Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“And you know this how?”
Ewart gulped again. “When, uh, when I first received orders to watch Irene Rush and her daughter, I was given the address by a man named Oakley. At the time, I, well, I thought he was an adept. The seniors at the temple treated him that way; how was I to…” He caught a glance from Nimble Shanks Annie, stumbled on.
“Anyway. Oakley came to see the archmage—Mr. Bainbridge—at the new house yesterday. I spotted him arriving, overheard them talking as I went past the drawing room. Talking about—well, you, for one thing, Mr. Silver, and from what I heard them saying, they—”
“I really think it’s best if Mr. Silver hears this direct from the horse’s mouth.
” Annie rose from the sofa and crossed to her former acolyte with a soft brushing of skirts and a speed that wouldn’t have looked amiss on a warrior-caste Huldu.
She raised one hand with fingers splayed. “I’m sure you won’t mind, Jerry.”
“Oh, again, mistress? Well, it’s just, I don’t—”
He fell abruptly silent as the witch’s fingers made some unfeasibly flexible motion in the air in front of his face and ended with a thumb printed firmly onto his forehead.
He fell back slack in the armchair, eyes glazed but still open, mouth slightly agape.
Nimble Shanks Annie muttered something under her breath, made a couple more passes with her hand.
The light from the lamps flickered, vibrated for a moment, and then dimmed to nothing.
A cool, gray gloom soaked into the lounge, in which the tiny alcohol flame from the burner seemed suddenly piercingly bright.
Annie tightened her fingers into a loose fist, made a tugging motion back toward her breast.
…and any further changes to our arrangement, said Bainbridge recognizably into the gloom. Duncan jerked a glance at Ewart, saw his mouth making shapes for the words. His throat lumped and contorted in eerie fashion, as if it contained an unfeasibly large parasitic worm.
Another voice, less urbane. That will be for Colonel Hardy to decide.
Ah, no, in fact, it won’t. This—all of this—will be for me to decide, Captain. And I’m not necessarily inclined to the colonel’s view that this is what has to happen.
For all that Ewart’s mouth moved, the voices barely seemed to issue from it. Instead, they fluttered and swooped about in the dimmed room like echoes, like spooked birds seeking an exit.
We gave you Ada Endershall! We told you where she was!
Only, I think, because you knew they’d engaged a competent woodsman. You were scared that with Silver involved, things were sliding out of your control.
We had Silver handled.
Really? Is that why you let him steal back the child and bring her almost all the way home?
We stopped him when it counted.
Yes, so I hear. However—
I don’t care what you’ve heard, Bainbridge. Silver is off the board. You don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s dead.
Quiet fell on the last word. Then stretched.
For a moment Duncan thought the hearing—séance, eidetic recall, whatever you wanted to call it—was over.
But when he looked at Ewart, the ex-acolyte was still slumped in the armchair, head tilted back, mouth open, like a man fallen asleep midjourney in a train carriage seat.
Duncan almost expected to hear him start snoring…
Yes, well. Even through the filter of the hearing, the delight in Bainbridge’s tone was evident. There again, I’m afraid you are quite wrong, Captain. Duncan Silver is very much alive. And, unless I’m much mistaken, about to cause you even more trouble than before.
Another silence, shorter this time.
What are you talking about? Oakley snapped.
I’m talking about the man you very sloppily failed to shoot dead a few nights ago.
Duncan Silver survived your attempt to kill him.
In fact, yesterday afternoon, he was sitting exactly where you are now, telling me all about it.
He’s understandably aggrieved. I’d advise Colonel Hardy to start locking his windows at night if I were you.
Raw silence.
Oh, and Silver will come after the child again, believe me. Where is she, by the way?
Somewhere safe.
Fine, don’t tell me. I can very likely scry the details myself. But! Voice suddenly raised, as if the captain had leapt to his feet or offered some other threat. I won’t need to.
What do you mean?
I mean that while it might please me to rub Sir Michael’s disdainful noble nose in his own ignominious failures, helping Silver rescue the mother and child and spirit them away somewhere does not in fact serve my interests any more than yours. I propose an alternative arrangement.
Which is what? Suspiciously.
Which is for Colonel Hardy’s ears, not yours.
Tell him he’s invited here Friday night for dinner, say about nine.
