by Diane Duane
Arhu was silent for a little, staring at the ground. Rhiow sat beside him, waiting.
“ … All right,” he said at last. He lifted a face to Rhiow that was full of fear. “But she said she was going to kill me.”
“I think that would take some doing,” Rhiow said. “But that small matter aside, no one kills one of my team without coming through me first. Power source she may be, but she’s not the only one with a claw to her name. Let’s go back.”
Ten minutes later they were back on the derelict platform under Tower Hill station. Huff stood looking forlorn as they came: Arhu looking a little defiant, Rhiow trying to keep her composure in the face of the storm of fury she expected from Siffha’h.
But Siffha’h was not there.
“She ran off,” Huff said, “just after Arhu did …” Huff looked profoundly disturbed, and Rhiow for one knew how he felt, and was sorry for him. It was unnerving to see so steady and stolid a personality suddenly at loose ends, embarrassed by the behavior of one of his team, upset by what he had glimpsed through Arhu’s vision: and there was something else going on with him as well, Rhiow thought, though she couldn’t easily tell what it was.
“She’ll be back,” Rhiow said, profoundly hoping that this would prove true. “Meanwhile we must start laying our plans …”
Everyone gathered together and sprawled out comfortably on the platform, including Artie, who was acquiring a grimy look, but becoming more cheerful all the time at all the exposure to “magic”. When he understood what the two teams were discussing, he immediately cried, “I want to come with you!”
The People glanced at one another, concerned. “I don’t know,” Huff said. “If something happened to you, Artie, and we weren’t able to return you to the time where you belong after all this—”
“Huff, if the timeslide’s to be powered successfully,” Rhiow said, “as it was the last time, he may have to come with us on the intervention run. We may very well have no choice in the matter.”
“If it can be powered successfully,” Fhrio muttered, “with Siffha’h missing …”
“We’ll deal with that issue a little later,” Huff said. To take care of any uncertainty about the dates, we must have someone guarding the Queen from at least a couple of nights before the date of the attack. I’m concerned that the Lone One might somehow get wind of what we’re trying to do, and attempt to forestall us by striking earlier. But meanwhile, for planning purposes, let’s assume that the slide goes well, and those of us not on guard duty find ourselves in the grounds of Windsor Castle on the evening of the ninth of July.”
“What time was the attack?” Auhlae said. “I couldn’t tell.”
“I saw the Moon,” said Rhiow. For her, that was the one image that haunted her most persistently about that whole year: every time she looked at the sky, she searched for the Moon to see what it looked like. “It was waning, and just rising then, which would have made the time about midnight, as ehhif reckon it, or at most half an hour past that. The Whispering can help us pin down the exact timing.”
“Now, as for the murderer …”
“The Mouse,” Fhrio said, and his jaw chattered. “Appropriate name, considering what’s going to happen to him.”
“It’s not going to happen to him,” Huff said forcefully. “Murdering a murderer will do nothing but play straight into the Lone Power’s paws. The action would rebound in Iau only knows what kind of horrible way. Whatever else happens to him, his life has to be spared.”
“At the same time,” Rhiow said, “when he disappears—I assume that’s something like what will happen to him, one way or another—that disappearance should be such that it raises as few questions as possible. An elegant intervention is one which leaves sa’Rrahh scratching her fleas and wondering what in the worlds happened.”
“I’d be less concerned about elegance and more concerned about simply making sure the assassination doesn’t happen,” Fhrio growled.
“Yes,” Rhiow agreed, “if necessary. No argument there. But the less wizardry is obvious about whatever goes on, the better.”
“What started it all,” Auhlae said, “was the Mouse getting that letter.”
Arhu shook his head. “No. There was another one.”
Rhiow looked at him in surprise. “What? Another letter?”
“You didn’t see it?” She shook her head. Arhu tucked himself down into “thinking” position and said, “There’s another letter, sent the day before. I see the desk it’s being written on, all shiny wood and leather: and the design on top of the paper. It’s a kind of gateway, and on top of it there’s a picture of what the ehhif-Queen wears on her head.”
Auhlae looked shocked. “The crowned portcullis,” she said. That’s the stationery used by the ehhif in the House of Commons. You’re telling me that the person starting this plot off is a Member of Parliament?!”
Arhu squinted. “The House of Commons. Is that one of the buildings in that big spiky place by the river? The one with the big clock?”
“Yes,” Huff said. “The whole thing together is the Palace of Westminster.”
“That’s it, then. I see the river out his window as he’s writing,” Arhu said, still squinting slightly, and rocking back and forth a little, an odd motion, as if he was on wings. “It’s getting late … the Sun is going down. He folds the letter up and puts it in an envelope, and he takes a pen and starts writing something up in the corner … No, he stopped. He’s just writing in the middle of the envelope now.”
“The address,” Rhiow said.
“I guess.”
“What does it say?”
“His handwriting’s hard to read.” Arhu was silent for a moment. “ ‘Edinburgh’? Where’s that?”
“In the north of the country,” Fhrio said.
