Fhrio waved his tail helplessly.“Why not?” he said. “It’s worth a try—”
“Try it with just Urruah first,” Siffha’h said. And there was a note there in her voice that Rhiow had not heard before. She was afraid.
Of what?
“All right,” Urruah said. “Let me take it.” He moved over to the power-point position as Siffha’h pulled herself away, and planted his paws on it. “Ready, Fhrio?”
“Ready—”
Power, growing quickly, increasing to a blaze, a blast. Rhiow blinked, finding herself becoming lost in it. The pressure from behind, which is Artie: the pressure forward, which is Urruah: the impetus in the center, which is Arhu. All go forward a very little way … and then stop, blocked.
Blocked, yes (says a voice that sounds oddly like Hardy’s). But only for actuallygoing.Seeing cannot be blocked: vision is ubiquitous. It is one of the chief functions of Her nature: She sees everything … though in Her mercy, she does not alwayslook.Looking makes it so…
Arhu looks. For a while all he can see is that scarred and leering Moon, the promise of destruction. It is meant to distract him. When he realizes this, he turns his attention away.Show me what happens to her,he says to the listening world.Show me the ones who kill the Queen.
The darkness swirls and does not quite dissolve…
There is little enough to see of them. They fear the daylight. In the room where they sit, talking in whispers, the curtains are drawn against the possibility of anyone seeing in. Sight they may defeat, but not vision.“The time has come. Our people can suffer this unjust rule no longer. We must go forward with the plan.”
“Are the conditions all correct? Are we sure?”
“As certain as we can be. The relationship with Germany could hardly be expected to worsen, excepting that they declare war … which they dare not do. Any more than the French. But both have been saber-rattling: and France has made several statements in the past few weeks that seem to threaten the monarchy. There is no point in waiting any further.”
More whispers, hard even for a Person’s ears to pick up. “The Mouse is in place.”
“Well, then let the Mouse run,” says another voice, and it chuckles.
The voices fade. Resistance rears itself against Arhu. Something knows he is watching and listening. Something is trying to push him away, back where he belongs.
The feeling of Arhu pressing back, pushing against the resistance, fighting it.
…To no effect. It pushes back harder. It is winning.
A deep breath … and then a different tack. The raven’s way.
Don’t push against it. Rise above it. Don’t fight with the vision: let it bear you. The wings and the wind are a dialog…
Arhu lets go and soars: and the Eye opens fully…
The letter came. The smallehhifpicked it up, without any particular fanfare, from the kitchen of one of the wings of the castle: a letter from his sister in Edinburgh, he said to the cook, and carried it away whistling. Still whistling, he headed for the potting shed where most of his day’s work took place these days—and then stepped into a thick bed of rhododendrons near the shed. Concealed there, he stood stock-still and silently tore the letter open.
He knew what it meant: he did not have to read it. All he had to do was make sure that the contents said what he had been told to expect.Dearest John, I hope you are well. I write to tell you that I have received the ten shillings you sent, and thank you very much. If you—
It was correct: it was all correct. The man folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, unaware with what fierce interest a Seer’s eyes looked through his, and puzzled out the postmark.July 9, 1874.
“Tonight,” the man whispered.
The vision whirled aside, shifted.
…And the resistance came back. Pressing him away. Not to see the next part…
Come on,he said.Help me.
No answer.
Siffha’h, come on! This is what will make the difference!
No—do it yourself!
You said it,Arhu said—not angrily, but pleading.I’ll take you anywhere you need to go.This iswhere we need to go!
A long, long silence, while the pressure increases.
…All right…
A shuffling of paws on the power-point, to make room for another. She rears up. Terrified, terrified, she comes down—
A blast of power runs down through the linkages, runs into Arhu. The pressure before him fails, melts away: the wind blows him past it—
Arhu whirls along with the wind, lets it bear him. Darkness now: not the darkness among the rhododendrons, but black night. In the silence, the man creeps along, under the cosseted trees of the Orangery, along the North Terrace. There are many doors into the silent castle, most locked, but few guarded: after all, the walls are guarded, and no one is inside the walls by night except trusted retainers of the household. There are no lights outside, on the inside of the walclass="underline" there is no need for such.
The man stops by a door just east of George the Fourth’s Tower, on the bottom leveclass="underline" the servants’ quarters and the kitchens. This is a door which is rarely ever locked—a little secret: even servants like to be able to escape now and then. The man waits for a few minutes outside it to make sure that no candle is burning inside, harbinger of someservant girl having a tryst in the midnight kitchen by the slacked-down coal fire of the biggest stove. But no light comes: and he needs none. He knows how many steps wide the kitchen is, how many stairs lead up from it to the first floor, and then how many steps, in the darkness, lead along the hallway to the second landing and the small winding stair which leads up into the eastern end of the State Apartments. It is a path he has walked five or six times now by night, and has memorized with the skill that used to let him ransack complex commercial premises in the City, in the dark, after just one walkthrough by daylight.
He unlatches the door with one gloved hand, slips in through it, shuts it gently behind him. Stands still in the darkness, and listens. A faint hiss from the hot-water boiler behind the coal stove: no other sound.
Twelve steps across the kitchen: his outstretched hand finds the shut door. He eases its latch open, slips through this door too, pulls it gently to behind him. No need to leave it open: he will not be coming back this way. Six stairs up to the hallway. Two steps out into the middle of the carpet in the halclass="underline" turn left. Sixty steps down to the second landing. The carpet muffles his footsteps effectively, though he would go silently even without it: he is wearing crepe-soled shoes which his employers would have judged most eccentric for a gardener. Well, they will have little chance to judge him further, in any regard. Others will be going to judgment tonight.
Fifty-nine steps, and he hears the change in the sound. Sixty. His toe bumps against the bottom step. Five stairs up to the landing: turn right: three steps. He puts his hand out, and feels the door.
Gently, gently he pulls it open. From up the winding stair comes a faint light: it seems astonishingly bright to him after the dead blackness. Softly he goes up the stairs, taking them near the outer side of the steps: the inner sides creak. One makes a tiny sound,crack:he freezes in place. A minute, two minutes, he stands there. No one has noticed. A great old house like this has a thousand creaks and moans, the sound of compressed wood relaxing itself overnight, and no one pays them any mind.
Up the remaining fifteen steps. They are steep, but he is careful. At the door at the top he halts and looks out of the crack in it where it has been left open. In the hallway onto which this stairway gives, next to a door with a gilded frame, a footman is sitting in a chair under a single candle-sconce with a dim electric bulb burning in it. The chair is tilted back against the wall. The footman is snoring.
Down the hallway, now, in utmost silence.