Wizard squared ra-3

by K. E. Mills

  “Ha,” said Reg, her dark eyes wickedly gleaming. “Royal? Bugger that. It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on, ducky!”

  Sir Alec handled his government-issue car with a quiet efficiency that wasn’t the least bit surprising. The shock would have been if he’d driven any other way.

  “So, Mr. Dunwoody,” he said, as they reached the lightly populated outskirts of Central Ott and turned onto Greater Flushcombe Road. “Any questions?”

  Gerald looked out of the window at the passing semi-rural countryside. Wherever they were headed, he’d not been there before. In fact, this was his first trip out of the city in months.

  “No, Sir Alec. I think I’m clear. Once I reach my destination I’m to take a room in the Grande Splotze Inn, using the name Barlowe. As soon as the dining room opens I’m to take the small table under the stuffed moose head with the chipped left antler, making sure to wear the yellow cravat that’s been provided for me, and wait until my contact stops to tell me I should really try the elk stew. Overcome by his kindness I’m to invite him to join me for supper, over which he will-if we’re very lucky-tell me some interesting things about a certain black market wizard we’re anxious to meet.”

  Sir Alec nodded. “Exactly.” Then, glancing sideways, he added, “And if you’re going to snigger I suggest you do it now. Sniggering in Grande Splotze might easily get you killed.”

  Damn. “I’m sorry, sir. But honestly-it is rather like something out of a bad cloak-and-dagger novel.”

  “I don’t read bad cloak-and-dagger novels, Mr. Dunwoody,” Sir Alec said coolly, “so I’ll have to take your word on that. As for your arrangements, they were made by the man you’ll be meeting over the elk stew. Given the risks he’s taking I’m not inclined to criticize. Are you?”

  “No, sir,” he muttered, and hunched a little in the uncomfortable passenger seat. Nobody could make him feel small the way Sir Alec could. “Sir-”

  “When you come back,” said Sir Alec, slowing the car to take a sharp left-hand turn onto a road that looked to be taking them into deep rural territory, “and you’ve been fully debriefed, I suggest you take a day for yourself and catch a train to the seaside. Alone. It’s my experience that fresh salt air and solitude do wonders for one’s perspective.”

  This was about Monk again. He knew it. “Sir-”

  “I’m doing my best, Mr. Dunwoody,” said Sir Alec. “And so is Sir Ralph. But unless your clever young friend starts helping himself not even his uncle and I will be able to save him.”

  Stupid bloody politics. Stupid old men. “Sir-Monk’s a genius.”

  “I know, Mr. Dunwoody. That would be the problem.”

  They drove some twenty-five more miles in silence. Around them the countryside grew markedly more full of sheep. At last Sir Alec slowed almost to stopping, then guided the car down a long narrow private road. It took them all the way around to the back of a seemingly deserted farmhouse, where a straggle of outbuildings sagged under the sunny sky. The surrounding silence was profound.

  “Right,” said Sir Alec, and stopped the car. “Here we are.”

  And here was in the middle of nowhere. Clambering out of the car, overnight bag clutched in one hand, Gerald looked around, perplexed. “Ah-Sir Alec? What-”

  “With me,” said Sir Alec, infuriatingly calm, and led the way into the nearest slatternly barn.

  Instead of cows, or even sheep, the barn contained a portal.

  “It’s unregistered,” said Sir Alec, answering his unspoken question. “One of a handful we use for little jobs like this. Perfectly safe, of course. Just-off the national grid. All right, in you hop.”

  Secret portals? The Department operated secret portals? What else didn’t he know? Feeling stupid, Gerald stared at his superior. “You’re a licensed portal operator?”

  For once, Sir Alec’s brief smile was almost warm. “Mr. Dunwoody, over time you’ll find I’m licensed for a great many things.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small copper disc and tossed it. “Use that for your return journey. It’ll shoot you through to a different unregistered portal. We don’t like to use the same one twice in any mission. There’ll be a phone so you can call the Department for a lift back to Nettleworth. And don’t worry. The travel token has a falsified destination signature. The Grande Splotze portal operator will be none the wiser. Now-have a safe trip and I’ll see you again soon.”

  Gerald slipped the return travel token into his pocket. “Yes, sir.”

