by K. E. Mills
“Look, I’m fine. Just a few bruises,” he said. “And I’m not important, I’m just Mister Haythwaite’s lowly assistant. I think—”
“Ha!” said Ambrose Wycliffe. “His former lowly assistant, you mean! Dunwoody, you’re sacked. I never want to see your incompetent face again. Getting the government involved in private Wycliffe company business—not having the courtesy to call me, your employer, before these interfering government busy-bodies—it’s outrageous! And I have no doubt this accident is your fault, just like—”
“Now, now, Ambrose,” said Permelia Wycliffe. The peculiar expression still hadn’t quite left her face. “I think you’re being a bit hasty. The young man is right, he is required by law to inform the authorities first. Doubtless they instructed him not to tell anyone else, even us.” She turned. “Isn’t that so, young man?”
Gerald blinked. Permelia was protecting him? How odd. But since the popular theory was not to go kicking gift horses in the teeth… “Yes, Miss Wycliffe. That’s exactly right, Miss Wycliffe. It’d be my licence if I disobeyed the authorities, Miss Wycliffe.”
She gave her brother a sharp, satisfied nod. “You see, Ambrose? And besides, you don’t know what caused this unfortunate explosion. You won’t know until you’ve spoken with Mister Haythwaite. You can’t sack a man who might be innocent of wrong-doing. That flies in the face of everything Wycliffe’s represents. Father would never have stood for it, you know.”
Ambrose Wycliffe’s face burned an even brighter red. “Really? Well, Permelia, in case you’ve not noticed, Father’s not here any more. But I am and I say—”
“That you’ve had a horrible shock,” said Permelia Wycliffe, and took her brother’s arm. “You’re quite overset, Ambrose, and who can blame you? But what kind of a devoted sister would I be, to stand by and let you make a poor decision without trying to stop you? Can you imagine I’d ever do such a thing?”
Ambrose Wycliffe stared at his sister, and she stared back. Some of the hectic colour died out of his jowly, whiskered face, and he cleared his throat. “No. Of course not,” he said hoarsely, tugging his arm free. “Very well. Mister Dunwoody here is not sacked outright.” Recapturing his authority, he puffed out his chest. “But you are suspended, Mister Dunwoody. Pending a thorough investigation into this disgraceful affair.”
“Suspended with full salary and benefits,” Permelia Wycliffe added smoothly. “In fact, don’t think of it as a suspension at all, young man. Think of it as a nice little holiday, to help you recover from your nasty experience. After all, it’s a wonder you weren’t blown to pieces.”
“Ah—yes—thank you, Mister Wycliffe. Miss Wycliffe,” Gerald said, very carefully not letting his gaze touch on the still-hovering Dalby. “I—ah—well, it has all been a bit upsetting. In fact, is it all right if I go home now? I’ve spoken with the men from the Department of Thaumaturgy. They know where to reach me if they need anything else.”
“All right,” said Ambrose Wycliffe, grudgingly. “You can go. But I don’t mind telling you, Dunwoody, you’ve handled this whole thing poorly. Very poorly indeed.” His disgruntled gaze swept around the now brightly-lit lab complex, crowded with busily investigating outsiders. “You might well have done irreparable harm to this establishment’s reputation. And if that proves to be the case—” Ambrose Wycliffe leaned close. “Not even my tender-hearted sister will save you.”
With an effort, Gerald kept his face under control. “I understand, Mister Wycliffe.”
“You’d better,” snapped Ambrose Wycliffe, then glared at the ambulance orderly. “And you. Take me to Errol Haythwaite at once.”
As the orderly hesitated, Gerald nodded. “Truly. I’m fine. I’ll be right as rain come the morning.”
“Very well, sir,” said the orderly, reluctant. “But you should see your own doctor, soon as you can.”
The Wycliffes followed the junior orderly to the other side of the laboratory complex, where two senior ambulance orderlies were still fussing over Errol. Permelia Wycliffe cast one last, puzzled look behind her. Gerald nodded and smiled gratefully, pretending not to notice anything was wrong.
Then he slid off his stool and made his circumspect way through the ongoing bustle to the lab’s main door… making sure to catch Dalby’s eye as he passed.
