Deep Secret (21 page)

“Reminds me of your aunt’s jumper,” says the Prat. “She is your aunt, isn’t she? The one with the custard on her shoulder.”

“I thought it was an egg,” I said. “Yes, that’s our Janine.” That reminded me of breakfast, and I tried to get out of him why he had looked that way at the crazy Croatian who thought Uncle Ted wrote about King Arthur. But I had forgotten what a cool customer he is.

He said, “Poor fellow. I suddenly saw what war can do to people.”

“I
knew
that wasn’t the truth, but that was all he’d say. Strange. I can’t help connecting the way he looked at that Croatian with what Nick says he saw last night.

Anyway, we went on to the Art Show after that. By this time I was thinking that, if anyone had told me yesterday that I’d be standing in front of pictures chatting amiably with the Prat, I would have blacked their eye and called them a liar. It must be something in the air of this con, I think. And there were some
very
naughty paintings by Zinka Fearon we were just discussing, when Dutch Case comes zooming through the Art Room. The Prat takes after him at the double, grabs him by the arm and says, “Found you at last!” he says. “Care to come and have lunch with us?”

With
us
? I thought. No way, not with Case – quite apart from the fact that the Prat has money and will go and expect me to buy lunch in that expensive dining room. And I went off in the opposite direction, fast.

I ran into Nick near the lifts. Nick was looking like the cat that had the cream. “They loved Bristolia!” he proclaimed. “And my new Wantchester game! I’d got some twists on both of them that no one had come across before. They’re saying I ought to get them made into proper computer games. Only I don’t know who to ask about it.”

“I do. Start talking to the Prat,” I said. Nick stared at me. “Honestly,” I said. “He’s just been telling me he designs the software. He seems to know most of the distributors and manufacturers.”

“Wow!” says Master Nick. “Let me at him!”

[2]

From the account of Rupert

Venables

I find that the notes I made at the time scarcely mention the hour or so I spent with Maree. I seem just to have jotted down
Bought an unconscionable number of books
, followed by
Mallory uncomfortably shrewd
, by which I certainly didn’t mean her uncle. I have seldom heard such drivel as he talked on that panel. What I meant was the awkward moment Maree gave me in front of Zinka’s paintings. Zinka does exquisite, delicate portrayals of humans copulating with various kinds of ribby-winged beings. Mostly they are the people you find in increasing numbers as you go Ayewards from the Empire. Though I have never myself met the horned men she had painted, I’ve met quite a few of the other winged ones in the pictures – but clearly not as intimately as Zinka has.

Maree said, staring, the sob growing in her voice, “You’d really think these were painted from life!”

I tried not to jump. “Zinka has quite an imagination,” I said. At this, Maree pushed her spectacles up her nose and
looked
at me. She seems to have an instinct for when I’m covering something up. Shortly after, she disappeared while I was flagging down Kornelius Punt, and I hardly knew whether I was relieved or aggrieved. Possibly she didn’t like Punt. I don’t exactly blame her.

I didn’t dislike him, or like him either. This is not a consideration for a new Magid anyway. What I was looking for were certain qualities that are necessary. Kees, as he told me he liked to be called, certainly had some of them. He had the brains. The travelling scholarship he had won was for outstanding achievement at university, and he told me he had been selected from thousands, all over Holland. But it was a while before I could get him to talk about this. He was incredibly hyped – I think it was contact-high from the convention – and would keep making inane jokes.

“You must give me a Dutch treat,” was the first thing he said. “I have no money.”

“That means we both pay half,” I said.

“And so we will!” he said, his voice going up into a delighted shriek. “You will contribute the money and I will give the pleasure of my company.”

“Fine by me,” I said. So he proceeded to order the most expensive things on the menu, while I tried to get him to talk sense.

When the food came, he said, gobbling up the scampi, “I have decided it is a fine joke to be in love with Maree Mallory. They say she has a broken heart, so there is no danger to me.”

I felt my face heating with anger. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” I said.

“Oh I know. She will bite me. Or scratch,” he said gleefully. “But then I am a masochist, so that is all right.” I think I would have cut in angrily here, only it dawned on me that Kees was trying to get a reaction out of me, having seen me going about with Maree. I was sure of it when he added, cocking his eye to see how I responded, “And she is a chip off the old block. Probably she is one of her uncle’s demons in disguise.”