  And with nothing else to say, he stepped into the portal and vanished.

  “Y’know,” said Reg, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sunshine.”

  Holding a finger steady on a precariously balanced thaumic constrictor, Monk blew his hair out of his eyes. “Well, you’re not me, are you, Reg?”

  Reg cackled. “And if you think I don’t give daily thanks for that, Mr. Markham, you’ve got cockroaches in your undershorts.”

  He looked at Melissande. “Have I told you today how grateful I am that you took her with you so she’s not living with me?”

  “I wouldn’t live with you if you paid me in rubies,” said Reg, offended. “Cheeky bugger.”

  They were up in the attic, fiddling with experimental thaumaturgics. Well. Drinking brandy and fiddling. And more the former than the latter. Sort of. What he really wanted to do was have at his multi-dimensional etheretic wavelength expander, except… well, it was still pretty unstable and Gerald wasn’t here. So instead, he and Bibbie were working on her ridiculous ethergenics project with Melissande taking copious notes and Reg making a nuisance of herself on one of the stationary pushbikes. It was all terribly domestic.

  “I think,” said Bibbie slowly, emerging from one of her trances, “that what we need to do next is cross-wire the thaumic constrictor with the etheretic enhancer, and feed the feedback pulse back through a compromising subharmonic Bodley prism.”

  “Say that again, ducky,” said Reg. “Backwards. I dare you.”

  Bibbie flapped a hand at her. “Shut up, you silly woman. Monk, what do you think?”

  I think Melissande looks adorable with ink smudges on her nose. “Um-really? A Bodley prism? You don’t want to use a Crumpshott?”

  “No,” said Bibbie, decisively. “Any fool can split the harmonics with a Crumpshott.”

  “And by any fool,” said Reg, amused, “she means Demelza Sopwith.”

  “Hey!” said Bibbie. “I thought we agreed that name was never to be spoken.”

  Reg rattled her tail feathers. “Sorry. Perhaps if I had some brandy I could remember things like that.”

  “ Forget it! ” Melissande and Bibbie shouted together.

  “Remember what happened the last time you got your beak into brandy?” Melissande added. “I refuse to go through that again.”

  Reg subsided, sulky. “Well, at least I didn’t climb into a fountain and crush innocent goldfish to death down my decolletage.”

  “You don’t have a decolletage, Reg,” said Melissande, teeth gritted. “Not any more. But I do. So shut up or I’ll pretend you’re a goldfish.”

  “I need more brandy,” Monk announced, and scrambled to his feet. “Lots of it.” The girls ignored him, they were too busy squabbling. Leaving them to it, he took the stairs two at a time down to the parlor where the drinks trolley lived. Suitably fortified he headed back upstairs, only to be halted midway by a banging on the front door.

  “What the hell?”

  It was late. They weren’t expecting anyone. And if it was Gerald returned from his mission he’d let himself in. Bugger. He didn’t want visitors. Mildly grumpy, he turned around, thudded back down the stairs and padded along the hallway to the hexed front door. Tucked the bottle of Broadbent under his arm, canceled the hex and swung the door wide.

  “Yes? What is it? What do you-”

  The man on the doorstep wore the same face he looked at in the mirror every morning.

  “Markham!” the man gasped. “Monk Markham! Le
t me in, for God’s sake! We have to talk!”

  Monk banged the door shut in the man’s face-his face-reset the hex and climbed back up to the attic.

  “Um-girls?” he said, halting in the doorway, and was amazed he sounded so unperturbed. “If I could just have your attention?”

  They looked at him inquiringly: Melissande, Bibbie and Reg.

  “Um-girls-am I drunk?”

  “Well, drunk’s a relative term when it comes to you,” said Bibbie, considering him. “But on balance no. I wouldn’t say so. Why?”

  He cleared his throat. “Because I just answered the front door and I’m standing on the doorstep. I don’t suppose you’d like to come downstairs and see?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bloody hell,” said Reg, peering down from Melissande’s shoulder at the figure collapsed on their doorstep. “I thought you were joking.”

  Monk spared her a look. “About something like this?”

  “Oh, for the love of Saint Snodgrass, don’t you two start,” said Bibbie, and shoved everyone aside. “Whoever he is, however he got here, he’s in trouble, can’t you see? Help me get him inside. MonkMonk — don’t just stand there, you idiot. Help.”

