Witches Incorporated (26 page)

Methven pulled his arm free, and took a prudent step sideways. “Ah—well—I needed someone to—”

“Bugger up the test? Well, good job, Robert. You picked the perfect man!”

“Sorry, Haythwaite,” muttered Methven, and took another step sideways.

“That’s
Mister
Haythwaite to you, Methven,” snarled Errol, glaring up at the wildly spinning model airship. “Now shut your trap while I save the day.”

Gerald and Methven watched, hardly daring to blink, as Errol pointed his staff towards the madly gyrating airship.

“Good lord, what’s he doing?” muttered Methven.

“Trying to siphon off the excess tetrathaumicles created as a by-product of the engine’s overheating,” said Gerald, without thinking. And when Methven goggled at him added, weakly, “Um. Isn’t he?”

“Yes… yes, of course,” said Methven. He was sweating, great damp patches staining the armpits of his white lab coat, beads of moisture rolling down his blanched face. He had a receding chin, and it was trembling. “That’s exactly what he’s trying to do. Yes.”

And in fact not only trying, but succeeding. Amazing. There was so much randomly generated thaumic energy inside the airship now it was glowing like a brazier, angry and bright red. The gold filigree on Errol’s staff was glowing too, hotter and hotter. It had to be almost too hot to hold, it had to be on the point of scorching him, surely, and he wasn’t wearing gloves, but Errol didn’t let go. Instead he was using an incredibly complicated and hard-to-balance etheretic-reversal incant to suck the excess thaumic energy out of the airship and into the staff where it could be stored temporarily.

Gerald shook his head. Errol was loathsome, an arrogant, insufferable, nasty piece of work… but there was no denying it. He was also a bloody brilliant wizard.

The experimental airship’s spinning slowed. Slowed further. Its furious colour began to fade. Now sweat was pouring down Errol’s face, which was twisting with the pain of his efforts and his blistering hand.

“I say, Errol!” shouted Methven, entirely forgetting his manners. “You ought to stop now, that staff is going to implode!”

“It’s fine,” Errol grunted, his chiselled jaw clenched. “I know what I’m doing. And that’s
Mister Haythwaite
to you, pillock!”

Gerald held his breath again. Methven was right, not even the kind of First Grade staff the likes of Errol could afford was strong enough to absorb much more raw thaumic energy. Remembering what had happened at Stuttley’s, remembering the catastrophic devastation caused by those overcharged First Grade staffs, he stepped forward and tentatively touched Errol on the sleeve.

“Errol—Mister Haythwaite—it can’t take any more.”

Errol wrenched his head round to glare at him with bloodshot eyes. “Did I ask for your opinion, you little maggot?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. The airship’s stabilised, sir. Now get that staff out of here before it overloads!”

Cursing, Errol looked up at the vanquished Ambrose Mark VI prototype then stared at his staff. Its filigree was starting to melt, an ominous blue haze rising above the tracery.

“Damn you, Dunwoody,” said Errol, and ran.

Methven bolted after him, and Gerald, first hastily deactivating the prototype altogether and leaving it to plunge willy-nilly to the laboratory floor, hustled in their wake.

Wycliffe’s lofty-ceilinged Research and Development laboratory was laid out like a horse-barn, two long rows of individual labs separated by a wide aisle, which was crammed full of desks and chairs and benches and sinks. At one end of the building was Mister Ambrose Wycliffe’s office, and at its opposite end was the Emergency Pit, where thaumaturgically compromised articles were thrown for later, carefully supervised disposal.

Shouting at the top of his lungs Errol ran full pelt for the Pit, blue-hazed staff raised above his head.

“Get out of my way—shift your bloody arse, you fool—move—move—move—
move
! Don’t just
stand
there, get the Pit open,
now
!”

Startled wizards scattered before him. Someone made a dive for the Pit’s double doors and hauled them open. Errol turned sideways as he ran… adopted the lanky, long-legged lope of a javelin thrower… threw back his head on a roar of pain… and speared his staff down into the Pit.

“Shut the bloody doors, you fool!” he bellowed at the helpful wizard—Monaghan, one of Wycliffe’s Second Graders.

Monaghan obeyed. As the doors slammed shut Errol triggered their protective shielding hex then staggered to a halt.

