doing a breakin did not seem daunting. Presumably the doors and windows on the ground floor would be locked. She remembered seeing a tree whose limbs overhung the house on the north. It should be possible to climb the tree and drop down onto the roof. Once that far, she could get in through the courtyard or from one of the balconies. She’d almost brought the subject up with Raney on the ride home, to give him the opportunity to volunteer. But she knew he would not. He would instead try to dissuade her, and would eventually become annoyed if she persisted, and condescending if she didn’t.
Flojian was away. There was only Toko, who would certainly be asleep in the servant’s quarters.
Not really intending to do it, she went over the details in her mind, where she would leave Piper, how to approach the property, what might go wrong, how she would gain entrance, whether there were any dogs about. (She couldn’t remember any.) As she lay safe and warm in the big bed, she realized gradually there was no real obstacle. And she owed it to her brother to proceed.
She considered how easy it would be, and her heart began to beat faster.
When Silas had joked with Chaka about burglarizing Karik’s home, he was, of course, expressing the wish that it would happen but that he wouldn’t have to do it. This is not to imply that Silas was a coward. His shoulder still ached from a bullet taken during service with the militia. He had stayed behind during the six-month plague to help the priests with the victims. And on one particularly memorable occasion, he had used a stick to face down a cougar.
Nor was he above bending a law or two to get his way. As he often reminded his students, laws are not ethics. But the risk entailed in a breakin daunted him. How would it look if an ethics instructor were caught burglarizing the home of a friend?
He was still smiling at the thought when he assumed his place in front of an evening seminar in the Imperium.
The Imperium was not an academic institution in the traditional sense. Its students, privileged and generally talented, might more properly be thought of as participants in an ongoing effort to extend human knowledge. Or to recover it, for it was obvious that much had been lost.
The questions naturally arising from the single unrelenting fact of the ruins dominated Illyrian thought. Who were these people? What systems of law and government sustained them? What purposes had they set out for themselves? What was the extent of the ruins?
The young men came when their own schedules permitted, and they discussed philosophy or geometry with whichever masters happened to be available. They were driven by pride and curiosity, they were highly motivated, and they wanted to understand the Roadmakers. It was an important goal, because something more elemental than mere technology had been lost. The Plague had killed indiscriminately, had carried off whole populations, and with them had gone whatever driving force had produced the great roadways and the structures that touched the clouds. Beyond the walls of the Imperium, the Illyrians had built a society whose sole purpose was to maintain political stability and an economic status quo. There was little discernible drive for progress.
The operations of the Imperium were funded by the Illyrian treasury, and by donations from wealthy parents and, increasingly, from those who had attended in their youth, and who came by periodically to join discussions which ranged from the mechanics of astronomy to the reality of the gods to the unwieldy relationship between diameter and circumference. (A school of skeptics were then using the latter fact to argue that the universe was ill conceived and irrational.)
The nine masters had been selected as much for their ability to inspire as for their knowledge. They were entertainers as well as teachers, and they were the finest entertainers that Illyria could produce. Silas was proud of his work and considered himself, not entirely without justification, one of the city’s foremost citizens.
He was conscious that there were in fact two Silas Glotes: one who was shy and uncertain of himself, who disliked attending social gatherings where he was expected to mix with strangers; and another who could dazzle people he had never seen before with wit and insight. In fact, all of the masters seemed to display, to a degree, this tendency toward a dual personality. Bent Capa, for example, mumbled at dinner but rose to eloquence in the courtyards.
In the seminars, subjects were designated, but once started, a discussion might lead anywhere. There was no formal curriculum, and the philosophy of the institution saw more benefit in exposure to a wise master than to a formal body of instruction. Given the level of interest among those in attendance, the system could hardly fail to work.
The death of Karik Endine had ignited discussions in many of the seminars, particularly with regard to Haven and the Abraham Polk legend. Librarians reported that both copies of The Travels were in constant use. Polk became the issue of the hour: Was he historical? Or mythical? If he was historical, had he indeed devoted himself to rescuing the knowledge of the Roadmakers?
Silas was of several minds on the matter. He wanted to believe in the tale of the adventurer who lived on the edge of a dying world, who with a small band of devoted companions carried on a desperate campaign to save the memory of that world against the day when civilization would come again. It was a magnificent story.
And it was possible. Not all the trappings, of course. There had certainly never been a Quebec, the mystical boat that possessed neither sails nor oars, that was capable of diving into the depths of the sea. Nor the undersea entrance to Haven, accessible, presumably, only to the submersible. Nor could Polk have rescued all the people for whom he was credited.
Maybe Polk had existed. Maybe someone tried to save something. And the stories got blown out of proportion. In that sense, there might well be a Haven somewhere.
On the day after his conversation with Quait, a visitor from the Temple, a priest, took her place among the participants in Silas’s assigned conference room. There were nine others, all young men. The seminar’s announced topic was: “Can Men Know the Divine Will?”
