2.
Dawn. The sun was not yet above the sea, but the western clouds were all aflame with red, and bands of pale and distant yellow light peered through the bands of cloud. A low retaining wall of gray stone ran the length of the seafront, and above this were the shops of Waterside Street, quiet as ghosts in the dawn.
There was a boardwalk on our side of the stone wall, and piers ran out on tall posts into the dark, murmuring water.
The four of us were huddled on the wide pier next to Lily Lilac's motorboat. There were crates lashed down under tarps on two sides of us, sheltering us from any view. On the fourth side was the sea. There were other boats moored here, too, but the fishermen either had not risen yet, or were taking Christmas Day off.
I had realigned Victor's monad, which had been twisted by Miss Daw to render him inert. His body had been stiff, without any heartbeat or breathing, but when I put him back to normal, the mechanical processes of breathing and circulation merely started again. It was so eerie, so inhuman, that I was having trouble remembering this was Victor, my Victor of whom I had dreamed so often. It was like seeing a computer or something, restored from a tape back-up.
Victor, in short order, had opened his third eye, and 'remagnetized,' as he called it, the 'parts of Quentin's nervous system' which 'allowed him to create magnetic anomalies.' In other words, he turned Quentin's magic back on. The beam he used was more golden than blue.
Quentin poked around in the rubbish in some trash bins near the dock and found an axe-handle with no axe head, which someone had thrown away. Now he held it tucked under one arm like a baton. The first thing he had done with it was draw what he called a 'circle of silence' on the planks of the dock where we hid, to allow us to talk, rather than pass notes, while Boggin's air spirits were listening for us.
The bus station was less than one hundred yards from where we huddled. It had taken me five minutes to walk up to the closed and locked door, slide 'past' them, find the locker. I did not bother opening the door; I was wary of using keys. I stuck my head in, lowered the hyper-sphere into this space, so that its light shone on the inte-rior of the locker. Here were papers and an envelope with money, as promised.
I would have brought Vanity, whom I now thought of as our trap-detector, but I was unwilling to experiment with what might happen if I drew her through the fourth dimension.
I drew out the papers and tickets and the envelope, and wafted through the wall. I folded my wings and assumed my secret identity as a girl again, and walked back down the street to where the others were waiting.
There were tears in my eyes by the time I got there. 'Assume my secret identity' was like a phrase Colin would have used.
I stepped back into Quentin's circle, and the sea noise grew hushed and remote, as if cotton were blocking my ears.
I showed them the papers. We had visas and passports, and about ?5,000 of Mr. ap Cymru's money. I was not sure if that was a little money or a lot, but I thought it was a lot. There were pictures of us, but I did not recognize the photographs; I had no idea when they had been taken.
There were papers for Colin, too, and there he was, a devilish half-smile to his face, looking out at me from his passport.
Victor said, 'How long do we wait, Leader? Our chances of being spotted from the air have just gone up tremendously, because we waited till sunup.'
I said, 'I don't know and I don't care. You decide. This time I am quitting and for real. I resign as leader.'
Victor said, 'Not wise. You still have a lot of information we don't know yet.'
I said stiffly, 'When a leader loses one of the men under her command, she can resign.'
Quentin said softly, 'We do not know for sure he's dead.'
Bitterness crept into my voice. 'You're right. He may only be captured.'
And I wondered how much of his memory they would have to erase to blot out all memories of us. All of them, I suppose. They would have to turn him back into a baby. Which, for all practical purposes, would erase him as a person. It was the same as death.
Quentin turned and looked at Victor. 'It still seems like we need a leader. Someone has to decide how long we wait, whether we go back to look for his… to look for him, or where we go.'
Vanity said, 'And what about me?'
In my heart, I had to agree with Vanity. Why was Quentin automatically assuming Victor would be leader if I was not? I said, 'Good point! Why can't Vanity be leader? Are we just all assuming girls can't do anything right? Is that it?'
Vanity looked embarrassed. 'Um, actually, I mean,
I sighed, feeling an immense weariness. I had been awake now, for how long? Two days? I lay back on the dock and tucked my hands behind my head, staring up at the sky. The zenith was mauve and dark blue, and the armies of the sunrise had not yet defeated that last rearguard of night. A star was there, faint, but not yet blotted out. One last holdout against the inevitable.
I just wanted to rest. I just wanted someone else to do the thinking for the group. I just wanted…
I just wanted Quartinus not to be dead. Once, at one of the irregular birthday parties Mrs. Wren used to throw for us (we had had three that year, I remember, and none the year before) Quartinus had been frightened by a party balloon. It had deflated, spitting with a rude noise, and when he ran from it, it flopped at random, here and there. Blind chance had made it seem to come after him, at least for a moment. Then he had cried, because the thing was limp, and he thought it was dead. He had been very young. I had held him in my lap and fed him a slice of birthday cake, and wiped his tears___
I said dully, 'Of the four powers, two of them are equal and opposite to each other. Me and Quentin; Victor and Colin. I had the hypothesis—really just a guess in the dark—that the two other powers we know exist, the Olympian and the Phaeacian, are combinations of two opposites. The Phaeacians seem to be able to bend space. I do not