“Good job, I say, good job,” Methven was panting, shoving his way through the stunned crowd of wizards. “Well done, Err—Mister Haythwaite! Are you all right, old ch—sir?”

Gerald, his heart stuttering, prudently hung back. Errol had dropped to his knees, the fingers of his left hand gripping his right wrist very tightly, his pale, sweaty face a grimacing mask of fury. He held up his right hand, and the other wizards gasped to see the livid, blood-filled blisters on its palm and fingers.

“Do I look all right to you, Methven?” he snarled. “Where the
hell
is Dunnywood, I’m going to—”

And then the floor heaved under their feet and the Pit’s hexed doors buckled and the air beneath the high roof of the R&D division shivered, as Errol’s caged First Grade staff surrendered to metaphysical inevitability and exploded.

“
Where is he
?” shouted Errol, lurching to his feet. “Show your bloody face, Dunwoody, if you dare!”

Reluctantly abandoning the shelter of his muttering, whispering colleagues, Gerald shuffled into view.
Oh dear. Oh no. I don’t think this is what Sir Alec meant by keeping a low profile.

“I’m here, Mister Haythwaite.”

“And why is that, Dunwoody?” Errol ground out, his eyes slitted. “
Why
are you here? Why are you
anywhere
? First you blow up Stuttley’s.
Then
your new employer breaks his neck hunting. And
now
here you are trying to wreck Wycliffe’s. You’re a
menace
! You’re a one-man walking disaster!
Everything
you touch turns to
shit
!”

“Ah—actually, Mister Haythwaite, that’s not quite—” Methven started to say.

“Did I ask
you
, Robert, you—you
turtle
?” said Errol, turning on him. “Did I invite
you
to express your ignorant opinion? Did I—”

“What in the name of all things thaumaturgical is going
on
here?” demanded an unimpressed baritone voice from the back of the crowd. “Would someone kindly
explain
this fracas?”

Mister Ambrose Wycliffe, lured out of his den by all the excitement.

Gerald and his colleagues turned towards the man Sir Alec had characterised as
decent enough, but not a patch on his father
—and nearly fell over. Because hovering behind Mister Ambrose Wycliffe, the very image of sober prosperity in his black three-piece worsted morning suit, was—was—

Melissande
?

What? What? What was
she
doing here?

Melissande seemed just as shocked to see him as he was to see her. Mouth dropped, she slid her prim glasses down her nose and stared at him over their rims, dumbfounded. Clutched to her black-bloused chest—lord, that was an ugly outfit!—was a pile of buff-coloured folders.

Then her expression changed to a warning, which gave him just enough time to duck aside as Errol Haythwaite thrust his way past to confront Mister Ambrose Wycliffe.

“What’s going on, sir, is that you’ve hired the most useless, incompetent and downright dangerous Third Grade idiot in the country… if not the entire world. If you’ll accept my recommendation, sir, you’ll get rid of him. Right now.”

Ambrose Wycliffe frowned, making his untrimmed bushy gingery grey eyebrows bristle. He looked a lot like a middle-aged basset-hound: sagging jowls, a wrinkled brow, and deeply dark brown, mournful eyes. “What? Who? Who are you talking about, Haythwaite?”

Gerald exchanged looks with Melissande, sighed, and raised his hand. “He’s talking about me, sir,” he said, as his colleagues prudently retreated from the direct line of fire. “Gerald Dunwoody.”

Ambrose Wycliffe squinted. “Never heard of you. Never laid eyes on you before, have I? How long have you been here?”

“Three weeks, sir. I was sent by Truscott’s, sir.”

“The locum agency?” Ambrose Wycliffe chewed at his lip. “They sent you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ambrose looked at Errol. “You must be mistaken, Mister Haythwaite. He can’t be
that
bad. Not if Truscott’s sent him.”

Errol seemed nonplussed. “You use a locum agency, Mister Wycliffe?”

“For the unimportant staff, yes,” said Ambrose Wycliffe. “I only hand-pick the important people, like you. Don’t have time to waste on functionaries. Leave that to Truscott’s.”

“Oh,” said Errol. “Well, sir, did Truscott’s happen to mention that
this
functionary is the man who blew up Stuttley’s last year?”

