Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

We take a couple more days to settle into our new lodgings and rest before we feel ready to go up the hill and try to get in to see Lord Hajarean. Gyrefalcon. Possibly our friend Simon.

I’d wanted to write him a letter, in English. Sam had objected, saying all the things that could go wrong with that, that would mean a no-show didn’t necessarily tell us anything. Some flunky opening it and seeing a meaningless scrawl, for instance. Sam wanted it face to face. She wanted to see his reaction when we said something in English.

“What are you worried about?” I’d asked.

“I’m not worried.”

But I know she was lying. I want to think she was just being extra-suspicious.

Luckily Sam has a pretty face, and a way of talking to people that gets us past the guy at the outer gate and the guy at the inner gate, so we quickly find ourselves in our best new formal daywear waiting in a large formal office on the front of the ground floor of Lord Hajarean’s palatial house on the rim of the valley.

“Impressive,” Sam says, standing at one of the large, glassless arched windows where she can see down all the way to the harbour. “He’s done well for someone who started as a stowaway street kid.” It’s cool and pleasant here in the late afternoon.

“That’s how he started?”

“In the game. Gyrefalcon was Thief-class. Pickpocket who picked the wrong pocket and needed to get out of Dodge in a hurry. Stowed away on the ship the party met on. That was his intro to the campaign.”

It is impressive. The architecture up here has more than a touch of the Arabic about it, with its arches and domes and geometric patterns everywhere. It’s a motif carried into the buildings’ interiors, if this one is any guide. Interior and exterior blend into each other in a way I find pleasing. Arabesque screens sweep glowing dappled pools of lightacross the patterned floor towards the far wall.

The door across the room opens and a man steps in, alone. I stand up to join Sam.

He crosses towards us. He looks middle-aged; I’d guess he’s in his fifties, but he looks good with it, with the lifelong fitness of someone who was a superb athlete in his youth. Now his red hair is greying, as is his neatly kept beard. He’s dressed unassumingly in a simple belted tunic and leggings, which serves to show off he still has a pretty decent figure for a man his age. The style may be unassuming, but the cloth is of the very best quality.

He doesn’t look anything like Simon, of course; any more than Sam or I look like Lee or Paul. He has a nice face though, I decide, even if he’s showing us nothing more than mild curiosity at this moment.

“Well,” he opens informally, “good morning, ladies. What can I do for you?”

Sam launches into her prepared speech. “Lord Hajarean?” He nods minutely. “We have been charged to deliver a verbal message to one who was once called the Gyrefalcon.”

That takes him a little by surprise. “I haven’t heard that name for a long time,” he remarks evenly. “Well, yes, I’m Gyrefalcon, or I was. You had better deliver your message.”

Sam switches to English. “Simon? It’s Lee and Paul. From the game. We’ve been looking for you.”

If there was a reaction from Lord Hajarean I missed it. He just looks at us both impassively for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he says eventually in Jeodine. “I didn’t understand that. What language was it? Is it a code?”

“Well, you’re a lot shorter than I remember,” Sam continues in English. “Aren’t you going to say anything about how we’ve changed?” She smiles hopefully.

Lord Hajarean looks at Sam again, a slight frown on his face. “You must forgive me, Miss, I do not understand what you’re saying.” He smiles, trying to make light of an embarrassing situation.

“But Simon—”

“Sam,” I say. “It’s not him.” With those words the disappointment lands on me like a terrible weight. “My apologies, Lord Hajarean,” I say, addressing him for the first time. “We made a mistake. I’m very sorry for wasting your precious time. Our message was clearly meant for another.”

“Apparently so. I’m only sorry you had a wasted journey,” Lord Hajarean says, unfailingly urbane and polite. “As for my wasted time, think nothing of it. I can lend you a carriage to take you back into the city,” he offers.

“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” I say.

“As you wish. Then I suppose I had better see you out.”