Chapter 9

LUCAS COULDN'T decide if he was annoyed that it was Mister Scontun, or outraged that this relative stranger was in his house. Had he been in here the whole time? No, Laurie would've run into him, surely. And Bramble wasn't exactly a vicious watchdog, but he was pretty good at pretending to be one.

Lucas supposed he ought to be a little bit frightened--what with the whole relative-stranger-in-his-house thing--but the man didn't seem to be dangerous, and he wasn't armed. Unless one counted Cat. Which Alex certainly did. But the way Cat was snuggling and purring wasn't exactly inspiring dread at the moment. It was kind of inspiring nausea, though.

"What the bloody--" Lucas stoppered it. There was no reason to be completely crude. Well, there was, but Lucas could be the better man. Sometimes. When he tried. "Mister Scontun," he said, as calmly as he could, "I don't know what you think you're doing, but one generally waits until one has been invited into a man's home before accosting him in his bedroom."

...Um. Right. That hadn't come out quite the way it had sounded in Lucas's head. Which was right this second reminding some of Lucas's more inconvenient bits of all the pleasant accosting that had gone on in this particular bedroom. As it were.

He shook it off. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. If you have a matter you'd like to see me about, I shall be pleased to make an appoint--" He stopped, the little bit of his brain that lived in the account books and not his trousers abruptly awake and slightly less hungover than he was. "Did you have some sort of business you wanted to discuss, Mister Scontun?" Alex had said the Henleys over to Bambridge had been asking Ennis about their wine and brandy supplier, and this man had been at the Duck last night. Maybe--

Oh. Wait.

Lucas winced.

"You're not some kind of collector, are you?"

All the books were up to date, and Lucas was very careful to pay all of the debts on time, but sometimes Mother or one of the girls would have a little charging seizure and "forget" to tell Lucas about it. Only once or twice, but the experiences had been embarrassing enough to sear themselves in Lucas's memory. Except this man didn't look like he'd be employed by any of the shops Mother or the girls would patronize. Once again, Lucas was struck by the odd style of the man's coat, and now that it was daylight and Lucas wasn't trying to see through a fog of beer and a screen of thorny bushes, he was struck further by the apparent wealth. The coat was silk, had to be, with intricate embroidery all along the seams, and cut in a style Lucas had never seen before.

And Cat was shedding all over it.

"Red Libe-aar-in," the man repeated, skritching Cat under the chin with his long fingers as she stretched shamelessly into it. And then he went on, very matter-of-factly, to vent a string of babble that Lucas supposed made sense to Mister Scontun, but was no more decodable to Lucas now than it had been last night. Lucas was vaguely pleased that at least his failure to communicate successfully while having been strung up by a bush had not, in fact, been entirely due to his own not-sober-ness.

"Mister... Whatever-your-name-is." Lucas made it as polite as he could, considering the man had just walked into his home, commandeered his cat, and started blathering at him like he was supposed to understand. "I'm sure you know exactly what it is you're trying to say, but I'm afraid I don't, and I'm not going to be able to give you whatever it is you apparently want from me until you can say something that makes more sense to me than 'Red Libe-aar-in.'" Lucas paused, then added a bit tetchily, "Which, by the way, I must say isn't the most polite way I've ever been addressed." Not the least polite, either, but still. "While I am, in fact a librarian, and my hair is, indeed, what one might call a shade of red, my name is not Red Librarian, it's Lucas Tripp. You may call me--"

"Tripp!" The man smiled broadly. "Tripp havesu Red Libe-aar-in mathlasa thei scontun dei selesen Tripp!"

Lucas stared. And then he narrowed his eyes. "Is this a practical joke? Did Laurie put you up to this?" Lucas really would kill him.

The man sighed, gently set Cat down on the bed, and rubbed at his chin, thoughtful. Cat let out a mournful bleat and pouted from her seat on Lucas's pillow. Lucas rolled his eyes.

"Menlathsa fie scontun," the man said slowly, "dei celendi Tripp." He sighed again, tipped a firm nod, then pointed at Lucas. "Tripp Libe-aar-in." And then at himself. "Elenenn Daimin." When Lucas merely stared blankly, the man did it again. "Tripp, Libe-aar-in" at Lucas, and then "Elenenn, Daimin" at himself.

All right. It would *seem* clear what the man was getting at. Except.

"Are you saying," Lucas asked carefully, thumping lightly at his own breastbone, "librarian," and then at the man's, "Daimin?"

"Ma, ma!" The man seemed elated and relieved at the same time. "Tripp Libe-aar-in mathlasa thei scontun ne lasa Elenenn Daimin!"

He beamed a smile that Lucas had to admit would have been quite engaging, were Lucas not standing in his bedroom with a stranger who was quite plainly completely stark bloody bonkers. Or at least Lucas was almost certain he was. And if Lucas was right, the man was rounding out his bonkers-ness by trying to converse in a language that had been locked up on the other side of the Portal for almost two centuries, *and* bollixing the pronunciation beyond recognition while he was at it.

"You think you're Daimin, don't you?" Lucas creased what he hoped was a friendly and unthreatening smile.