I ignored this, but I was very mortified. Probably the reason I made such few and curt notes on the morning was that I was increasingly exasperated to find that I infinitely preferred Maree, whom I had discounted, to any of the candidates left. If only she did not speak to me with that
sob
in her voice…

Meanwhile I got irritated with Kees Punt. He seemed to be a confirmed jester. It would, in a way, I thought, be quite good cover for a Magid, never to be taken seriously, except that Punt was drawing attention to himself all the time – his voice kept rising to a shriek as he made yet another outrageous pun – and it is not a good idea for a Magid to do that. If people notice you for one thing, they tend to notice the rest. But Kees was young. I had hopes he could grow out of it. There must be a serious man in there somewhere, I thought, while he shouted that he was a great joker and then told me in a shriek that the words on his T-shirt were Elvish.

And I still feel I may not have done justice to Kees, because while he was blithely laying into his Woodcock Supreme and I had just got him to talk about his travels, we were both distracted by turmoils among the other eaters. From the table behind me, Ted Mallory said loudly, “Well, why
should
I have denied it, for fuck’s sake? He’d made a total mess of it. I simply took it and improved it and I’m not ashamed to admit it! Books are public property – and he’d no business to be so damn rude!”

Kees’s pale face lit up and he raised a hand to make sure I was attending to this. “I am a great gossip,” he said gleefully, “and a nosy parker. Listen. There is some scandal here.”

From the table behind him, one of my American friends was saying, “Why, if that guy thinks he’s been robbed, how is he going to handle shared world writing? There, you make a gag, someone else takes it up, and next you know it’s being bounced around every single story. That’s all Mallory did. Thurless is an asshole.”

From across the dining room, I could now hear Thurless himself, practically screaming, “It’s shameless plagiarism! I’ve a good mind to sue Mallory for this!”

I looked at Kees, his pale excited face and raised hand. He had the ability to be a Magid all right. I could feel him raising the sound level of all the voices around, so that we could hear even the distant Thurless without missing a word. “It is a scandal!” he said delightedly.

Evidently Maree and I had left the panel just before the fun started. Thurless had suddenly rounded on Mallory and accused him of having stolen all the funniest bits of
Shadowfall
from a novel Thurless had published the year before that. Mallory had blandly confessed it was so. “If I find the cog I need lying around in somebody’s botched machine,” he was saying behind me, “I feel quite justified in taking it and using it properly.” Well. That certainly fitted his philosophy. But it was clear there had been a flaming row, and not everyone had enjoyed it.

Under Punt’s manipulations, I could hear the MC, Tina Gianetti, saying tearfully to Maxim Hough, “I couldn’t
stop
them! I thought they were going to
fight
across me! And I don’t like to hear language like that in public, Maxim.”

“What language?” Kees wondered delightedly. “Double Dutch consisting of four-letter words? Let someone tell us, please!”

Now he was actually pressuring Gianetti and the Americans to repeat what had been said. I said to him, rather sharply, “Kees, do you always do this to people?”

“Only when I need to know,” he said happily. “For gossip and exams and so on.”

“It’s a misuse of power,” I told him.

“Yes, you are po-faced,” he said. “I have noticed. But where is the harm?”

“It amounts to cheating if you do it in exams,” I pointed out.

“
Everyone
cheats,” he said, “if they can. I would not do it for something serious like a parliamentary election or anything like that. And this is juicy gossip.”

It left me with considerable doubts about the man’s ethics. I
think
he truly intended no harm to anyone, but that was not to say he would still be harmless in ten years’ time. I was doubtful about him, enough to be quite glad when he looked at his watch and said he had to go and gopher for the publishers.

“You need not pay for a dessert,” he said. “I am sweet enough.” And left.