Ambrose Wycliffe blinked, then took a step forward, squinting again. His extravagant ginger muttonchop whiskers quivered. “
What
? That was
you
, Mister Dunwoody?”

Gerald managed not to look at Errol. Managed to keep his lowly Third Grade obsequiousness intact. Just.
Damn, Sir Alec. I told you this would happen
.

“The investigation did exonerate me, Mister Wycliffe,” he murmured humbly. “Mister Harold Stuttley was found culpable on a number of regulatory violations. The official government conclusion was that the unfortunate destruction of the factory wasn’t my fault.”

“I see,” said Ambrose Wycliffe. He laced his pudgy fingers over his substantial belly and frowned more deeply, rocking slightly on his heels. “Still. That doesn’t explain what’s going on now. And what
is
going on now? I’m still waiting for someone to tell me. What the
devil
was that explosion?”

“
That
,” said Errol, teeth glittering in a sabre smile, “was Mister Dunwoody destroying yet another of my First Grade staffs. He seems to think I have an unlimited supply. And I can I assure him that I don’t. Not of staffs… and not of patience, or tolerance for unmitigated incompetence. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mister Wycliffe, but he’s managed to wreck the latest Ambrose Mark VI prototype as well.”

A cry of dismay went up from their audience of goggling wizards. The Mark VI was their latest, greatest project. A great many hopes and dreams—not to mention jobs—were pinned to its experimental fuselage and propulsion design.

Ambrose Wycliffe’s florid face paled, dramatically. “Is that true, Mister Dunwoody? Have you wrecked the Mark VI prototype?”

“No, he hasn’t, Mister Wycliffe,” said Robert Methven. “I’m sorry, Mister Haythwaite,” he added, coming forward. “I don’t mean to disrespect you or contradict you or interfere in any way. It’s just that Mister Dunwoody wasn’t working on the Mark VI. I was, as per Mister Haythwaite’s request. I just asked Mister Dunwoody to step in and read off the gauges on the etheretic quantifier while I fired the new engine up for a burst. That’s all. I swear, he didn’t lay so much as a finger on the airship prototype.”

“Maybe not,” muttered Errol. “But he looked at it. And that’s more than enough where Dunnywood’s concerned.”

“Now, now, Mister Haythwaite,” said Ambrose Wycliffe, indulgently. “I can see that what we have here is an unfortunate clash of personalities. But since it’s been proven by an official government investigation that Mister Dunwoody here
didn’t
blow up Stuttley’s, and our Mister Methven has manfully owned up to his part in this unfortunate business and exculpated Mister Dunwoody, I don’t think it’s fair to sack the chap. Not when he comes with a Truscott guarantee and I won’t get a refund on my deposit.”

“It’s your decision, sir, of course,” said Errol, his voice dangerously clipped. He turned on Methven. “So you’re saying I’m responsible? The Mark VI is my ship. I designed it. I invented the new thaumic conversion matrix. So if there
is
a problem with the engine the fault is mine? Is that what you’re saying?”

Gerald cleared his throat. “No, Mister Haythwaite, I think what Mister Meth—”

Errol seared him with
such
a look he actually stepped back. “
Shut up
, Dunwoody,” Errol hissed. “Didn’t you get the memo? Third Grade wizards should be seen and not heard.”

A ripple of unease ran through the gaggle of watching wizards, and as though Errol’s vicious retort was some kind of signal—or warning—they began to drift away to their desks and benches and labs.

Ambrose Wycliffe unlaced his fingers from his belly and stepped to Errol’s side. Sliding an arm around his shoulders he harumphed, understandingly. “Mister Haythwaite, your distress does you credit. We all know how dedicated you are to the success of the Ambrose Mark VI. But you must not allow yourself to become overturned. We are still in the experimental stages, are we not? These little setbacks are bound to happen.”

“That’s very generous of you, sir,” said Errol, stiffly. “I appreciate your understanding.”

Ambrose Wycliffe shook his head. “Not at all, not at all. Why, I could tell you stories of prototype disasters in my late father’s day that make this look like a mere peccadillo. Don’t forget, Mister Haythwaite, that this grand laboratory was my childhood playpen. I grew up with airships and I can assure you, when it comes to design teething troubles there is nothing new under the sun.”