The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 17.2

He woke to find the cistern eerily quiet. The normal gush and flow of adjacent water and sewer pipes was absent; only an occasional dripping from the western entrance broke the silence.

Key took out his watch and wound it. Despite likely being a few minutes behind by now, it read nine o'clock. He had six hours before Seffa's usual arrival time.

His workbench and Seffa's chair were on a raised stone platform off the cistern proper, which he hoped would spare his equipment in the unlikely event of overflow into the chamber. His makeshift bedroll was laid out beside the bench, on the cold stone. He considered going back to it, briefly, when he realized that the only work he really wanted to do involved Seffa's amulet, which he didn't have.

He settled on reorganizing his equipment, which took several hours. If he were going to be spending all of his time down here, he wanted his lab arranged as efficiently as possible. Organization was good: his obsessive nature craved it. It filled his mind, leaving no room for higher thought. Among the many things it helped him avoid thinking about were Valkin's reaction to finding him gone, and Seffa's potential reaction to the proposal he had decided to make to her.

Arriving at their hideout last night, Key had realized that leaving Valkin's house for good was not the only decision he had made, almost unconsciously, over the past several weeks. A larger plan had begun to form in the back of his mind. A series of hypotheticals had slowly but surely become intentions, and as he had rolled himself into on of the musty blankets he kept on hand for Seffa's use, he knew that it was time to put the plan into action.

It wasn't perfect, he knew; for one thing, it hinged quite dramatically on Seffa's involvement, both logistically and emotionally. Loathe as he was to admit it, the idea of going on without her was...distasteful. It reminded him too much of losing his mother, which led him down a path into a part of himself where he preferred not to go.

She—Seffa—was the only one, including Mother, who had ever come close to understanding him. The only one who seemed to accept him as he was, without asking for more. Without asking for something he couldn't give.

When midday came he ate the small amount of rations they had stored there as afternoon snacks. He would need to go out for food, he knew, a task he was dreading. It seemed too soon to venture out into the city. If Valkin were looking for him, which Key rather hoped he was not, he could easily be spotted at any of the places he knew to go for groceries. Perhaps he could convince Seffa to do the shopping.

After his unsatisfying luncheon he lost himself in his books for the entirety of the early afternoon. He became so diverted by The Nature of the Phiros that he didn't even notice when Seffa arrived, at her usual time. He looked up from one of Kalan's discussions of the metaphysical nature of the phirotic energies themselves—sadly incomplete, as the only surviving copy of the book found after the Rehabitation was in very poor condition—to see her ensconced in her chair, reading a book of her own, toying with a tendril of hair.

He tensed, realizing the time, and snapped his book shut so loudly that she jumped.

"Seffa," he said, tonelessly.

"Hello," she said, alarmed. "You frightened me."

"I'm sorry," he said. He waited, as he usually did, for her to respond to his apology. After a moment she remembered this habit, and did so.

"It's all right," she said.

"I wanted to talk you," said Key.

"That's nice," said Seffa, looking back down at her book. "What about?"