Varden’s lips thinned.  Anna decided it would be gentlemanly to rescue him.  “It’s only postponed, isn’t it?” she said lightly.  “I think old empires sound rather interesting.  I didn’t know Pumphrey had an antiquities collection, or an interest in . . . Narmos, was it?”  She smiled at the bald man.  “I had the impression he wasn’t a very, um, grounded person.”

“He seemed solid enough to me, when I spoke to him a few weeks ago,” the man said.  “He wanted to see about bringing some heavy pieces up from the coast.  We talked business.  He’s a canny man, Pumphrey.  Might have come up from little, but he’ll be ruling a trade empire in a decade’s time if he keeps at it.”

The younger woman laughed.  “Dear Lord Ferlezand, we really must be discussing different Pumphreys.  The one I know couldn’t rule his own household.  Have I told you about that dreary thing he called a party, last Wintereve?”

            The conversation turned to parties, and Anna let herself be steered away into the woodcuts gallery.  Varden smiled at her.  “Thank you for that.”

            “I say, a connection between Pumphrey and Narmos.”  Anna smiled back.  “That’s worth following up on, don’t you think?”

            “Only if old Ferlezand is right.  He was telling the truth when he said archeology wasn’t his line.  He wouldn’t know Narmos from Alarna.”

            “But we could find out if Pumphrey does.  He has to be keeping those stone slabs somewhere.  Does he have an estate here in Germhacht, do you know?”  From his accent, Anna thought that Pumphrey, like Varden, was Arienish.  But Varden’s father had a summer home in Germhacht.  Pumphrey might, as well.

            Varden shook his head.  “No, his estates, if you can call them that, are home in Arien.  His factories, too, right on the river in Logansburg.  Unsightly monstrosities.”

            “Then what is he doing here in Germhacht, do you suppose?”

            “Other than collecting mindless followers?” Varden shrugged.  “The Society headquarters and library may have attracted him.  Or he might simply be here on business.  Regardless, he’s publicly known to be staying at the Derdrien House, here in town.”

“Isn’t that where he’s giving his lecture?”  The one the Pumphrites had interrupted Anna’s contemplation of DeAngellis to invite her and Varden to.  “Let’s shock him and attend.  Who knows what he might be hiding in that house?”

            Varden frowned.  “Awful parlor tricks, most likely.  Aren’t those beastly people having a séance?  It’ll be moving mirrors and steam shrieks, to startle his gullible guests.”

            “You’ve seen that sort of thing before?”  Varden didn’t strike her as the sort who visited spiritualists.

“All these charlatans have their strategies.”  Varden shrugged.  “We saw plenty of fortune tellers, wizards, and mediums while traveling through the Borghols. Mirrors, wires, and noise-makers, for the most part.”  His arms were crossed, and he drummed his fingers.  Irritation, or some deeper nervousness?

“We might arrive fashionably late, and miss that bit,” Anna suggested.  “Surely we could survive the lecture.”

Varden stilled his fingers.  “An expert eye can see through such tricks easily.  It wouldn’t be difficult to unmask him.”

Did he want to go to the séance or not?  He was fascinatingly difficult to read.   “Whether or not Pumphrey is hiding stolen antiquities,” Anna said slowly, watching Varden’s face, “he is certainly misleading innocent people.  Stopping such a fraud would be something worth doing.”

“You think so?” Varden met her eyes.  Those intense darks were especially intense right now.

“I do.”  She let out a breath. “As long as you’re sure you can tell pretend supernatural occurances from real ones.”

Varden laughed, sudden and surprising.  “Lady Anna, don’t tell me you believe there are real ghosts and such?”

Anna considered for a long, careful moment before she spoke.  The mountains of Shandor were wilder and higher than anything in the Borghol range, and even farther from what people here called civilization.  Anna had seen her share of odd things.  Her family’s people had stories they held sacred about ravens that spoke in men’s dreams, creatures that in older times had changed their shapes at will, wise kings who read their people’s hearts like books, and Amryns who could hear the Land’s memories and feel its heartbeat.  There were things about her home that all Shandorians just knew not to mention to foreigners.  Common fairy tale things that wouldn’t make someone like Tam blink, would sound ridiculous to Varden’s cultured ears.

“I don’t know about ghosts,” she said at last, truthfully. “But mightn’t there be something true, beyond our understanding of the ordinary?”

“I thought you were the one who wanted evidence,” he mocked gently.

“Mythology is in all our histories.”  Anna shrugged, looking idly at a painting, and finding an unexpected mermaid amid the rocks on the shore.  “It’s written in our cultures, deep to the roots, isn’t it?  Something must have formed it, and fed it so that it’s not only in books, but told by families in the firelight.”

