Song of the Sword (26 page)

Wally barely had time to take all that in before someone said “knock, knock” behind them. He turned to see another security guard, a skinny blonde with pouty lips, an angular face and way too much eye shadow.

“Hi, Jenny,” Drezner said. “Will you watch the door?”

She nodded.

Drezner settled into one of the chairs. “Make yourselves at home,” he told Wally and Ariane.

Jenny dragged one of the two chairs away from the tiny dining table, placed it in front of the door, and then sat down on it and leaned back, legs stretched out, arms folded, face impassive.

Wally looked at Ariane, then at the kitchenette sink. She followed his glance, but turned away from the kitchenette and sat down on the couch. Not knowing what else to do, Wally sat next to her. “I guess we wait, then?”

“I guess you do,” Drezner replied, though Wally had aimed the question at Ariane. Her only response was to lean back and close her eyes.

Drezner picked up the remote control from the arm of his chair and turned on the TV. Two men were scrubbing little brooms against a sheet of ice, trying to stay ahead of a round chunk of granite with a blue handle on top of it. “You like curling?”

Wally groaned. “No!”

The sliding rock slammed into a stationary one with a sound like a thunderclap. The crowd roared. Drezner shrugged. “Too bad.”

For the next hour and a half, Wally watched sliding rocks and men with brooms while Ariane napped, or so it seemed. Nobody said anything. After forty-five minutes, Drezner changed places with Jenny. She sat just as silently as he had, staring at the TV.

Finally, ninety minutes later, Ariane opened her eyes and stood up.

~ • ~

Ariane knew very well what Wally had meant by his pointed look at the sink. She hadn’t missed the significance of Rex Major stopping in Yellowknife before returning to Toronto either. In Toronto, he would have the shard locked up, and unless his safe had running water, they’d never be able to get their hands on it. But in Yellowknife...

If only she wasn’t so tired!

Drezner had said the Mounties would arrive in “a couple of hours.” So, while Wally suffered through curling, she dozed, trying not to use any more energy than she had to.

She needed even more time to fully recover...but they were running out of it.

She stood up. Wally’s eyes snapped to her. So did Drezner’s. So did Jenny’s. She tried to keep her voice casual. “Anything to eat in the kitchen?”

“I doubt it,” Drezner said. “Place should have been emptied out when the guy living here went south.”

“Mind if I take a look? I’m starving.”

Drezner shrugged. “Go wild.”

She glanced at Wally. “Want to help?”

Wally grinned. “Sure!”

She winced.
Don’t sound so eager!
But Drezner’s gaze had already shifted back to the TV.

Ariane made a show of searching the cabinets while Wally looked in the refrigerator. Except for a stack of plastic cups, an empty two-litre Coke bottle and a box of sugar cubes (Ariane ate six – calories were calories), the shelves were empty.

Wally closed the refrigerator. “Nothing in there but a bad smell.”

Ariane took a couple of cups from the stack and handed one to Wally. “Guess we’ll have to settle for a drink of water.”

Wally grinned again. “Good. I’m thirsty.”

Ariane turned on the tap.

“They have really good water up here,” Wally said. “At least, they do in Yellowknife.”

She almost laughed. “So I’ve heard.”

“What are you two up to in there?” Drezner stood up from his chair and took a couple of steps toward them. “You’re wasting water.”

Ariane hardly heard him. The water had begun to call to her the moment she turned on the tap, but what she needed to hear was the song of the sword...and there it was, a faint echo of what she had heard in the pit, but much
stronger than it had been in Regina. West...and south.

Yellowknife. It had to be.

“Just running it to get it cold,” Wally said.

Ariane touched the stream of water, and felt the power surge within her – not as strong as it had been at its peak, but strong enough. She grabbed Wally’s hand. Some perverse impulse made her call, “’Bye, Drez. ’Bye, Jenny. Wish I could say it’s been fun – but it hasn’t.”

