Laura Gilman - Curse the Dark

“Yes, please,” Sergei said, shooting Wren a warning glance. She returned it with a look of wide-eyed innocence. They had played out variations of this scenario before. The big, well-dressed man would take the lead, asking the questions and hogging the attention. After a few more carefully smart but not too imaginative questions, Wren would start to fade from their awareness, leaving her free to do the real looking around. Not that there was much to see.

“The building to your left is our dormitory.” It looked like a traditional rustic farmhouse; three stories high with wide windows framed by wooden shutters, two grey chimneys, one on either end; and faced entirely of the same brick used in the larger building. But something about it said modern construction, without being obvious about it. A carefully tended garden ran the entire length of the left side, filled with tall green leafy things and splashes of red and yellow that Wren couldn’t identify. Vegetables came from the supermarket, usually wrapped in plastic. She didn’t think about it much beyond that. It was surprisingly quiet, just the sounds of birds and wind, and the occasional low thump and murmur, like someone moving something somewhere else. Her skin prickled uneasily.

Two men came out of the front door, talking in low voices to each other. They were dressed in plain brown trousers and button-down shirts rather than Theo’s robe, but their postures were more hunched over, more defensive. They caught sight of the newcomers, and froze.

“Ah, just who I wanted to see,” Teodosio said. If he wanted to see them, they clearly had not wanted to see Teodosio. Although it might have been the Americans they were reacting to, the way the duo scuttled around to the other side as they approached.

“Brothers Alain and Frederich. This is Signor Didier, from the States, and his associate, Signorina Valere. They work with Signor Mattenni and are here representing the signor’s interests.”

Wren kept a straight face, and managed not to shoot her partner a glance. She supposed that name would have come up in the briefing their no-show contact would have given them, because there had been no Mattenni mentioned anywhere in the quickie briefing they got before leaving, including all the paperwork Sergei was hauling around.

Or maybe they hadn’t planned on giving them that particular info at all.

Gee, Silence information not up-to-date or fully accessible. The shock. Sergei was right, their motto really is know all, tell nothing. Even to their own people.

“Alain, if you would inform Jacob that our guests are here?” Brother Alain made a hunched-forward gesture that looked like it started out as a bow, and ran back into the farmhouse. “Frederich, come with me, please.”

Frederich looked even less happy than before, but obediently fell into step with them as they continued toward the larger building.

Now that she was on a level with it, the structure looked even more like a fortress than before—a rectangular shape, two stories high, with narrowly arched windows at odds with the larger, square openings of the farmhouse-dormitory. The facade was arched, and the double-door opening could have taken a full-size Cadillac and not scratched the chrome on either side. In the afternoon sunlight, it glowed against the summer-blue sky, like something out of one of those paintings, the ones where it always looked as though it were about to thunder. Hudson Valley school, right. She had retrieved one back in, what, ’97?

Teodosio led them right up to the doors and unlocked the left-hand door with an old-fashioned metal key. “Any time you wish to enter the House, either I or Frederich must be with you. We have many treasures within these walls, you must understand, and we are the entrusted caretakers of them.”

“Of course,” Sergei said politely. Personally, Wren figured the lock would take her about seven seconds to tumble, even without using current. And there didn’t seem to be any other kind of security, no alarms or tripwires or—

The doors closed behind them, and Wren felt herself shiver not from the sudden dark, or the echoing quiet, but from the fact that she knew, instantly, that she was inside a building with absolutely no electrical wiring at all. The walls were thick brick and mortar, and insulated to a fare-thee-well. Current could not find her there.

She could not find current here.

The uneasy prickle turned into full-fledged worry, just one small step down from panic, and she touched the magic inside her, warming suddenly-cold nerves on the responsive flickers deep in her core.

“Wren?” Sergei cast a concerned look sideways, obviously having sensed her reaction.

“I’m fine.” She wasn’t, not by a long shot, but couldn’t let it throw her. What she was going to do now was seriously low-power anyway; even as tired as she was, it would barely disturb her natural level of current. And if anything happened, well, she’d been told there were ways to get current from stone, if you needed it badly enough. And there was a lot of stone around her that had likely never been tapped, if the building was as old as it looked. As old as Brother whatsisname, Teodosio, said it was.

“If you will come with me, please.” Teodosio turned a knob on the wall, and the gas lamps placed along the main hallway flared brighter. “I apologize for our old-fashioned ways of doing things. We try to remain true to our traditions. And besides—” a brief smile flashed on his basset hound face “—the money is not there to upgrade.”

He was lying. Wren didn’t know how she knew that, but he was. Which meant they had a reason for not having electricity available. Old-fashioned? Or cutting a Talent off from an easy source of energy? Don’t get paranoid, Valere. Not yet. Not while you’re still gathering information.

They went up a shallow stone staircase, ten steps, then a landing, then turned and another ten steps to the second floor. The torches seemed brighter up here, or somehow more light was getting through the narrow windows, because Wren could see more details around her. The walls had been plastered over with a slightly rough-textured white coating, and the wooden beams of the ceiling were blackened with age, creating a pleasing contrast. At intervals along the walls there were alcoves holding wooden carvings of figures—saints, she supposed—in various benevolent poses. Wren, with her lapsed Protestant background, didn’t have a clue who any of them were. Her mother might have. Sergei probably did.

There were five doorways on either side of the hallway, each arched in a smaller echo of the main entrance. Passing by several of them, Wren caught a glimpse of glass-fronted cases and heavy cabinets. It wasn’t so much a library, she thought, as a book prison….

“In here, please.”

They were ushered through a doorway on the left, into a room that seemed incandescent compared to the gloom of the hallway. Light came in through the windows, split into prisms by the leaded glass. There were a number of the heavy cabinets here as well, plus thick glass-topped desks with obviously old manuscripts displayed underneath. One of them was conspicuously empty, the faded green backing noticeably darker where something had been removed.

“It was there?” Sergei asked, pointing to the empty space.

“What? Oh, no, no. That is an illuminated manuscript we’ve out on loan to a brother organization. The Nescanni parchment, that was never left on display, no. No, never that.” Teodosio was flustered, far beyond what the question would seem to merit, until Wren remembered what Andre had said. Everyone who has read it has disappeared. Right. Displaying it where anyone could lean over and take a looksee…not such a good idea, no. Although the way he’s reacting, I bet that’s exactly what they did once. Wonder who went and disappeared? And how long ago?