Outside it was cool and much more quiet, the aftermath of the accident mercifully muffled. Aching all over, his various scrapes and bruises vigorously complaining, Gerald folded his arms tight to his chest and waited.
A brief increase in noise, as the doors opened then closed again. The scrape of boots on the pathway. A roughly cleared throat.
“Dear me,” said Dalby sourly, very quiet. “What a hurly-burly to be sure. Never a dull moment when you’re around, is there, Dunwoody?”
Gerald didn’t turn. “Does Sir Alec know?”
“You could say that,” said Dalby, with a soft, derisive snort. “He wants to see you. Soon as. Proper put out, he is.”
Proper put out? I bet that’s an understatement. “Fine. I don’t suppose you could—”
“Don’t make me laugh,” said Dalby, and spat. “I’ve got to keep an eye on what’s happening here. Take Haythwaite in when the leeches have cleared him. You’ll have to make your own way to Nettle-worth, boyo.”
Oh. In which case, he’d have to soup-up another scooter. But that still left the one he’d ridden to South Ott. Somehow he’d have to get it back here before someone noticed its absence.
Damn. Why can’t anything ever be simple?
“Fine,” he sighed. “Only there’s one small problem, Dalby.”
Another derisive snort. “No, there’s not. The scooter you left across town’s shoved in the garden, over there.”
“You found it?”
“Course I bloody found it,” said Dalby, scornful. “The amount of hexing you did on that thing, it’s a wonder every bloody wizard in town didn’t find it. Bloody show-off, Dunwoody, that’s what you are.”
Gerald felt his face heat. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” said Dalby. “That makes my night, that does.”
And he went back inside.
Still aching, and now dry-mouthed with nerves on top of it, Gerald retrieved the scooter… and went to face the formidable Sir Alec.
“So you see, sir,” he finished, at the end of his long and convoluted explanation of the night’s events—keeping the girls out of it had been interesting, to say the least—“Errol Haythwaite is in the clear. But it looks like we’ll have to take another look at the Wycliffes.”
Leaning back in his chair, elbows propped on its arms, Sir Alec steepled his fingers and gazed at the ceiling. “Hmm. Yes. That certainly appears to be the case, doesn’t it?”
The night was so late now it was very nearly morning. Beyond Sir Alec’s office window the sky above Nettleworth was shifting towards dawn, blushing pale pearly grey with the merest suggestion of pink. Gerald was so tired he felt light-headed and not quite real. Strangely insubstantial, as though his bones were made of paper and his flesh of cotton stuffing. Thanks to some noxious brew Sir Alec had made him drink, his aches and pains were mostly subsided. But oddly, he was hungry… and he desperately wanted to sleep.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get Rottlezinder out in time,” he added. “I know you were anxious to speak with him, sir.”
Gaze lowered again, Sir Alec raised an eyebrow. “Anxious, Mister Dunwoody? I’m not in the habit of feeling anxious. Certainly it would’ve been useful if we’d been able to chat with Mestre Rottlezinder, but alas. In this business we quite often encounter disappointment. However experience has taught me that things often do work themselves out, though perhaps not as swiftly as one might prefer.”
Gerald frowned. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “the fact that Rottlezinder’s dead will give us a bit of breathing space. Finding his replacement won’t be easy. Perhaps we’ll get lucky, and the search itself will help us identify who’s behind the portal sabotage. Ambrose Wycliffe, or who
ever.”
The faintest hint of weariness touched Sir Alec’s cool eyes. “Indeed. In our business, success too frequently hinges upon fortuitous serendipity.”
While failure turned on the lack of it. “I’m sorry about the boot factory, too. Even though I didn’t see anything in Rottlezinder’s room except for him, Errol and the portal hex, there might’ve been information hidden elsewhere in the building. I wish I’d been able to investigate more thoroughly. Still… maybe Mister Dalby can find something in the debris.”
“It’s unlikely,” said Sir Alec. “Which is also unfortunate. But under the circumstances—all things considered—I appreciate that your choices at the time were limited.”
Gerald waited for the inevitable, sardonic reference to Stuttley’s. When it didn’t come he felt himself relax, just a little bit.