She delayed long enough to see Jenny leap up from the couch and Drezner lunge toward them – and then she let the flow take them. She heard the beginning of twin shouts before everything vanished.

They rushed through the pipes to the sewage treatment plant, through the outflow pipe into the depths of a lake,
through rivers, muskeg and underground aquifers. She fol
lowed the song of the sword, feeling the shard grow closer and closer – until she knew they were as close as they could get.

They emerged in warm water that stung her eyes. She straightened her legs, and her feet touched concrete instead of mud.

She found herself standing beside Wally in a swimming pool. A little girl, maybe four years old, stared wide-eyed at them from the coils of a floating green plastic donut with the head of a dragon. “You shouldn’t go swimming with your clothes on,” she said.

Ariane smiled at her. “You’re right!” She looked around. Three older children, two girls and a boy, and a couple of very startled-looking adults stared back from the other end of the pool, which was inside a three-story greenhouse-like structure attached to a larger building. Waterslides towered at one end. Balconies with sliding glass doors overlooked the pool on the building side, which they were facing. Behind them, outside the moisture-fogged glass, sunlight glared off deep snow. Inside, the temperature was tropical.

It’s a hotel
, Ariane thought.
Major must be staying here.

“Hey! You kids get out of there!” A man in a blue janitor’s uniform appeared from behind the waterslides.

“Yes, sir!” Ariane called. She and Wally climbed from the pool using the nearest ladder. They stood dripping on the tiled side of the pool while the janitor gave them a long lecture about fouling the pool and the dangers of drowning and where were their parents anyway? He ended by banning them from the pool for the rest of their stay and told them to get out before he reported them to the management.

Trying to look sheepish, they slipped past the giggling kids, lined up on the edge of the pool like spectators at a water polo match. A short carpeted corridor, with doors leading to the men’s and women’s change areas, connected the pool area to the lobby. By the time they reached the end of it, they were dry but the walls were dripping.
Serves the old guy right
, Ariane thought, then felt a little guilty – the janitor hadn’t really done anything they didn’t deserve, from his point of view – but there really was nowhere else to send the water.

They entered the lobby. Two armchairs upholstered in green plaid stood on either side of an artificial fireplace, and Ariane led Wally to them. “OK,” she said in a low voice once they were both seated. “That was the easy part. Now we have to figure out how to get into Major’s room and find the shard.”

“Wait until he’s taking a bath and materialize in his bathtub?” Wally suggested.

“Uh...no.” But the mental image of the two of them emerging in a bathtub while a naked Major stared at them, shocked, made her grin a little – and then a lot when she thought of all the water their arrival would spill across the bathtub floor. “Got it! What we need is a diversion...and a way to get into Major’s room.”

“What if he’s in it?”

“Then we’ll wait until he isn’t,” Ariane said.

“First we need to figure out which room it is,” Wally pointed out.

“Shouldn’t be hard. In fact, let’s do it right now.” She hopped out of the chair and cocked her head, listening to the song of Excalibur, coming from... “Follow me.”

A hallway ran the length of the building. They entered a stairwell at one end and climbed up to the first landing, where Ariane hesitated, listening. “At least one more floor...” Up another flight. “This one.” Into the hallway. “Other wing.” Past the elevators. The shard’s song was so loud now she could hardly believe Wally couldn’t hear it. She placed her hands on the wall, and began walking slowly along the corridor, running her fingers over the paint. Stronger...stronger...and then, suddenly, weaker. She backed up. “Here!”

Wally checked the room number: 303. “OK, so now how do we make sure he’s not in there with it?” he whispered.

Ariane led him back down to the lobby, and picked up
the handset of a white courtesy phone on the desk. She di
aled Major’s room number, listened for a moment, then hung up. “No answer. He’s not in there.”

“And here I thought you’d use magic,” Wally said. They left the lobby, and this time took the elevator to the third floor. As the door opened and they stepped into the hallway, he said, “So, what’s your diversion?”

