Saash blinked and looked off vaguely in another direction. Urruah yawned, exhibiting every one of his teeth, long, white, and sharp; then he looked lazily at Arhu, and said, “I like the dead part.”
Oh, thank you so much for your help, Rhiow said silently to them both, growling softly. Saash, didn’t you think to get him something to eat, all today?
I was about to, when he started his little stunt with Abad. And then you showed up, and we went straight out, and I assumed you would stop for something, but no, we had to come straight here, by the High Road, no less, and by the time we got near food he was ravenous, and why do you expect him to have behaved otherwise?
Rhiow bristled … and then took a breath and let it out Well, you know, she said, after a moment, you may have something there. So box my ears and call me a squirrel.
Saash looked at her with annoyed affection. Not today. I’m saving up all your beatings to give them to you all at once. Probably kill you.
“What’s a life or two between friends?” Rhiow muttered. “I’m sorry. Now, Arhu, listen to me because you’ve got to get this through your head. We do not go out of our way to attract attention. A wizard’s business is not to be noticed. And it’s not ehhif attention we’re working to avoid! We’ve been doing strange things around them all through their history, and they still haven’t worked out what’s going on. There are much worse things to worry about. Though we work for the Powers That Be, not all the Powers are friendly … and if you carelessly raise your profile high enough to get noticed by one of them in particular, She’ll squash you flatter than road pizza, eat all your nine lives, spit them up like a hairball, and leave you nothing but a voice to howl in the dark with! She is no friend to wizards, or life, or any of the other things you took your Oath to defend. And even if you don’t take your Oath seriously yet, She does … and will, if She catches you.”
He stared at her, ears down, still wide-eyed: not the usual insolent look. Maybe it got through, she thought. I hope so. “So behave yourself,” Rhiow said, “because I’m personally going to see to it that your ears ring from moonrise to sunset until you do. —Meanwhile, we’re not going to linger here; we’ve been visible too long already. But for the Dam’s sweet sake if you have to come out in public and beg, at least do it with some dignity. Watch this.”
She slipped around the counter and strolled through the door over to the open space just beside the big glass counter laden with all the meat and cheese: then she sat down demurely and put her tail about her feet. There she waited.
The big man behind the counter had gone back to the business of making a pastrami and Swiss on rye. Rhiow gazed at him steadily, and when he felt the pressure of her look, she opened her mouth and trilled. It was practically a shout for a cat, but Rhiow knew mat ehhif beard this sound as a small conversational half-purr, not grating or intrusive, but inquisitive and polite. When he looked over at her, Rhiow did it again, stretching her mouth a bit out of shape to approximate the human smile, far more pronounced than a cat’s.
The man looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. Then he shrugged. He glanced from side to side to see whether anyone was watching, then reached down to the pile of pastrami he had already cut, and threw a big slice in Rhiow’s direction.
She was ready for this. In an instant she was up on her hind legs and had caught it in her paws. Then she dropped it, picked it up in her teeth, and trotted around the counter and out with it: not hurried, but businesslike, with her tail up and confident.
Off to one side, Rhiow dropped it for the others to share. The sound of the ehhif’s laughter was still loud behind the counter. “The outside’s got pepper on it: it’s an acquired taste,” Rhiow said to Arhu. “Better just eat the middle. — Now did you see how that went? I picked up that technique from my ehhif: don’t ask me why, but they think it’s hilarious. If I go back, that man will give me more to see me do it again.”
“It’s a waste of time,” Arhu muttered around his mouthful. “You could have just sidled and took it.”
“No, I couldn’t. You can’t take anything but yourself with you when you sidle. If you steal, you do it visibly… and that’s just as it should be.”
“Then you might as well have just taken it anyway. You could have gotten in and out of that glass thing before he knew what had happened.”
“No,” Rhiow said. “For one thing, you’d never be able to come back here and get more: they’d chase you on sight. But more importantly, it’s rude to them.”
“Who cares? They don’t care about us. Why should we care about them?”
The pastrami was gone. “Come on,” Urruah said, glancing around: “let’s get ourselves sidled before the transit cops show up and get on our case.”
They slipped around a corner from the deli and sidled, then started to walk back out toward the concourse. “They do care, some of them,” Saash said.
Arhu hissed softly in scorn. “Yeah? What about all the others? They’ll kick you or kill you for fun. And you can’t tell which kind they are until it’s too late.”
Rhiow and the others exchanged glances over Arhu’s head as they walked. “It’s not their fault,” Urruah said. “They generally don’t know any better. Most ehhif aren’t very well equipped for moral behavior as we understand it.”
“Then they’re just dumb animals,” Arhu said, “and we should take what they’ve got whenever we like.”
“Oh, stop it,” said Rhiow. “Just because we were made before they were doesn’t mean we get to act superior to them.”
“Even if we are?”
She gave him a sidelong look. “Queen Iau made them,” Rhiow said, “even if we’re not sure for what. Ten lives on, maybe we’ll all be told. Meanwhile, we work with them as we find them…” Arhu opened his mouth, and Rhiow said, “No. Later. We have to get moving if we’re going to catch Ehef during his business hours.”
“Who’s Ehef?” Arhu said.
“Our local Senior wizard,” Urruah said. “He’s five lives on, now. This Me alone, he must be, oh, how old, Rhi?”
“A hundred and sixty-odd moons-round,” Rhiow said, “thirteen or so if you do it by suns-round, ehhif-style. Oldish for this life.”
“A hundred and sixty moons?” Arhu goggled. “He’s ancient! Can he walk?’
Urruah burst out laughing. “Oh, please, gods,” he said between laughs, “let him ask Ehef that. Oh please.”
“Come on,” Rhiow said.
Chapter Five
The walk down to Fifth and Forty-second is never an easy one, even on weekends: too many windowshoppers in from out of town, too many tourists, and even a sidled cat has to watch where it walks on Fifth Avenue on Sunday. But by nine-thirty on a Sunday night, almost everything is closed, even the electronics shops that litter the middle reaches of Fifth, festooned with signs declaring closing-out sale! everything must go! and attracting the unsuspecting passersby who haven’t yet worked out that, come next week, nothing will be gone but their money. As a result, a pedestrian, whether on two feet or four, can stand for a moment and gaze across at the splendid Beaux-Arts facade of the New York Public Library’s Forty-second Street building—especially in the evening, when it glows golden with its landmark lighting—and enjoy the look of the place without being trampled by man, machine, or beast.