“So, all in all, an eventful evening,” Sir Alec said, his steepled fingers tapping each other.
“Yes, sir,” he sighed. “Eventful is one word that springs to mind.”
Sir Alec’s gaze narrowed. “The thing is, Mister Dunwoody, that when one is assigned a watching brief, the emphasis is generally placed upon watching. But it seems there has been rather a lot of running about in this instance. Also some very… creative… uses of thaumaturgy.”
He swallowed. “As you say, sir. Things got a bit eventful.”
“And then, of course, there’s the matter of the docilianti compulsion,” Sir Alec continued, ignoring that. “If I recall correctly, I believe I made quite a point of telling you how rarely such a dangerous incant is to be employed. And yet here we have you, a junior janitor, whipping it out at the first opportunity. Tell me, Mister Dunwoody, do I misremember the facts or were you not quite… opinionated… regarding the uses of such thaumaturgics?”
Sir Alec’s voice was mild enough, his expression perfectly bland, but behind his grey eyes something dangerous waited. Gerald felt his jaw tighten.
“I know what I said about that kind of thaumaturgy, Sir Alec. And my opinion hasn’t changed. But under the circumstances I didn’t think I had a choice. We had to get out of there, and Errol—well, I knew Errol wasn’t going to co-operate. And there wasn’t a lie I could tell him that he’d believe.”
“No, no I don’t suppose there was,” Sir Alec said at last, musingly. “Given your colourful history. Tell me, Mister Dunwoody, how did you manage to breach Rottlezinder’s perimeter warding hexes? I don’t recall you mentioning that.”
He kept his gaze steady, his expression unchanged. Watch yourself, Gerald. This man is no-one’s fool. “I don’t recall mentioning that there were any warding hexes, Sir Alec.”
Sir Alec smiled. “Perhaps you didn’t. But there must have been some, surely. A man like Haf Rottlezinder would never leave himself exposed and unprotected, even in such an obscure location. Everything we know about the man suggests he’d have himself warded to the stars. So. How did you successfully breach his defences?”
Seated on the other side of Sir Alec’s imposing desk, in the remarkably uncomfortable wooden visitor’s chair, Gerald dropped his gaze to his knees. Well. Hadn’t he been an idiot, to hope Sir Alec wouldn’t put his finger precisely on his story’s omission? The question before him now was how did he handle the situation. Reg’s uncharacteristically solemn warning echoed in his memory.
If I were you, I might be a bit… careful… about what I said in my reports to that Sir Alec.
The warning only echoed his own misgivings. He might’ve spent the last six months here in Nettle-worth, being poked and prodded, but that didn’t mean he knew Sir Alec any better now than five minutes after they first met.
All right, yes, Monk says I can trust him to fight the good fight, but how does Monk know that? He’d never lie to me… but that doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t lie to him. And I have no idea what Sir Alec really thinks of my abilities. For all I know he already sees me as a threat…
Sir Alec cleared his throat, very mildly. Too mildly. “Mister Dunwoody,” he said, suspiciously pleasant. “I feel it would be a great pity for you to thrust a spoke in the wheel of your brand-new career by choosing, at this point, to tell me anything less than the whole, unvarnished truth.”
He looked up, straight into Sir Alec’s unnerving grey eyes. Eyes that had looked upon death, and worse than death, for more years than he cared to think about. And he realised he’d reached a kind of crossroads, without ever noticing the journey or its destination. He’d thought he’d made his final choice in New Ottosland. That Sir Alec’s offer of joining the Department was the defining moment of his life.
But he’d been wrong. This was the defining moment of his life. Because after the factory, and Rottlezinder, he knew from the inside just what he was getting himself into. It was the difference between looking at a rapid-filled river… and swimming in it.
So. Did he want to keep swimming? Or did he want to get out? Was Sir Alec a man with a life preserver or was he someone with a long pole waiting to push him under the surface to watch him drown? There was no way of knowing. Not for certain. It all came down to a question of faith.
Either you trust him or you don’t, Dunwoody. The time has come to make your choice: piss or get off the Department pot.
“I don’t know how I did it,” he said, shrugging. “I was thinking about sticking my toe in the door, and the next thing I knew a tiny thread of my potentia had woven itself into Rottlezinder’s warding hex. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. And somehow I was able to pass through the barrier undetected.”
