Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [59]
Grabbing up my jacket, I threw it on and dashed out into the hall. I had only the vaguest idea where I was going, but on reflection, I seemed to remember passing the garden on my way to the outbuildings. I found the door after only one wrong turn and stepped out into the night. The creak of the hinges, as I passed through, was the same creak I’d heard earlier.
The night was bright and it was easy to see the shadowy figure ahead of me. She had been moving at a fairly rapid pace when I first saw her from my window, and I was afraid she might have already crossed the garden and disappeared over the wall before I could reach her. As it was, she had reached the wall, but the bundle she was carrying had slowed her down. She had placed the bundle on the top of the wall and with it something else, the sight of which gave me another cold chill—Teddy.
Teddy, a.k.a. Simkin, sat on the top of the wall beside the bundle while Eliza vaulted over the wall, in a flurry of cloak and skirt. Turning, she reached for the bundle with one hand and Teddy with the other. She saw me.
Her face, framed by its night-dark cloud of hair, was pale as the heavy flowers; pale but resolute. Her eyes widened when she saw me, and then narrowed in displeasure.
Frantically, I waved my hands, though what I hoped to accomplish by this gesturing was beyond me. Whatever it was, it didn’t work. She snatched up the bundle, and it was obviously heavy, for she had a difficult time managing it. She was forced to drop Teddy—on his head, I hoped—and use both hands to grasp the bundle.
There was a muffled clang—steel wrapped in cloth striking stone.
I knew then what she carried and the knowledge knocked the breath from my body. I faltered, came to a halt.
She saw that I knew, which served only to increase her haste. Securing her burden, she turned away from me and I heard her footsteps slipping on the rocks of the hillside.
I came to my senses and hurried after her, for now it was more imperative than ever that I catch up to her.
The Technomancers were listening. But according to Mosiah, the Duuk-tsarith were watching!
Expecting to see their dark forms leap out of the shadows any moment, I scaled the wall, scrambling over it clumsily. I have said that I was not very athletic. I could not see the ground beneath me in the dark shadow cast by the wall. I misjudged the drop and fell heavily, bruising my knees against the wall and scraping away the skin on the palms of my hands.
“Oof! Zounds! Oaf! You’ve knocked the stuffing out of me!” came a voice.
I was too busy trying to regain purchase on the steep slope to pay any attention to the lamenting Teddy. My feet scrabbled on a loose rock, which bounded down the hillside and started a small avalanche. I slipped and slithered and then she hovered over me. The folds of her cloak settled around me. Hands grasped my arms and pinched my flesh.
“Stop it!” she whispered furiously. “You’re making enough noise to wake the dead!”
“Happened once,” said a doleful voice, somewhere near my elbow. “The Duke of Esterhouse. Dropped dead, sitting in his armchair, reading the paper. Everyone afraid to tell him. Knew he’d take the news frightfully hard. So we left him there. And then one day cook forgot and rang the dinner bell—”
Startled, Eliza let go of me and sat back on her heels.
“You can talk!” she said to me in a tight voice. She was not carrying the bundle.
I shook my head emphatically. Reaching underneath my scraped rump, I pulled out the alleged stuffed bear and gave it a -shake.
Eliza looked at the bear and bit her lower lip and the sudden inkling of the truth formed in my mind.
“Are you hurt?” she asked in a grudging tone.
I shook my head.
“Good,” she said. “Go back to bed, Reuven. I know what I’m doing.”
And without another word, she snatched the bear from my hand and was up and gone in a flutter of skirt and cloak. She stopped some distance on the hill below to pick up her heavy bundle, and then I lost her in the darkness.
She knew where she was going. I did not. She was accustomed to climbing and walking