The Wizard Hunters by Martha Wells

began, hoping something would come to her. Nothing did. “Well...” she tried again.
    Niles turned to Gerard, who adjusted his glasses selfconsciously, and said, “Well. . .”
    Tremaine held her breath, afraid he would get stuck there too, then he continued, “. . . Tremaine’s father was the first person to discover the Gardier’s activities.”
    “Really?” Niles frowned, glancing back at her as if expecting to see some sort of evidence of this on her countenance that he had previously overlooked. “I thought Nicholas Valiarde was an art importer who funded Arisilde Damal’s work in the Viller Institute.”
    “He was,” Tremaine agreed readily. “He did.” The public version of events was that Nicholas had been just a gentleman adventurer who had made the mistake of helping Arisilde test his last Great Spell. Nicholas had always meant to keep the Valiarde name clean, but after years of living a variety of double lives, too many people knew too many pieces of the truth. And after her mother’s death he had become careless.
    Gerard’s brows quirked and he cleared his throat. “He occasionally did work for the government.” He took Niles’s arm and turned him back toward the hallway.
    “Work for the government involving art?” Niles asked, with another baffled glance back at Tremaine.
    “Uh ...” Tremaine nodded.
    “I’ll see you in the morning,” Gerard said over his shoulder as he hauled Niles along.
    “Good night,” Tremaine called, and he gave her a backhanded wave as he disappeared down the hall. She started up the grand staircase with a shake of her head. Once they finished constructing the new spheres, her part would be over unless she could think up some other job to do here. Unfortunately the Institute needed sorcerers or scholars of etheric theory, or people trained in mechanics, philosophy or astronomy. Tremaine had an average education in writing and letters. I can’t even make decent coffee . Being a member of the family that had bankrolled the Institute’s nonmilitary endeavors and who owned the patent on the Viller-Damal Sphere, she could probably hang about anyway, but that would surely get awkward.
    It had put a real crimp in her plan to kill herself, that was certain. There had been a profound relief and a wonderful freedom in giving up, in resolving not to strive anymore for goals she couldn’t define even to herself. Now she seemed to be weighed down with hopes again. Not the least of which was that Nicholas and Arisilde might really be alive, lost in that other world somewhere.
    Tremaine paused on the stairs, thinking about it. She wasn’t sure she believed there was a chance at all, if she wasn’t just seizing on it as a convenient excuse in case someone tried to send her home before she wanted to go. Maybe I can learn to make coffee , she thought ruefully, continuing up the stairs.
    Muttering “I hate my life” under her breath, she reached the third floor and tramped down the dusty carpet toward her room.
    Only one of the glass lily light fixtures still had a bulb and it was at the end of the dim hallway. She stopped in front of the door, digging in her pocket for the latchkey. As she touched the door, she felt it give slightly. Tremaine frowned, running her hand lightly down the smooth wood to the lock. It had taken her at least five minutes of struggle last night to get the damn thing open; she knew it fit tightly. Then her fingers found the scoring on the metal that the shadows in the hallway concealed. The lock had been clumsily forced.
    Half chilled, half intrigued, Tremaine stepped slowly back. Oh, I don’t need this right now . Getting murdered had never been near the top of her list as a viable suicide option. How embarrassing, if this was another old enemy from her family’s checkered past, come to enact vengeance on Nicholas Valiarde’s daughter. And incidentally disrupting the Institute’s vital work and causing Tremaine the humiliation of difficult