Although women were not expressly forbidden from attending Imperium seminars, they were not encouraged, on the grounds that space was limited and intellectual development was essential for the males from whom the League’s leaders would eventually be selected. But women did visit from time to time, and they were particularly welcome if they had specialized knowledge to contribute or a professional interest in the proceedings.
Silas took a few minutes to have each of his participants identify himself. Only the priest was an unknown commodity.
“My name is Avila Kap,” she said. “I represent no one, and I’m here solely because the topic is fascinating.” She smiled dis-armingly.
Avila was about thirty. She wore the green robe of her calling, hood drawn back, white cord fastened about her waist, white sash over her right shoulder. The colors of the prime seasons. Her black hair was cut short. She glanced around the table with dark, intelligent eyes. There was an almost mocking glint in them, as if they were dismissing the Imperium’s reputation as a rationalist institution. Silas thought that her good looks were enhanced by the robe.
He set the parameters for the dialogue: “In order that we avoid spending the afternoon on extraneous issues, we will assume for purposes of this discussion that divine beings do exist, and that they do take an interest in human affairs. The question then becomes, have they attempted to communicate with us? If so, by what characteristics can we know a divine revelation?”
Kaymon Rezdik, a middle-aged merchant who had been sporadically attending the seminars longer than Silas could remember, raised his hand. “Considering that we have the Chayla,” he said, “I’m surprised that we’re even having this discussion.”
“Nonsense,” said Telchik, an occasional visitor from Argon. Most of the others present nodded approvingly. Telchik was a handsome youth, brown-haired and blue-eyed. “If the Chayla is the work of the gods, they speak with many voices.”
Among the group that day, only Kaymon and one of the younger participants and, of course, the priest, could be described as believers. Most of the others, in the fashion of the educated classes of the time, were skeptics who maintained that either the gods did not exist, or that they took pains to keep well away from the human race. (The view that the gods were survivors from the age of the Roadmakers had been losing ground over the past decade, and had no champions in the field that day.)
“What characteristics,” asked Silas smoothly, “would you demand of a communication before you would pronounce it to be of divine origin?”
Kaymon looked puzzled. “The official sanction of the Temple,” he said, glancing hopefully toward Avila.
“I think,” said Avila, “that, in this case, you are the Temple.”
“Exactly,” said Silas. “If a message were laid before you, with supernatural claims, how would you arrive at a judgment?”
Kaymon’s gaze swept left and right, seeking help. “There is no way to be sure,” said Telchik, “unless you are standing there when it happens. And even then—”
“Even then,” said Orvon, an advocate’s son, “we may be seeing only what we wish to see.”
“Then we may safely conclude,” said Telchik, “that there is no way to know whether a communication does in fact have divine backing.”
Several of the disputants glanced uncomfortably at Avila, to see how she was taking the general assault on her career. But she watched placidly, with a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“And what have you to say of all this?” Silas asked her. “They may be right,” she said matter-of-factly. “Even assuming that Shanta exists, we cannot know for certain that she really cares about us. We may well be living in a world that has come about by accident. In which everything is transient. In which nothing matters.” Her eyes were very dark. “I don’t say I believe this, but it is a possibility. But that possibility is outside the parameters of the discussion. I would propose to you that the gods may find us a difficult subject for communication.”
“How do you mean?” asked Orvon. She pressed her palms together. “Orvon, may I ask where you live?”
“Three miles outside the city. On the heights above River Road.”
“Good.” She looked pleased. “It’s a lovely location. Let us suppose that, this evening, when you are on your way home, the Goddess herself were to walk out from behind some trees to wish you good day. How would you respond?”
“He would lose his voice,” laughed Telchik.
“I suppose it would be a little unnerving.”
“And if she gave you a message to bring back to us?”
“I would most certainly do so.”
She nodded and raised her eyes to encompass the others. “And how would we respond to Orvon’s claim?”
“Nobody’d believe it,” said Selenico, youngest of the participants.
“And what,” asked Silas, “if the Goddess had said hello instead to Avila? Would we believe her?”
“No,” said Orvon, “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” asked Avila.
“Because you are not objective.”
“No,” said Silas. “Not because she is not objective, but because she is committed. There is a difference.”
“Indeed,” rumbled Telchik. “I should like to hear what it is. Shanta would do better to give her message to me.”
“Yes,” said Avila, brightening, “because if you came with such a story, we still might not believe it, but we would know that something very odd had happened.”
Sigmon, a young man whose primary interest was in the sciences, suggested that a deity who wished to communicate would necessarily want an unbeliever, to allay suspicions. “And furthermore,” he said, “he might want to go for drama, rather than a simple statement that we should do thus and so.”
“How do you mean?” asked Kaymon. Sigmon’s brow wrinkled. “Well,” he said, “if I were a god, and I wanted to tell the Illyrians that Haven exists—” All faces turned in his direction.
