The Dwarf fixed Loren with his one dark eye, and there was a trace of amusement in his face. “You aren’t,” he said. “You aren’t supposed to know.”
Loren made a gesture of ultimate exasperation, and left the room again, returning with a shirt of his own, which he began cutting into strips.
“Loren, don’t blame yourself for letting the svart come through. You couldn’t have done anything.”
“Don’t be a fool! I should have been aware of its presence as soon as it tried to come within the circle.”
“I’m very seldom foolish, my friend.” The Dwarf’s tone was mild. “You couldn’t have known, because it was wearing this when I killed it.” Sören reached into his right trouser pocket and pulled out an object that he held up in his palm. It was a bracelet, of delicate silver workmanship, and set within it was a gem, green like an emerald.
“A vellin stone!” Loren Silvercloak whispered in dismay. “So it would have been shielded from me. Matt, someone gave a vellin to a svart alfar.”
“So it would seem,” the Dwarf agreed.
The mage was silent; he attended to the bandaging of Matt’s shoulder with quick, skilled hands. When that was finished he walked, still wordless, to the window. He opened it, and a late-night breeze fluttered the white curtains. Loren gazed down at the few cars moving along the street far below.
“These five people,” he said at last, still looking down. “What am I taking them back to? Do I have any right?”
The Dwarf didn’t answer.
After a moment, Loren spoke again, almost to himself. “I left so much out.”
“You did.”
“Did I do wrong?”
“Perhaps. But you are seldom wrong in these things. Nor is Ysanne. If you feel they are needed—”
“But I don’t know what for! I don’t know how. It is only her dreams, my premonitions…”
“Then trust yourself. Trust your premonitions. The girl is a hook, and the other one, Paul—”
“He is another thing. I don’t know what.”
“But something. You’ve been troubled for a long time, my friend. And I don’t think needlessly.”
The mage turned from the window to look at the other man. “I’m afraid you may be right. Matt, who would have us followed here?”
“Someone who wants you to fail in this. Which should tell us something.”
Loren nodded abstractedly. “But who,” he went on, looking at the green-stoned bracelet that the Dwarf still held, “who would ever give such a treasure into the hands of a svart alfar?”
The Dwarf looked down at the stone for a very long time as well before answering.
“Someone who wants you dead,” Matt Sören said.
Chapter 2
The girls shared a silent taxi west to the duplex they rented beside High Park. Jennifer, partly because she knew her roommate very well, decided that she wouldn’t be the first to bring up what had happened that night, what they both seemed to have heard under the surface of the old man’s words.
But she was dealing with complex emotions of her own, as they turned down Parkside Drive and she watched the dark shadows of the park slide past on their right. When they got out of the cab the late-night breeze seemed unseasonably chill. She looked across the road for a moment, at the softly rustling trees.
Inside they had a conversation about choices, about doing or not doing things, that either one of them could have predicted.
Dave Martyniuk refused Kim’s offer to share a cab and walked the mile west to his flat on Palmerston. He walked quickly, the athlete’s stride overlaid by anger and tension. You are too quick to renounce friendship, the old man had said. Dave scowled, moving faster. What did he know about it?
The telephone began ringing as he unlocked the door of his basement apartment.
“Yeah?” He caught it on the sixth ring.
“You are pleased with yourself, I am sure?”
“Jesus, Dad. What is it this time?”
“Don’t swear at me. It would kill you, wouldn’t it, to do something that would bring us pleasure.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” “Such language. Such respect.” “Dad, I don’t have time for this any more.” “Yes, hide from me. You went tonight as Vincent’s guest to this lecture. And then you went off after with the man he most wanted to speak with. And you couldn’t even think of asking your brother?”
Dave took a careful breath. His reflexive anger giving way to the old sorrow. “Dad, please believe me—it didn’t happen that way. Marcus went with these people I know because he didn’t feel like talking to the academics like Vince. I just tagged along.”
“You just tagged along,” his father mimicked in his heavy Ukrainian accent. “You are a liar. Your jealousy is so much that you—”
Dave hung up. And unplugged the telephone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn’t ring.
They said good-night to the girls and watched Martyniuk stalk off into the darkness.
“Coffee time, amigo,” Kevin Laine said brightly. “Much to talk about we have, yes?”
Paul hesitated, and in the moment of that hesitation Kevin’s mood shattered like glass.
“Not tonight, I think. I’ve got some things to do, Kev.”
The hurt in Kevin Laine moved to the surface, threatened to break through. “Okay,” was all he said, though. “Good night. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.” And he turned abruptly and jogged across Bloor against the light to where he’d parked his car. He drove home, a little too fast, through the quiet streets.
It was after one o’clock when he pulled into the driveway, so he entered the house as silently as he could, sliding the bolt gently home.
“I am awake, Kevin. It is all right.”
“What are you doing up? It’s very late, Abba.” He used the Hebrew word for father, as he always did.
Sol Laine, in pajamas and robe at the kitchen table, raised a quizzical eyebrow as Kevin walked in. “I need permission from my son to stay up late?”
“Who else’s?” Kevin dropped into one of the other chairs.
“A good answer,” his father approved. “Would you like some tea?”
“Sounds good.”
“How was this talk?” Sol asked as he attended to the boiling kettle.
“Fine. Very good, actually. We had a drink with the speaker afterwards.” Kevin briefly considered telling his father about what had happened, but only briefly. Father and son had a long habit of protecting each other, and Kevin knew that this was something Sol would be unable to handle. He wished it were otherwise; it would have been good, he thought, a little bitterly, to have someone to talk to.
“Jennifer is well? And her friend?”
Kevin’s bitterness broke in a wave of love for the old man who’d raised him alone. Sol had never been able to reconcile his orthodoxy with his son’s relationship with Catholic Jennifer—and had resented himself for not being able to. So through their short time together, and after, Kevin’s father had treated Jen like a jewel of great worth.
“She’s fine. Says hello. Kim’s fine, too.”
“But Paul isn’t?”
Kevin blinked. “Oh, Abba, you’re too sharp for me. Why do you say that?”
“Because if he was, you would have gone out with him afterwards. The way you always used to. You would still be out. I would be drinking my tea alone, all alone.” The twinkle in his eyes belied the lugubrious sentiments.
Kevin laughed aloud, then stopped when he heard the bitter note creeping in.
“No, he’s not all right. But I seem to be the only one who questions it. I think I’m becoming a pain in the ass to him. I hate it.”
“Sometimes,” his father said, filling the glass cups in their Russian-style metal holders, “a friend has to be that.”
“No one else seems to think there’s anything wrong, though. They just talk about how it takes time.” “It does take time, Kevin.” Kevin made an impatient gesture. “I know it does. I’m not that stupid. But I know him, too, I know him very well, and he’s… There’s something else here, and I don’t know what it is.”