The next couple of weeks were comparatively uneventful. Leonie and Len continued to accompany Upper IVa on rambles- as the Head had pointed out, for them to go along every time would soon have been noticed and commented on, and the last thing Miss Annersley wanted to do was to draw attention of any kind to that particular form. Girls, she knew, were liable to gossip, and there was no knowing who would overhear.
Leonie, when told of this dictum, had agreed whole-heartedly, but with inward qualms. Louella was Comyn- even if the Comyn had exiled her family- and she had laran. Would distance be enough safeguard Copper?
Only time would tell, but the anxiety provided an incentive to continue the training sessions with Len Maynard. Not, Leonie mused ironically, that she had needed that incentive, but by now Len herself had been able to see the potential advantages- and even guess, a little, something of Leonie's background- and that had certainly acted as a spur to the girl.
Sometimes the Keeper chafed at the inherent restrictions of her position; at Arilinn, by now Len would have taken her monitor's oath, and, if she had the talent for it, would be working towards qualifying as a matrix mechanic or technician. Although, as it happened, Leonie did not believe Len would be outstandingly gifted in either of those capacities- she would probably make a satisfactory technician, and was not sufficiently scientifically minded to act as a mechanic- which meant helping to physically build the matrix relay screens.
On the other hand, the girl was proving to be an outstanding monitor, and increasingly, Leonie was beginning to wish she could have her for Arilinn. Since Callista's departure, an already small circle had shrunk. A competent monitor who had neither the talent nor the desire to be more would free the current monitor, who was skilled in other areas of laran work, but was too badly needed, under the circumstances, in her present post.
Len herself began to look forward to the sessions with Leonie. As that lady had predicted, she was now coming to actively enjoy the work and the total intimacy and acceptance that came from working in rapport with another. However, it was not to be expected that her new relationship with the junior mistress should be overlooked.
"Len, when you've finished here, Miss Denny wants to see you in her room," Con Maynard told her sister one afternoon at Kaffee. Len was on duty that day and had fully expected to go from there to Leonie, so now she groaned and looked furtive.
"I suppose it's over my last Spanish prep," she said resignedly. "I knew it wasn't very good- I couldn't concentrate, somehow, last night, but I didn't think it was as bad as all that!"
Con grinned. "Not being able to concentrate doesn't sound like you," she agreed. "But where were you hoping to go? You looked really peeved when I gave you the message."
"I was supposed to go to Miss Hastur for some-er- coaching," Len said, improvising wildly. Then she turned in relief to her next supplicant for coffee, and handed a cup over.
"There you are, Prue! And cheer up, do. No-one blames you for that little ass Val Gardiner going dicky-dancing all over the place."
"That's what Priscilla said," Prudence Dawbarn replied gloomily. "All the same, I can't help feeling it was my fault. Young Val has gone from frying pan into the soup with everyone lately, and I suppose the ticking off I gave her was the last straw. Besides," she continued, her fair face flushing, "I can quite see it would annoy any of that crowd being told off by me. Me, you know!"
In spite of themselves, both Maynards grinned. Prudence had become a byword for heedlessness in her younger days, and there was some truth in what she said now.
"Don't be such a donkey," Con told her briskly. "That was then and this is now. And the fact is, you're a Senior and she's a Middle. You were perfectly within your rights for pulling the kid up for breaking rules, and Val will be back soon. You'll see!"
"Does the Head know she's gone?" Prudence asked anxiously, ignoring this. She had already had a session with her twin sister, Priscilla, but neither her words nor Con's now made any real difference to how Prudence was feeling at this time, so she preferred to change the slant of the conversation a little.
Len filled the last cup of coffee with a sigh of thankfulness, and then took a cup of her own over to a table with her sister and Prudence. Kaffee was the only meal of the day when the girls might eat without adult supervision, and it was a jealously guarded privilege, so there was rarely any trouble.
"Surely she does know by now," Con said doubtfully. "I can't see them keeping it from her when-"
"Len!" All three girls turned and rose at the sight of Miss Hastur.
Leonie nodded politely at Con and Prudence, and turned to the girl she was seeking.
"Would you come with me please? There is something I must speak of to you."
Con's black eyebrows disappeared into her hair as Len left her half finished coffee and disappeared with the new mistress.
"It looks like Len has forgotten to go to Sally," she observed wryly.
"Sally probably didn't want her for anything much," Prudence told her glumly. "Len just doesn't get into trouble. Besides, if you're that bothered, I suppse you could always go to Sally yourself and tell her that Len was snaffled before she could get over?"
"I suppose I could do that," Con agreed unwillingly. She paused, and then it burst out. "But I just don't understand it! Miss Hastur seems nice enough, but she doesn't teach any of us. Why does Len spend so much time with her?"
Prudence, unsurprisingly, had no answer to this, and Con let the subject of her sister's associates drop and returned to the Prefect's Room to write an essay on Maria Edgeworth's Irish novels. Prudence returned to her own quarters to do likewise, and thought no more about it.