I left as soon as I could flag a waiter and get my bill signed. I hefted my four bags of books and made my way across the room. Thurless was at a table by the exit. I had been hoping to snag him next, but he was clearly still in a fury, to judge by the way he was stabbing the roast potatoes on his plate. I could almost see him thinking of them as Ted Mallory’s kidneys and heart. His beard wagged with rage. Even so, I would have stopped and had a word with him, had not the other man at the table looked up at me as I approached. It was the most unloving look I have ever received. It was delivered at me from pale eyes that were yellow where they should be white and fat lips that parted in a snarl shape amidst a brown and grey beard.

The fellow was a total stranger. His badge said G
RAM
W
HITE
, which rang a faint bell. Mrs Janine Mallory had mentioned that name at breakfast, that was all I knew. But it was clear he had pretty strong magic, about equal to Thurless. I could feel it in both as soon as I was near. And he hated me. And was warning me off. I simply walked on as if I had not noticed. I saw myself in one of the hotel’s ubiquitous mirrors stride on and push at the exit door with a couple of my bags of books without batting an eyelid or changing my expression, for which I silently commended myself. It was not until I was past the door and puzzling about the way the fellow had looked at me that I recalled that there had been a grey hooded cloak thrown across the back of this Gram White’s chair.
Then
I placed him. He was the leader of those monk-like figures that everyone drew back from in the foyer. And, having been near enough to sense the character of his magic, I thought I knew why he had glared at me. He had been one of the ones using the node. He must have realised that I was the one who had stilled it.

I went straight to the Dealers Room. “Gram White?” I asked Zinka.

She was sitting among her mirrors, boxes and winged models eating a large hot dog. “Bad news,” she answered, one cheek bulging. “Local resident. Runs an arms factory in Wantchester. Always comes to this con and always teaches Esoterica in Universe Three. Don’t touch him with a barge-pole, or even something longer than that.”

“Thanks,” I said, and left her to her lunch.

I went to my car then. I came out through the kitchen entrance into a surprisingly biting-cold bright day, in which snow was drifting like pollen, and stowed my carrier bags in the boot before climbing into the car.

Scarlatti went from loud tinkle to faint tinkle. “About time!” Stan said. “Your phone keeps going off, but I can’t seem to manage the tapes. I just had to let it ring.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was busy. Stan, where exactly did you get that list of possible Magids from?”

“Senior Magid,” he said. “Handed down to her from Above about the time I knew I was dying. Why?”

“Upper Room, or higher up?” I asked.

“Well, it
came
to her through Upper Room, like most things,” he said. “But the details were so vague, I got the feel it could have come from much higher up. Cost me a lot of work, to get you a list with names and addresses out of it, I can tell you.”

“I thought so,” I said. “We are being Intended, Stan. And I don’t like it. I can’t see what they’re
playing
at!
None
of these candidates is right. Punt is the best, and he’d do anything for a laugh. I think the Croatian is deranged. Thurless has been throwing scenes like a prima donna ever since he appeared, and I suspect he’s into the bad magic too. Fisk is
awful
, and you know my opinion of Mallory. I think we’ll have to wipe that list and start again.”

“Steady on. I must have been given it for a
reason
!” Stan protested. “Have you talked to all of them now?”

“Not to Fisk or Thurless,” I admitted, “and not properly to Gabrelisovic.”

“Then one of them’s got to have hidden depths,” Stan said. “Don’t judge until you’ve done a proper—”

Here my phone clamoured. It was Dakros. The sound was unusually distant and crackly, but Dakros’s voice came out of it joyously. “Got you at last, Magid. Sorry about the interference. I’m in a landcruiser on my way to the Thalangia World Gate. We’ve found Knarros. High Lady Alexandra found him.”

“She did?” And not just a pretty face, I remembered. “How did she do that?”

“You remember I sent her to Thalangia?” Dakros’s crackly voice asked. “To the farm my uncle manages for me? Well, she got talking to my uncle and his people there, and my uncle happened to mention there was a religious colony up on a hill about ten miles away, and somebody else remarked they were thorn-worshippers like the Emperor was. So Alexandra made some quiet enquiries. And it appears there are children, or at least young people, up there, but everyone told her that the head of the colony won’t let anyone near the place unless they come on business, and won’t let them talk to the children if they do go with deliveries and so forth. So she asked some more. And today someone told her that the head of this colony is a strict brute of a centaur called Knarros. She called me up at once.”