“Maybe your family.”  Varden raised an eyebrow.  “I think you’ve spent too much time near the Blackfeathers.  Doctor Blackfeather wrote an entire paper, did you know, on a supernatural hero and some demon god, who were supposed to have battled in the Alarnan wastes.  He finds a solid translation of the Sharnish language, and then proceeds to muddy that legitimate discovery with this fanciful gibberish about creatures that never existed.  One could be surprised, but all his work is like that.  Fairy tales posing as history.”

Anna remembered that paper.  She’d done the sketches for that dig, and her illustrations had been published, along with Djaren’s and Jon’s translations of the precious Sharnish.  It had mostly been Lady Blackfeather’s paper, really, though Anna had helped as well.  The hero’s magic shield was now lodged in ten-year-old Jon’s palm.  There were certain things she’d never be able to discuss with Varden, Anna realized.  Art though, that was still something, she reassured herself.

“If we left now,” Varden said, “we could take the long drive round the old king’s court manor, and arrive at Pumphrey’s Derdrien gathering just at dusk.  There shouldn’t be any traffic.”

            No traffic, that would be good for Tam.  Poor dear Tam. “I must bring my coachman,” she said.

            “What, is he still here?” Varden looked round.

            “Outside.”

            “He’s an odd sort of escort.”

            “But I can trust him perfectly,” Anna said, finding the statement true.

            “As you wish.  Shall we go separately, or . . .”

            “I should like to discuss that with Tam.”

            Varden looked puzzled, but merely shrugged. “An odd name.  Wherever did you find him?”

            “Shandor.”

            After polite thanks and goodbyes, they made their way outside, where Tam waited with the coachmen.  He was evidently doing his best to talk with them.

            “I know some words of Germhacht now,” he said, in greeting.  “A couple of these fellows have been giving me the right of it about handling a carriage on cobblestones.  Are we going back to the hotel?”

            “If you don’t mind, Tam, we could go look in on what Pumphrey is up to.”  Anna explained about what they’d heard inside, and the plan to go investigate. 

            Tam scratched at his head.  “You sure this isn’t something stupid, that Lady Blackfeather might object to?”

            “Varden is a perfect gentleman, Tam.”

            “Nah, not him, I meant Pumphrey.  What if he’s possessed or mad or somewhat?”

            Anna smiled.  “Did you pack along a mallet?”

            Tam looked down at his feet, then up with a smile.  “Maybe.”

 

“I don’t know,” Ellea said, “whether this is such a good idea.”  She sulkily dropped the last of the salon pillows on the floor of the garden gazebo.

“We haven’t left the hotel grounds,” Djaren pointed out.  “We are still technically within the hotel.”  He made a few adjustments to his hurriedly constructed telescope, all cardboard and borrowed bits of whatnot and spyglass lenses.  “If there are hails of blood or comets, we don’t want to miss them.”

“I doubt we would miss comets.” Ellea flopped down amid the pillows and nibbled at a cake.  “Don’t they make a fearful racket?  And flatten cities?

“Do you think there will really be comets?” Jon asked.  “I hope not.”

“There’s really no telling,” Djaren said, rather cheerily.

“I shouldn’t like to see a rain of blood either,” Jon said.  “Or lightning that falls like a torrent upon the earth, or a shaking of the world’s foundations, or any of those other things in the books.”

“We have umbrellas ready too,” Ellea pointed out.  “So rains of blood are accounted for, anyway.”

“Gum suits would be just the thing to protect from lightning, I should think.” Djaren paused in adjusting some clamps.  “That calls for some experimentation.”

“We haven’t gum suits,” Jon said, looking through the chest of supplies they had hauled out from their rooms.

“More’s the pity.  Another day, then.  We’d need a special generator too, for solid testing conditions, like they have in the silver plating factory.”

Ellea giggled suddenly.  “Some demon hunter you would make, in a gumsuit, with an umbrella.”

Djaren made a face at her.  “Not everyone can be Father, and be made of one thing or the next in a moment.  Other people have to find other ways to be handy.” He consulted some of his notes, then smiled over at Jon.  “You’ve something there in your hand, at any rate.”

“I don’t know how to use it,” Jon said, looking down ruefully into his palm.  “I want to be helpful, but I haven’t the first idea what to do.  I should hate to think that bad things might occur that I could have prevented if I’d only known how.”

“How did you save Uncle Eabrey, last summer?” Ellea asked him.

“I don’t know.  I wanted him safe.  I wanted something to protect us.”

“Then that will probably work again.” Djaren pulled out safety matches and some candles from the supply box.

“I don’t think though,” Jon said, “that I can stop comets.”

“Well, no one can hold that against you,” Djaren said.  “I don’t know if even Father can do that.”

            Ellea leaned out over the gazebo rail and looked up at the stars.  The sky was clear at the moment of clouds and flying fathers.  She wished briefly that Poppa was here, and not hundreds of miles past calling for.  Even if he couldn’t stop comets, he was very reassuring to have near.

 

© Ruth Lampi 2010