Huff threw Rhiow a very covert and very amused look as Fhrio put his other ear forward.“Oh, no indeed,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to deprive him …”
“All right, then,” Rhiow said to Huff. “I think we’ll need some hours to put together what spells we want to carry with us, and to make sure things back at home are all right before we set out. If you can keep the gate in inactive mode until we get back, that’ll probably be best.”
“No problem with that,” Fhrio said. “I’ll just disconnect it from the power source entirely until you get back—when? tomorrow?—to set up the parasitic timeslide.”
“Tomorrow let it be,” Rhiow said, “about this time, if that suits you all.”
They all got up.“And meanwhile, thanks for the work you’ve done,” Huff said. “We’re further along than we were, though the problem looks worse than it did: at least there’s been a change in status, whichyouwere begging for, Fhrio, as I remember. So you may owe Arhu one after all.”
“Though, Fhrio, I must admit that he overstepped the bounds,” Rhiow said. “And my apologies to you for that.”
Fhrio took a not entirely ceremonial swipe at Arhu’s ear. “Let him behave himself after this, then.”
“I will do so,” Arhu said with abrupt and brittle clarity, “insofar asyouso do as well, when we come into the dark and you cannot find the way: when others see the path that you do not, and you rebel …”
Rhiow blinked. It was not anything like Arhu’s usual turn of phrase: she heard foretelling in it, and her fur stood up on her. She hoped Fhrio’s was doing the same, for there was no mistaking the Whisperer’s Dam when She chose to speak out loud … as she sometimes did, using Arhu as Her throat.
The resonances trembling around his words faded themselves out on the air, leaving the London team looking at one another.“I’m sorry,” Rhiow said, “but it’s another recent development. Arhu is a visionary, though the talent is still training. When it comes out so forcefully, though, we’ve learned to listen …”
Fhrio shrugged his tail.“We’ll see what happens,” he said, sounding skeptical, but cheerfully so. “Are we all done? Then I’ve got a gate to see to, and a pride to go home to. See you all tomorrow …”
He stalked out, leaving them all looking after him. Auhlae looked after him with some concern and said,“He goes my way home, for a little distance: I’ll go with him. Siffha’h, come with me?”
“Sure,” said the youngster. Auhlae rubbed faces quickly with Huff, saluted the others with a flirt of her tail, and headed off after Fhrio. Siffha’h trotted off after Auhlae, leaving Arhu gazing after her.
Rhiow lashed her tail once or twice, then said to Huff,“Truly, I am sorry if we’ve caused any trouble—”
“If the way he acts makes you think so,” Huff said, giving her an amused look out of those big green eyes, “don’t. Fhrio’s always like the one flea down in your ear that you can’t get at. But for all that, he’s good at his job. Come on …”
They all made their way out, slipping behind the bar and down a corridor behind it to a heavy metal door with a small cat-door installed in the bottom of it: then out into a small untidy yard stacked high with steel beer barrels and plastic soft-drink crates. At the back of the yard, a corrugated steel gateway in a high wall had a small improvised cat-door cut into the steel and hinged.“Convenient,” Urruah said.
“It is, isn’t it?” said Huff. “But one thing. Urruah, thank you for volunteering.”
Urruah looked at him in surprise.“Well, as I said, it seems appropriate. Doesn’t it, Rhi?”
“It does. Accusations of ego aside.”
Huff laughed at that.“Don’t take him seriously, cousins:pleasedon’t. He’s got ego enough of his own and to spare. But I do thank you.”
“You’re worried about Auhlae,” Arhu said suddenly.
Rhiow sighed, thinking that vision was not Arhu’s only problem: he was perceptive as well, but not about how to use the perception.He needs a tact transplant,she thought, but she suspected that this was something not even wizardry could handle. She and Urruah were just going to have to beat it into him over time … hopefully before he got so big that the corrective administration of educational whackings was no longer a viable option.
Huff looked for a long moment at Arhu before saying,“Yes, I am. I don’t think you’re too young to understand the situation. We’ve been together a while, and she’s dear to me: the thought of her in danger upsets me. If we needed to do something dangerous in the Powers’ service, of course we would … and doubtless will. But I don’t like to think of her anywhere near trouble.”
Rhiow understood completely, though at the same time it seemed to her that for partners who were wizards, and who might be in trouble at the drop of a whisker, such an attitude was likely to cause one or both of them pain sooner or later.
“I know what you mean,” Arhu said, and suddenly looked very young, and painfully dignified, and profoundly troubled, all at once.Oh, dear,Rhiow said privately to Urruah,hehasbeen bitten badly, hasn’t he…
The claw in the ear is the claw through the heart,Urruah said, quoting the old proverb.I just hope she doesn’t rip him ragged before she’s through…
“Yes,” Huff said. “I thought you might. Thank you, anyway: thank you all for volunteering.” And he leaned over and rubbed cheeks with Rhiow.
She was oddly moved.“Cousin, you’re more than welcome. It’s our job, after all. Meanwhile, we’d better get going to prepare what we need. We’ll see you down by the gate, about this time tomorrow.”
They made their way out through the little steel door, into the alley behind the pub, and headed for the gate, and home: and all the way home Rhiow’s fur felt strange to her where Huff’s cheek had brushed it…
THREE
They parted at Grand Central—Urruah to make his way off to his dumpster, Arhu to the garage. Rhiow went home by one of the “high road” routes, over roofs and ’tween-building walls, rather than by the surface streets. She was already thinking about the spells she would want to bring with her the next day, the preparations she would have to make, and she was in no mood to deal with the traffic at street level. Yet at the same time Huff’s touch was on her mind: nor could she stop thinking about poor Arhu’s adolescent suffering over Siffha’h.I wonder why she dislikes him,Rhiow thought, as she jumped up on a high dividing wall at the end of Seventieth Street and looked down through the maze of tiny cramped alleys which would finally lead to her own alleyway and the road up her own apartment’s wall. Ihope they can sort something out. It would be nice if Arhu had another wizard more or less of his own age to be around, instead of just us old fossils…
Iaehh hadn’t seen Rhiow the night before: so when she came in the cat-door now, an hour or so after he would have returned from work, Iaehh swept her up and carried her around the apartment for about ten minutes, alternately scolding her for being missing, and hugging her for having come back. Rhiow put upwith it, even though she didn’t normally much care for being carried around. Finally she patted his face with her paw, which she knew he thought was very “cute”: but she left her claws just the tiniest bit out, and he felt them, and laughed.
“You’re a good puss,” he said, and put her down by the cat-food dish. He had washed it again. “You’re learning,” she said, and purred approval as he fed her. When he finally sat down in his reading chair (having had his dinner some time ago: pizza, to judge by the smells), she jumped upinto his lap and sat there washing for a good while. Iaehh picked up the remote control and turned on the living-room TV, and for a good long time he sat quiet and watched the local news channel intone its litany of who had been robbed or shot in the City, what politicians were saying what cutting and possibly true things about other politicians, and what the weather was going to be like the next day.