On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service fw-2

by Diane Duane

  Disraeli bowed at that. “Yet it brings us to another matter, ma’am,” he said. “You are a mother not only of princes and princesses, but of a people. And those people greatly desire to see you take up your public role with more enthusiasm. We have spoken of this before—”

  “And doubtless will again,” said the Queen, turning away from him. “Mr. Disraeli, I know your concerns. But I cannot make a show of myself when my heart would be insincere, no matter what public opinion would make of it. You cannot possibly know the pain I suffer for the lack of my dear Albert … how I long for him … how that longing makes so many things, the splendors, the pleasures, as nothing but ashes in my mouth. I will not pretend to be what I cannot be … and my people, who love me, will understand.”

  He bowed again, slowly, reluctantly: and gradually their talk passed to other things. Arhu, meanwhile, rubbed against the Queen’s skirts, then headed back into the bedroom.

  Siffha’h followed him in. “Well?” she said. “I didn’t follow all of that.”

  “It gets complicated. But that was the lead-up, all right,” Arhu said. “The circumstances are lining up as predicted.”

  “You’re looking smug.”

  “Smug?” Arhu shook his head until his ears rattled. “No. I like a high accuracy rating: it makes me a lot less nervous … especially when I hear the words ‘necessary expansion’ from someone who has nuclear weapons when no one else does. Nope,” Arhu said, “we’re in the right place at the right time. Now all we have to do is wait …”

  The timeslide gatings which first transported the London and New York teams to 1874, and then had dropped Siffha’h and Arhu in the Queen’s rooms, had both run into trouble, as Ith had predicted. The resistance to them had been staggering, an order of magnitude greater than the last time it was tried. But Whoever was handling the resistance had not been prepared for a power source which for the first time, simply ran into it, and through it, as if it was not there. The timeslide had first aligned itself with the time and place where Artie had stumbled upon them: they left him off in time for tea with his Uncle Richard, and making their farewells, they gated once more and popped directly out into Old Jewry in the late evening of July the eighth. There, under the scarred and tarnished Moon, the teams made themselves at home, as best they could, in the Mark Lane Tube station.

  Rhiow found its trains surprisingly modern: the station was clean and safe, and more handsomely decorated than its contemporary counterpart. The worldgates were not there, though. As Rhiow had suspected, they were presently up in the Fenchurch Street mainline rail station, and Rhiow and Huff had both been unwilling to tamper with them or to try to contact any London-based gating team which might be supervising the gates at this time. There were already enough complications to deal with.

  They waited, and saw the City as best they could, and became very expert of ridding themselves of mud in short order. In particular, they spent a fair amount of time visiting with Ouhish and Hwallis at the British Museum. Hwallis had been delighted to hear about the recovery of the full spell for protection against the Winter: but the news about what was required to activate it had come as a blow.

  The intervention, however, was Rhiow’s and Huff’s main care, and they made their preparations slowly, despite the impatience of some members of the team. Look, it’s been two days now, Arhu said, late on the eighth, and I don’t know how much more petting we can stand. If it’s not Herself, then it’s the princes and princesses. And all the servants are trying to make friends with us too.

  I should think you could do very well out of this … Urruah said. Like the others, he was down on the twin of their ‘derelict’ platform, where the timeslide spell was ‘stabled’ until they would need it again.

  Do you mean food? Please! Don’t even mention it, Siffha’h said. I’m so stuffed I’m losing the ability to scamper.

  Huff smiled at that. A historical moment, he said.

  Have you heard from Auhlae?

  Yes. Nothing unusual as yet. So far the gates are behaving themselves.

  Rhiow put her whiskers forward, glad to hear it. She had also been glad when Auhlae volunteered to mind the gates during the intervention. It had taken a weight off Huff’s mind: he had been very nervous indeed of the prospect of bringing her here.

  Just hold on the best you can, you two, she said. It’s only a couple of days more. Have you seen the Mouse?