The man nodded vigorously. "Ma, Elenenn Daimin." He tapped a finger to his chest then held out his hand, palm up. "Scontun."

Lucas only stared and kept smiling. The man still didn't *seem* dangerous, but he had accosted Lucas twice, and was now standing in Lucas's home, which meant he'd been watching and quite obviously following. And he clearly wanted something.

"Scontun." Lucas tilted his head. "I think the word you're actually trying to say is scounttune, which in the language of the Daimin means 'key.' A key to what or where, I'm sure I don't know, but--Hey, what d'you think you're doing?" Lucas snatched back the book to which the man had just helped himself from Lucas's bedside table. He hugged it to his chest. "This is a very valuable text from the lost library of the Third Sovereignty of the Helemites. It's very important to me, and I'll be very cross if you make me beat you over the head with it."

It had been the very first Winter's Heart gift from Alex, who'd found it quite by accident in a curiosity shop, mixed in with a bunch of romance dreadfuls the last time he'd been to Qest'trel on his father's business. He hadn't known what it was; he'd just known that Lucas would. And the fact that Alex had thought about him--way back when they'd been new to each other, and still shying from potential promises--had rather set Alex in Lucas's heart to stay. Which made the book beyond price for Lucas. Alex had once said perhaps Lucas should sell it, when Lucas was having a difficult time stretching budgets. Lucas thought he'd rather starve to death as a pauper in the wilderness, and with that book clutched to his chest.

"Scontun." The man said it very firmly this time. He nodded at the book in Lucas's hand then peered around himself, and swept up another from the stack on the floor by the clothespress. He took up several from the top of the stack and held up the first. "Scontun." He held up another. "Scontun." He opened the book, leafing the pages. "Scontun." He brought it over to Lucas and riffled the pages again, then pointed from Lucas to the book. "Scontun." Then he jabbed two fingers toward Lucas's eyes, said, "Libe-aar-in," and he poked at the words on the open page. "Scontun."

Lucas frowned. "You want me to read you a book?"

"Scontun."

Lucas was getting really tired of that word. He sighed. "All right, enough is enough." He snatched the book from the man's hands and set it back on the stack on the floor. "Come along, then, Mister Elenenn, or whoever you think you are." He grabbed up his smelly coat and gestured for the man to follow him out of the bedroom and toward the front door. "I refuse to deal with this any further until I've had a cup of tea and a headache powder." When the man didn't move fast enough for him, Lucas doubled back, smacked another book out of the man's hand, then took hold of his arm and dragged him along.

"Den scontun mathlasa--"

"No, no," Lucas said airily when the man resisted a bit and started babbling at him again, "I'm afraid I won't be leaving you to yourself in my house, and if you're very nice, p'raps I'll even give you a cup of tea before I send for a constable to come collect you and take you... somewhere that isn't in my bedroom." He shoved the man, still nattering, out the door ahead of him.

"Daimin enthalsa fie scontun dei--"

"Scontun, scontun, yes." Lucas took hold of the man's elbow and dragged him onto the path toward the main house, all the while nodding amiably. "I've got lots of scontuns in my old room. I'm sure I can find one or two I can stand to part with and let you play with them while we wait for the nice constable, hmm?"

"Tripp Libe-aar-in mathlasa thei scontun ne lasa Daimin enlathsa fie scontun dei celendi."

"Yes, exactly," Lucas agreed, and kept agreeing all the way up the lane to the house. It was only a five-minute walk, after all. Lucas could take it for another five minutes. And then he'd let Alex at the man. Alex could find the humor in anything. "And while we're at it, I'll beat Laurie until he either confesses to setting you on me, or until I feel better, whichever comes first. I might even let Alex help." Lucas winked at Mister Whoever-he-was. "The smart money's on the confession, because it's not looking like I'm going to be feeling better anytime soon." Although, the prospect of beating Laurie *was* rather starting to perk Lucas up a bit.

"Here we are." Lucas said it probably a bit too eagerly, as he let go of the man's arm and swung the door to his mother's house open then turned to shove the chattering man inside ahead of--

He blinked. Bramble gave a low bark from inside the house, the sound of toenails on polished marble heralding his intent to investigate.

"Mister Crazy Person?"

Lucas stared at the blank spot on the porch step that had been a chattering nutter only a second ago then frowned to one side and then the other. Bramble arrived, panting through a doggy smile, and nearly knocked Lucas down the steps when he rubbed up against Lucas's hip. Lucas ignored him, venturing down into the yard again, peering to all points, but....

"Nothing," he told Bramble, patting him on his big, giant head. "He was right here a second ago. Where could he have got to?" And why wasn't Bramble sensing anything? The man couldn't have got far in three seconds. "Huh."

Lucas shook his head, bemused, still scanning the garden. The manor was set up on a hillock that overlooked a great chunk of the property. Lucas had a clear line of sight down to his little carriage house, all of the outbuildings, the hedge maze, the fountain, everything, and there was no babbling crazy man between him and any of it. The man had simply... disappeared.

"Huh."