“He can hear you. You’ll give him a swelled head,” Maree said.
Rob had certainly heard. There was a faint, satisfied smile on his ravaged face. He knew he was beautiful all right. I suspect he had been terrified, as he rushed round the hotel, that his beauty had been spoilt for ever. Now, reassured, he visibly relaxed and fell asleep.
We covered him with the duvet and wearily cleared up.
“God!” said Maree. “I’m pooped! I’m going to lie down. Nick, come with me and make me some coffee.”
The two of them departed, taking one of the kettles. It was very convincing. And I had enough on my mind. It never occurred to me, or to Will, that there was any duplicity.
Rupert Venables continued
Will and I made some cardboard-flavoured Earl Grey and sat at the other end of my room so as not to disturb Rob. Here Will fed the quack chicks the last biscuit but one and made himself a badge like mine out of the last biscuit, while I briefed him on the current state of the fatelines. As I was definitely going to wipe that list, it was really only necessary to hold the lines as they were until I had time to do something about the puzzling behaviour of Andrew.
“Very strange, that,” Will mused. “It sounds almost as if he might have been stripped.”
“I’d thought of that,” I said, “except that stripped people are usually dead.”
“Not all of them,” said Will. “There was a Mage in Thule who went round as two people for years.”
“Yes, but if Nick’s right, Andrew’s four people at least. I saw two of him myself,” I said. “No, I don’t think that can be the answer. God knows what is, though. Anyway, keep firm hold on his line – and if you find someone’s been messing with the node again, just put it quietly back. I think it’s a fellow called Gram White who’s doing the messing. I’m going to put a stopper on him tomorrow if I can.”
“The sooner the better,” Will agreed. “Amateur mage, is he? Probably hasn’t a clue what he’s doing. What do all the people at this convention think when they don’t find their rooms where they left them?”
“They all say this hotel’s very confusing,” I said, “but they mean they think they just keep getting lost.”
“There’s why I don’t live on Earth,” Will said. “Everyone always has to have the rational, scientific explanation for something, even if it’s so obviously wrong you could scream.”
Rob was deeply asleep when we got up to leave. He was another matter I was going to have to deal with later. Meanwhile, to make sure that no one from the hotel or the Convention happened to barge in on him, I put the strongest possible wards round the room. It would be difficult for people to find a rational, scientific explanation for Rob, not if they met him face to face in my room, hard though they had all tried earlier. Will promised to keep checking up on him. He left the quack chicks running about in there on the carpet. This, he said in his blandest way, would help him remember to keep coming up here. Typical Will, that. I think he does things like that because he knows I like to be orderly. At least, if he had got round to winding me up, it meant that Will was recovering from the shock of hitting Rob. I was glad about that.
We went down in the same lift Rob had come up in. Zinka, bless her, had expunged the blood, but the thing seemed to be running now at half speed. Another thing I had to see to later. When we finally reached the ground floor, I lef
t Will in his false badge mooching inquisitively along to the main function hall and went out to the staff car park. Scarlatti met me just outside the hotel door. It was – perhaps – fainter than before, but you could hear it everywhere. To say I was angry is an understatement.
The sonata stopped with a guilty tink as I opened the car door. “Stan!” I said.
“What?” he said jauntily.
“You know very well what!” I told him, flinging myself into the seat and starting the engine. “It’s probably the last straw. Don’t say a word. Don’t excuse yourself. Don’t speak to me. I have just had to assist someone to sew the skin back on a half-flayed centaur and I am probably at the end of my tether. I want to throw up. I want to scream. But because Will and Nick both did that – or more or less – I was the one who had to be sensible. The story of my life! No, don’t speak!” I yelled, as we screamed out through the narrow archway.
“I was only going to ask where we’re going,” Stan said humbly.
“Thalangia, in the Koryfonic Empire,” I told him. We were already on our way. By car, the way looked like a bumpy unpaved lane, running sharply downhill.
“Hey, you can’t do that!” Stan cried out. “The Upper Room didn’t say I could go anywhere but Wantchester!”
“I am sick of the Upper room,” I said, “and all of Them Up There into the bargain! They’ve thrown everything in the book at me lately. If they don’t want you on Thalangia, they can come and take you away personally. That will stop you terrifying the hotel staff just as easily.”
“Is that why you’re doing the transit by car?” Stan said. “I never knew you could.”
“Will always does it,” I said. “No. I’m going by car because last time I went into the Empire, someone shot at me. With any luck, this time they’ll disable the car and I’ll have the perfect excuse to leave you there!”
By this time, we had reached Thalangia. A car is that much quicker. We drove into an incredible spread of evening light, and I found I had miscalculated slightly. I was not used to making transit at such a speed. I could see a wooded hill something like a couple of miles ahead and a walled place on top of it. Over to the left of it, there was a strong gleaming of more than one Empire troop carrier, where Dakros was presumably waiting. The carriers were probably more like three miles away, across a flattish plainland cross-hatched with vineyards. There was no direct route to them from where I was, but the vineyards had mud roads running hither and thither among them, and I supposed I could get there eventually if I zigzagged often enough. I set off along the likeliest mud road, bumping slowly in second gear and raising such a cloud of golden dust that I could see next to nothing in the rear-view mirror.
“Ah, come on, Rupert!” Stan said. “This is the first I’ve heard of any of this – shooting and centaurs and all. Give us a break and explain a bit. All I know about is that blasted hotel car park, hour after hour.”
I simply turned down another rutty golden lane without answering.
“Please!” he said. “OK, I’m sorry about the music. That do? I did try to tone it down, but they were all so worried by it that it was amusing to spread it around a bit and get them really scared. I know it was wrong. Please?”