To Visit the Queen (39 page)

Rhiow went out after Arhu at a run, and found him gone. He had done a private transit, not bothering to take long enough to get to one of the gates: she could smell the spell of it in the air of the hallway, and she thought she knew where Arhu had gone, within about ten feet.

Rhiow turned once, quickly, where she stood, and drew the circle with her tail, tying the wizard's knot with one last flirt of it. Then she instructed the wizardry to lay in identical coordinates to the last transit from this spot, and to execute them.
And don't forget the air!
she added hurriedly.

There was a loud clap as she displaced a considerable cubic volume of air from the tunnel, taking it with her. The sound of the clap had barely faded from her ears before she was standing on the cold, white pumice-dust of the Moon, looking around.

He was no more than ten feet away.

Arhu looked at Rhiow and opened his mouth to speak the words of another spell, ready to run again.

"Don't do it,"
she said.

Arhu sagged and let the breath go out of him, standing there looking cold and scared and very alone. It was an expression Rhiow had not seen on him since he first came to her and the other members of the team: and she had forgotten how much it hurt to see it.

"Tell me what's happening," Rhiow said. "Arhu,
please.
"

"I can't."

"You can," Rhiow said, "or I'll pull your ears off and wear them as collar jinglies."

Arhu stared at her in complete misery. "Who needs ears?"

"Arhu," Rhiow said, "this isn't the time for self-indulgence. If you've seen something that threatens the team, or you— "

"The team?" he said, and laughed bitterly. "It's a little more personal this time."

"It's not— you didn't see anything like your own
death,
did you?"

"Oh, no, not mine. Someone else's."

"Well, for Iau's sake, tell me! Maybe we can do something to stop it."

"You don't understand," Arhu said. "It's already happened." He laughed again, that bitter sound. "Listen to me, I'm sounding like the Ravens already."

Rhiow shook her head in frustration. "What's in Iau's name are you talking about?"

Arhu flopped down on the powdery Moondust. "Rhiow," he said very softly. "Siffha'h is my sister."

"What?"

"I Saw her," he said. "I Saw her in the bag... with me and the others, when the
ehhif
threw us in to drown. And she Saw it too, through me, just now. She Saw it all.... But dying didn't stop her, then. She came straight back. She must have been reincarnated within days of when she died. Maybe hours. And it took me this long to realize it. She was my twin, Rhiow— she had my same spots! And she was the one I climbed on top of, last, to keep breathing...."

He was utterly devastated. For her own part, Rhiow could only stand there and look at him in complete astonishment. There always had been that resemblance between Siffha'h and Arhu; it really had been fairly striking. And the way Arhu had been drawn to Siffha'h. And then, Rhiow thought, with the suddenness of a blow, there was the simple matter of her name.
Why didn't I ever think to take it apart,
Rhiow thought.
But then, who thinks to take "Rhiow" apart for "dark-as-night"?
For in Ailurin, Siffha'h simply meant "Sif-again," or, by a pun in Ailurin, "one more time," the end of a feline phrase similar to the
ehhif
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

"What do I do now?" Arhu asked hopelessly. "How can I go back? And... I thought it was an accident. Did I maybe kill her on purpose? My own twin? And more importantly, does she
think
I killed her on purpose?" He laughed again bitterly. "I couldn't figure out why she didn't like me. Now it makes perfect sense. How else would you treat the brother who climbed on top of your body, possibly even pushed you farther down into the water, to keep on breathing?"

His despair and grief were awful to hear: the sound of them made it difficult for her to think how best to help him. Rhiow was also acutely aware that, to some extent, Arhu's was the most unusual talent of the team, and the one that the Lone Power was most likely to attempt to undermine directly. In some ways, she and Urruah were simply support for Arhu, the youngest of them, and therefore the most powerful.

But Siffha'h was even younger, and her power might potentially be greater still. Was the Lone One working to impair her effectiveness as well?
And why did she reincarnate so quickly? Was it specifically for this job, to do something that had to be done for wizardry's sake... or was it for revenge?

She had no answers, and she didn't think she was going to get them by sitting here. Certainly Arhu wasn't. "Well," Rhiow said, "what will you do about all this? Are you going to stay here on the Moon? You won't be making your team responsibilities any easier to fulfill."

"You're not taking this very seriously," Arhu snarled.

"On the contrary," Rhiow said, "I'm taking it more seriously than you are. There's a small matter of our home reality being chucked out of the scheme of things like litter-box cleanings if we don't do something to stop it. You are a key to the solution of this problem, just as Artie is, in his way; just as Siffha'h is in hers. We need to get back down there and handle it." She glanced up at the gibbous Earth hanging above the pristine white surface. "Otherwise,
that
is going to wind up looking like that other Moon."

He looked at Rhiow pitifully. "I can't face her."

"You already have faced her," Rhiow said. "It just didn't last long enough. Come back and have another try."

Arhu looked up at the glowing blue Earth. He breathed in, breathed out.

"Besides," Rhiow said, "now we know how the assassination takes place. We've got to lay our plans for how to stop it. We'll need you for that as well. And then we've got to execute those plans... and without you, that's impossible."