  Yes. A very inoffensive-looking little ehhif, Arhu said. It’s no wonder he was so good at the second-story work before McClaren hired him for this job: he’s pretty small. He works in the gardens every day, putting plants in pots and taking them out again, and no one gives him a second look.

  Well, you’re ready for him…

  There are more protections waiting to be activated around that bed than any ehhif needs, Siffha’h said. And we’re there too: she insists on us sleeping with her. But he’s not going to have a chance to make it this far, anyway. Come tomorrow afternoon, he’s going to find himself locked in the Albert Tower with no way out … and the morning after, the police will take him away.

  They’ll probably charge him with suspicion of theft when they find out what kind of work he used to do, Arhu said. I won’t mind. I see the way his little eyes look at things. It’s not a mouse he reminds me of: it’s a rat.

  Rhiow shivered a little. The image of a rat’s mind in a man’s body bothered her. Well, she said, keep an eye on things. Urruah has gone to the House to see about that letter.

  Good, Arhu said. This is a nice place … but I’ll be glad when this lady is safe. She’s got her problems, but none that deserve being killed for.

  There’s also the slight problem of what would happen after she was killed…

  Don’t remind me. Well, keep us up to date, Siffha’h said. It really will be kind of a relief to get out of here. She cries about Albert every night, like it’s a ritual, and the pillows get all wet. I’m amazed she doesn’t catch cold.

  Rhiow’s tail twitched. “Do what you can for her,” she said. “A purr at the right time can do wonders.”

  We will.

  Rhiow sighed and lay back on the concrete. She was missing Iaehh already, and she was beginning to get that twitchy, uncomfortable feeling that comes of staying out of one’s home time too long. In addition, she was beginning to feel peculiarly … exposed. I just wish I knew to what. But the feeling of something watching them, with bad intent, was getting very strong.

  No matter. It won’t take very long now. Urruah will sort that letter out … and then we can frame the Mouse and go home.

  But something kept suggesting to Rhiow that it would not be that simple…

  The morning of the ninth of July came up, hot and still, with crickets creaking in the crevices of stone walls and under the foundations of houses. It was hot everywhere, from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

  Nearer the John O’Groats end of things, just after the time when the milk arrives after dawn, the postman came up the walk of a small neat semidetached home in Edinburgh city. Before he could knock, the latch was lifted, and a small dapper man came out. The postman handed him several letters, which the man went through swiftly. One of these he opened: then, as the postman was on the way down the walk to the street, the small man called him and stepped back inside the door of the house for a moment. When he emerged, he handed the postman another letter. The postie took it and went his way.

  In the Palace of Westminster, unseen, a gray-striped tabby cat walked calmly down the Commons’ Corridor, looking at the paintings that adorned the walls there: the last sleep of the Duke of Argyll, the acquittal of the Seven Bishops in the reign of James II, Jane Lane helping Charles II to escape.

  Marvelous stuff, Urruah thought to himself, but is it art? Most of it, he thought, was the kind of painting which a partisan of a subject does to try to convince other people that it’s of as much historical or cultural value as he thinks it is. Figures of old-time ehhif gestured heroically or stood in stoic silence, an
d all of them, to Urruah’s educated eye, had ‘Establishment’ written all over them. Urruah walked among them with amusement, heading for the House of Commons, and restraining his urge to sharpen his claws on the more bombastic of the murals.

  He was sidled, naturally, and therefore had to sidestep to miss the occasional ehhif parliamentarian making for the House. They seemed to hold their meetings very late. It was nearly midnight: even bouts of hauissh, the feline pastime which most nearly includes politics, did not usually take place quite this late. Whatever, Urruah wasn’t terribly concerned about what hours they kept, except as it involved one man: McClaren.

  He paused by the doors to the House, a little off to one side, and listened before going in.