Meanwhile, Len turned to the mistress as soon as they left the Speisesaal. She did need to ask why Leonie had called her, and Leonie, knowing it, did not waste time in explanations.
"There is something I must ask you," she said abruptly. "It is not ethical; but still, I must ask."
"About Val?" Len queried, puzzled.
"Not precisely. When you spoke to Miss Annersley- was there anything you sensed that could help us now?"
Len's eyes widened; she had been training long enough to know that Leonie was breaking a taboo amongst telepaths in asking what Len had discovered from that inadvertent contact with the Head's anxious mind.
Leonie, knowing what the girl was thinking, schooled her face to impassivity while she waited. Once again, she thought, I am Keeper, and responsible only to my own conscience for what I do- yet here on Terra that old adage hardly applied.
Eventually, Len shook her head. "I can't think of anything," she said frankly. "I think it might be that woman you told me about, though."
"Luisa Aldaran?"
"Yes. Didn't you say she has laran?"
Leonie's face cleared. "But of course. You must think me very foolish, Len!" Mentally, she continued, she is Comyn, so she has laran... and Valerie has hair like Flavia's- copper red. Could it be that Luisa-Louella believes that all red-heads here have laran powers?
"Maybe she does," Len said in response to the unspoken thought. She herself still found it difficult to respond deliberately from the mind to such a contact; she was still inexperienced enough to need a matrix, and in any case, lacked Leonie's Hastur Gift.
"What would she do to Val?" Len asked, rather fearfully. It was still early, she thought hopefully. Not quite sixteen hours. Perhaps Val would turn up before Abendessen...
-Not if Luisa has taken her for her own purposes, Leonie thought soberly in response. And I do not know what she would do. Or rather, I may know. Yet Valerie has no usuable laran as far as I have seen, and that will be her greatest safeguard.
-You mean like because if she had a matrix, for example, taking it away from her wouldn't hurt her because she wouldn't be keyed into to it?
-Exactly. Well done, Len! You have responded mentally without using your matrix!
Len flushed in response to the unexpected praise, for after that first introductory session, Leonie had trained Len as a Keeper trains her newest recruit, and the lessons had not always been easy, or the praise frequent. Yet at the same time this soujourn away from Arilinn and from handling the energon rings every day was having it's own effect on Leonie, and the humanity she had tried so long and so painfully to suppress in the years since she had been made Keeper was beginning to reassert itself, a little, and Leonie was coming to realise that this was not wrong- thus bringing herself closer to the idealogy of the Forbidden Tower than even she liked to admit.
-Should we tell Auntie Hilda? Len wanted to know.
-I do not know. I would rather not tell her, because she would want to know why we suspect this, and I cannot think how to tell her.
-You'll have to tell her something eventually! Len declared mentally. No-one's ever been able to hide anything from her indefinitely!
-Which proves that she does have laran. Tell me, Len, have you tried to touch her mind since we began training?
-No! You said it wasn't right!
Leonie sighed.
-I did not mean that you should enter her mind against her will. Yet you have laran, and so, I think, has she. You are close, I believe, and if you can touch her mind without her fearing or withdrawing from you, we could use it...
Len looked at the elder woman askance.
"I see," she said aloud. "I don't know. I'll have to try sometime."
Leonie nodded. "That is all I ask, child. Now I suppose you had better return to your friends!"
"Con is my triplet," Len reminded her. "And I'll have to think of something to tell her. She's starting to wonder why I'm always disappearing with you when you don't teach me."
"How does she know I do not?" Leonie asked.
Len grinned. "We're triplets. I can't hide anything from her- or from Margot either, when she pays attention."
Leonie looked thoughtful. Triplets. How would that affect laran distribution, she wondered. It was well known on Darkover that in twins one twin had stronger laran than the other, and she acknowledged this to be true in her own case. Her laran was and had always been stronger than Lorill's. And then she thought: or is it only that, as a woman, only I could be Keeper trained and so we all thought my laran was the stronger?
Suddenly she remembered Ellemir Lanart-Alton, twin to Callista. Ellemir had been a part of the battle between the Forbidden Tower and Arilinn, despite the fact that she supposedly had little laran, and more, had been pregnant at the time. In triplets, could two have laran? Or all three? And in what strength?
Len turned to go, and Leonie roused herself from her reverie. Time enough to find out about the triplet-bond later. "One moment, Len. The fact that Luisa has kidnapped Valerie without knowing for certain whether or not she has laran indicates that she may be growing desperate. I think it is now essential that I determine whether and if Flavia has laran. If-" Leonie broke off and stopped.
"You mean, if she's kidnapped, and you've keyed her into a matrix, then we could find her quicker than we can find Val now?" Len suggested.
Leonie nodded, her face shadowed. "Exactly so. Although, I think I must also teach both her, and you, how to shield your matrices when you are working with them. That needs stronger defences than your own telepathic shields, and it is crucial. A matrix user can normally trace any other known matrix user.." Leonie's voice trailed off, and Len nodded in understanding and departed, her own face as grave as Leonie's had been.