“Then he looks around in his desk drawer for something,” Arhu said, still rocking slightly. “A little piece of paper. He sticks it onto the letter, in the corner.”
“Stamping it rather than ‘franking’ it,” Auhlae said. That way it won’t look any different from other ehhif’s letters, at least on the outside.”
“I see. All right. Then he puts the letter in a box on a bookcase by the door, and goes out,” Arhu says. “He goes down to the big room where we saw the people shouting, before.” He blinked. There are already a lot of ehhif there, all shouting and waving papers around. They’re loud, down there.”
“They do that,” Huff said. “Don’t ask me why. It’s traditional.”
“And these are the people who run the country?” Rhiow said. “Why do the ehhif here let them carry on like that?”
“Maybe they like to watch a good fight?” Urruah said.
“They’re not allowed actually to fight with each other,” Huff said. The two sides are kept a sword’s length and three feet apart on purpose.”
“So all they do is yell at each other all night? All those toms?” Urruah twitched his tail in bemusement. “No singing?”
“Not in there,” Huff said. “What can I tell you … they’re ehhif.” He put his whiskers forward. “But the letter?”
“I don’t see it go out,” Arhu said, “but I could hear him thinking that that’s what would happen to it. That would be the evening of the seventh, for a letter to get up north and an answer to come back on the ninth.”
“If we were to steal that letter,” Auhlae said, “while he was downstairs in the House shouting at the other MPs, when he came back, he would think that whoever picks up the post had already come to take it away. Then he would think that everything was going according to plan, and he wouldn’t do anything which would stop the plan until it was already too late: we would have stopped it. The Mouse wouldn’t run …”
“And in the meantime, we can do something about him,” Huff said. “The ehhif plotting this must have planted him in the Queen’s household a good while before, for him to be able to get out when he wanted and sneak around like that. They would have come to trust him …”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Auhlae said, waving her tail approvingly. There are plenty of such places—” Then she stopped and put her whiskers so far forward that Rhiow thought they might take leave of her face. “Let’s lock him up in the Albert Chapel,” Auhlae said. “It’s old, with lots of gates and bars: Henry the Seventh built it as a tomb for himself. But the Queen turned the place into a memorial for her poor mate when he died, and now it’s all full of gold and jewels and precious things that she had put there in his memory. Let the Mouse sit in there all one night, with no way to get out, and let the castle staff find him in the morning …”
There was general laughter and approval at the idea, and Artie clapped his hands. “One thing, Arhu,” said Huff. “Who was it that wrote the first letter … the one which caused the second one to be sent?”
Arhu squinted again. “Let me watch him for a moment,” he said. “There was something on his door. When he goes out again …”
There was a little silence while everyone let him work. Artie looked up, then, and said, “Who’s going to do guard duty on the Queen?”
Rhiow glanced at Huff. They both turned and looked at Arhu.
He went wide-eyed. “Oh no!” he said.
“It’s the best bet,” Huff said. “She was known to have a soft spot for little kittens.”
“I’ll ‘little kitten’ you, you big—”
“Arhu,” Rhiow said, slightly exasperated. “It’s useful being cute. Exploit it a little. You can take the poor ehhif’s mind off her troubles for a while.”
“What am I supposed to do? Play with string?” Arhu looked scornful.
“If necessary, yes,” Huff said. “Make sure you ingratiate yourself sufficiently with her, and she won’t want to let you out of her sight … which, for our purposes, would be absolutely perfect.”
Arhu was opening his mouth to disagree again. “You will also probably eat like royalty,” Urruah said.
Arhu shut his mouth and looked thoughtful.
“I hate to mention it,” Rhiow said, “but the other one who is probably going to be perfect for this job is Siffha’h. Another ‘cute’ one.”
Arhu straightened up again. “No way!”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Rhiow said, in a tone of voice meant to suggest that the discussion would have only one possible ending. “What about that door, Arhu? What’s on it?”
He breathed out in annoyance and squinted at nothing again. “It’s not coming.”
“The vhai it’s not,” Urruah said, and gave him a look.
Arhu made the disgusted face again, then went slightly vague in the eyes, as if trying harder.
“McClaren,” he said suddenly. “Does that make sense?”
“Is that what’s on the door?” Fhrio said.
Arhu twitched his tail “yes’.
“Bad,” Fhrio said. “The only ones who get their names on their doors are Government ministers …”
Auhlae and Huff looked grim. “Rhi, who was he?” Urruah said.
“From what Hhuhm’hri told me, probably the Chanceller of the Exchequer,” she said, listening anew to the material she had read into the Whispering. “They changed these jobs around every now and then, though not as often as they do now. I would probably need to talk to Ouhish to get a more accurate date.”
“I’m not sure we need it,” Huff said. “We know he’s involved. I would love to find some way to betray his part in the conspiracy as well … but it may not be possible. Almost certainly the letter he writes to the third party in Edinburgh isn’t going to contain anything which would incriminate him: he wouldn’t be so stupid, even in those less investigative days, as to commit something of that kind to House stationery. He probably used that more as a guaranteed form of identification to his contact than anything else.”
