ramblings. I don’t know how Alec sleeps at night. And then, feeling sick, he wondered if he understood anything at all. “Just what is it that you do for the government, exactly, Sir Alec?”
This time Sir Alec’s chilly smile was frightening. “I keep things tidy, Mr. Markham. I clean up other people’s mess.”
Clean up. Now there was a terrifying euphemism. He made himself meet Sir Alec’s intimidating gaze. Summoned a little intimidation of his own.
“Well, you’re not cleaning up Gerald,” he said, his voice low. Painfully aware of Melissande, almost within earshot. “None of this is his fault. Give me your word you’ll leave him alone or-”
“Or what?” said Sir Alec, so impersonally polite. “What is it you imagine you can do, Mr. Markham?”
How odd, that he could go from admiring to hating someone in such a short space of time. “Sir Alec, this isn’t Gerald’s fault,” he said, sounding anything but impersonal. But I don’t care. I don’t. “Something happened to him when Stuttley’s factory went up. Something nobody was expecting, or could have foreseen. In the name of all things thaumaturgical, when he left here for New Ottosland he was rated a piss poor Third Grade wizard! And the next thing he knew he was turning cats into lions. That’s-that’s-”
“Unprecedented. I know,” said Sir Alec, watching him closely. “A word I suspect will be quite worn out before this is over.”
“Please,” he said, and heard the catch in his voice. “ Please. At least say that any cleaning up will be a last resort.”
“I’m not a wasteful man, Mr. Markham,” Sir Alec replied after an awful pause. “I don’t throw anything away if I don’t have to.”
It was the only assurance he was going to get-and it wasn’t anywhere near good enough. Still feeling sick, he glanced at silent Reg. “Well? Come on. I can’t believe you don’t have an opinion.”
Reg chattered her beak, dark brown eyes glittering. “You want my opinion? First we find out what’s happened in madam’s back yard. And then if this government plonker starts waving a dustpan and brush around I think you should knit his intestines into a throw rug while I pluck out his eyeballs and use them for marbles. That’s my opinion. Care to second it?”
He grinned. “Hear, hear.”
“Monk-” Uncle Ralph joined them. “ Enough. If you can read those damn recording crystals then stop messing about and read them. Otherwise-”
“Sorry,” he said. Glanced over at Melissande. “Sorry. All right. Here I go…”
With the original cat-into-lion transmog recording clutched tight in his right hand and the Abercrombie recording crystal folded hard in his left, he closed his eyes to block out extraneous distractions-like the hint of tears in Melissande’s green eyes-and reached out with his potentia.
The vibrations from the transmog set his bones humming anew. He was astonished all over again, recognizing that this was the new Gerald. Before the accident at Stuttley’s his friend had been a tentative, almost apologetic wizard. A man who found it hard to believe he’d earned the right to wield his cherrywood staff and expected at any moment to have it taken away. And no amount of cheerleading from the sidelines-from himself and Reg-had made a difference. In his heart that Gerald had thought of himself as a wizard by mistake. A tailor’s son from Nether Wallop who’d be unmasked as an impostor any tick of the clock.
But now? After his catastrophic thaumic accident? This Gerald felt as confident as-as Errol Haythwaite, and that was saying something.
I don’t understand how nobody saw this coming. He worked for the Department of Thaumaturgy, for crying out loud. Why didn’t they see it?
Then again… why didn’t he?
It was a question he’d been asking himself ever since Gerald had tripped the monitors with that first Level Twelve trick-and he was nowhere near close to any kind of answer.
Some bloody friend I am. Some genius. A genuine thaumaturgic marvel right under my nose and I couldn’t smell it. I’m a bloody disgrace.
“Mr. Markham…”
And that was Sir Alec, playing cattle prod again.
“Nearly done,” he muttered. “Don’t fuss at me.”
With Gerald’s remade thaumic signature fresh in his mind, he focused his attention on the Abercrombie’s recording crystal. Packed full of energy and imagery, the first touch of his potentia to its contents sent him staggering sideways. He heard Reg say something, steady on, something like that, but her words were muffled by the cold and heat and breath-stealing power surging through him.
Suddenly his mind was filled with a darkness he was frightened to touch.
But I have to. I have to know Except he knew already. A single glance had told him. He was a genius, after all. That darkness was familiar, its thaumic fingerprints belonging to his kind and gentle friend. Sort of belonging. A version of his friend. Because what he could feel, what his potentia showed him, was a gentle power warped and twisted into something no longer itself. Something hungry and brutal and unfamiliar with loving care. Reeling with shock, he collapsed against a handy desk.
Bloody hell, Gerald. What have you done?
A wind was blowing in his face, through his hair. Shrieking. What the No. It was Reg. He opened his eyes.
“- going on, Monk Markham! You tell me right this instant or I’ll be using your eyeballs for marbles, just you see if I don’t!”
She was flapping hysterically in front of him, loosened feathers floating free to drift haphazard into piles of melted copper and goo.
Then someone’s hands seized his shoulders and started shaking him. Started shouting, sounding as upset as Reg.
“Monk! Monk, what did you see? What’s happened? Tell us! ”
Melissande.
He let her shake him. He couldn’t pull away, couldn’t argue or complain.
Gerald, you stonking idiot. What have you done?
Letting go of his shoulders, Melissande slapped him hard across the face. “ Mr. Markham! For the love of Saint Snodgrass pull yourself together! ”
“Steady on there, Your Highness! There’s no need for that!”
Uncle Ralph, coming to the rescue? That was one for the books. His father would need a stiff drink and a lie down when he heard.
“Sir Ralph is right, Melly,” said New Ottosland’s unlikely king. “You really mustn’t slap Mr. Markham, you know. I’m sure he’s doing his very best to help.”
Ignoring them both, Melissande slammed her fists against his chest, leaning into him until her nose and his were practically touching. Her lovely green eyes were terrified, and desperate.
“What did you see, Monk? What did you see? ”
He couldn’t keep it a secret. But instead of looking at Melissande he turned his head and looked at Reg, who’d subsided, exhausted, on a cluttered, report-covered desk.
“Go on,” the bird said, her voice ragged. “I can take it. What’s that fool boy gone and done now?”
She might be able to take it, but he couldn’t. His eyes were burning, hot tears blurring his vision. He could feel Sir Alec’s cold gaze on him, waiting for an excuse to start cleaning up.
“What do you think, Reg?” he said dully. “He’s done what he wanted to do in the first place. What we thought you’d talked him out of doing.”
“But-what? No,” said Melissande, uncertain, as Reg covered her face with one wing. “No-no, he couldn’t have. Not when he knew-not after the cave-no, Monk. You’re wrong. You’ve made a mistake. He wouldn’t.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Lord Attaby. “What is it you think Mr. Dunwoody has done?”
Sir Alec held out his hand. “May I, Mr. Markham?”
There was no hope of protecting Gerald now. Barely able to meet Sir Alec’s almost compassionate gaze, he handed over the recording of New Ottosland’s unprecedented thaumaturgic event. Watched Sir Alec close his fingers around the crystal, close his eyes and open himself to the images and impressions contained within it. Watched the shock shudder through him, and the pain, and the horror.
