Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
On the next level up they met Caerleon and Dechtire on their way down, the pair out of breath.
“Commander is on his way,” Caerleon said.
“Never mind that, we need to evacuate the building,” Frollo said, and kept going, heading for the stairwell that Hallie assumed Caerleon and Dechtire had just come from.
“Grenades,” Modron told the pair as she ran past them.
“Grenades?” Dechtire asked, falling in beside Hallie.
“Big loud bangs,” Hallie said, breath coming in gasps as she tried to keep up with the others.
“We didn’t hear a thing,” Caerleon commented. He’d gone to the rear of the group, behind Hallie.
“Building is solid,” Girard said. He wasn’t breathing as heavily as Hallie, but he sounded like he was working hard to keep up with the tac team.
The armed men and women surged up the stairs and Hallie ignored everything else, having no attention to spare from the effort it took to stay upright and moving forward, trying to keep the others in sight.
To her relief, there were only a few flights before the team ahead of her went through another door, onto the level.
She followed them out, gasping for air, into a different world.
From the heat and chaos and noise of the basement, they were now in a wide corridor full of quiet, hushed serenity.
It seemed to intersect the building, the walls rising at least two-storeys on either side.
The floor was pale, polished stone with a thick rug running along the centre, the muted, swirling patterns on the pale walls lit from narrow windows high overhead.
The arrival of the tac team, all of them breathing hard and bringing with them the scent of explosions, barely made a dent in the overall calm of the corridor.
Looking to one side, Hallie could see the enormous molten gold fountain she’d caught sight of from outside.
To the other side, the corridor led to a huge pair of wooden doors that were currently standing open, giving her a glimpse of what could only be the Conclave meeting chamber.
They had come out onto the main floor of the building, where the Conclave conducted its business and where, she was quite sure, no one from low city had ever set foot before.
Even as she realised that, a group of people came through the double doors and towards them at a jog. Hallie saw the director, a clutch of investigators, and what looked like the rest of the tac team, led by the commander.
“Frollo, we were just about to join you. Report.” The commander sounded tense.
“Sir, we need to evacuate the building,” Frollo said, standing straight as the commander approached.
“We were in engineering section A and discovered motion sensors at the service door to the lift shaft. When we tried to gain access, someone dropped a bunch of grenades on us. We have armed hostiles in the building.”
“Grenades. Any injuries?” the director asked, voice sharp, concern clear as he looked around the group.
“A few scrapes and cuts. Nothing serious,” Modron reported with confidence. Hallie wondered just when the woman had been able to make that assessment while they were all running, but she had made it.
“How many hostiles?” the commander asked.
“Unknown. It would have needed only one person to drop the grenades, but we have evidence of two individuals entering the parking garage in a vehicle traced back to Findo Trask and Russet Welliver. They used a false ID of one of the security techs, a Brade Watkins,” Frollo said.
“We didn’t see anyone in the parking areas or section A.
Someone had accessed the lift controls in section A. We haven’t cleared section B.”
The commander’s brows were drawn together, gaze turned inwards as he absorbed the information Frollo had given him. No one around him spoke. After a moment, he nodded.
“Trask and Welliver could be anywhere in the building,” the commander summarised. “Roth, we need to call for a full evacuation.”
“I agree,” Peredur said, glancing over his shoulder to the Conclave meeting room, then turning back to the tac team. “With Welliver on site, we can’t take the risk of more explosions. Commander, you and your people clear and hold a path to the nearest exit. We’ll round up the Conclave.”
“The Conclave is already here, sir?” Girard asked, face reflecting Hallie’s own surprise.
“Yes.” There was a hint of irritation in Peredur’s face and voice. “Apparently, they all decided to get a head start on the day, so all of them, and their aides, are already in the chamber.”
“Good luck to you,” Commander Rojas said with a brief, sour smile as he put his helmet on and started issuing orders.
“Everyone who isn’t going with Rojas, come with me,” the director said, turning on his heel and heading back to the Conclave meeting room.
