"He left New Zealand?"
"He went back to New Zealand! Ultimately he went on to Africa. A year or so later he was blessed with a son, namely you.” Creighton spoke in sharp, authoritative phrases, as if he were instructing recruits in the mysteries of the Gatling gun. If he had been, then at least one recruit would have been totally at sea.
Edward was tempted to ask if the prophecy had saved him from being a girl, but that would sound lippy.
Creighton was still talking. “The Service has rather mixed feelings about the Filoby Testament, but all in all we tend to favor the future it describes. So he fulfilled that element of the prophecy and stayed where he was, at Nyagatha, killing time until the—"
"Killing time? Sir, he was—"
"I know what he was!” Creighton barked. “I dropped in there in ‘02 and met you. Cute little fellow you were, lugging a leopard cub around under your arm everywhere. Nevertheless, take my word for it, as far as your father was concerned, Africa was merely an extended working holiday."
"A twenty-year holiday, sir?"
"Why not? Exeter, when I say that your father belonged to the Service, I am not referring to His Majesty's Colonial Office. The Service to which I belong and your father belonged is something else entirely, and probably a great deal more important."
Edward muttered “Yes, sir,” wondering how to bring up the question of his father's true age.
Creighton did not give him the opportunity. “Now you understand why I waited until you saw your leg healed before I tried to tell you any of this."
"It will take a little time to adjust, sir."
Creighton might be crazy, but he seemed to know exactly where he was heading. The dogcart was entering a fair-sized village. A baker's wagon was making its rounds, but otherwise the streets were still deserted.
"Time is something we don't have,” he said testily. “The opposition have tried three times to nobble you, Exeter. Five times, if you count the first attempt on your father and the Nyagatha massacre. They probably assumed they'd got you that time, by the way. That would explain why they left you alone for so long afterward. But this spring a certain building was buried by a landslide, and then everybody knew that the Filoby Testament was still operative. Your parents were definitely dead, so you must be alive. They set the hounds on you again. You can't expect your luck to hold indefinitely."
"How can they find me now, sir? If I can hide from the law, then I can hide from ... Who exactly are the opposition? I mean, if someone's out to kill me, I'd like to know who."
Creighton directed the pony down a side road. He made his Hrrnph! noise. “Ultimately the people who are so eager to put your head over their fireplace are the group we refer to as the Chamber. It has no official name and its membership varies from time to time. This is a little hard to ... Look at it this way. You know that His Majesty's Colonial Office doesn't operate in England. The Home Office doesn't operate overseas. But the two would cooperate if—oh, say a dangerous criminal wanted by one of them escaped into the other's territory. They'd pass the word. With me so far?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well the Chamber doesn't operate here—its members have no power at all in this, er, environment. The Service that I belong to doesn't operate here either, but we're allied with a sort of local branch that we usually refer to as Head Office, although the relationship is informal. We help each other out from time to time—in matters like this, in recruiting, and so on. They were the ones who got your father appointed D.O. at Nyagatha, of course, as a favor to us. He, in turn, did certain favors for them while he was there. The two organizations have similar aims and goals, so we cooperate with them and they with us, but you understand that here I am only a private citizen, with no authority."
Hrrnph! “Now, the opposition here is as variable and poorly defined as the Chamber—knock one down and two more spring up—but at the moment Head Office is tangled with a really hard bunch they're calling ‘the Blighters.’ It's a very apt description! Blighters here and Chamber there both oppose the aims that the Service and Head Office aspire to, so they're natural allies. It's the Blighters who killed your father and who are after your hide, as a favor to the Chamber."
Which was all very clear, Edward thought, but it had told him nothing except meaningless names. “Would you mind defining a couple of terms, sir? Where exactly do you mean by ‘here'? If the Service you refer to is not the Colonial Office, then what is it? What sort of people make up the Chamber, and the Blighters?"
"That's a deuce of a lot of defining. As for what sort of people, well Mr. Goodfellow is one example, although he has always remained neutral until now."
This was definitely too much to swallow on an empty stomach. “Sir, are you telling me these groups are made up of gods?"
Creighton sighed. “No, they're not gods, not in the sense you mean. They may act like gods, and they do have supernatural powers. The one you met is a faint shadow of what he would have been in Saxon or Celtic times, and he cured your leg out of kindness, because he'd taken a fancy to you. Snap of the fingers, you might say."
"If he's not a god, then he's some sort of numen, or woodland spirit, or a demon, or—"
"He's a man, like us. Born of woman. He's a stranger, that's all."
"Well certainly! But—"
"And I won't define ‘stranger’ either. Not yet. He has a store of mana and I'm sure that a long time ago he was much more powerful than he is now. Yet he was probably always a pygmy in his class, whereas some of the Blighters are giants—look what they've achieved in the last month. This bloody war in Europe was provoked by them. Head Office have been struggling to prevent it for years. The Blighters outmaneuvered them. Now it's happened, utter disaster. But on that level the battle is over, and the big bad wallahs can sit back and savor their rewards. They can also turn their attention to other things. Like you."
Mr. Goodfellow had said very much the same thing about the war, Edward recalled, and whoever or whatever Mr. Goodfellow was, he was no ordinary mortal.
The dogcart had left the village and was bumping across a common on the far side, heading for some trees by the river.
"You see,” Creighton added in a terse tone, as if he was tired of explaining things to a very thick child, “part of the trouble has been that both Head Office and the Blighters have been so occupied with political conniving these last few months, that they had no real assets to spare for peripheral matters such as doing favors for friends. That's why they just sent a crazy woman against you. They say she truly is crazy, by the way. She's a Balkan anarchist with a bad case of bloodlust. In other circumstances, they could have disposed of you without any trouble. On the other hand, had things been normal, Head Office could have defended you better."
"So it canceled out?"
"Perhaps it did. But now Head Office are in disarray. They have lost badly and will need time to lick their wounds. The Blighters are about to reap an enormous harvest of mana. This is definitely a good time to do a bunk!"
"But I don't have any choice—” Edward said, and then stopped in astonishment. The dogcart had rounded the trees and was almost into an encampment of Gypsies—half a dozen wagons and a couple of tents. Smoke trickled up from a central fire. Small children were running for cover and several dark-garbed men had turned to inspect the visitors. Gypsies?
"Any choice of what?” Creighton demanded, reining in the pony.
"I mean I'm going to enlist, of course. There's a war on!"