“Upper Room, or higher up?” I asked.
“Well, it came to her through Upper Room, like most things,” he said. “But the details were so vague, I got the feel it could have come from much higher up. Cost me a lot of work, to get you a list with names and addresses out of it, I can tell you.”
“I thought so,” I said. “We are being Intended, Stan. And I don’t like it. I can’t see what they’re playing at! None of these candidates is right. Punt is the best, and he’d do anything for a laugh. I think the Croatian is deranged. Thurless has been throwing scenes like a prima donna ever since he appeared, and I suspect he’s into the bad magic too. Fisk is awful, and you know my opinion of Mallory. I think we’ll have to wipe that list and start again.”
“Steady on. I must have been given it for a reason!” Stan protested. “Have you talked to all of them now?”
“Not to Fisk or Thurless,” I admitted, “and not properly to Gabrelisovic.”
“Then one of them’s got to have hidden depths,” Stan said. “Don’t judge until you’ve done a proper—”
Here my phone clamoured. It was Dakros. The sound was unusually distant and crackly, but Dakros’s voice came out of it joyously. “Got you at last, Magid. Sorry about the interference. I’m in a landcruiser on my way to the Thalangia World Gate. We’ve found Knarros. High Lady Alexandra found him.”
“She did?” And not just a pretty face, I remembered. “How did she do that?”
“You remember I sent her to Thalangia?” Dakros’s crackly voice asked. “To the farm my uncle manages for me? Well, she got talking to my uncle and his people there, and my uncle happened to mention there was a religious colony up on a hill about ten miles away, and somebody else remarked they were thorn-worshippers like the Emperor was. So Alexandra made some quiet enquiries. And it appears there are children, or at least young people, up there, but everyone told her that the head of the colony won’t let anyone near the place unless they come on business, and won’t let them talk to the children if they do go with deliveries and so forth. So she asked some more. And today someone told her that the head of this colony is a strict brute of a centaur called Knarros. She called me up at once.”
“Knarros is a centaur!” I exclaimed. Then there had been a clue in the graphics.
Dakros laughed joyously amid the static. “Yes, no wonder all the humans were frauds. As I said, I’m on my way to Thalangia in a cruiser, with as many men as I can spare. We’ll be at the farm by tomorrow evening. Can you join us beside that hill, Magid?”
“Well, I’ve got rather pressing business—” I began.
“If he’s a centaur, it’s going to take a Magid,” Stan put in, in my other ear. “Tell him yes, and put things on hold for an hour or so here.”
“All right,” I told Dakros, sighing a little. “Give me node points and references for the hill. “What hour?”
We settled on six in the evening and I hung up. “What do you mean, it’s going to take a Magid if he’s a centaur?” I asked Stan.
“If you know centaurs,” he said, “it stands to reason. This one’s in a position of trust and he hasn’t come forward. That means he’s promised not to, or probably only to come forward under certain conditions. Centaurs like that are real sticklers. You’re going to have to convince him the conditions are met. They listen to Magids, if they listen to no one else. And he could be a magic user himself. That would make sense in the—”
“All right. I’m convinced. I’m not a centaur,” I said. “I’ll go and argue with Knarros tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’d better make some arrangements here.”
I got out of the car, into the stinging snow, and hurried to the Dealers Room again. I was not about to do as Gram White seemed to have done and leave a major working set up unattended in a strong node like this one in Wantchester. I had four people’s fatelines woven into the Hotel Babylon – no, more like seven, if you counted my own and Andrew’s and, as I strongly suspected, Maree Mallory’s too – and there was no way I could wind all that down before Saturday night. I had intended to spend most of the following week doing it.
Zinka had finished her hot dog by then and was drinking tea. Luckily there were very few other people in the room. I had panted out my problem to her in a hoarse whisper.
“No,” she said. It was quite pleasant. It was also like running full-tilt into an iceberg. “Leave the Empire to stew, Rupert. Word’s out that it’s Intended to fall apart anyway. I’m on holiday. I told you.”
“But you said you would in an emergency,” I pleaded.
“This,” said Zinka, “is not an emergency. This is you trying the kiss of life on a week-old corpse. I repeat: no.”
“I can’t leave a full-scale working unattended!” I more or less wailed.
“Then don’t,” she said. “Or get someone else in. What’s wrong with Stan?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “Dead and disembodied in my car at this moment.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then I am sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
The signs were that the iceberg would have melted then, except that, unfortunately, my Croatian candidate came and loomed over us. Suddenly, before I could say any more. His hollow, haunted face bent down between us. Zinka and I both drew back from it. “You two have the wrong smell,” Gabrelisovic said. His large mauve hand, marked with lumps and white nicks, came between us also, forming one of the more violent of the signs against witchcraft. “Such as you,” he said, “have I killed with the bare hand and buried in the mass grave many times in the mountains of my country.” He stood up and retreated. “I hunt by smell,” he said. “Beware. You disgust.” And he strode away.
“Gosh. Wow!” Zinka said. “Long time since I encountered a genuine witch-sniffer. He must have added quite a dimension to their war! He’s mad as a hatter as well, isn’t he?”
Knowing what a good healer Zinka is, I said wistfully, “Is there any chance you can make him sane again?”
“No,” she said, staring after Gabrelisovic as he strode from the room. “No way. Not after he’s killed people bare-handed, there’s no chance. And he’d go for me if I tried.” Then, as I opened my mouth to continue pleading about my working, she added, “And no to that too, Rupert. I always know when I’m needed now. Go away.”