The Big Meow

  “You could just sidle,” Arhu said.

  “Sooner not,” Helen said. “Right now I have this feeling that something up there is watching, watching… The less wizardry, the better.” She looked over at Rhiow.

  “We’re thinking inside the same skin, cousin,” Rhiow said. “I’d sooner get in there without sidling if I could…”

  “There might be a way,” said a voice from the shadows.

  Hwaith came slipping out from under another of the manzanitas, half-invisible in the deepening twilight to even a Person’s eye until he moved. “Would you believe,” he said, “that this place has a wine cellar?”

  “Not sure how it could avoid having one,” Urruah said, “having seen how the party crowds here soak the stuff up.”

  “So right,” Hwaith said. “Natural cooling from the hillside. Locked on the inside, obviously. A nice iron gate to let the visitors see down the length of the tunnel. But you know…” He waved his tail. “There must be a lot of condensation when the temperatures on the hillside get really hot.”

  “Which in this climate would be mostly…” Aufwi said.

  “Because there’s a drain channel down the middle of the tunnel, and the condensation runs down it into a little pipe that lets out, oh…” He turned and wandered over to another bush a few yards away. “Right about here.”

  And of course once you were looking for it, or right at it, it was impossible not to see the terra-cotta drainpipe all covered with detritus from the brush all around, and dully moss-colored from the parched moss that was growing in the only place it could manage to. The runoff hadn’t managed to dig too deep a gully on its way down the road: mostly it soaked into the ground and fed an unusually green and well-grown patch of brush.

  Rhiow slipped over to the pipe and looked at it, then bent down to measure the width with her whiskers. “Kind of a tight fit…”

  “Not for those of us who’ve been watching our intake,” Hwaith said, glancing in an idle manner toward Urruah.

  Arhu and Siffha’h collapsed briefly into muffled adolescent snickering. Aufwi hunted more or less desperately for some other direction to look in. Urruah gave Hwaith a glance that might have been avuncular if fewer of his claws had been retracted at that moment. “Child,” he said, “watch and learn.”

  Urruah bent down and gradually vanished into the pipe, though it was educational to watch what he had to do with his hindquarters to manage it. Rhiow slipped up beside Hwaith and said under her breath, “How can you joke at a time like this?”

  “Now or never,” Hwaith said, giving her one of those sidewise looks. “I’d say this is the time for making use of last chances.” And in he went after Urruah.

  Rhiow stood there feeling for a moment as if a claw had been very purposefully stuck into some previously unidentified tender spot on her hide. No one else had a look for her; Arhu slipped into the pipe after Urruah, and Sif and Aufwi after him.

  Helen simply vanished… though not completely. Rhiow looked around her and saw nothing but a little shiny green beetle sitting on the ground where an ehhif surely no shorter than five foot eleven had been squatting. Where have you put your mass?? she said silently. And that wasn’t even a wizardry. How did you —

  Elsewhere, Helen said. It’s a bit of a talent. She scurried up Rhiow’s tail onto her back. Quickly now, cousin, I’m compressed down pretty tight here –

  Shortly, so was Rhiow. The kits had made light work of the pipe, and even Urruah had maneuvered himself in here somehow, but Rhiow found herself wondering whether Iaehh’s description of her as “plumptious” might actually have some foundation in fact. If anything’s left of the fabric of reality after I get back, she thought, I’ll have to look into it… She crawled along paw over paw, her back scraping the top of the pipe, though she was trying to keep it flat for Helen’s sake. Where the aueh are you?

  Between your shoulderblades.

  Rhiow hissed as she pulled herself along. It’s not even as if I drink that much cream.

  How much is that much?

  You’re not helping. Way down at the end of the pipe she could see a dim light. I’m a wizard, Rhiow said silently, and in considerable annoyance. In the course of my Art I will be thrust into embarrassing positions and situations that I may consider unbefitting to my dignity. I must remember that no dignity of mine matches that of Those who conferred my office upon me –

  I’m betting you won’t catch Aaurh the Mighty stuffing Herself into something like this, Helen said.