“Watch.” Once again standing outside Room 303, Ariane pressed her forehead against the wall, feeling for water. “Got it,” she whispered, and
tugged
.

A rumbling in the wall, a gurgling, a loud clanking sound – and Ariane stepped back, smiling.

“Now what?” Wally said.

“Now we run downstairs and tell them the toilet in our room overflowed.”

“The toilet in
our
...oh!” He laughed. “Sweet!”

They raced back down the stairs and down the hall, but Ariane stopped Wally before they reached the lobby. “Allow me,” she said. She sauntered into the lobby and banged on the bell on the desk. A clerk emerged.

“Yes, miss?”

“There’s something, like, wrong with the toilet in our uncle’s room?” Ariane said, trying to sound both bored and annoyed and making sure to add a little uptick at the end of each sentence to make everything sound like a question. “There’s, like, water running all over the floor? And, like, into the corridor and everything? It’s really gross?”

The desk clerk looked stricken. “I’m so sorry, miss!
We’ll have that looked after right away.” He grabbed the phone. “Maintenance, we’ve got a broken toilet in Room –”
he looked at Ariane and Wally.

“303,” Wally supplied with a helpful smile.

“303. Hurry, please.”

“Our uncle is going to be so bummed,” Ariane said. She heaved an exaggerated sigh, and then sauntered back out of the lobby. The moment they were out of sight of the concierge, she grabbed Wally’s arm and ran to the elevator.

“Uncle?” Wally said.

“He’s going to look up who’s in Room 303,” she said. “He may know who Rex Major is, but there’s no way he can be sure we’re not Major’s niece and nephew.”

“Smart,” Wally said.

They exited the elevator on the third floor and strode down the hall to where, sure enough, a dark stain was spreading across the blue-green carpet beneath the door to Room 303.

The janitor who showed up a moment later, a little out of breath, was the same man who had ordered them out of the pool. His eyes widened. “You two! What did you do this time?”

“Nothing,” Wally said, which was true – for him. “The water just suddenly came over the top of the toilet.”

The janitor grunted. “Likely story.” He used his passkey to open the room. While he walked into the bathroom, Ariane and Wally moved over the soaking carpet into the main room.

The room looked unused, except for a single soft-sided suitcase that lay on a stand below the curtained window, and a closed laptop computer on the desk.

The shard sang to Ariane from the suitcase. She wondered why Major had left it unattended...and when he would be back. They might not have much time. She hurried to the suitcase and tried to open it...

...and only then saw the bright orange miniature padlocks that held each zipper closed.

“It’s locked,” Ariane whispered to Wally.

He fingered the locks, then glanced back at the bathroom. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. He tiptoed toward the bathroom, and Ariane, wondering what he was up to, followed him.

As they came close to the door, she could see the janitor’s boots and hear his muttered cursing. He was kneeling on the floor pulling at something in the toilet tank. His back was to them. All she could see was his rear end...

...and his tool belt. Wally pointed, and Ariane followed the gesture. Hanging from the belt was a heavy pair of tin snips, the kind plumbers used. “I’ll distract him, you grab,” he whispered.

“What? Wait –”

But Wally didn’t wait. He stepped into the room. “Can I help?” he said eagerly. He leaned over the toilet tank. “What’s that thing do?”

“Don’t touch –” The janitor reached into the tank as Wally pulled on something. The toilet flushed, more water poured over the edges of the bowl, the janitor swore, and in all the confusion Ariane jumped forward and pulled the snips from the tool belt. Then she turned and dashed for the suitcase.

“Hey!” The janitor tried to get to his feet, but was understandably hampered by having his hand in a toilet tank and water running over his pants. Wally was faster. He escaped the bathroom on Ariane’s heels and slammed the door behind him. Then he grabbed its handle with both hands and held on with all his strength while the janitor yelled furiously on the other side and tried to pull it open. “Hurry!” he panted.