Free Lokant by Charlotte E. English Page A

found
Grandpapa?’ She released him, and with a sunny smile she danced
into the house. Her friend and Mags followed, leaving Aysun and
Nyra staring dumbly after them.
    ‘She seems well,’ said
Nyra.
    ‘Quite,’ Aysun agreed
feebly. How far changed his daughter now was, Aysun could not
imagine; but he was very certain he had never seen her so bright,
so happy, and so entirely without the fears and the awkwardness
that had plagued her since she was a child.
    ‘Well,’ said Rheas.
‘Shall we go in?’ He hobbled inside without waiting for an answer.
Aysun and Nyra had no choice but to follow.
     
     

Chapter
Seven
     
    Tren was staring
vacantly at the pages of an open book when the woman appeared.
    It wasn’t that he’d
given up, precisely. He had been hard at work since soon after
moonrise and it was now long after moonset, but as he had nothing
better to do and no company at all, he had every intention of
continuing with his reading until he couldn’t stay awake
anymore.
    But some awkward part
of his mind had had other ideas, ever since he’d learned that Lady
Glostrum was spending the evening with Lord Angstrun instead of
studying side-by-side with him as she usually did.
    Particularly since he
had realised that she wasn’t coming home until the next day. What that meant did not take a great deal of intellect to
decipher. When he had heard light footsteps crossing the floor of
the study, his grey misery had lifted with the brief hope that Eva
had come back after all.
    But when he looked up,
he saw a complete stranger.
    She wasn’t as tall as
Eva, but she was larger in every other sense. Her hair was chestnut
brown and her complexion was a shade of brown he’d never seen
before. She smiled at him and paused before the desk.
    ‘Forgive my intrusion,’
she murmured. She had a lilting accent that was pleasing to the
ear, though he couldn’t place it. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to be
here so late.’
    Tren stood up and bowed
politely. ‘I probably shouldn’t be.’
    ‘Then that makes two of
us, for I shouldn’t be here either.’
    Tren smiled
uncertainly. ‘Are you a friend of Lady Glostrum’s?’
    ‘I have never met her
ladyship. I am looking for some lost property.’ The woman shifted
her attention to the desk, still scattered with books, and she
actually began searching through them. Feeling a flicker of alarm,
Tren closed the book he was reading and stacked it up with a few
others.
    ‘If you’ll grant me
your name, I’ll tell Lady Glostrum you called. Perhaps she could
help you another time?’
    ‘Oh, no, no,’ she
replied mildly. ‘I don’t need to be helped. Ah, there it is.’ Her
hand darted out; she grabbed a book from the middle of Tren’s pile
and pulled it out. The rest collapsed and slithered to the
floor.
    ‘Um – wait, those
belong to Lady Glostrum, you can’t just –’ He quickly began picking
up fallen books, stacking them out of her reach.
    ‘This one is mine,’ the
woman said, leafing through the large book that she held. Then her
brow furrowed. ‘Hm. Did you remove these?’
    Tren realised she was
holding Andraly Winnier’s memoirs. The torn stubs of the missing
pages stuck forlornly out of the centre of the book.
    ‘Certainly not!’
    ‘I see,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ She turned away and made for the door, but before she
reached it her form became suddenly less solid. He could make out
the outline of the door before her.
    Then she vanished.
    For an instant Tren sat
frozen with confusion. Then, remembering that the study overlooked
the street outside, he jumped out of his chair and hurried to the
window. The streets were dark - the Night cloak reigned overhead,
blotting out all sunlight - but the lamplighters had done their
work diligently, and the streets were well illuminated with
silvery-white light globes bobbing gently in the air. He could
discern no sign of the chestnut-haired woman.
    Tren drifted back to
his chair and sat down, suddenly realising how