  The light was closer. Rhiow found it hard not to laugh, despite the weight and press of events. Cousin, she said, if we’re spared and come back to our own time and place, most seriously I desire your better acquaintance: because for an ehhif you’ve a very Personish sense of humor.

  I take that as high praise, Helen said, and may the Queen take the mouse straight from your mouth and so claim it for her own that only the tail hangs out when She’s done. Here we are now –

  Maybe a yard ahead the pipe widened out into a tiny tunnel with a grille at one end, perhaps a foot wide. The grille, though, was thin wire stuff susceptible of being bent to one side by a Person approaching with enough intent from the far side: and whatever intent Hwaith might have earlier imparted to it, Urruah had added a whole lot more. The grille was well bent askew from the bottom up, and Rhiow peered out under the bent-upwards part into a long dimly-lit space with an old tiled floor and brick walls.

  Rhiow slipped through the opening and paused, looking around at the others, who were checking the space out. Helen scuttled down off Rhiow’s shoulder, down her leg and onto the floor, and beetled well off to one side near the closest of a series of dusty wood-and-wire wine racks stacked up high against the walls. A second later she was in ehhif shape again, down on one knee on the bricks and glancing around. “I’ll bet this isn’t the only space under this house that’s dug into the hillside like this…” Helen said.

  “We don’t need to search the place,” Rhiow said. “The guests are going to be arriving pretty soon. All we need to do is position ourselves here and there inside the house and close to it, hidden, and wait to see where they go.”

  “Not being seen is going to be the issue,” Siffha’h said. She was bristling.

  So was Arhu. He was staring into the shadows behind the wine racks nearest him as if he thought the dusty bottles were likely to come at him. But it wasn’t just dust he was seeing. “The place is full of sthahheh,” he said, hardly above a whisper.

  Rhiow glanced at Helen, not sure if she knew the Ailurin word. But Helen nodded. “Amrakyumara,” she said, a word of her own language, and “behind” this Rhiow immediately heard the Speech-word ukfasht. It was the blanket term for the dark beings that were not quite ghosts and not quite demons, never-embodied minor energies of darkness that gathered and clung around sa’Rraah and Her minions, battening on the power of Her hatred and Her desire for unlife.

  “Where were they when we were here?” Urruah said under his breath.

  “Probably penned up somewhere,” Arhu said. “But the shadows are all boiling with sa’Rraah’s nasty little pets. Like rats, rustling.” The fur was standing up all over him. “This place is one big garbage can to them, just waiting to be tipped over…”

  “Penned up,” Rhiow said, thoughtful. The suggestion made her bristle. It was possible that Dagenham and whoever was working with him hadn’t wanted to take the chance that some of the ehhif visitors might be sensitive to such manifestations. She liked that possibility a lot better than the idea that the shadow-imps had been locked up because the conspirators thought that a few wizards might find a way to sneak themselves onto the guest list. And because I like the other possibility better, that means that this one is far more likely…

  “Exactly how well can they see us, I wonder?” Aufwi said.

  “For now, the way we see them,” Rhiow said. “As shadows: more sensed than truly seen. They need intention – evil intention – and concentration, to make them more than
vaguely aware.” She started up toward the far end of the tunnel, which was barred by an elaborate iron gate, all curves and whorls of black metal. “Anyway, they’re not going to get that from us. What we need to concentrate on is finding where the ehhif meeting with Dagenham are going – “

  That was when they heard a door open down the hallway past the iron gate, and the sound of footsteps down the hall.

  All heads came up. “Arhu!” Rhiow said. “You’ve been in here most. Drop some out-of-the-way hiding places into our minds. We’ll all transit quickly in a lot of directions – attracting less attention or at least creating more confusion if anyone who understands what transits look like is watching. Keep the noise of it down, everybody! We’ll keep our heads down while Arhu goes to ground and Sees for a little. Arhu, find where the shadows are thickest – I’m betting that’s where tonight’s meeting will be. Don’t speak for a quarter of an hour ehhif time. Then just a burst to me. All of you, get ready to go!”

