Maree said, staring, the sob growing in her voice, “You’d really think these were painted from life!”
I tried not to jump. “Zinka has quite an imagination,” I said. At this, Maree pushed her spectacles up her nose and looked at me. She seems to have an instinct for when I’m covering something up. Shortly after, she disappeared while I was flagging down Kornelius Punt, and I hardly knew whether I was relieved or aggrieved. Possibly she didn’t like Punt. I don’t exactly blame her.
I didn’t dislike him, or like him either. This is not a consideration for a new Magid anyway. What I was looking for were certain qualities that are necessary. Kees, as he told me he liked to be called, certainly had some of them. He had the brains. The travelling scholarship he had won was for outstanding achievement at university, and he told me he had been selected from thousands, all over Holland. But it was a while before I could get him to talk about this. He was incredibly hyped – I think it was contact-high from the convention – and would keep making inane jokes.
“You must give me a Dutch treat,” was the first thing he said. “I have no money.”
“That means we both pay half,” I said.
“And so we will!” he said, his voice going up into a delighted shriek. “You will contribute the money and I will give the pleasure of my company.”
“Fine by me,” I said. So he proceeded to order the most expensive things on the menu, while I tried to get him to talk sense.
When the food came, he said, gobbling up the scampi, “I have decided it is a fine joke to be in love with Maree Mallory. They say she has a broken heart, so there is no danger to me.”
I felt my face heating with anger. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” I said.
“Oh I know. She will bite me. Or scratch,” he said gleefully. “But then I am a masochist, so that is all right.” I think I would have cut in angrily here, only it dawned on me that Kees was trying to get a reaction out of me, having seen me going about with Maree. I was sure of it when he added, cocking his eye to see how I responded, “And she is a chip off the old block. Probably she is one of her uncle’s demons in disguise.”
I ignored this, but I was very mortified. Probably the reason I made such few and curt notes on the morning was that I was increasingly exasperated to find that I infinitely preferred Maree, whom I had discounted, to any of the candidates left. If only she did not speak to me with that sob in her voice…
Meanwhile I got irritated with Kees Punt. He seemed to be a confirmed jester. It would, in a way, I thought, be quite good cover for a Magid, never to be taken seriously, except that Punt was drawing attention to himself all the time – his voice kept rising to a shriek as he made yet another outrageous pun – and it is not a good idea for a Magid to do that. If people notice you for one thing, they tend to notice the rest. But Kees was young. I had hopes he could grow out of it. There must be a serious man in there somewhere, I thought, while he shouted that he was a great joker and then told me in a shriek that the words on his T-shirt were Elvish.
And I still feel I may not have done justice to Kees, because while he was blithely laying into his Woodcock Supreme and I had just got him to talk about his travels, we were both distracted by turmoils among the other eaters. From the table behind me, Ted Mallory said loudly, “Well, why should I have denied it, for fuck’s sake? He’d made a total mess of it. I simply took it and improved it and I’m not ashamed to admit it! Books are public property – and he’d no business to be so damn rude!”
Kees’s pale face lit up and he raised a hand to make sure I was attending to this. “I am a great gossip,” he said gleefully, “and a nosy parker. Listen. There is some scandal here.”
From the table behind him, one of my American friends was saying, “Why, if that guy thinks he’s been robbed, how is he going to handle shared world writing? There, you make a gag, someone else takes it up, and next you know it’s being bounced around every single story. That’s all Mallory did. Thurless is an asshole.”
From across the dining room, I could now hear Thurless himself, practically screaming, “It’s shameless plagiarism! I’ve a good mind to sue Mallory for this!”
I looked at Kees, his pale excited face and raised hand. He had the ability to be a Magid all right. I could feel him raising the sound level of all the voices around, so that we could hear even the distant Thurless without missing a word. “It is a scandal!” he said delightedly.
