around, is there, Dunwoody?”
Gerald didn’t turn. “Does Sir Alec know?”
“You could say that,” said Dalby, with a soft, derisive snort. “He wants to see you. Soon as. Proper put out, he is.”
Proper put out? I bet that’s an understatement. “Fine. I don’t suppose you could-”
“Don’t make me laugh,” said Dalby, and spat. “I’ve got to keep an eye on what’s happening here. Take Haythwaite in when the leeches have cleared him. You’ll have to make your own way to Nettle-worth, boyo.”
Oh. In which case, he’d have to soup-up another scooter. But that still left the one he’d ridden to South Ott. Somehow he’d have to get it back here before someone noticed its absence.
Damn. Why can’t anything ever be simple?
“ Fine,” he sighed. “Only there’s one small problem, Dalby.”
Another derisive snort. “No, there’s not. The scooter you left across town’s shoved in the garden, over there.”
“You found it?”
“Course I bloody found it,” said Dalby, scornful. “The amount of hexing you did on that thing, it’s a wonder every bloody wizard in town didn’t find it. Bloody show-off, Dunwoody, that’s what you are.”
Gerald felt his face heat. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” said Dalby. “That makes my night, that does.”
And he went back inside.
Still aching, and now dry-mouthed with nerves on top of it, Gerald retrieved the scooter… and went to face the formidable Sir Alec.
“So you see, sir,” he finished, at the end of his long and convoluted explanation of the night’s events-keeping the girls out of it had been interesting, to say the least-“Errol Haythwaite is in the clear. But it looks like we’ll have to take another look at the Wycliffes.”
Leaning back in his chair, elbows propped on its arms, Sir Alec steepled his fingers and gazed at the ceiling. “Hmm. Yes. That certainly appears to be the case, doesn’t it?”
The night was so late now it was very nearly morning. Beyond Sir Alec’s office window the sky above Nettleworth was shifting towards dawn, blushing pale pearly grey with the merest suggestion of pink. Gerald was so tired he felt light-headed and not quite real. Strangely insubstantial, as though his bones were made of paper and his flesh of cotton stuffing. Thanks to some noxious brew Sir Alec had made him drink, his aches and pains were mostly subsided. But oddly, he was hungry… and he desperately wanted to sleep.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get Rottlezinder out in time,” he added. “I know you were anxious to speak with him, sir.”
Gaze lowered again, Sir Alec raised an eyebrow. “ Anxious, Mister Dunwoody? I’m not in the habit of feeling anxious. Certainly it would’ve been useful if we’d been able to chat with Mestre Rottlezinder, but alas. In this business we quite often encounter disappointment. However experience has taught me that things often do work themselves out, though perhaps not as swiftly as one might prefer.”
Gerald frowned. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “the fact that Rottlezinder’s dead will give us a bit of breathing space. Finding his replacement won’t be easy. Perhaps we’ll get lucky, and the search itself will help us identify who’s behind the portal sabotage. Ambrose Wycliffe, or whoever.”
The faintest hint of weariness touched Sir Alec’s cool eyes. “Indeed. In our business, success too frequently hinges upon fortuitous serendipity.”
While failure turned on the lack of it. “I’m sorry about the boot factory, too. Even though I didn’t see anything in Rottlezinder’s room except for him, Errol and the portal hex, there might’ve been information hidden elsewhere in the building. I wish I’d been able to investigate more thoroughly. Still… maybe Mister Dalby can find something in the debris.”
“It’s unlikely,” said Sir Alec. “Which is also unfortunate. But under the circumstances-all things considered-I appreciate that your choices at the time were limited.”
Gerald waited for the inevitable, sardonic reference to Stuttley’s. When it didn’t come he felt himself relax, just a little bit.
“So, all in all, an eventful evening,” Sir Alec said, his steepled fingers tapping each other.
“Yes, sir,” he sighed. “Eventful is one word that springs to mind.”