  Helen vanished again, and the People swiftly melted into the shadows, waiting for the iron gate down at the other end to open. It would be only a matter of a few moments before before an ehhif or two walked in here, and their attention as usual would be on trying to make out where they were going, not what was going on behind them. Their eyes are always bad coming in out of light into dark, Rhiow thought, putting herself backwards into the dusty spot between two wine racks. Cobwebs plastered themselves all over her fur, and behind her a crowd of spiders cursed her out in tiny voices.

  It wasn’t their voices she was intent on, thuough. “ – wasting the good stuff on them – “ said someone.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” said a second, more familiar voice. “After the big one goes down, we’ll have enough of this stuff to swim in if we want it.”

  Silhouettes stepped up to the gate: one tall, one smaller, slighter, both male. “Hard to imagine what that’s going to be like…” said the taller one.

  Here, Arhu said to Rhiow, and showed her the spot he intended for her. She started to flick her tail in acknowledgement, and then stopped it to keep from discommoding any more spiders as the location manifested itself in her mind: a level up and down a hallway, tucked away underneath a tall cylindrical shape that Rhiow recognized as an old-fashioned hot water heater. She hooked the location’s coordinates up to the fast-transit spell she kept ready in her thought-workspace, but her mind wasn’t really on it. She was concentrating on the clatter of the big key in the lock, the casual laughter of the smaller of the forms. Dagenham, Rhiow thought.

  The gate swung in with a creak: he stepped in, the other ehhif behind him. Rhiow kept perfectly still and concentrated on being as small and black as she could, while the two shapes came down the middle of the wine cellar-tunnel. “Haven’t had much time to spend on that,” he said to his companion. “Last-minute logistics are such a bitch. But it’s all coming together tonight at last…”

  It amazed her, even in this dimness, to see how very differently Dagenham carried himself from the way he had at the party. No diffidence now, none of that unease of a functionary among persons far more important than himself. All that was cast away. At the moment Dagenham was wearing only casual dark trousers, a white shirt, suspenders; but now he was clothed in much more. From endless hours spent in New York streets watching every kind of ehhif, Rhiow knew the look and body language of success, of certainty, of arrogance among their kind, and Dagenham was wearing them all.

  The two came closer, most of them out of sight from her point of view now except for their shoes. One pair of them, the other ehhif’s shoes – a pair of brown wingtips — stopped as he looked at something in the wine rack above Rhiow. She held her breath. “How many of them even understand what’s going to happen?” the ehhif said. “Or what’s going to be asked of them?”

  The second pair of shoes kept going. Down low, Rhiow felt a breath of air – one of her People transporting out with maximum caution. Oh please let them mistake it for a draft, she thought. Better to do that from behind them rather than in front of them, they’d be more likely to believe a draft was coming that way – For the thought of the crowding shadows that Arhu had Seen was much with her. Too easy for them to alert this man or someone working with him if they get really conscious of us —

  “If they haven’t figured it out by now, then we don’t need them,” Dagenham said. “It’s been spelled out again and again. Now that the last package has arrived, we’re in the endgame. If they make the offer, it goes easier with them. If they try to hedge their bets by not offering…” His footsteps kept on going down the wine cellar, paused at last.

  Clink, clink, went one bottle against another. Across the way, behind one of the opposite wine racks, Rhiow saw a white-and-black patched form sliding along the wall toward the door, paying no mind to any spiders’ complaints. A second later the shape was gone, with even less wind this time. Sif. Good.

  “Maybe they’re just not sure,” said the second ehhif’s voice. Rhiow cocked an ear. All of a sudden he was sounding familiar somehow. Was he at the party? Could have been — There had been such a press of ehhif there, so much noise…

  Another breath of wind, even more slight this time. Aufwi, she thought. Or Urruah. I shouldn’t wait, I should go… “There’s no time left for that,” Dagenham said, against more clinking. “You of all people should know. You’ve got all your choices made, even this last-minute one – “

  “Well, why not?” said the second ehhif, and Rhiow could hear the shrug in his voice. “If They want her, fine. If not, I’ll have the use of her for a while…” He paused: clink, clink. “Red or white?”