  “The parlor’s probably the best place for now,” said Melissande. She sounded terribly self-contained, and looking at her face he couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling. “I’ll jolly up the fire.”

  “Good idea,” he said. “Ah-Melissande-”

  She waved aside his concern. “I’m fine. Bibbie’s right. We should get him inside before somebody sees him.”

  As she and Reg retreated, he helped his sister haul-haul Me? Can I say me? Or is it not-me? I must be drunk. Or dreaming. Is this real? It can’t be real. Can it?

  — him over the threshold and into the house. The man was a dead weight, stuporous and groaning. No luggage. No handy name tag. No anything to suggest who he was, where he’d come from or what the devil he was doing here in Ott. In Chatterly Crescent.

  On my doorstep.

  “Get the door,” Bibbie grunted, the man half-draped over her shoulder. “And double-hex it. No, better make that a triple. The last thing we need tonight is any more visitors.”

  Blimey, had his little sister always been this bossy? Or were Reg and Melissande starting to rub off on her?

  Great. That’s all I need… another bossy female in my life.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” he muttered, and took care of the front door. Then he helped Bibbie get-get- not-me — all the way down the hall and into the parlor, where Melissande had indeed jollied up the fire and even managed to shove the arm chairs out of the way and heave the old sofa in front of the warmly dancing flames.

  Reg was perched suggestively on the edge of the drinks trolley. “Really, now, under the circumstances, don’t you think I deserve a brandy?”

  “I’ll bloody flambe you in the stuff if you don’t give over, Reg,” Bibbie said, close to snarling. “Come on, Melissande. Don’t just stand there, grab his ankles. We need to get him lying flat.”

  With much huffing and puffing and muttered cursing they got-got-not-him-laid out on the sofa like a not-quite-dead corpse.

  Reg flapped over from the drinks trolley to land on the sofa’s back. “Hmm,” she said, head tilted, considering their unexpected guest. “Hope you’ve got some shovels somewhere, Mr. Markham. Because from where I’m sitting it looks like curtains for you.”

  Strategically retreating, Monk shoved his hands in his pockets. “That’s not me, Reg,” he snapped, feeling a violent shiver run through him. “Don’t call him me.”

  She sniggered. “Well, if that’s not you, sunshine, he’s doing a bloody good imitation.”

  “Where did you put that bottle of brandy, Monk?” Bibbie demanded, looking around. “He could probably do with a nip.”

  “Oh, fine, yes,” said Reg, all her feathers fluffing. “Waste perfectly good brandy on a man with both feet in the grave all the way up to his armpits, why don’t you, but deny me the solace! After a shock like this, and me with all those years in my dish! Blimey! There’s no justice in the world.”

  “Well, Reg, you’re right about that much,” Bibbie retorted. “Because if there was any justice in the world you’d have talked yourself into asphyxiation a few centuries back! Monk. Where’s that brandy?”

  Bugger the brandy. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the shoes on not-him’s feet. Shoes were good. Shoes were safe. Except-except I bought those shoes last year. From Mr. Chokati’s Famous Shoe Emporium. In the big sale. I know for a fact they’re upstairs in my closet. So what are they doing on this impostor’s feet?

  “Never mind, Bibbie,” said Melissande, so quietly he could hardly hear her. “I’ll fetch the brandy.”

  The brandy. Yes. He’d put the bottle down somewhere, hadn’t he? Mel would find it. She was good at things like that. Being organized. Being tidy. Efficient. He had to stay here and not think about shoes.

  The man on the sofa, who wore dark trousers and a pale shirt and a slightly tired three-quarter length blue coat that looked horribly familiar- but I am not not not going to think about that- stirred and started muttering. Nothing intelligible, just nonsense words laced with pain. Monk felt another violent shiver run through him. That was his voice. That was the way he sounded when he was in pain. He kept staring at the shoes. It seemed safer that way.

  Bibbie was crouched beside their completely unnecessary visitor, holding his hand in a firm but gentle grasp. “Hush,” she said softly. “It’s all right, Monk. You’re safe.”

  Monk? Monk? Bibbie, what are you doing? You can’t call him that! He’s not Monk, I am.