  “ … because the expense would be so great,” an ehhif was saying in a great deep rolling voice; “whilst perhaps in the next parish there might be a clergyman who turns to the east when he celebrated the Holy Communion. If a parishioner called upon the bishop to prosecute in that case, then there would be no difficulty, it would be easy to prosecute for the posture … but by no means easy to prosecute for the doctrine. Is it not a monstrous proposition that when unsound doctrine is preached, one must proceed by the old, slow, cumbersome ecclesiastical law, and yet there should be a rapid prosecution for gestures …”

  Urruah stood there trying to make head or tail of this for some minutes. It seemed that the ehhif was talking about communicating with the One, which was certainly a courtesy and a good idea generally: but these ideas of ehhif as to how the One liked to be communicated with seemed amazingly confused, and also seemed to be very hung up on obscure symbology which had to be exactly observed and duplicated, or else there would be no communication. If they really think this, Urruah thought, maybe it’s no wonder they’re so asocial. The Universe must seem to them like a place run by ants. Rude, illiterate ants…

  “ … among the leading churchmen I have found extreme distaste and dissatisfaction with the bill. It is said that the bishop, in the ninth clause, must appear ‘in a fatherly character’, but before the canons come in, he must practically have pronounced that some offense had been committed which ought to be proceeded against. Thus the power of the bishop as arbitrator can never commence until he has pronounced and sanctioned the prosecution—”

  Urruah reared up and peered through the glass of the doors. His view was largely blocked by frock-coated men standing between him and the floor of the House, and talking nonstop.

  Well, vhai’d if I’m going to stand here all night, he thought. Very carefully Urruah slipped through the wood paneling of the lower half of the door, slowly, so as not to upset the grain of the wood, and being careful not to become strictly solid again until he knew exactly where the legs of the ehhif on the other side were. Fortunately none of them were too close.

  Once in, Urruah stood there at the back of the House and listened for a few more minutes … finally wondering why in Iau’s name anyone would come here late at night to hear this kind of thing … unless indeed they were all insomniacs in search of treatment. Up in the stranger’s gallery, various visiting ehhif were either asleep or on their way to being so: on the other side, journalists were scribbling frantically in notebooks, trying to keep up with what the ehhif who spoke was saying. Urruah wondered why anyone would bother. The man had the most soporific style imaginable, and in this hot, still room, made hotter yet by the primitive electrical lights, the effect produced put the best sleep-spells Urruah knew to shame.

  Urruah peered about him again, looking for any sign of McClaren. The ehhif was tall and had a big beard, but unfortunately that described about half the ehhif in here: this was a very hairy period for ehhif males in this part of the world. McClaren also had a long hawkish nose and very blue eyes, but again Urruah’s view was somewhat blocked.

  He’s probably not here, Urruah thought. Still … I’ll take a look around. And the impish impulse struck him.

  He unsidled.

  At first no one noticed him. It was late, and he was walking softly down the carpeted floor of the gangway on the Opposition side. He knew where he was headed: toward the center of the room, the “aisle”, where he could get a good view of both front benches. McClaren was a government minister, and would normally have been sitting there on the left-hand side of the Speaker as Urruah was facing the Speaker’s Chair.

  He looked around him at the weary, complacent faces as he came down the gangway … and they began to look at him. Urruah put his whiskers forward as the laughter started. That’ll wake them up, he thought: this’ll probably make the papers tomorrow … He came down to the aisle, took a long leisurely look across at the Government benches … and saw McClaren there.

  Urruah stopped short, with the laughter scaling up all around him.

  What’s he doing here?!

  For he was not supposed to be here. He should have been up in his office—writing a letter—

  Sa’Rrdhh in a five-gallon bucket, Urruah thought, no—

  He bolted toward the Government benches, ignoring the surprised or shocked faces turned toward him, and jumped up on the back of the first front bench, almost getting into the beard of the surprised minister sitting nearest. Urruah jumped with great speed from there to the first of the back benches, and to the next and the next, going up them like steps in a staircase and not particularly caring whose leg, shoulder or head he stepped on in the process. The laughter became deafening. There was a door at the back of the last of the benches, at the very top. Urruah jumped down and went straight through it, this time without the slightest concern for the grain of the wood.