He can bring you, too, if he likes. In the meantime, I’m bringing someone he’ll want to meet, someone with what you military types would call vital strategic intelligence.
I’ll happily share it with the Forestry Commission, for a consideration.
Still trying for a seat at the table, are we, Bainbridge? Brusque contempt in Oakley’s tone.
A small, icy silence welled up in the wake of the words. Nothing but Ewart’s breathing to be heard. Then Bainbridge again, in chilly, measured tones.
Captain, I don’t expect someone of your inferior rank and limited outlook to understand this, but what I am trying to do here is build the table that we will all need to sit at, if we are to survive these times.
That includes your much-vaunted new and clueless Forestry Commission; it includes superannuated stuffed shirts like Sir Michael Endershall, sadly; and it will need to include men like me, because we are the only ones who have a hope in hell of understanding this new age and bending it to our will.
Sharper minds than yours, Captain, have already grasped this, in Whitehall, in Oxford and Cambridge, and in other places I have no intention of even mentioning to an underling such as yourself.
I have conversed with these men, and the necessary furniture is already being moved into place.
My seat at the table, as you put it, is already assured.
Now. You will convey this, all this, to Colonel Hardy, and I suggest you recommend to him that he bring a less insolent tone than yours to dinner this Friday night.
This time, the quiet that fell was electric. Even through the eavesdrop spell, you could hear it crackle between the two men.
Is that clear enough for you, Captain?
Oakley cleared his throat, awkward. And Silver?
You let me worry about Silver. He may yet prove an asset, if I can keep him onside. There is more to Duncan Silver than meets the eye, and I, for one, believe we…
Voice fading out, like a radio program turned rapidly down.
Ewart sat, flop mouthed, glassy eyed, and motionless in the chair, like some particularly gormless stuffed ape exhibit in a museum.
A thin line of drool shone down his chin like snail track.
Duncan looked at the witches. Nimble Shanks Annie shrugged.
“That’s all there is. Apparently, someone else came down the corridor and Jerry was forced to beat a hasty retreat. Lucky he wasn’t caught, to be honest.”
“What do you think, Duncan?” Sal, still stirring the cheese pot.
“I think I’m going to feed Bainbridge his own fucking entrails.”
“Yes, darling, understandable. But that’s not really what I meant. I mean—does this make any kind of sense to you?”
Duncan brooded.
“It makes sense that Hardy was watching the mother all along,” he said finally.
“I got back from meeting her Tuesday afternoon, and he’d already dropped his card off with Niamh at Skoldergate.
Irene Rush called me on the Monday. Most likely someone followed her to the call box, then rang the operator to check the number after she’d gone.
I get assessed as a threat, Hardy makes his pitch to get me down to London and out of the way.
What’s not clear to me is why they’d share their information with that magicking cunt Bainbridge. ” He paused. “No offense.”
The two witches looked at each other.
“Yes, I think if anyone could lay claim to the title magicking cunt, it would be us,” said Sal dryly. “Though I’ll admit Bainbridge does have some raw talent. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him, Duncan. One or two of the sisters have made that mistake in the past.”
She looked pointedly at her colleague.
“All right, all right.” Nimble Shanks Annie, grumbling crossly as she dunked a fresh piece of ham into the cheese. “So I let him steal Jerry when I wasn’t looking. It’s not like we took those phallus-obsessed fuckers seriously back then.”
Wolfbane Sal muttered something under her breath. Duncan cleared his throat into the silence it left.
“Well, he seems to have found his way back to the fold.” He nodded at Ewart, still slumped apparently entranced in the armchair. “Nice of him to have an attack of conscience like that.”
This time Sal cackled, very witchlike, then put fingers over her mouth and stopped. “Sorry. But you say the cutest things, Duncan.”
He looked at her, uncomprehending.
“He didn’t have an attack of conscience,” Annie said indistinctly through her mouthful of ham and cheese. “He had an attack of patent Wolfbane Sally Bethune loyalty invocation. Nice binding spell, too, Sal, very subtly done.”
Flash recall of Ewart and the witch at the top of the stairs. Sal and her dabbing, maternal fingers, her muttered hiss-click litany of half-sounded syllables under her breath.
Annie would never forgive me if I let a former apprentice of hers walk out of here without so much as a care spell. Look, I’ll just…There! All done!
Duncan stared at Ewart’s slumped form again. “You…you bound him for this?”