  As though she could hear his thoughts, his little sister turned and skewered him with a glare. “I don’t begin to know how this is possible but this man is you, Monk. He is. Look at him. Look at his face and tell me he’s not you.”

  Oh, Saint Snodgrass and her forty-seven descendants. Feeling sick, feeling dizzy, he dragged his gaze away from the shoes he’d bought seven months ago and looked at the face of the man on the sofa. Made himself take a few steps towards him and look again.

  Bloody hell. That’s me.

  Although… now that he came to actually pay attention… it wasn’t exactly him. Not the him living this life, at any rate. The face of the man on the sofa was thinner. Oddly older. And it had lines in it… deep lines… that only suffering could carve. The Gerald they’d found in the cave, his face had been lined the same way after that mad bastard Lional had spent days playing with him-but eventually those lines had smoothed and then, praise Saint Snodgrass, they’d disappeared, leaving only occasional blank looks and patches of silence in their wake.

  Whoever had been playing with this man-this not-him-they were still playing. But where? And how?

  Melissande returned with the brandy and an empty glass. Bibbie poured a little into it, slipped an arm around the man’s-the other Monk’s-shoulders and helped him sit up a bit.

  “Here,” she said, with a small, encouraging smile. “It’s all right. It’s just brandy.”

  He heard a rattle of tail feathers and looked at Reg, still perched on the back of the sofa. The wretched bird was giving him a meaningful look. Then she looked at Melissande, head tipped to one side again. His heart banged like a drum.

  Oh, lord. Mel.

  She was so pale all her freckles stood out like fallen leaves on a snowfield. Even without a magnifying glass he thought he could count every last one of them. Not even in the middle of the Lional-crisis or the Wycliffe-kerfuffle had he seen her looking so shaken and unsure.

  Gingerly he joined her and wrapped his fingers around hers. Her skin was icy. “Hey. You know that’s not me, right? This is me. I’m holding your hand.”

  “I know,” she said, and slipped free of him. “But if he’s not you, Monk…”

  Exactly. Then who is he?

  Beside them, Reg snorted. “Well, if I didn’t know better, sunshine, I’d say he was your evil twin. But since
I do know better I’m going to say you’re his.”

  He didn’t even bother to glance at her. “Thank you, Reg. That’s terribly helpful.”

  “I don’t know,” Reg added, huffy. “That poker-assed Sir Alec picked a fine time to whisk Gerald off in a cloud of secrecy, I must say. We could do with his nattering around about now.”

  The man on the sofa flinched and jerked his head away. Brandy spilled down his chin and the front of his coat.

  The coat Bibbie gave me three Solstices ago.

  Saint Snodgrass’s bunions, this really was insane.

  Bibbie held out an impatient hand, fingers snapping. Straight away Melissande took a plain, unfrilly hanky from her tweed trousers’ pocket and passed it over.

  “There you are,” said Bibbie, dabbing the man dry. “All better. Can you talk sensibly now?”

  “Not if he’s anything like our Monk Markham, he can’t,” said Reg. “Honestly, ducky. Do remember who you’re dealing with.”

  “Melissande…”

  “Please, Reg,” Mel said, her voice low and not quite steady. “You really aren’t helping.”

  Reg chattered her beak. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m helping. If you’re flapping at me you’re not going into hysterics, are you? That’s called keeping up morale, that is.”

  Mel turned to him. “Monk, he didn’t like it when Reg mentioned Gerald. How can he know Gerald? And why would mentioning his name upset him?”

  “ Why?” said the man on the sofa, his eyes dragging open. “How can you even ask me that, Melissande? How can you-” He pressed trembling fingers to his chapped lips. “Oh. Sorry. I keep forgetting. I’m all over the place from the transition. And-and-” A terrible shudder racked him head to toe. “And then there’s the shadbolt.”

  “ Shadbolt? ” said Bibbie, and leapt to her feet. “What shadbolt?” Closing her eyes she reached out with her potentia, then after a moment pulled back again. Her eyes were wide and brimful of shock. “I don’t understand. How can that even be poss-”

  Alarmed, Monk abandoned Melissande and went to his little sister. “Bibbie, what is it? What did you fee!?”