Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [58]
“No reason,” said a furry voice, near my elbow. “Except that I happen to like orange.”
Teddy sat upon the stool. The orange glow of the listening device was reflected in his button eyes.
I might have asked how Simkin knew what such a device was, or even if he did know what it was. I might have asked why he waited to show it to us now, now that it was too late. I might have asked, but I did not. I think I feared the answer. Perhaps that was a mistake.
And I did not tell Saryon that all we had said had been overheard by the Technomancers. Perhaps that, too, was a mistake, but I was afraid it would only add to his misery. Whereas, if Gwen was right—and she should surely know Joram—by morning he would have reconsidered. By morning, we would all be gone from this place and the Technomancers could listen to the silence.
Picking up the throw, I placed it over Saryon’s shoulders, and rousing him from his bleak reverie, I persuaded him to go to bed. We walked together down the dark hallway, with only the lambent light of the stars to guide us. I offered to make his tea for him, but he said no, he was too tired. He would go straight to bed.
Any doubts I had about concealing my knowledge of the listening device vanished. It would only worry him to no purpose, when he needed rest.
And if that was a mistake, then it was the first of many to be made that night. Still another mistake, and perhaps the most drastic, was that I neglected to keep an eye on “Teddy.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Wrap the sword in these rags. If anyone stops you, tell them you are carrying a child. A dead child.”
JORAM; FORGING THE DARKSWORD
I woke up, thinking I heard a sound, but unable to place what the sound had been. Lying in bed, trying to recollect what it was and not making much headway, I heard the creak of hinges, as of a door being either opened or shut very slowly, so as not to disturb anyone.
Thinking perhaps it was Saryon and that he might need me, I left my bed, pulled on my sweater and jeans, and went out into the hall and down to his room. Listening at the door, I could hear his gentle snoring. Whoever was up and wandering around in the night, it was not my master.
“Joram,” I thought, and though I had been angered by his obduracy and his show of disrespect for Saryon, I felt sorry for the man. He was being forced to leave a home he loved, a life he had made.
“Almin give him guidance,” I prayed, and returned to my room.
Restless, knowing I would not be able to go back to sleep, I walked to the window and parted the curtains to look out upon the night.
My window opened up onto one of the many gardens with which the Font was surrounded. I have no idea of the name of the flowers which grew out there; some sort of large, white blooms that hung heavy on their stems and seemed, to my imagination, to be hanging their heads in sorrow. I was thinking to myself that this would make a good metaphor to use in a new book I was then planning. I was about to turn away, to note it down, when I saw someone enter the garden.
Of course, Joram has taken his worries outside, I thought. I felt uneasy about disturbing his privacy and also about the possibility of him seeing me through the window and thinking I was spying on him. I was about to draw shut the curtains when the figure stepped out into an open walkway, almost directly opposite me, and I saw that it was not Joram.
It was a woman, wearing a cloak and hood and carrying a bundle in her arms.
“Eliza!” I said to myself. “She’s running away from home!”
I went cold all over. My heart constricted. I stood bolted to the floor in that terrible indecision which sometimes comes over one in a crisis. I had to do something, but what?
Run and wake Saryon and have him talk to her? I recalled his weariness and how ill he had looked and decided against that.
Wake her parents?
No. I would not betray Eliza. I would go to her myself, try to persuade her to