  Wait, Rhiow thought. Wait, I do know him –

  “For this?” Dagenham chuckled. “Red. Don’t want to dilute the color scheme…”

  They started back toward her. No more time: she had to go. Rhiow activated the transit spell with the greatest care —

  Darkness, and a space small for her, as Rhiow could tell by the feeling she got from her whiskers even without moving to check the impression. In front of her, a crack-defined square with faint light coming through it. Warmth from above: that would be the water heater Arhu had shown her. And partly between her and the light, something was swiftly fading into solidity —

  Images of possible lurking shadow-imps flooded over her. Rhiow fumbled hastily in her mind for a spell as the dark thing came darker, came real…

  It dropped its jaw at her, and bronze eyes glinted in the light from the crack around the door. It was Hwaith.

  Rhiow sagged with relief, but also annoyance. “How does this keep happening?” she said. “You’re just stalking me, that’s all…”

  “I promise you, it was an accident,” Hwaith said, and Rhiow was surprised to hear that he sounded as testy as she felt, at least for the moment. “Took the coordinates our young cousin gave me and never gave it a second thought. So blame him. Or blame it on sa’Rraah if you feel the need, and we’ll take it out of Her hide later.”

  Rhiow crouched there and tried to manage her annoyance. “All right,” she said, and for the next few moments sat quiet and listened.

  She could hear a faint buzzing at the edge of hearing. She glanced up at the water heater, wondering if the noise had something to do with its electrical system. But that didn’t seem to be the source. “Hwaith,” she said, “you have the Ear…”

  “It’s them, all right,” he said. “What Arhu heard.” His ears were flicking with his own annoyance. “They’re like rats in the walls here. Disgusting things…”

  Rhiow tried to calm herself down a little, concentrating on her breathing, which sounded loud to her. Nothing to do now but wait until Arhu reports in… Yet at the same time she was quite aware of how not so much as a hair of Hwaith’s fur was touching hers, despite how small this space was. Without looking as if he was crowding away from her, nonetheless he was; and after that first glance he wouldn’t now look at her.

  Rhiow stayed crouched down and breathed for a while,
waiting to see if the tension would relax at all. It didn’t. And there’s spellwork coming, she thought. This isn’t good. It could interfere with the way the team operates, and most especially now that can’t be allowed…

  “Hwaith,” she said.

  He turned one ear in her direction, didn’t move otherwise, didn’t speak.

  “About before…”

  The ear flicked, but that was all.

  Rhiow sighed. “Hwaith…” She wasn’t quite sure where to begin. “And what you said. It’s not that I’m not honored…indeed, flattered…”

  He finally flicked a lazy glance at her. She eyed Hwaith’s whiskers carefully in that darkness, judging how far forward they were set. Hwaith’s look was entirely neutral.

  “But you have to know it’s impossible,” Rhiow said, as gently as she could. “Leaving aside the issue of our separate times – it’s just not a thing that can happen….”

  “’Impossible,’” Hwaith said, giving Rhiow a challenging look. “If we were younger wizards, it’s not a word either of us would be using.”

  “Of course that’s where the youngest of us get their advantage,” Rhiow said. “But we’re both well past that stage now: not just lives along, but years. Wizards our age have to rely on expertise rather than mere blunt power.”

  “And always run the risk of forgetting how our own definitions of possibility limit what we can do,” Hwaith said. The tone wasn’t accusatory: he might have been discussing the weather. “And as for the lives: that’s exactly the point. Neither of us is in a place in our travels where we can afford to just say ‘Maybe next time will work out better.’ Are we?”

  For some seconds Rhiow was silent. Her soul was suddenly full of the echoes of her shock at discovering, not so long ago, that Saash — Saash who she thought she’d known so well — was nine lives along and nearing that final threshold that no wise Person approached without some unease. No one had any way to know whether he or she was one of those whose lives had brought them so closely into tune with the Powers’ way of being that they would inherit the gift that Aifheh and Sehau had won in sa’Rraah’s despite. Many People made light of that gift, saying that nine lives should be enough for anybody, and that an eternity of service afterwards was more than even the Gods had a right to demand. But Rhiow wasn’t one of these.