Sir Alec’s gaze narrowed. “The thing is, Mister Dunwoody, that when one is assigned a watching brief, the emphasis is generally placed upon watching. But it seems there has been rather a lot of running about in this instance. Also some very… creative… uses of thaumaturgy.”
He swallowed. “As you say, sir. Things got a bit eventful.”
“And then, of course, there’s the matter of the docilianti compulsion,” Sir Alec continued, ignoring that. “If I recall correctly, I believe I made quite a point of telling you how rarely such a dangerous incant is to be employed. And yet here we have you, a junior janitor, whipping it out at the first opportunity. Tell me, Mister Dunwoody, do I misremember the facts or were you not quite… opinionated… regarding the uses of such thaumaturgics?”
Sir Alec’s voice was mild enough, his expression perfectly bland, but behind his grey eyes something dangerous waited. Gerald felt his jaw tighten.
“I know what I said about that kind of thaumaturgy, Sir Alec. And my opinion hasn’t changed. But under the circumstances I didn’t think I had a choice. We had to get out of there, and Errol-well, I knew Errol wasn’t going to co-operate. And there wasn’t a lie I could tell him that he’d believe.”
“No, no I don’t suppose there was,” Sir Alec said at last, musingly. “Given your colourful history. Tell me, Mister Dunwoody, how did you manage to breach Rottlezinder’s perimeter warding hexes? I don’t recall you mentioning that.”
He kept his gaze steady, his expression unchanged. Watch yourself, Gerald. This man is no-one’s fool. “I don’t recall mentioning that there were any warding hexes, Sir Alec.”
Sir Alec smiled. “Perhaps you didn’t. But there must have been some, surely. A man like Haf Rottlezinder would never leave himself exposed and unprotected, even in such an obscure location. Everything we know about the man suggests he’d have himself warded to the stars. So. How did you successfully breach his defences?”
Seated on the other side of Sir Alec’s imposing desk, in the remarkably uncomfortable wooden visitor’s chair, Gerald dropped his gaze to his knees. Well. Hadn’t he been an idiot, to hope Sir Alec wouldn’t put his finger precisely on his story’s omission? The question before him now was how did he handle the situation. Reg’s uncharacteristically solemn warning echoed in his memory.
If I were you, I might be a bit… careful… about what I said in my reports to that Sir Alec.
The warning only echoed his own misgivings. He might’ve spent the last six months here in Nettle-worth, being poked and prodded, but that didn’t mean he knew Sir Alec any better now than five minutes after they first met.
All right, yes, Monk says I can trust him to fight the good fight, but how does Monk know that? He’d never lie to me… but that doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t lie to him. And I have no idea what Sir Alec really thinks of my abilities. For all I know he already sees me as a threat…
Sir Alec cleared his throat, very mildly. Too mildly. “Mister Dunwoody,” he said, suspiciously pleasant. “I feel it would be a great pity for you to thrust a spoke in the wheel of your brand-new career by choosing, at this point, to tell me anything less than the whole, unvarnished truth.”
He looked up, straight into Sir Alec’s unnerving grey eyes. Eyes that had looked upon death, and worse than death, for more years than he cared to think about. And he realised he’d reached a kind of crossroads, without ever noticing the journey or its destination. He’d thought he’d made his final choice in New Ottosland. That Sir Alec’s offer of joining the Department was the defining moment of his life.
But he’d been wrong. This was the defining moment of his life. Because after the factory, and Rottlezinder, he knew from the inside just what he was getting himself into. It was the difference between looking at a rapid- filled river… and swimming in it.
So. Did he want to keep swimming? Or did he want to get out? Was Sir Alec a man with a life preserver or was he someone with a long pole waiting to push him under the surface to watch him drown? There was no way of knowing. Not for certain. It all came down to a question of faith.
Either you trust him or you don’t, Dunwoody. The time has come to make your choice: piss or get off the Department pot.
