Chapter 67
The knock on the door would have woken up Song, if she were asleep.
Instead she was sitting in the dark in her uniform, a treatise on Izcalli titles lying open in front of her – ‘tetehcutin’, it read, is the highest semi-hereditary rank under the Calendar Court, ruling the broad equivalent to a Lierganen coun- in a silent reproach, the page unchanged for the last hour. Song’s eyes burned with exhaustion but she could not sleep. There was another knock, soft but urgent. Toc toc toc. Shaking out her empty-eyed trance she rose to her feet, leg knocking against the writing desk, and made for the door.
She wrenched it open, hoping for Maryam or Angharad or even Tristan. Instead what she found was a nervous-looking Someshwari with a plain face decorated by brass spectacles.
“Adarsh Hebbar,” she said.
“Bait,” he retorted. “Let me in before someone sees.”
Too surprised to argue, she moved aside and he hurried in as if some angry hound might nip at his heels out in the hall. Song closed the door, and after a moment of the man looking lost remembered it was complete darkness in here for someone without her eyes. She moved to light one of the lamps, striking the match. Hebbar looked relieved by the light, arms loosening their grip around the packet he was clutching like a buoy.
“Bait,” she said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He passed her the packet, cloth tied up by rope, and her wrist dipped under the weight. Heavy. Piles of paper, by the feel of it.
“There,” Adarsh Hebbar said. “All our reports, along with Alejandra’s tracings of the symbols in the temple and the drawings I made of the layout. You have two hours at most before I have to put them back or Tupoc will surely notice.”