“I see,” said Sir Alec, after a moment. “How very… creative… of you, Mister Dunwoody.”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know about creative, Sir Alec. All I know is that it turned out lucky for Errol. If I hadn’t—improvised—he would’ve been blown to bits, just like Haf Rottlezinder.”
“Yes indeed, he certainly would have,” murmured Sir Alec.
He leaned forward. “Look, sir. I’ve no idea what you know about me that I don’t. I don’t know what all those tests have told you. And to be honest, right now I’m too tired to care. But let me tell you what I know about me. I agreed to join your Department so I could make up for what happened in New Ottosland. All I’m interested in is stopping people who hurt other people with thaumaturgy.”
Sir Alec unsteepled his fingers, and instead laced them across his lean belly. “Yes, Mister Dunwoody. I am perfectly aware of your motives for joining this Department.”
“Maybe, but I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings,” he retorted. “I never asked to be a rogue wizard, Sir Alec. If I could undo it right now, believe me: I would.”
Sir Alec’s eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
“You asked for the truth. That’s it. I’ll always be truthful with you, provided honesty doesn’t get someone hurt.”
“Mister Dunwoody…” Sir Alec sighed. “Surely you’ve learned by now that life is rarely so cut-and-dried. Telling the truth frequently results in casualties. That is the nature of our business. It is sadly too often how this wicked world of ours works.”
“I know,” he said, uncomfortable. “I suppose what I’m trying to say, Sir Alec, is that while I might work for you, that doesn’t mean you own me. And it doesn’t mean I’m going to let you spend six more months poking and prodding and investigating me to satisfy your curiosity about just what makes me tick. You take me or leave me the way I am, flaws and all, right here and now. And if there’s more about me and my rogue powers to discover, then I say let’s discover them while I do what I joined this Department to do. Because otherwise, I don’t see any point in me staying.”
Sir Alec’s wintry smile appeared then disappeared, like a sparkle of sunlight on dancing water. “What a forthright young man you are, Mister Dunwoody.”
“I try to be,” he said, making himself meet Sir Alec’s unforgiving gaze. “And I try to learn from my mistakes.”
“Yes, well, I’d advise you to learn from this one,” said Sir Alec. “Do not edit
your reports to me, Mister Dunwoody. I’m not sure if it’s occurred to you, but trust is in fact a two-way street.”
The girls. He winced. But I can’t drop them in it. Nor Monk. I’ll just have to do a better job of keeping them out of things after this. “Yes, sir.”
“Hmm,” said Sir Alec, eyes narrowed. Then his expression relaxed. “And now, to celebrate the establishment of our new and deeper, more trusting relationship, I will share with you some rather alarming news about your erstwhile superior Errol Haythwaite.”
Gerald sat up. “He’s not dead, is he? I mean, I took every precaution with that lab explosion, Sir Alec. I know I timed it right, and jiggled the prototype’s engine matrix not a single thaumicle past what I needed to, and I absolutely protected him with—”
“Relax, Mister Dunwoody!” Sir Alec said sharply. “I realise you’ve had a morbid night but there’s no need to assume everything is about death.”
He swallowed. “Sorry. So—Errol’s all right?”
“He’s not dead,” said Sir Alec. “But I’m afraid to say that he’s far from all right.”
Oh, lord. “What’s happened now?”
Sir Alec got out of his chair and moved to stand at the window, gazing into the slowly lightening sky. “What can you tell me of Jandria, Mister Dunwoody?”
“Ah… not an awful lot,” he said, staring. “Um. They were the instigators of the last big war. Must be coming up to forty years ago. They lost. They were required to pay some pretty steep reparations and made to agree not to rebuild their—oh.”
“Yes,” said Sir Alec, at his blandest. “Oh indeed. They were made to agree not to rebuild their military capabilities.”
He felt his heart thud, sickeningly. “Are you saying the Jandrians have broken the terms of the armistice?”
“I’m saying we’ve received reliable intelligence that they are working on a secret fleet of military airships,” said Sir Alec. “Incorporating some of Errol Haythwaite’s most innovative thaumaturgical designs.”