Evidently Maree and I had left the panel just before the fun started. Thurless had suddenly rounded on Mallory and accused him of having stolen all the funniest bits of Shadowfall from a novel Thurless had published the year before that. Mallory had blandly confessed it was so. “If I find the cog I need lying around in somebody’s botched machine,” he was saying behind me, “I feel quite justified in taking it and using it properly.” Well. That certainly fitted his philosophy. But it was clear there had been a flaming row, and not everyone had enjoyed it.
Under Punt’s manipulations, I could hear the MC, Tina Gianetti, saying tearfully to Maxim Hough, “I couldn’t stop them! I thought they were going to fight across me! And I don’t like to hear language like that in public, Maxim.”
“What language?” Kees wondered delightedly. “Double Dutch consisting of four-letter words? Let someone tell us, please!”
Now he was actually pressuring Gianetti and the Americans to repeat what had been said. I said to him, rather sharply, “Kees, do you always do this to people?”
“Only when I need to know,” he said happily. “For gossip and exams and so on.”
“It’s a misuse of power,” I told him.
“Yes, you are po-faced,” he said. “I have noticed. But where is the harm?”
“It amounts to cheating if you do it in exams,” I pointed out.
“Everyone cheats,” he said, “if they can. I would not do it for something serious like a parliamentary election or anything like that. And this is juicy gossip.”
It left me with considerable doubts about the man’s ethics. I think he truly intended no harm to anyone, but that was not to say he would still be harmless in ten years’ time. I was doubtful about him, enough to be quite glad when he looked at his watch and said he had to go and gopher for the publishers.
“You need not pay for a dessert,” he said. “I am sweet enough.” And left.
I left as soon as I could flag a waiter and get my bill signed. I hefted my four bags of books and made my way across the room. Thurless was at a table by the exit. I had been hoping to snag him next, but he was clearly still in a fury, to judge by the way he was stabbing the roast potatoes on his plate. I could almost see him thinking of them as Ted Mallory’s kidneys and heart. His beard wagged with rage. Even so, I would have stopped and had a word with him, had not the other man at the table looked up at me as I approached. It was the most unloving look I have ever received. It was delivered at me from pale eyes that were yellow where they should be white and fat lips that parted in a snarl shape amidst a brown and grey beard.
The fellow was a total stranger. His badge said GRAM WHITE, which rang a faint bell. Mrs Janine Mallory had mentioned that name at breakfast, that was all I knew. But it was clear he had pretty strong magic, about equal to Thurless. I could feel it in both as soon as I was near. And he hated me. And was warning me off. I simply walked on as if I had not noticed. I saw myself in one of the hotel’s ubiquitous mirrors stride on and push at the exit door with a couple of my bags of books without batting an eyelid or changing my expression, for which I silently commended myself. It was not until I was past the door and puzzling about the way the fellow had looked at me that I recalled that there had been a grey hooded cloak thrown across the back of this Gram White’s chair. Then I placed him. He was the leader of those monk-like figures that everyone drew back from in the foyer. And, having been near enough to sense the character of his magic, I thought I knew why he had glared at me. He had been one of the ones using the node. He must have realised that I w
as the one who had stilled it.
I went straight to the Dealers Room. “Gram White?” I asked Zinka.
She was sitting among her mirrors, boxes and winged models eating a large hot dog. “Bad news,” she answered, one cheek bulging. “Local resident. Runs an arms factory in Wantchester. Always comes to this con and always teaches Esoterica in Universe Three. Don’t touch him with a barge-pole, or even something longer than that.”
“Thanks,” I said, and left her to her lunch.
I went to my car then. I came out through the kitchen entrance into a surprisingly biting-cold bright day, in which snow was drifting like pollen, and stowed my carrier bags in the boot before climbing into the car.
Scarlatti went from loud tinkle to faint tinkle. “About time!” Stan said. “Your phone keeps going off, but I can’t seem to manage the tapes. I just had to let it ring.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was busy. Stan, where exactly did you get that list of possible Magids from?”
“Senior Magid,” he said. “Handed down to her from Above about the time I knew I was dying. Why?”
