Maki-chan smiled, and elaborately folded back her sleeves, and poured out the tea, taking her time with each gesture. “Oh, there are talents here too, Coulton-san,” she said at last, again as if she could read his thinking. “It is not only your part of the world that knows of them. Though we do not gather above an orsine here, and we have no glyphic to help us find others. They must find us. But if this Onoe girl was revealed to Cairndale, then it is to Cairndale she must go. A glyphic’s claim must be respected.” The witch paused. “You did not imagine yours was the only such refuge in the world?”
He hadn’t thought about it, in truth. He’d only always just gone where he was told, collected what kids he was told to collect. He knew there were talents in Paris because Berghast corresponded with them; but elsewhere in the world? He felt a sudden quick flare of anger, thinking that Berghast hadn’t seen fit to inform him. Made him look foolish, it did. He frowned and he turned the little cup in his fingers and he blew on it to cool it. “So who is it you work for, then?” he asked.
Again, that smile. “Ah. I have been honored to work for you, Coulton-san,” she replied.
It was no kind of answer. The little cloth purse with the strange Japanese coins in it still sat, untouched, on the floor between them. But Coulton felt something shift in that moment, a delicate balance, as if the payment had at last been accepted, and he marveled again at the precise customs of that land.
* * *
It was dark when Coulton got back to the inn. There was still no sign of Jacob and he cursed under his breath and then, standing with the inner screen open behind him, paused and turned slowly. He had the same creeping feeling, the feeling that someone was there.
“Hello?” he called softly.
The corridor was dark, the warm floor in shadow, the stairs and the polished railing visible in the gloom.
“I can feel you, like,” he growled. “Don’t think I can’t.”
Still there was nothing. After a moment, grimacing, he shut the screen with a snick and took off his hat and coat. Going mad his arse. He knew when there was a something, damn it.
The tatami again had been laid out and he stood looking down at it, irritable. It never did feel right, sleeping on a thin mat on the floor. But the inn was clear of vermin; and truth was, his back hurt him less in the mornings than it used to.
He was sweating lightly in his shirtsleeves, sitting cross-legged at the little desk, writing out their progress in the institute journal, when Jacob returned.
“Well,” he said looking up. “Look at what the bloomin cat dragged in. Where you been at, all day, then?” But catching sight of Jacob’s face, he stopped. “Lad? You all right?”
Jacob hovered for a long moment in the shadow, then came forward and crouched near the paper lantern. A faint orange glow cast his features into a strange relief.
“I was down at the harbor,” he said quietly. “Thinking.”
“Thinking?” Coulton grinned. “No wonder you look so damn tired.”
But the younger man didn’t smile. “I’ve been having … dreams,” he said. “Most peculiar dreams. They’re so real. It’s like I’m not dreaming at all.”
Coulton, quiet, watched Jacob’s face, watched the conflict in it.
“There’s a … a woman. I can never see her face. She keeps in the shadows. It’s like she’s there with me, in the room, while I’m sleeping.”
Coulton felt a shiver go through him. He thought of his hat, upside down that morning. He said, “It’s a queer place, this country. It’ll be good for us both when we’re back in England, in the right world.”
But Jacob shook his head. “It’s not the place, Frank. I’ve been having these dreams a while now. Even back at Cairndale.”
“All right,” said Coulton. “So what do she want, your dream woman?”
“She wants me to open the orsine. At Cairndale.”
Coulton started to smile, stopped.
“But last night she said … she said I was running out of time. That my brother wasn’t … gone. Not really. That I could still help him.”
“Your brother. As in, Bertolt. As in what died all them years back?”
Jacob nodded.
Coulton leaned forward, suddenly concentrated. The room seemed to shift around them, to get smaller. “I ain’t saying how crazy it sounds. I ain’t saying that.”
Jacob held his long beautiful fingers over the lantern.
“Did she tell you how it were to be done, then?” asked Coulton.