dung beetle who couldn't believe his luck.
Something went 'plop' on the red dust, throwing up a little crater.
And again, and again.
Lightning split the trunk of a nearby baobab.
The rains began.
Victor's back was beginning to ache. Carrying young women to safety looked a good idea on paper, but had major drawbacks after the first hundred yards.
'Have you any idea where she lives?' he said. 'And is it somewhere close?'
'No idea,' said Gaspode.
'She once said something about it being over a clothes shop,' said Victor.
'That'll be in the alley alongside Borgle's then,' said Gaspode.
Gaspode and Laddie led the way through the alleys and up a rickety outside staircase. Maybe they smelled out Ginger's room. Victor wasn't going to argue with mysterious animal senses.
Victor went up the back stairs as quietly as possible. He was dimly aware that where people stayed was often infested by the Common or Greatly Suspicious Landlady, and he felt that he had enough problems as it was.
He used Ginger's feet to push open the door.
It was a small room, low-ceilinged and furnished with the sad, washed-out furniture found in rented rooms across the multiverse. At least, that's how it had started out.
What it was furnished with now was Ginger.
She had saved every poster. Even those from early clicks, when she was just in very small print as A Girl. They were thumb-tacked to the walls. Ginger's face and his own stared at him from every angle.
There was a large mirror at one end of the poky room, and a couple of half-burned candles in front of him.
Victor deposited the girl carefully on the narrow bed and then stared around him, very carefully. His sixth, seventh and eighth senses were screaming at him. He was in a place of magic.
'It's like a sort of temple,' he said. 'A temple to . . . herself.'
'It gives me the willies,' said Gaspode.
Victor stared. Maybe he'd always successfully avoided being awarded the pointy hat and big staff, but he had acquired wizard instincts. He had a sudden vision of a city under the sea, with octopuses curling stealthily through the drowned doorways and lobsters watching the streets.
'Fate don't like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everyone knows that.'
I'm going to be the most famous person in the whole world, thought Victor. That's what she sail. He shook his head.
'No,' he said aloud. 'She just likes posters. It's just ordinary vanity.'
It didn't sound believable, even to him. The room fairly hummed with . . .
. . . what?
He hadn't felt anything like it before. Power of some sort, certainly. Something that was brushing tantalizingly against his senses. Not exactly magic. At least, not the kind he was used to. But something that seemed similar while not being the same, like sugar compared with salt; the same shape and the same colour, but . . .
Ambition wasn't magical. Powerful, yes, but not magical . . . surely?
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