Arhu sighed and looked at Rhiow again. "You can be a real pain in the tail sometimes," he said. He was shivering all over, as if someone had thrown him in water.

Rhiow put her whiskers forward and walked over to the boundaries of his spell, let his spell and hers get familiar, and then walked through into his bubble of air. He looked at her fearfully.

She went gently up to him and began to wash his ear. "Come on," she said between licks. "You've had it out with the Lone One before. You thought It had done the worst to you that It could manage: It tried to kill your spirit, and It failed. Now It's having another try... and It's trying to steal your sister from you as well, if It can. It would love nothing better than to alienate you from one another at this time when, if you can work together, you can defeat It one more time... and It's depending on your pain doing Its work for It." She stopped washing for a moment and bent down and around to look Arhu in the eye. "Are you listening to me?"

He looked back at her, still full of grief, and a pang struck her again, for his pain looked much like hers must have looked when Hhuha died.

"It was so awful," he whispered.

"Of course it was awful," Rhiow whispered back. "Its wretched gift, death, that It tricked our People into accepting: how should it
not
be an awful thing? That was never what the Powers had in mind for us when they built the worlds. Now we have to deal with it as a matter of course. But at least in your case you've got a second chance. How many of us get a chance to meet a friend again in another life, let alone a relative? It happens, but not that often. Don't let It trick you into throwing that away as well!"

Arhu was silent for a little, staring at the ground. Rhiow sat beside him, waiting.

"All right," he said at last. He lifted a face to Rhiow that was full of fear. "But she said she was going to kill me."

"I think that would take some doing," Rhiow said. "But that small matter aside, no one kills one of my team without coming through me first. Power source she may be, but she's not the only one with a claw to her name. Let's go back."

Ten minutes later they were back on the derelict platform under Tower Hill station. Huff stood looking forlorn as they came: Arhu looking a little defiant, Rhiow trying to keep her composure in the face of the storm of fury she expected from Siffha'h.

But Siffha'h was not there.

"She ran off," Huff said, "just after Arhu did." Huff looked profoundly disturbed, and Rhiow for one knew how he felt, and was sorry for him. It was unnerving to see so steady and stolid a personality suddenly at loose ends, embarrassed by the behavior of one of his team, upset by what he had glimpsed through Arhu's vision: and there was something else going on with him as well, Rhiow thought, though she couldn't easily tell what it was.

"She'll be back," Rhiow said, profoundly hoping that this would prove true. "Meanwhile we must start laying our plans...."

Everyone gathered together and sprawled out comfortably on the platform, including Artie, who was acquiring a grimy look but becoming more cheerful all the time at all the exposure to "magic." When he understood what the two teams were discussing, he immediately cried, "I want to come with you!"

The People glanced at one another, concerned. "I don't know," Huff said. "If something happened to you, Artie, and we weren't able to return you to the time where you belong after all this— "

"Huff, if the timeslide's to be powered successfully," Rhiow said, "as it was the last time, he may
have
to come with us on the intervention run. We may very well have no choice in the matter."

"
If
it can be powered successfully," Fhrio muttered, "with Siffha'h missing...."

"We'll deal with that issue a little later," Huff said. "To take care of any uncertainty about the dates, we must have someone guarding the Queen from at least a couple of nights before the date of the attack. I'm concerned that the Lone One might somehow get wind of what we're trying to do, and attempt to forestall us by striking earlier. But meanwhile, for planning purposes, let's assume that the slide goes well, and those of us not on guard duty find ourselves in the grounds of Windsor Castle on the evening of the ninth of July."

"What time was the attack?" Auhlae said. "I couldn't tell."

"I saw the Moon," said Rhiow. For her, that was the one image that haunted her most persistently about that whole year: every time she looked at the sky, she searched for the Moon to see what it looked like. "It was waning, and just rising then, which would have made the time about midnight, as
ehhif
reckon it, or at most half an hour past that. The Whispering can help us pin down the exact timing."

"Now, as for the murderer..."

"The Mouse," Fhrio said, and his jaw chattered. "Appropriate name, considering what's going to happen to him."

"It's
not
going to happen to him," Huff said forcefully. "Murdering a murderer will do nothing but play straight into the Lone Power's paws. The action would rebound in Iau only knows what kind of horrible way. Whatever else happens to him, his life has to be spared."

"At the same time," Rhiow said, "when he disappears— I assume that's something like what will happen to him, one way or another— that disappearance should be such that it raises as few questions as possible. An elegant intervention is one that leaves sa'Rráhh scratching her fleas and wondering what in the worlds happened."

"I'd be less concerned about elegance and more concerned about simply making sure the assassination doesn't happen," Fhrio growled.

"Yes," Rhiow said, "if necessary. No argument there. But the less wizardry is obvious about whatever goes on, the better."

"What started it all," Auhlae said, "was the Mouse getting that letter."

Arhu shook his head. "No. There was another one."

Rhiow looked at him in surprise. "What? Another letter?"

"You didn't see it?"

She shook her head. Arhu tucked himself down into thinking position and said, "There's another letter, sent the day before. I See the desk it's being written on, all shiny wood and leather: and the design on top of the paper. It's a kind of gateway, and on top of it there's a picture of what the
ehhif
-queen wears on her head."