The next morning, Connie was sound asleep when Gristig burst into her room and barked at her from the end of her bed.

"Where is your friend?"

Connie pushed herself up on her elbows and stared at Gristig. She struggled to comprehend what was going on.

Gristig continued harshly, "Your friend, that man. He's missing. Where did he go?"

"What? What are you saying? Peter? Missing?"

"He must have told you what he was planning. You're creating a lot of trouble for us."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't pretend you know nothing. I know better."

Rennish came into the room, "Gristig. Let me speak with Connie. Leave us."

Gristig glared at Rennish and left.

Connie was now fully awake and sat up, "What does she mean? Peter is missing? He can hardly walk. How can he be missing?"

"No one can find him."

"Did you ask Vossey?"

"She's missing too. Though I'm pretty sure I know where I can find her."

"Why does Gristig think I know where he is? And why is she so angry with me?"

Rennish sat down at the end of the bed, put her kind face in place, and brought out her gentle voice.

"There are changes happening in Ladore and beyond. Changes a number of us have been working on for some time about our relationship with Earthside. And right now, we are having delicate negotiations with other communities and domains to discuss these matters. Connie, there are a number of people, including me, who think its an odd coincidence how your sudden and quite unprecedented arrival in Dahria happened to coincide with these changes." She smiled, "I wonder if you've been completely forthright with us."

Several beats of silence hung in the air. Connie hoped she looked convincingly bewildered and concerned.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. And I'm sorry if I'm making trouble for you. I just want to be with my father. And right now, I want to find Peter. I think we should get out of your hair and go ahead and start making our way to my father, even if Peter is not 100%. I'm worried about what's happened him."

"People are looking for him. He probably wondered off and got lost. It happens easily in our forests."

"I'll help look for him."

"I don't think that's a good idea. In fact, we're going to move you back to the Squares. At least for a little while, until we locate Peter."

"I don't understand."

"Please, Connie. It will be simpler right now for us. Besides there are some people staying there who would like to speak with you." Rennish stood.

"Wait. What about Tessa? Did she have the baby? Did everything go all right?"

"She's fine. We have good birthers. It's a girl."

Connie cleaned up and gathered her things, including the Go game. When Harnell came to take her to the Squares, she effusively thanked the young woman for the use of her embroidered clothes last night. Harnell barely acknowledged the thanks, tossed the clothes on a chair, and led Connie to her room on the second floor of Square Two.

"Who are the people who want to talk to me?"

Harnell pointed down and across the courtyard to a set of open double doors. "They're in the tearoom."

It only took Connie a minute to put away her few things. She placed the Go game on a small table in the room. Regarding it, she became even more deeply anxious about Peter. He wouldn't have left on his own. It wasn't like he was in some addled mental state to aimlessly wonder off by himself.

Someone had taken him. It had to be. But who? And why? What if Rennish and the others were only pretending they didn't know anything about his disappearance? What if they did it to scare her into revealing why she came to Dahria? What if Peter was being brutally interrogated? Even tortured?

When she entered the tearoom, a man stood looking out the window toward the river, his back to Connie.

"Hi, I understand you wanted to speak with me?"

The man turned. Connie froze.

"Ah Connie, I'll bet you're surprised to see me. Or maybe not." It was Grayson.

"Grayson," she said flatly.

"Come now, you should be a little more excited to see me."

"Right. Excited that you lied to me? And Findlay? And trying to do god knows what to this whole new world?"

"I don't think that's fair. I've always been quite fond of you. And it's not so much that I lied to you. Well, maybe a little here and there. Mostly I just omitted telling you about certain things."

"And you're here to fill in the blanks?"

Grayson did his head tilting sympathy gesture. "Come, sit. I've made a fresh pot of this rather tasty Dahrian tea for us."

Despite her deep anger. Connie had to admit, there was a tiny, odd sort of relief hearing a familiar voice. And though his breezy friendliness might not be genuine, she felt more capable of handling him than some of the inscrutable Dahrians.

"Okay. Why don't you start with the mysterious wealthy patron. Mr. Hastings. I believe is his name."

"Ransom Hastings. Owner of Hastings Mining. He's my father. I use a different last name."

"What?!?! Oh really? Why should I be surprised?" She threw up her hands. "Did Findley know?"

"He did. My post-doc work with him was part of the agreement to fund his work. Though despite that somewhat forced arrangement, Findley and I got on well. As you know, I was quite fond of him. Though he ended up holding back the most vital information."

"Which I gave you."

Grayson nodded, "Yes, you did. The coordinates to the Irish passage. And, as a result, and now that you're here, I feel you're owed the whole story."

To Connie's surprise, Grayson spoke seemingly candidly and at length. Beginning with how, a number of years ago, when his father visited his gold refinery in Dublin, the manager showed him an unusually large nugget they recently purchased. A young woman had brought it in. Said she'd inherited it from her grandfather who had prospected in Australia as a young man. She had papers and ID so that it all seemed legit.

Yet when Grayson's father held the nugget and looked at it closely, he sensed something different about it. He told the manager to hold off refining it and took a few grams to a specialized lab for a detailed analysis.

"The results were – confounding - to say the least."

"It was stolen?"

"He wondered about that. The lab results matched nothing from any current gold mining operations. But my father also has an extensive collection of gold artifacts. Which he's had analysed over the years. What the nugget did match was the gold found in his most precious piece, a Bronze Age lunula found in a peat bog in Ireland."

"A lunula? Isn't that a necklace?"

"Yes, shaped like a crescent moon." Grayson gestured the form of it around his neck with his fingers. "It predates even the Celts."

"That must be worth a pretty penny."

"Priceless"

"Shouldn't that be in a museum?"

Grayson sighed, "It will. Some day."

"And the match was confounding because..."

"Easily mined gold resources in Ireland were exhausted long, long ago. The likelihood of a sizable nugget hanging around and then blithely being cashed in? Impossible. And the woman cashing it in lied about its source. At the time, I was finishing my archaeology PhD. - Yes, Connie, I am legitimately an archaeologist. And my father had me research prehistoric gold mines in Ireland, at least what is known."

"And you came upon Findley."

"Yes. I came upon Findley. Who, with his expertise on pre-Celtic peoples, was knowledgeable about every known ancient gold mining site in Ireland, including some only vaguely hinted at in ancient texts and legends."

"But he wouldn't have known the young woman with the nugget."

"We thought it was maybe someone on one of his digs. Of course, I didn't find her." He smirked. "Well, not until I came to Dahria. Anyway, I got caught up in Findley's fervour about the legends of a passage to a hidden world. Though we uncovered some interesting artifacts, it all was seeming to come to nothing at the same time Findley began...unravelling...as you put it. We thought that was that. Except. Except old Findley kept making claims he'd figured it out."

Connie frowned, "My Mother's journal. That you took. I think Findley planned to finally give to me. And then when he reread it, he twigged on the signaling I did when I was younger. But he didn't figure it all out. About Dahria and everything."

Grayson said, "No, but enough to know there was some peculiar connection between you and your mysterious biological father and the mysterious place he came from. What I still don't understand, after all the time we spent together, why he didn't tell me what he'd discovered."

"I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter now. I led you right to the passage."

"And that's what we want to talk to you about." Another familiar voice spoke behind Connie.

She started and turned around. James stood behind her.