“—I can think of nothing better than inspiring Karik Endine to produce a copy of the Connecticut Yankee.”
The moon set at about midnight. It was well into the early hours when Chaka got out of the bed in which she had lain sleepless, and dressed. She put on dark blue riding breeches and a black shirt. She had no dark jacket and had to make do with a light brown coat that was more awkward than she would have liked. (The temperature had fallen too far to try to get by without wearing something warm.) She pulled on a pair of moccasins, attached a lamp to her belt, and stopped in her workshop to pick up a couple of thin shaping blades.
Shortly thereafter she stood in the shadow of Flojian’s villa, listening to his horses move uneasily in the barn. A brisk northern wind shook the trees. The night was dark under banks of clouds. The only lights she could see were out on the river, moving slowly downstream.
The villa was dark. The tree on the northern side was higher than she remembered, its branches flimsier. But she got lucky. Before attempting the climb she circled the house, trying windows and doors. The latch on one of the shutters in the rear had not been properly secured and she was able to worry it loose. She opened the window, pulled the draperies apart, and peered into the darkness beyond.
Seeing nothing to give her pause, she threw a leg over the sill and climbed into the room. This was the first time in her adult life she had flagrantly violated someone’s property, and she was already trying to compose her story in case she got caught. Too much alcohol. I didn’t think this looked like my house. Or, I fell off my horse last night. Hit my head. I don’t remember anything since. Where am I?
She was in the reception room where she had first met Silas. To her left was the inner parlor in which Flojian had told her of her bequest. And to the right was the north wing, Karik Endine’s solitary domain. Curtains were drawn across all the windows, and the room was quite dark. She waited for the tables and chairs to appear, and then navigated among them until she found a doorway in the right-hand wall. It opened into more darkness. She went through and closed the door softly behind her.
It was a passageway. She bumped into a chair, started to feel her way around a server, and knocked over a candlestick holder. It fell with a terrible clatter and she froze.
But the noise seemed not to attract anyone’s attention. She righted the candlestick holder and passed through another door into a large sitting room, illuminated through a bank of windows. This was, she knew, Karik’s wing. She looked outside to assure herself no one was about, and used a match to light the candle in her lamp.
The room was masculine, filled with hand-drawn charts and drinking mugs, and heavy oak furniture of a somber cast. (The charts depicted areas of political influence during various eras in the valley’s history.) A chess game, with ornate pieces, was in progress on a tabletop.
A wide set of carpeted stairs led to the second floor. The lower level consisted of three rooms. She opened cabinets, inspected desk drawers, examined closets. The area had been thoroughly cleaned. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, everything was gone. No empty glass nor scrap of paper remained to show there had been an occupant only a few days ago.
She was about to start upstairs when she heard a squeal. The hinges on the door from the corridor. She doused her light and ducked behind a curtain just as the door opened and someone thrust a lamp into the room. “Who’s here?” Toko’s voice.
Her heart beat so hard she could not believe it wasn’t audible. He came into the room a few steps and raised the lamp. She tried not to breathe. The shadows lengthened and shifted as Toko looked first this way and then that.
Then, apparently satisfied, he withdrew and closed the door. His steps faded, but she waited several minutes. When she was convinced he would not come back, she tiptoed upstairs.
There were two rooms on the upper level: a bedroom and a work area. The bedroom was made up, and it too retained no sign of its former owner.
The workroom was long, L-shaped, with wide windows. The-curtains were drawn back, providing a view of the river. Glasses and goblets filled a cabinet. The windows opened onto a wide balcony, where several chairs surrounded a circular table. One might have thought the occupant had been accustomed to entertaining.
There were two padded chairs inside, a long worktable with several drawers, a desk, a pair of matching cabinets, some empty shelves, and a chest.
The chest was locked.
The worktable drawers were empty, save for one or two pieces of paper. The desk contained a few pens, some ink, and a blank notebook. She found a sweater in one of the cabinets, somehow missed in the press to collect everything. And a revolver, which she recognized as the work of the same gunsmith who had supplied most of her own family’s weapons. Strange, she thought, that we forgot how to print books. But we remember how to make guns.
She knelt down in front of the chest.
The lock was designed to keep out curious children, rather than thieves. She produced the narrower of her blades, and inserted it. Minutes later the mechanism gave and she raised the lid.
She looked down at an oilskin packet. It was roughly sixteen inches wide by a foot. She lifted it out, set it down under the lamp, and released the binding cords.
It contained a sketch which she recognized immediately as her brother’s work. It was dated July 25, making it later than any of the others.
The drawing depicted a rock wall rising out of a frothy sea. A sliver of moon floated in a sky swept with dark clouds. It was one of his better efforts, but there was nothing extraordinary about the drawing itself.
Nothing extraordinary, that is, until she saw the title, which appeared in its customary place below his signature.
Haven.