'Gregor?' It was Crezia.
'What are you doing locked in there?' she called through the door.
'Just discussing things with Aemos/
They're serving hot punch in the salon. I thought we might mingle/
'In a minute/1 called out in reply. There was a lurch and the train started to move again.
I looked at Aemos. 'The things we've spoken about… they don't go any further. Not yet. Crezia doesn't need to know, neither does Eleena, come to that.'
'My lips are sealed/ he said.
We came out of the blizzard and down a comfortable gradient into Locas-tre. It was nearly midday. The bad weather lurked like a grey wall behind us, veiling the Uttes, but reports suggested it was moving into the valley.
At Locastre, the porters announced a ninety minute stop.
I told Eleena to make sure the express didn't leave until Aemos and 1 were safely back.
Locastre occupies a cleft valley gouged by glaciers. The old buildings are dark grey – granite stands in for the traditional Gudrun ouslite used in the lowlands – and the altitude and climate is such that pressurised, heated tunnels of armourglas sheath the streets. I hired a servitor litter and had it scurry me through the warm, damp street tunnels, as ominous squalls of snow peppered the transparent roof above.
Outside the office of the Astropathic Guild, I told it to wait and left my credit bar locked into its fare-meter as good faith. It settled low on its spider-limbed chassis, venting steam from its hydraulics.
There was a message from Nayl waiting for me in the Aegis account. He had made good time, and was already in New Gevae. Passage off-world had been arranged with a freighter called the Caucus. He was eager to see me.
Nayl's communique was in Glossia and I phrased my reply the same way. Weather permitting, we would be in New Gevae in two days. On arrival, I would arrange a meeting with him.
'Is that all, sir?' asked the adept attending me.
I remembered Crezia's comments over dinner about Nayl being trustworthy. I added another line, suggesting that the situation reminded me of the tight spot we'd been in on Eechan, years before, facing Beldame Sadia.
'Send it, please/ I said.
Up at the station, the express sounded its horn.
The express rumbled up into the Central Atens, chased by the weather. Despite the fact that we were now scaling some of the steepest and longest gradients in the route, the locomotive was running at full power, trying to outpace the snows for as long as it could.
The main range of the Atens, through which we now travelled, included the greatest mountains on Gudrun: Scarno, Dorpaline, The Heledgae, Vesper, Mount Atena. Each one dwarfed the peaks like Mons Fulco that we had encountered earlier. They seemed as dark and cyclopean as tilted continents.