Gerald felt a tremble on the edges of the ether. Felt Rottlezinder’s potentia gather itself, like a fist. The criminal wizard was going to reactivate his warding hexes, and once they were brought back to life there’d be no hope of getting into that factory, no hope of learning the truth about him and Errol, no chance of thwarting whatever wickedness they had planned next.
No, no, no… I can’t be locked out, I can’t. Come on, Dunnywood, you tosser. Think…
Time spiralled around him. Years ago… he was a small boy playing in the kitchen while his mother baked fresh scones. A knock on the door. Someone unexpected. Mother went to answer it-some kind of travelling salesman. He remembered standing behind her, his four-year-old head not quite level with her hips, clutching her green skirt, listening to her tell him, “No thank you, not today.” Remembered her closing the door, and the toe of the salesman’s shoe jamming it open. Remembered his voice, persistent and argumentative. She’d threatened him with her rolling pin and he’d run away, the nasty man.
Jamming his toe in the closing door…
Was it even possible? Was there an equivalent incant? If there was he’d never come across it. He’d have to improvise one, and quick.
Oh lord. Where’s Monk when I need him?
As Haf Rottlezinder rewove the strands of his guarding hexes, Gerald took a deep, desperate breath and insinuated the barest sliver of his potentia into the turbulence of the thaumic mix. Not even so much as a toe in the door… more like a toenail… or a tiny toenail clipping… If Rottlezinder felt it, if he noticed any shift in the etheretic balance, this would get very ugly, very fast. And his best weapon, his First Grade staff, was yards and yards behind him in a patch of weeds.
“Hey!” said Errol from the abandoned factory’s entrance. “What the hell are you playing at, Haf? Do you think I came all this way to stand around watching you show off?”
Distracted, displeased, Rottlezinder swung round. And as he swung round he snapped the fingers of his right hand. Dull ruby fire flashed, the bracelet round his wrist shivering, and the warding hexes slammed back into place.
“You should watch your mouth, Errol,” said Rottlezinder, not amused now but threatening. “A fight with me is not something you should be looking for.”
“All right,” said Errol. He sounded… cautious. And beneath the caution was something else. Fear. “I don’t want to fight, Haf. I came to talk. So let’s talk.”
The factory’s partially boarded-up door clattered shut behind them. Gerald let out his held breath, light-headed, and bent over, gasping, hands braced on his knees. Too close. That was too close. Rivulets of sweat trickled down his spine and face.
I read all those case files. I studied the last ten years of the Department’s doings. Even with the censored bits blacked out, and nobody wanting Sir Alec to think they thought they were writing adventure fiction, I could see what this life is. So why am I surprised I’m so scared I could vomit?
Looked like Reg was right after all. Living is believing, sunshine, she was fond of saying. Until you’ve lived it you don’t know what’s possible.
Carefully he straightened, willing the dry-mouthed heaves to subside. Then he reached out and tugged, so very gently, on the thin thread of his potentia that was caught up in Haf Rottlezinder’s warding hexes. Had he been right? Had his desperate gamble paid off? Or was he about to trigger the hexes and bring this entire investigation crashing down around his inexperienced ears?
He nearly fell over.
Oh, lord. Oh, Reg. It worked. How could it work? I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m making this up as I go along.
Incredibly, what he’d managed to achieve, it seemed, was the insertion of his potentia into the actual matrix of Rottlezinder’s warding hexes. It was still his, but somehow it was mimicking Rottlezinder’s thaumic signature. The most fortuitous fluke, surely: this could only have worked because he stuck his toe in the door at a precisely perfect split-second of the hexing process.
If I’d tried to do it on purpose I’d never have managed it. Gosh. When Monk hears about this he’s going to go spare.
But while it was exciting, he wasn’t sure what it meant. Could he now break Rottlezinder’s wardings? Or could he-maybe-possibly He walked through them as though the hexes weren’t there. As though he were Haf Rottlezinder himself.
Dazed, he spun about to look behind him. To the ordinary eye the wizard’s hexes were invisible, but he could sense them in the ether, thaumic barbed wire, slashing claws and tearing teeth.
That shouldn’t be possible. I shouldn’t have done that. Could anybody do that… or is it just me?
In the pit of his belly, a faint, sickening tremble. If that wasn’t something any First Grader could do… if what he’d just done was a trick reserved for rogue wizards…
What else can I do that we don’t know about yet? And how long will it take for my own side to start thinking I’m more wizard than they can handle?
Horrible thoughts… but he’d have to think them through later. Right now he had to get inside the factory and find out what Errol and Haf Rottlezinder were planning next.
With enormous care he cloaked himself in another obfuscation hex; not Reg’s, this time, but one he’d learned from Sir Alec. The good news was that it muffled his thaumic signature until he was practically invisible. The bad news was that it interfered with his potentia, but he’d have to live with that. Secrecy was the most important thing right now.
He looked up. There, just as Reg had said, was the faint trace of light leaking between the top floor windows’ shutters. That was where he needed to be, and quickly. Before Errol and Haf concluded their treacherous business.
Scarcely daring to breathe, he eased himself into the abandoned boot factory. It was pitch dark inside, like being smothered with black velvet. His half-blindness wasn’t much help, either… but he didn’t dare try an illuminato incant.
The tracer crystal.
He dug it out of his pocket and held it in front of his good eye, squinting. The tracer glowed steadily, indicating Errol’s nearby presence, but it wasn’t bright enough to make a difference to the dark.
Damn.
Shoving the useless thing back in his pocket, he reached out with his muffled senses and began to pick his way across the floor to where he thought, he hoped, the stairs were located-heart-thuddingly aware that time was ticking past, that Errol and Haf could be planning another devastating portal attack and he wasn’t anywhere near enough to overhear and stop them.
Come on, come on, Dunnywood. Get a move on. Don’t let them win.
He found the stairs and, tread by uncertain, unseen tread, climbed them. Up one floor. Then another. Another. He was breathing in dust and who-knew-what kinds of filth; he wanted to sneeze and cough, but couldn’t. His sinuses were burning. His legs were burning too-climbing stairs was hard work and he’d never been an athlete. Maybe Reg should have nagged him a little harder about getting outdoors for some healthy fresh air and calisthenics.
As he reached the top floor at last, the blood thundering through his veins and arteries, he heard raised voices. Errol and Haf Rottlezinder were arguing. Under the cover of their anger he crept along a little faster, guided by the spill of light from a room at the end of the corridor that led off from the staircase.
“-always were one of the best, Haf,” Errol was saying. “But is this any way to prove it? I thought you’d learned your lesson five years ago.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Rottlezinder sneered. “That was your game, as I recall. Appearances always mattered to you. They always will. Me? I don’t care how a thing looks. I never did. The world is a lie. Everyone is a liar. Even you, Errol. Especially you, I think.”
The ether shivered again, teeth and claws returning.