Hallie fell into step behind Girard and didn’t stop until they were through the enormous double doors and inside the chamber. Then she did stop. She couldn’t have moved any further forward if she’d wanted to, amazed not only at where she was but at the spectacle in front of her.
The Conclave meeting chamber was the single biggest room she had ever seen, larger than anything she could have imagined.
It rivalled the railway terminus in midtown for scale and height.
It was formed in an oval shape. She had entered at one of the ends.
Straight ahead of her, the other end of the oval was made of glass that stretched at least as high as the main entrance to the building.
This glass was etched with designs Hallie couldn’t make out just then.
The walls soared overhead, several storeys high, gracefully curving inward until they reached a glass roof.
The marble walls she remembered from television screens started at the base in a dark, deep green that reminded her of the ocean, the colour seamlessly fading and blending into blue, paler and paler as the walls rose until there was barely any colour before the glass domed roof.
It was deceptively simple, with no adornment, but the kind of simplicity that murmured of skilled craftsmanship and great expense.
The floor of the chamber was made entirely of pale, veined marble, a shocking display of wealth even by hochlen standards.
The centre of the floor was recessed, accessed by a dozen rings of wide, shallow steps that ran around the entire chamber.
At regular intervals around the stairs, wooden benches had been placed.
Hallie hadn’t been aware that any audiences were allowed, but perhaps the Conclave members’ aides were permitted to sit in from time to time, or the benches were used for a break between meetings.
At the bottom, in the centre of the chamber floor, was a large oval table with seats evenly spaced around it.
In contrast to the understated elegance of the room, the table surface was scattered with electronic tablets and bundles of papers as well as glasses of water, tea and coffee cups, and silver trays of what looked like miniature cakes.
The signs of preparation for the meeting, far more ordinary and mundane than the extraordinary window, helped Hallie regain her focus and turn her attention to the people in the room.
No one was sitting around the table just now.
The Conclave members, all of them wearing floor-length robes in the same deep green as the base of the walls, were gathered in small groups.
Some were on the very lower floor, near the end of the meeting table.
A few of the members were standing on the steps, some near the main doors, and still more were settled on the benches.
There were a few other hochlen mixed in.
Aides, Hallie guessed, and spotted the familiar figure of Emmet Lowery farther into the room, seeming to be in close conversation with one of the aides.
Even at that distance, Hallie could still see the overlay of Emmet’s hochlen disguise over his true form.
Those gathered were almost all male, with very few women present and, among the women, only Cotovatre wore the robes of a Conclave member.
Hallie had known that, of course, but seeing the hochlen idea of hierarchy so clearly illustrated still gave her an uncomfortable jolt.
She remembered Verain Abbott’s proposal, his ambition that she should marry his son not to make either of them happy but so that Girard would step into place as Cotovatre’s heir.
Seeing all the men in their robes made her even more confident in her choice to say no and even more determined to follow in her ancestor’s footsteps.
With her mind working fast, she moved with the director and investigators several paces into the room and down the first two shallow steps. She could see surprise and irritation on the faces that were turned towards her group.
“Ladies, gentlemen, I need you to come with us,” the director said, pitching his voice to carry through the whole, vast room.
With so much of the room formed of hard surfaces, every sound should have echoed.
Instead, there was a subtle richness in the air that mellowed and tempered all the various noises, from voices to footsteps. Magic, Hallie guessed.
“What’s the meaning of this, Roth?” Lamorat asked. He was several steps further down towards the floor of the chamber, standing with Ulfiam, neither of them looking all that happy.
“There’s been an explosion in the basement,” the director said, with what Hallie thought was admirable calm. “We’re concerned about other devices.”
“This is unacceptable,” another member said. The florid-faced, angry man Hallie had noted at Cotovatre’s party. Nanters Gable. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. “You are expected to secure the building and protect the members here. Not order us about as if we were children.”
“You can shout at me all you want later,” Peredur said, irritation sharpening his voice, “but right now, you need to move.”