“Upper Room, or higher up?” I asked.
“Well, it came to her through Upper Room, like most things,” he said. “But the details were so vague, I got the feel it could have come from much higher up. Cost me a lot of work, to get you a list with names and addresses out of it, I can tell you.”
“I thought so,” I said. “We are being Intended, Stan. And I don’t like it. I can’t see what they’re playing at! None of these candidates is right. Punt is the best, and he’d do anything for a laugh. I think the Croatian is deranged. Thurless has been throwing scenes like a prima donna ever since he appeared, and I suspect he’s into the bad magic too. Fisk is awful, and you know my opinion of Mallory. I think we’ll have to wipe that list and start again.”
“Steady on. I must have been given it for a reason!” Stan protested. “Have you talked to all of them now?”
“Not to Fisk or Thurless,” I admitted, “and not properly to Gabrelisovic.”
“Then one of them’s got to have hidden depths,” Stan said. “Don’t judge until you’ve done a proper—”
Here my phone clamoured. It was Dakros. The sound was unusually distant and crackly, but Dakros’s voice came out of it joyously. “Got you at last, Magid. Sorry about the interference. I’m in a landcruiser on my way to the Thalangia World Gate. We’ve found Knarros. High Lady Alexandra found him.”
“She did?” And not just a pretty face, I remembered. “How did she do that?”
“You remember I sent her to Thalangia?” Dakros’s crackly voice asked. “To the farm my uncle manages for me? Well, she got talking to my uncle and his people there, and my uncle happened to mention there was a religious colony up on a hill about ten miles away, and somebody else remarked they were thorn-worshippers like the Emperor was. So Alexandra made some quiet enquiries. And it appears there are children, or at least young people, up there, but everyone told her that the head of the colony won’t let anyone near the place unless they come on business, and won’t let them talk to the children if they do go with deliveries and so forth. So she asked some more. And today someone told her that the head of this colony is a strict brute of a centaur called Knarros. She called me up at once.”
“Knarros is a centaur!” I exclaimed. Then there had been a clue in the graphics.
Dakros laughed joyously amid the static. “Yes, no wonder all the humans were frauds. As I said, I’m on my way to Thalangia in a cruiser, with as many men as I can spare. We’ll be at the farm by tomorrow evening. Can you join us beside that hill, Magid?”
“Well, I’ve got rather pressing business—” I began.
“If he’s a centaur, it’s going to take a Magid,” Stan put in, in my other ear. “Tell him yes, and put things on hold for an hour or so here.”
“All right,” I told Dakros, sighing a little. “Give me node points and references for the hill. “What hour?”
We settled on six in the evening and I hung up. “What do you mean, it’s going to take a Magid if he’s a centaur?” I asked Stan.
“If you know centaurs,” he said, “it stands to reason. This one’s in a position of trust and he hasn’t come forward. That means he’s promised not to, or probably only to come forward under certain conditions. Centaurs like that are real sticklers. You’re going to have to convince him the conditions are met. They listen to Magids, if they listen to no one else. And he could be a magic user himself. That would make sense in the—”
“All right. I’m convinced. I’m not a centaur,” I said. “I’ll go and argue with Knarros tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’d better make some arrangements here.”
I got out of the car, into the stinging snow, and hurried to the Dealers Room again. I was not about to do as Gram White seemed to have done and leave a major working set up unattended in a strong node like this one in Wantchester. I had four people’s fatelines woven into the Hotel Babylon – no, more like seven, if you counted my own and Andrew’s and, as I strongly suspected, Maree Mallory’s too – and there was no way I could wind all that down before Saturday night. I had intended to spend most of the following week doing it.
Zinka had finished her hot dog by then and was drinking tea. Luckily there were very few other people in the room. I had panted out my problem to her in a hoarse whisper.
“No,” she said. It was quite pleasant. It was also like running full-tilt into an iceberg. “Leave the Empire to stew, Rupert. Word’s out that it’s Intended to fall apart anyway. I’m on holiday. I told you.”
