“I have no idea who those two men were, your Honor,” Horrabin was saying, and his already weird voice echoed with a sort of nightmare ululation in the stone shaft. “They were certainly none of my crew.”
“And they really did mean to kill him?”
“Oh, yes. Dennessen says when he knocked the second man off our American he had already stabbed him once, and was cocking another thrust.”
Doctor Romany swung meditatively for a few moments back and forth, kicking off gently from the concave stonework. “I can’t understand who they could be. Someone working against me, obviously, who either already knows what the American has to tell … or simply doesn’t want me to learn any of it. It couldn’t be the people he came with, because I saw them all disappear when the gate ceased to exist, and I’ve monitored all gates since and nobody has come through them. And the Antaeus Brotherhood hasn’t been a threat to us for more than a century, I gather.”
“They’re a bunch of old men,” Horrabin agreed, “who have forgotten the original purpose of their organization.”
“Well, tell your man Dennessen that if he could recognize the man who tried to kill the American, and bring that man to me alive, the reward will be the same as if he’d killed Dog-Face Joe.” He flapped his arms to stop swinging. “The bearded man who shot at the American and then picked him up may be of the same group. You say you recognized the daring canoeist?”
“I believe so, yer Worship. He wasn’t wearing his usual turban, but it looked like a beggar who sometimes hangs around here, called Ahmed. A fake Hindoo. I’ve got an order and reward out now for his capture.”
“Good. We’ll wring the story out of one of these birds, Set willing, even if we have to peel him down to nothing but lungs and a tongue and a brain.”
Damnable Richard carefully reached for his wooden monkey, whom he’d set on the window ledge so as to be able to see the prodigy of two sorcerers hung up like hams in a smokehouse, and put his thumb and forefinger over its ears, for savage talk tended to upset it. And Richard himself wasn’t pleased. He’d been in town for a full week now, confined to Rat’s Castle and the hall under Bainbridge Street, while Doctor Romany at least got to travel around in order to be at each gate when it appeared, which involved going out into the country a good deal of the time.
“I can’t help thinking—wondering whether—this interference may be prompted by my… partner’s efforts in Turkey,” said Doctor Romany.
“But nobody knows what they are,” pointed out Horrabin. He added more softly, “Even I know only that your twin brother has found a young British lord, sojourning abroad alone, who you two seem to think you can make some use of. It seems to me I should be more fully acquainted with your plans.”
Romany seemed not to have heard him. He said thoughtfully, “I don’t believe there’s been any breach of secrecy at this end, simply because I’m the only one that knows anything important. But I don’t know much about what may be going on at Doctor Romanelli’s end of things, back in Turkey; I understand this young lord is fond of writing letters. I just hope my… brother hasn’t allowed some unobtrusively important bit of information to find its way, in one of these letters, to certain people in this island.”
Horrabin looked surprised. “Where’d you say this troublesome young peer is?”
“A few days out of Athens, obediently heading back up the Gulf of Corinth to Patras; for some reason milord is very vulnerable psychically when he’s in that little area: Patras, the Gulf of Patras, Missolonghi. So when he was last there, in July, Romanelli had the imperial consul, an employee of his, put milord to sleep by having him concentrate on the operation of a musical clock, and while he was asleep my brother placed a command in milord’s mind, under the thinking level so he wouldn’t be aware of it—a command to return to Patras in mid-September, by which time things should be warmed up here so that everything will come to a boil at once. And his lordship is even now carrying out the order, blithely supposing that the decision to return to Patras is his own.”
Horrabin was nodding impatiently. “The reason I asked was, well, for a letter of his to have incited trouble here, it would have to have been sent… when? Months ago, I should think. Aren’t there about a dozen wars going on between here and there? So even if he’d written to somebody right at first, in July, there hasn’t been time for the letter to arrive here and for somebody here to find out who you are and what you want.”
Romany raised his eyebrows and nodded. “You’re right—I hadn’t considered the slow pace of international mail these days.” He frowned. “Then who in hell were those men, and why are they interfering with me? “
“I couldn’t say,” answered the clown, slowly stretching and bending his limbs like some sort of huge, painted spider. Damnable Richard covered his monkey’s eyes. “But,” added Horrabin, “they’re interfering with me too. Four dozen of my tiniest homunculi were drowned out there tonight by that bloody Hindoo. You need to make your Master in Cairo send more of that stuff—what’s it called?”
“Paut,” said Doctor Romany. “That’s damned hard stuff to produce nowadays, magic being as strangled as it is.” He shook his head dubiously.
Horrabin’s painted face clenched in what was probably a scowl, but he continued his slow exercises. “I need it—to work for you I need it—to make more homunculi,” he said evenly. “Dwarves and such I can warp down from human stock, but for boys that can overhear conversations while hidden in a teacup, follow a man by crouching in a fold of his hat,” the clown’s voice was rising, “sneak into a bank through the drains and replace good gold sovereigns with your gypsy fakes—” and he tilted over so that his head was near Romany and his legs pointed away, and he added, in a whisper, “or if you want some lads that can enter a monarch’s chamber concealed in a nurse’s dress, and put mind-rot drugs in his soup without being seen, and then, dressed up as anything from bugs to the twelve apostles, do dances on a table top out of his reach, just to give his ravings added color—for work like that you need my Spoonsize Boys.”
“We won’t have to do that very much longer, if things work out as planned in Patras,” said Romany quietly. “But your creatures have their uses, I admit. I’ll explain the situation to my Master, and let you know tomorrow what he says.”
“You communicate by means of something faster than the mail,” observed Horrabin, his orange eyebrows inquiringly raised halfway to his hat.
“Oh yes,” said Romany with a deprecatory shrug. “By sorcerous means my colleagues and I can converse directly at any time, across any distance, and even send objects through space instantly. Such perfect communication ensures that our stroke, when we deal it, will be flawlessly aimed, timed and coordinated—unanswerable.” He permitted himself a smile. “In our hand is the King of Sorcerers, and that beats any of the cards John Bull may have in his hand.”
Damnable Richard looked at his monkey and rolled his eyes and shook his head. What a crock, eh, monkey? he thought. He just doesn’t want this terrible clown to know how much he needs him. How many times, monkey, have you and I seen him shouting at that silly candle of his with Egypt-writing on it, and after a couple of hours just get a faint voice saying, “What? What?” coming out of the round flame… and how about the times he’s tried to send or get objects from his pals in the far off lands? Remember the time his Master tried to send him a little statue, and all that showed up was a handful of red hot gravel? Hah! This to sorcery!