Corridors of the House

            Nascine rode back to her flat immediately. She would file away Tartin’s strange actions – how he had broken into that strange tinker shop by the Finger’s Market - and deal with that when she could. For now, she wished only to process what Harren had told her.

            One thing of which she was certain was that the notion of Elona as an Agent of the House was impossible. Even in her most paranoid imaginings, Elona could not be a deep-cover Agent. If anything, Elona was probably the House’s greatest adversary.

            You think that fairly confidently for someone who did not believe the House existed until recently.

            Nascine hurriedly made for the lift, nearly forgetting to put the cord in her bike’s cable-plug.

            Harren had come to her. He knew she was investigating. The man was Thiefmaster of the Rookery, a position that was hardly low-clearance, or one to be given to a man who could, even within the slightest realm of possibility, be an enemy, or so she had thought. Could Harren himself be the Agent that Yasik had warned her about? Or perhaps he had been deceived – fed false information in order to foment chaos that might throw the Rookery off the real Agent’s scent. Either way, when it was his word against that of a woman who had ruled Retrein for almost three thousand years, Nascine felt it was Elona who deserved greater trust.

            She would have to be decisive. Every moment she held on to this meeting with Harren, she was declaring herself in his camp. Even staying home for the night could be unwise.

            The Queen seemed to prefer setting up their meetings herself. Nascine had never been the one to initiate. She would need to call upon the queen. She knew not to fret about judgment and interpretation – a good scout would tell only what he or she saw. She would tell Elona what Harren had said, and where, and when.

            A cup of tea. She needed one. Nascine went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. She stood there for several minutes. She passed the time by looking at the photos magnetically attached to the icebox. One of them was the old picture of her grandmother meeting the queen. It was a strange thing, to see this weathered and faded photograph portraying a woman that looked exactly as she did today. There was something unsettling about it. Those eyes that had seen so much – far more than any other human alive, Nascine was sure – and yet they looked just as clear and white as a healthy young woman’s.

            What are you, Elona? she thought.

            The kettle began to whistle. That seemed fast. There had not been much water in there, so perhaps she had merely overestimated how long it would take. The real point was that tea would be there soon.

            She tossed a bag of Terely Tea into a mug and poured the boiling water over it. The steam rose up, and for a moment she felt a calm wash over her. She stirred the tea to cool it – she required no milk or sugar this time – and finally took a sip.

            As if the tea were a potion, Nascine felt every muscle in her body suddenly relax, She smiled, rejoicing in the relief and allowed her mind to drift to less worrying thoughts.

            She put the mug down on the counter. It slipped and fell on the floor, shattering.

            What…?

            She stumbled backward, her eyelids growing leaden. The feeling rushing through her was pleasant. It was shockingly pleasant, like the moment that one feels as one truly drifts away into sleep.

            When she hit the ground, it didn’t even hurt. Or rather, it hurt distantly, a mere memory of pain.

            The world flowed around her, as if everything she could see was a projection on a fountain’s spray. She seemed to be sitting in a chair upholstered with fake leather. Everything was totally silent – it was as if her mind had simply shut off the notion of sound.

            She stood, feeling totally weightless, and drifted down the corridor in which she had found herself, her bare toes occasionally brushing the black and white tiles on the floor.

            The corridor opened up, and she found herself floating above a still, cold lake high above the tree line on some cold mountain. The sky was marbled with grey and white clouds.

            There was a cacophonous howl of wind, so intense that she felt tears streaming from her eyes. She suddenly felt as if she were in a different place, below the mountains, in a forest. She did not know the place.

            She was walking now – her feet touched the ground – but she still felt that this could not be real, that she was still having some sort of dream.

            They (and she was not alone now, was she?) came to a small clearing in the woods. There was a thatched-roof hut, very small, that she felt pushed toward. The entrance was perfectly dark, and she felt trepidation well up inside her like a rushing river of frigid water.

            “Easy now,” said the man standing over her. “Just try to breathe.” The room was very dark, and she could barely see the man’s face, just enough to note that he wore a pair of spectacles. The only illumination seemed to be an oil lamp on the other side of the room.

            She was soaking wet. Her hair was saturated with water. She had been wrapped in a thick wool blanket, and, she realized, she was naked underneath it.

            She tried to sit up, but found that her muscles refused to do the job.

            “It’s only been about twelve hours. You’ll have to give yourself a little more time,” said the man. He had a Narcian accent, and spoke with a confident quickness that made her think he might be a military officer, or at least someone who considered himself very powerful.

            “Where am I?” she tried to say, though it came out more as “Ere m’I?”

            “We’ll have to talk about that when you’re more fully recovered. Suffice it to say that we just pulled you out of the Lockey River.” Nascine’s vision was growing clearer. She could see that he was an older man, perhaps in his late fifties. “My name is Barclay,” he said.

            Nascine blinked. She could now see that they were in a small room, with a doorway that led off to the rest of the building she was in. It was similarly dark in there, also dimly illuminated by lanterns.

            She could make out a few figures there. They were bustling around, but beyond the movement and the impression that they were probably men rather than women, she could not tell anything else.

            “Who?” she managed to get out in a decently audible manner.

            “We’re friends. You drowned. You’re very lucky we’re the ones who found you. Someone slipped you a powerful drug - something most people wouldn’t look for, wouldn’t know how to treat.”

            Nascine tried to stretch her vocal muscles internally. They felt stuck, as if someone had allowed a layer of paint to dry over them. “I’m… gracious.” The words came out weak, and it felt as if something was scratching her throat as she said them. “But who are you?”

            Barclay smiled awkwardly – an odd expression on his weathered veteran’s face. “Well, technically speaking, we’re the House.”

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2013)