toiletries, everything was gone. No empty glass nor scrap of paper remained to show there had been an occupant only a few days ago.
She was about to start upstairs when she heard a squeal. The hinges on the door from the corridor. She doused her light and ducked behind a curtain just as the door opened and someone thrust a lamp into the room. “Who’s here?” Toko’s voice.
Her heart beat so hard she could not believe it wasn’t audible. He came into the room a few steps and raised the lamp. She tried not to breathe. The shadows lengthened and shifted as Toko looked first this way and then that.
Then, apparently satisfied, he withdrew and closed the door. His steps faded, but she waited several minutes. When she was convinced he would not come back, she tiptoed upstairs.
There were two rooms on the upper level: a bedroom and a work area. The bedroom was made up, and it too retained no sign of its former owner.
The workroom was long, L-shaped, with wide windows. The-curtains were drawn back, providing a view of the river. Glasses and goblets filled a cabinet. The windows opened onto a wide balcony, where several chairs surrounded a circular table. One might have thought the occupant had been accustomed to entertaining.
There were two padded chairs inside, a long worktable with several drawers, a desk, a pair of matching cabinets, some empty shelves, and a chest.
The chest was locked.
The worktable drawers were empty, save for one or two pieces of paper. The desk contained a few pens, some ink, and a blank notebook. She found a sweater in one of the cabinets, somehow missed in the press to collect everything. And a revolver, which she recognized as the work of the same gunsmith who had supplied most of her own family’s weapons. Strange, she thought, that we forgot how to print books. But we remember how to make guns.
She knelt down in front of the chest.
The lock was designed to keep out curious children, rather than thieves. She produced the narrower of her blades, and inserted it. Minutes later the mechanism gave and she raised the lid.
She looked down at an oilskin packet. It was roughly sixteen inches wide by a foot. She lifted it out, set it down under the lamp, and released the binding cords.
It contained a sketch which she recognized immediately as her brother’s work. It was dated July 25, making it later than any of the others.
The drawing depicted a rock wall rising out of a frothy sea. A sliver of moon floated in a sky swept with dark clouds. It was one of his better efforts, but there was nothing extraordinary about the drawing itself.
Nothing extraordinary, that is, until she saw the title, which appeared in its customary place below his signature.
Haven.
4
In an age that depended on sails and oars for power, the Mississippi was a cranky partner at best. Northbound cargo had to be hauled upriver by a combination of flatboats and draft horses. To complicate matters, the river was prone to change course periodically. It had swallowed but only partially digested many of the concrete and brick cities that had sprouted along its banks in ancient times. These had now become navigational hazards. There were seven major collapsed bridges, three of which, at Argon, at Farroad on the Arkansaw, and at Masandik in the south, effectively blocked any vessel larger than a canoe. This was the factor that made Illyria the crossroads of the League, and its center of power. And which created economic opportunities for Flojian Endine.
His draft animals were raised on two ranches near Cantonfile. He’d been planning for some time to expand the number of horses in his stables, and his conversations with business allies in Masandik convinced him that the traffic would support the investment. On his return to Illyria he met with his groom at the pier to devise a strategy. When the morning-long meeting ended, and the groom had left, he sat back with a cup of tea, feeling satisfied with his life. Business was good, his financial health assured, and the future bright. He was living in the morning of a new age, now that his father was gone. The brooding presence was removed from the house at last. Only the shadow of his ruined name remained.
What had the old man done out there?
Well, no matter. Maybe the speculations would stop now. It was time for people to let go and bury their dead and be done with it. But that was unlikely. The damned book had appeared, as if Karik had been determined to stir everything up again. When he’d seen what it was, Flojian had been tempted to burn it. But he could not bring himself to violate his father’s last wish, even though he’d hated him for it.
He suddenly realized Chaka Milana was standing in his doorway. Her eyes radiated hostility.
“Hello, Chaka,” he said, carefully inserting concern into his voice. “Is something wrong?”
She was clutching an oilskin packet. “I owe you an apology.” Her tone was flat.
“For what?” He got up and came around the desk. “Please come in.”
She held out the packet. He recognized it, and his heart sank.
“I was in your house last night.”
A welter of emotions rolled through him. “So I see. Is your conscience giving you trouble?”
She glanced at the oilskin. “I’d be grateful if you’d explain this to me.”
Flojian made no move to open it.
“You do know what’s in it.”
“Of course I know.”
“Tell me what it means.”
Flojian would have liked to put the same question to his father. “It’s a false alarm. What else could it be? They thought they’d found it, but they hadn’t. Simple as that.”
“Here’s something else that’s been kept quiet. Why?”
“Why did I keep it quiet? What makes you think I knew anything about it? My father didn’t have a very high regard for me, Chaka. I’m the last one he’d confide in. I didn’t even know the sketch existed until we cleaned up the day after the ceremony. Anyway, I suspect he didn’t make it public because it would have led to exactly this kind of reaction.”
Her expression hardened. Flojian hated confrontations. He preferred to be liked, and much of his personal success was predicated on the fact that people willingly threw business his way, and others were anxious to work for him.
“I think you owed me the truth,” said Chaka.
“What is the truth, Chaka? That he might have found what he was looking for? Or that your brother might have jumped to an unjustified conclusion? You know as well as I do that at least one of the sketches is pure fantasy. Remember The Dragon? Who knows where the truth is?
“My father devoted his entire life first to trying to establish that Haven existed, and then to trying to find the place. He dreamed about it, fought for it, and lost his reputation over it. Do you seriously believe that he could have found it but neglected in the face of all that repudiation to mention it to anyone? Does that make any sense to you at all?”
She stood her ground. “No,” she said. “But neither does his failing to mention the Mark Twain to anyone. There’s a pattern here.”
“What pattern? Look, he could have found the book anywhere.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “When he told me about my brother’s death, he said they got careless, that they were preoccupied because they thought they were almost there. In fact, if this is what it appears to be, Arin was alive at the end of the journey.”
“Chaka, it’s all guesswork.” He opened the packet, removed the sketch, and studied it. July 25.
“It’s the last in the series,” she said.
He sighed. “I’m sorry there’re still all these questions. But this is why I didn’t say anything. It’s why I should have destroyed it. I knew it would just start the old trouble up again.” He put the sketch back inside its wrapper and
