The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [72]
“I locked that,” he said faintly.
“You!” Louis said, and to my astonishment, a look of anger filled his face as he stepped threateningly toward me. “You have some explainin’ to do!” he growled. “Why do th’ Council seek ye?”
“The Council?” Domick echoed.
Louis flicked him a quick quelling glance. “Aye, th’ Council. Two Councilmen came up tonight. They have a permit to remove Elspeth Gordie. They said th’ Herder Faction wanted to question ye as well.”
I felt my face whiten. The Council wanted me, but I dreaded the fanatical Herders, who had burned my parents, far more.
But there was Rushton to think about. “I had a brother. He was involved in some sedition, and they think I can tell them the names of his accomplices,” I said, leaving out a world of detail.
Louis squinted his eyes and looked at me skeptically, but I pretended not to see.
“You say they have Rushton? Where?” I asked.
No one answered.
“Look, Rushton did help me tonight,” I said urgently. “He told me to hide in the silo, but I got lost in the storm.”
“Why would he help you?” Roland asked sharply.
I looked at him helplessly, for I did not know that myself.
“She is not important now,” said Domick. “We can deal with her later. I don’t know how she undid that lock, but I’ll tie her up in there and then we can talk.”
“No!” I shouted. “Rushton helped me, and now I want to help him.”
“Do you know what Rushton is doing here?” Louis asked very carefully.
I hesitated, and then shook my head. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said it would put other people in danger. His friends—you, I suppose,” I added soberly.
“Where have they got him?” Roland asked Louis.
“Somewhere outside Obernewtyn. It would have to be close,” Louis said.
“How could they get outside Obernewtyn in this storm?” Roland demanded. “And why would they bother? They can interrogate him just as well in the doctor’s chamber.”
His words sparked my memory of the passage concealed behind the doctor’s fireplace. Coming from it, Alexi and the others had been outside and they had spoken of the Zebkrahn machine. “I think I know where they have taken him,” I said, trying to contain my excitement.
Louis looked at me, his eyes faded with age and watering from the cold but sharp as a knife. “An’ where would that be?” he asked noncommittally.
Seeing that I must trust them if I wanted to be trusted, I told them nearly everything I had seen and heard that night in the doctor’s chamber. The three men exchanged a long glance, and then Louis said, “Selmar once mentioned something about a track leading from a secret tunnel out of the grounds. The place is fair riddled with tunnels and hidden passages. And maybe it comes out close to a cave or rift where they found this Zebkrahn. The best way to find it would be to start in the doctor’s chamber, but the house is in an uproar.”
“We have to search outside the grounds for the other end of the passage,” Roland said.
But Louis was still looking at me. “Perhaps you can find him,” he said quietly.
The other two stared at him in bewilderment.
“You can ask him where he is and what he wants us to do,” Louis continued.
My heart skipped a beat at the knowledge in his look. Slowly, I nodded. “It will be better if I can get outside the walls of Obernewtyn first. The closer I am, the better. And I won’t be able to do anything until the snowstorm stops.”
“My bones tell me that this storm has near worn out its malice. The minute it stops, I will take ye to the farm gate.”
Realization dawned on Domick’s face. “You … you are like Selmar was before,” he said.
That was something I had not guessed, and it made what had been done to her even more of a tragedy. “I’ll help,” I said. “But I don’t have much courage.”
Louis spoke briskly. “There’s strong an’ weak in th’ world. If yer born without courage, ye mun look in yerself an’ find it. From what Selmar said, this place is a good step from