They all lay and thought for a moment. “No,” Huff said, “unless someone comes up with a brilliant idea on how to reveal him, we’re going to have to be satisfied with stopping the attempt itself and removing the assassin permanently from the Queen’s ambit. Any other thoughts?”
If there were any, they were briefly derailed as the air down at the end of the platform tore softly, and a taloned shape stepped through.
“Ith!” Artie cried, jumped up and ran to him, and shook Ith’s claw in a manner so suddenly and incongruously ehhif-adult that Rhiow burst out laughing, and had immediately to pretend to have a hairball. While this was going on, Ith greeted Artie and came pacing over to the teams. He crouched down on those long back legs, the great-claw of each foot grating on the stone.
“How did you do?”
“Ith hissed, a most satisfied sound. The spell is complete,” he said. “I did not stop with the Museum in London. New York and Berlin, also, I visited, and the new Egyptian wing of the museum in München, apparently the biggest such collection in the world now. I am afraid a security camera might have caught me in Berlin: I was in a hurry.” That toothed jaw dropped in a slight smile. “I will be interested to see how they explain what the videotape may show. But first tell me how you fare.”
They told him: and Arhu, finally, looked at Ith for a long moment in which he seemed to say nothing. Ith listened, with his head on one side, and then knitted his foreclaws together in that gesture which could mean contemplation or distress—in Rhiow’s experience, Ith’s claws were more to be trusted as an indicator than his face or his eyes, which did not work like a Person’s.
“So our old Enemy puts Its fang into your heart again, brother,” Ith said, working the claws together so that they scraped softly against one another. “It is folly. The same venom will not work twice—you will begin to develop an immunity.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Arhu said bleakly.
“Gladness is far from you just now,” Ith said, “but we will see. Meanwhile, Huff, Rhiow, tell me what we must now do to save the Queen.”
They outlined the plan to him, and Ith listened to it all, his foreclaws working gently at each other the while. At last, when they were done, he bowed agreement to what they had said.
“It all sounds well,” said Ith. “But there is another possibility for which you must also prepare. Your plan, no matter how well laid, may nonetheless fail. If you do not get it right the first time, there is little chance that the Lone Power will let you into that timeline again. It will erect such barriers against you that half the world’s wizards brought to bear against them at once would not prevail. Then the Queen will die, and the consequences will begin …”
The People, and Artie, all looked at one another. “That possibility must be prepared for,” Ith said. “If nothing else, the Winter must be prevented. That at least. No matter if our timelines die, and all of us, and all the ehhif and all the People, and even all my people—if we can only keep the Winter from happening, then there will be survivors, and the world will eventually grow green again.”
“He’s right,” Huff said, looking over at Auhlae. She waved her tail in agreement.
“Well, you have the complete spell,” Urruah said. “So we’re all right in that regard …” He caught the look in Ith’s eye. “Aren’t we?”
“The spell is indeed complete,” Ith said. “But I am less certain than I was when I started that it will function.”
“What?” Rhiow said. “Why?”
“Here,” Ith said, and moved a little aside to make a clear space on the floor.
He constructed the spell for them as Urruah had constructed the timeslide, as a three-dimensional diagram in the Speech. It was more than just six-parted as he had suggested. It was a fourth-dimensional expression of a truncated icosahedron; a near-spherical array of hexagons, each one surrounded by five pentagons. Arhu was not the only one squinti
ng, now: everyone was having trouble grasping the spatial relationships of the thing.
“Iau, it makes my head hurt just looking at it,” Fhrio said, though with a certain amount of admiration.
“To achieve this construct,” Ith said, “I unwrapped four hundred and thirty-eight mummies, and extracted spell fragments from some sixty or seventy amulets. It is a great help to be able to use one’s wizardry to see into the mummy first before you must unwrap it: otherwise I would be claw-deep in bandages yet.” He tilted his head this way and that, bird-like, admiring his handiwork. “It is, as you see, something of a power-trap. Fives and sixes … That structure traps wizardly energy within it, confining and concentrating it for use. But there is a problem.” The claws began to fret gently at one another again. “The recitation parameters of the spell—you see them there, reflected in each ‘wing’ of the construct—require the physical presence of a threshold number of mummies: a massive, strictly physical reinforcement. Originally, that would have been the main cat-mummy burial site at Bubastis. But that is now gone, as we know.”
“Are you saying that this won’t work?” Fhrio said, peering at the spell.
“No. I am saying that it may work, but if it does, I will not understand how. And you may be right: it may not function at all … in which case there is no protection against the Winter. And in that case, you must succeed.”
Silence fell among the gathered People. Arhu kept studying the spell-construct, and his gaze went vague … but Rhiow, looking over at him, became less sure that it was the construct on which he had his eye, or Eye.
He turned to her all of a sudden. “Eight hundred thousand People, you said, was the threshold number for gating to start in an area,” Arhu said. “How big an area? And do those eight hundred thousand People have to be alive … ?”
Rhiow didn’t know what to make of that one. But, Three hundred thousand cat-mummies at Beni-Hassan alone, Budge had said. And there were probably many more…