"The Filoby Testament ... but you will not have heard of that. Never mind. The gods have decreed, Eleal Singer, that you shall not journey to Sussland. That is all. Your presence there might change the world. I was instructed to ensure it does not happen."
She thought of the priest and Sister Ahn. She could not even scream.
The reaper sighed. “Please believe, the necessity distressed me. I am not evil. I am not vindictive. I honor my master with the gift of souls—that is all. True, he grants me great rapture when I perform this service, but I would rather offer strangers, really I would."
Dolm, who was always so jovial...
The reaper moved. Without exactly seeing, she knew that he had knelt down at her side—within reach.
She could not hear him breathing. Did he breathe when he was being a reaper?
"But here tonight I learned that it will not be necessary. Holy Ois knows who you are and how to stop you. She has the matter in hand. I was told I need not meddle within her domain. In the morning she will do what she wills, whatever that may be. You will not be journeying to Sussland."
That did sound like Eleal Singer was not going to die now.
The morning could look after itself.
"Is there anyone you wish to die?” the reaper inquired softly.
Eleal's teeth chattered.
"Well?” he asked. “Answer!"
She stuttered, “N-n-no!"
"Pity. Because if you wish to see someone die, Eleal Singer, then you need only tell that person that I am a reaper. I shall know, and they will die. Is that clear?"
She nodded in the dark, and knew he knew that.
"If by any chance Holy Ois does allow you to go to Suss, then of course I shall have to act.” Dolm sighed, and floated erect again. “And I must go and act now. Act? Actor?” He chuckled drily, as Dolm did when he was about to make a joke. “Ironic, is it not? That rare performance you saw had but one spectator, yet she does not have to pay. Others must pay, strangers must pay. An expensive performance! He will want two at least, perhaps three if they are not young. Sleep well, little spy."
The blackness drifted toward the door. Then it stopped.
"I only came,” said a whisper more definitely in Dolm's usual offhand tone, “because I thought your remarkable curiosity had earned an explanation."
The door opened, closed. The bolt slid. The lock shut.
Eleal drew great sobbing breaths of icy air. She was going to live through the night. Compared to that, nothing else mattered, not even her wet bed.
18
PATIENTS WERE WAKENED AT SIX O'CLOCK SO THEY COULD be washed and fed and have their beds made before the doctors’ rounds. Shaving in bed was bad enough, but other things were worse. Bedpans were the utter end.
The nurse wanted to give Edward another needle, but he refused it, preferring to put up with the pain, rather than have porridge for brains.
She was quite pretty, in a chubby sort of way, with a Home Counties accent and a brusque manner. She would tell him nothing except he'd had an accident and Doctor Stanford would explain. His dream kept coming back to him and the memories he'd had in his dream—he could remember remembering them, sort of. Bagpipe was in there somewhere.
He was in hospital, in Greyfriars. He still could remember almost nothing after those awful images of dinner and him with no evening dress. After dinner ... nothing, just fog. And nightmares.
He was worried about Bagpipe. He asked about him, Timothy Bodgley.
"No one by that name in the hospital,” the nurse said, and then just kept repeating that Doctor Stanford would explain. She wouldn't even say how she was so certain that there was no one by that name in the hospital when she had not even gone to check. She did admit that this was Monday, and visiting hours were from two till four. “You've got a fine collection of stitches under that bandage,” she added, changing the subject clumsily, “but your hair should hide most of the scar."
"You mean it won't spoil my striking good looks?” he asked facetiously, and was shaken when she blushed.
He surprised himself by eating the greasy ham and eggs he was given for breakfast. The tea was cold, but he drank it. He had a private room, and that worried him. He had a broken leg—a badly broken leg—and that worried him even more. He could not enlist with a broken leg, so he might be going to miss the war. Everyone agreed it would be over by Christmas.
He asked for a newspaper to find out what was happening in the crisis, and the nurse said that was up to the doctor.
He was left alone for a long time, then. Eventually a desiccated, graying man in a white coat marched in holding a clipboard. He had a stethoscope protruding from one pocket. Right behind him came Matron, armored in starch, statuesque as Michelangelo's Moses.
"Doctor Stanford, Mr. Exeter,” she said.
"How are we this morning?” The doctor looked up from the clipboard with an appraising glance.
"Not bad, sir. Worried."
The doctor frowned. “What's this about you refusing a needle?"
"It doesn't hurt too much, sir,” Edward lied.
"Oh, doesn't it? You can overdo the stiff-upper-lip business, young fellah. Still, I'll leave it up to you."
A few questions established that the only real problem was the leg. The many-colored patches Edward had discovered on his hips and arms were dismissed brusquely. Eyes and ears, fingertips on his wrist and a beastly cold stethoscope on his chest...
The doctor changed the bandage on Edward's head. “Eighteen stitches,” he said admiringly. “Most of the scar won't show unless you want to try a Prussian haircut.” He scribbled on the clipboard and handed it to Matron. “Get the blanks filled in now he's conscious, will you?"
He stuffed his hands in the pocket of his white coat. “You have a badly broken leg, Exeter, as I'm sure you know by now. In a day or two we'll take off the splints and see if we can put it in a cast. Depends on the swelling, and so on. We may have to load you in an ambulance and take you to have it x-rayed, but we hope that won't be necessary. You're a healthy young chap; it should heal with no permanent damage. In a year you'll have forgotten all about it. For the time being, though, you have to endure the traction."
"How soon can I enlist?"
Stanford shrugged. “Three months."
"May I see a paper?"
"If you take it in small doses. Don't persist if you get a headache. Anything else you need?"
"I'd like to know how I got here."
"Ah! How much can you remember?"
"Very little, sir. Greyfriars Grange? Bagp ... Timothy?"
The look in the doctor's eye told him before the man said it. “He wasn't as lucky as you."
The ham and eggs rose and then subsided. Edward swallowed hard a few times and then said, “How?"
"He was murdered."
"Murdered? Who by?"
"Don't know yet. Do you feel up to answering some questions for the police?"
"I'll try. I don't remember very—"
In strode a large, heavyset man. He must have been waiting by the door. He was dressed like a banker, but he had Roberto written all over him, and the look of a man who might have been a first-rate rugby fullback. Getting a ball past him would be like swimming up Victoria Falls, even now, with a staunch bow window stretching the links of his watch chain. His mustache spread out like the horns on a Cape buffalo, turning up in points at the end.
"Five minutes, no more,” the doctor said.
The policeman nodded without a glance at him. The doctor departed. Matron followed him to the door, but in a way that suggested she was not going far.