Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 67

“Not you as well?” I asked him.

Nick shook his head. “But I wasn’t going to miss something like that.”

Janine, I thought, couldn’t know her son very well if she thought she could keep him away simply by not inviting him. But this sort of ignorance seems to be a failing in most mothers. My own mother obstinately fails to notice the queer things I do as a Magid – the queer things all three of her sons do.

“The conversation you and Rob and Maree had in the lift must have been quite interesting,” I said.

Nick and Rob looked at one another. There was both exasperation and complicity in the look. “I hadn’t thought you’d noticed,” Nick said irritably.

“Like to tell me about it?” I asked.

There was a fairly long silence, broken only by a mutter from Maree. In it, I picked out the words “tell him”, but I had no idea if she was instructing Nick to come clean or if the words were in fact “don’t tell him”. But it proved she was attending. That impressed me. Even allowing for my accidental working, she was showing far more resilience than I expected.

At length, Rob looked at me limpidly and said, “Well, I told Nick we were cousins of course. But I thought I was going to pass out—”

“And there wasn’t time to say very much before you two hauled the lift back down,” Nick cut in quickly.

“Did Rob explain how a centaur and a human could conceivably be cousins?” I asked. “It seems a little unlikely.”

“Oh, by adoption of course,” Rob said. His beautiful features blazed with innocent sincerity. “My Uncle Knarros adopted Nick’s mother as his sister.”

“When was that?” I asked him. I needed to ask why, but I knew Rob would not tell me that.

“Fifteen years ago, before she left the Empire,” Rob replied.

“So Janine is definitely a citizen of Koryfos?” I said.

Rob nodded, eager to oblige. “She was born in Thalangia.”

This, from a centaur, would be the truth. We had got somewhere. But I couldn’t see us getting much further with Nick there, not if I was to have Nick’s help with Maree. Will was looking at me anxiously, trying to convey this. All at once, I felt deathly tired. I nodded at Will, suggesting he had a go at Rob now and, fetching clean clothes out of a drawer, I went into the bathroom to wash and change. That felt a great deal better, even with the front of my hair missing. I put salve on my burns and came out.

Will had made no headway. I could see at once. Rob was still shining with sincerity. Nick looked sulky. I went to the cocktail fridge and sorted myself out a little bottle of brandy. “Want some, Will?”

Will is never a great drinker. “Not with a big working coming up,” he said, “but you look as if you could use it.”

I turned round after the first heavenly, pungent, warming swig, wishing I could confront Rob with the death of Knarros – he ought to be told anyway – but with Nick there I thought it safest to confront him with Maree instead.

“Do you know what’s happened to her?” I said, pointing to the wheelchair.

Rob’s eyes reluctantly travelled to the little bent, blanched figure. “She’s been stripped, hasn’t she? I heard they go pale like that.”

“That is correct,” I said. “Maree was stripped. Furthermore, the gate opened into the heart of a volcano. And that wasn’t an accident. The other half of her was destroyed.” I took another swig from the little bottle, watching Rob across it, hoping this might make a dent in his huge, false innocence. Perhaps it had. He was looking pale and ill again, but this time I thought it was genuine.

Unfortunately, the Room Service waiter arrived just then, with praiseworthy promptness, bearing a vast tray loaded with cheeseburgers, an outsize basket of chips and an enormous pot of the hotel’s excellent coffee. I gave the guy a large tip. The way the node was behaving, he deserved it, although I shuddered a little at how much this extended weekend was costing me. When I had leisure to look at Rob again, the colour was back in his brown cheeks and he had the slightly smug look of someone who thinks he has successfully wriggled out of an unpleasant situation.

I haven’t finished with you yet, my lad! I thought.

But for that time we were all preoccupied with food, even Nick, who, as I expected, found the smell of it irresistible and tore into the chips. Maree, to everyone’s distress, seemed unable to eat. Nick induced her to drink some sugary coffee at least, leaning over her with surprising patience, coaxing and encouraging, while Will and Rob cheerfully demolished Maree’s share of the food. It was quite a sight to see Rob sitting up and munching into a cheeseburger, his dark eyes sparkling, and a hoof or so trailing out from under my duvet. Centaurs not only recover quickly: they need to eat a lot.

So too, it seems, do quack chicks. I had clean forgotten them and I couldn’t think what was happening when two fluffy yellow bundles emerged from under my bed, cheeping urgently. Will fed them pieces of bread and a chip or so. And their effect on Maree was quite startling. She sat up, leant forward and followed the little birds with her eyes, avidly. There was even a faint smile on her pinched, colourless face. Of course, I remembered, she was going to be a vet. She had clearly been led to it by a love of small creatures.

Before she could lapse again into mumbling semi-life, I cleared the tray away and tipped every scrap and crumb left on to the carpet in front of the wheelchair. The chicks sped eagerly to the heap, and Maree leant over, watching.

“Right,” I said. “Time for serious stuff. Rob, we are going to perform one of the deep secret workings here and you are going to witness it perforce. I must ask you to swear not to speak of it to anyone.”

“You could put a geas on him,” Will suggested.

“Ah, please!” said Rob. “I swear not to say a word. I’ll make myself sleep if you like.”

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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