“But you said you would in an emergency,” I pleaded.
“This,” said Zinka, “is not an emergency. This is you trying the kiss of life on a week-old corpse. I repeat: no.”
“I can’t leave a full-scale working unattended!” I more or less wailed.
“Then don’t,” she said. “Or get someone else in. What’s wrong with Stan?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “Dead and disembodied in my car at this moment.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then I am sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
The signs were that the iceberg would have melted then, except that, unfortunately, my Croatian candidate came and loomed over us. Suddenly, before I could say any more. His hollow, haunted face bent down between us. Zinka and I both drew back from it. “You two have the wrong smell,” Gabrelisovic said. His large mauve hand, marked with lumps and white nicks, came between us also, forming one of the more violent of the signs against witchcraft. “Such as you,” he said, “have I killed with the bare hand and buried in the mass grave many times in the mountains of my country.” He stood up and retreated. “I hunt by smell,” he said. “Beware. You disgust.” And he strode away.
“Gosh. Wow!” Zinka said. “Long time since I encountered a genuine witch-sniffer. He must have added quite a dimension to their war! He’s mad as a hatter as well, isn’t he?”
Knowing what a good healer Zinka is, I said wistfully, “Is there any chance you can make him sane again?”
“No,” she said, staring after Gabrelisovic as he strode from the room. “No way. Not after he’s killed people bare-handed, there’s no chance. And he’d go for me if I tried.” Then, as I opened my mouth to continue pleading about my working, she added, “And no to that too, Rupert. I always know when I’m needed now. Go away.”
I took myself off, wondering what to do. The answer seemed to be, to finish my work here – at least I needn’t now interview Gabrelisovic – as far as I could, and then ask Will, as the nearest off-world Magid, to stand in for me while I dealt with Knarros. Will was easier to reach than any other Magid currently on Earth. It sounded so simple, put like that. I went off to do it.
From Maree Mallory’s
Thornlady Directory, file
twenty-six
I’m entering this quite late at night, after I left the publishers’ parties and dragged Nick away with me before he got too drunk. One of the parties must still be going on.
I can hear distant drunken hooting, and somewhere there’s just been a huge crash of broken glass. Someone turned the wrong way at a corner and tried to walk through a mirror probably.
Actually I left because a) my fabulous Nordic type wasn’t at any of them (Wendy was hunting for him too); b) Rupert is furious with me; and c) Janine came in while I was sitting on the floor between Nick and Wendy and bitched about what a sight we looked. She can talk. She was wearing a black thing with a golden snake wrapped round it that made her look like an advanced version of one of Zinka’s pictures. The snake had two heads and one head was – well anyway, I couldn’t stand any more and came away.
But I really meant to write down the extraordinary thing this afternoon.
What happened was that Nick was desperate to talk to Rupert – the Prat – about computer games. ‘Desperate’ is an understatement. Nick wouldn’t let me do anything else but help find him and snabble Rupert Venables. Of course we couldn’t find him at first. Then we ran him down in the bar – naturally at the precise moment he got caught by the dreadful Tansy-Ann. He was with her for ages.
Nick kept saying we should go and rescue Rupert, why didn’t we? He said we would earn the man’s undying gratitude. And I told him he had no idea what Tansy-Ann was like. She was quite capable of catching us and holding us in thrall too. And even Nick agreed she did look a bit that way. So we sat and waited. Somebody bought me some Real Ale because they said I looked as if I needed it – I blame that news sheet again – and Nick got bought a Coke he didn’t like. And we watched Rupert avoid having his back massaged by Tansy-Ann and get his hands squeezed instead, while Tansy-Ann pushed her beak into his face and talked for a good hour. I was getting almost sorry for the Prat, when Nick and I looked up after not looking for a second or so. And Rupert was gone. Tansy-Ann was alone, looking startled.
“Told you so,” said Nick. He had done no such thing. “He’s just like me. I can always get away from people if I want to. He’s probably in the gents.”