  He raced out through the West Division lobby, through it into the little hallway at the corner of the Lobby and up the staircase two floors. He knew well enough where McClaren’s office was. Through that wooden door, too, he went, sidled again this time.

  There was no one in the office.

  Urruah stood very still for a moment and licked his nose three times in rapid succession. Then he glanced around him, and looked up into the box on the bookcase.

  No letter.

  He jumped up onto the desk, covered with the same leather and paper blotter that Arhu had seen. There were no writings on it, but there were faint depressions as of writing.

  Urruah looked across to the small narrow fireplace at the other side of the office. Perfect, he thought.

  He did a very small wizardry in his mind and put his paws down on the blotter, electrostatically charging it. Then he glanced over at the fireplace, and spoke courteously in the Speech to the soot up in the chimney.

  Tidily, in a thin stream, it made its way across the room to him. Urruah guided it down onto the blotter, then levitated the blotter a little way up on its edge to let the soot slide down it.

  It adhered here and there on the blotter, mostly to signatures. But one recent piece of writing showed up most clearly where the soot clung.

  MR JAMES FLEMING

  14 KENNISHEAD AVENUE

  EDINBURGH

  Dear Mr. Fleming,

  Thank you for yours inst. the 6th of July regarding passes to the Speaker’s gallery. Such may only be granted by the Speaker after introduction by the applicant’s own member of Parliament. In your case this would—

  Oh, no, Urruah thought.

  It’s gone. It’s gone already. How can it be gone?

  He ran out of the office again, through the door, his heart pounding and his mouth dry with terror.

  Everybody! Everybody! Windsor, now, hurry, now!

  …He unlatches the door with one gloved hand, slips in through it, shuts it gently behind him. Stands still in the darkness, and listens. A faint hiss from the hot-water boiler behind the coal stove: the tick of cinders shifting in the box: no other sound.

  He takes his twelve steps across the kitchen, reaches out his hand … finds the shut door. He eases its latch open, slips through this door too, pulls it gently to behind him. Six stairs up to the hallway. Two steps out into the middle of the carpet in the hall
; turn left. Sixty steps down to the second landing, and out onto the carpet. In the darkness he passes by the doorways he knows are there, to the Picture Gallery, the Queen’s Ball Room, the Queen’s Audience Chamber. Silently past the Guard Chamber: no guards are there any more—the place is full of suits of armor, some of them those of children, and silken banners and old swords and shields, the gifts of kings. No more kings after tonight, he thinks, with the slightest smile in the dark. No more queens…

  Fifty-nine steps, and there is the change in the sound. Sixty. His toe bumps against the bottom step. Five stairs up to the landing: turn right: three steps. He puts his hand out, and feels the door.

  Gently, gently he pulls it open. From up the winding stair comes a faint light: it seems astonishingly bright to him after the dead blackness. Softly he goes up the stairs, taking them near the outer side of the steps: the inner sides creak.

  Something brushes against his leg. A gasp catches in his throat: he freezes in place. A minute, two minutes, he stands there.

  Nothing. A cobweb. Even a place like this, with a hundred servants, can’t keep all the stairwells free of the little toilers, the spinners of webs. Softly he goes on up again, one step at a time, at the edges, with care.

  The remaining fifteen steps are steep, but he is careful. At the door at the top he halts and looks out of the crack in it where it has been left open. In the hallway onto which this stairway gives, next to a door with a gilded frame, is a chair under a single candle sconce with a dim electric bulb burning in it. There should be a footman in it, but there’s no sign of him. The chair is tilted back against the wall, and down by the foot of the chair is a stoneware mug: empty. The footman has gone to relieve himself. And the door in the gilded frame is slightly open.

  Perfect. Down the hallway, now, in utmost silence.

  Swiftly now, but also silently. Reach up and undo the bulb from its socket. No one will think a thing of it: these newfangled things burn out without warning all the time. Wait a few seconds for night vision to return. Then, silently, push the door open and step in.