“At least he’s willing,” Urruah said. “More than he was before.”
“Well, we owe a lot of that to you … your good example.”
Urruah put his whiskers forward, pleased, as they came to the next corner and went across the side street at a trot. “Feels a little odd sometimes,” he said.
“What,” Rhiow said, putting hers forward too, “that the original breaker of every available rule should now be the big, stern, tough—”
“I didn’t break that many rules.”
“Oh? What about that dog, last month?”
“Come on, that was just a little fun.”
“Not for the dog. And the sausage guy on Thirty-Third—”
“That was an intervention. Those sausages were terrible.”
“As you found after tricking him into dropping one. And last year, the lady with the—”
“All right, all right!’ Urruah was laughing as they came to Fifty-Fifth. “So I like the occasional practical joke. Rhi, I don’t break any of the real rules. I do my job.”
She sighed, and then bumped her head against his as they stood by the corner of the building at Forty-Fifth and Lex, waiting for the light to change. “You do,” she said. “You are a wizard’s wizard, for all your jokes. Now get out of here and do whatever you have to do with your dumpster.”
“I thought you weren’t going to mention that,” Urruah said, and grinned. “Luck, Rhi—”
He galloped off across the street and down Forty-Fifth as the light changed, leaving her looking after him in mild bemusement.
He heard me thinking.
Well, wizards did occasionally overhear one another’s private thought when they had worked closely together for long enough. She and Saash had sometimes “underheard” each other this way: usually without warning, but not always at times of stress. It had been happening a little more frequently since Arhu came. Something to do with the change in the make-up of the team? … she thought. There was no way to tell.
And no time to spend worrying about it now. But even as Rhiow set off for her own lair, trotting on up Lex toward the upper East Side, she had to smile ironically at that. It was precisely because she was so good at worrying that she was the leader of this particular team. Losing the habit could mean losing the team … or worse.
For the time being, she would stick to worrying.
The way home was straightforward, this time of day: up Lex to Seventieth, then eastward to the block between First and Second. The street was fairly quiet for a change. Mostly it was old converted brownstones, though the corner apartment buildings were newer ones, and a few small cafes and stores were scattered along the block. She paused at the corner of Seventieth and Second to greet the big stocky duffel-coated doorman there, who always stooped to pet her. He was opening the door for one of the tenants: now he turned, bent down to her. “Hey there, Midnight, how ya doing?”
“No problems today, Ffran’kh,” Rhiow said, rearing up to rub against him: he might not hear or understand her spoken language any more than any other ehhif, but body language he understood just fine. Ffran’kh was a nice man, not above slipping Rhiow the occasional piece of baloney from a sandwich, and also not above slipping some of the harder-up homeless people in the area a five- or ten-dollar bill on the sly. Carers were hard enough to come by in this world, wizardly or not, and Rhiow could hardly fail to appreciate one who was also in the neighborhood.
Having said hello in passing, she went on her way down the block, not bothering to sidle even this close to home. Iaehh rarely came down the block this way anyhow, preferring for some reason to approach from the First Avenue side, possibly because of the deli down on that corner. She strolled down the sidewalk, glancing around her idly at the brownstones, the garbage, the trees and the weeds growing up around them; more or less effortlessly she avoided the ehhif who came walking past her with shopping bags or briefcases or baby strollers. Halfway down was a browner brownstone than usual, with the usual stairway up to the front door and a side stairway to the basement apartment. On one of the squared-off tops of the stone balusters flanking the stairway sat a rather grungy looking white-furred shape, washing. He was always washing, Rhiow thought, not that it did him any good. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“Hunt’s luck, Yafh!”
He looked down at her and blinked for a moment. Green eyes in a face as round as a saucer full of cream, and almost as big: big shoulders, huge paws, and an overall scarred and beat-up look, as if he had had an abortive argument with a meat grinder: that was Yafh. However, you got the impression that the meat grinder had lost the argument. “Luck, Rhi,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve had mine for today. Care for a rat?”
“That’s very kind of you,” she said, “but I’m on my way to dinner, and if I spoil my appetite, my ehhif will notice. Bite its head off on my behalf, if you would …”
“My pleasure.” Yafh bent down and suited the action to the word.
She trotted up the steps and sat down beside Yafh for a moment, looking down the street while he crunched. Yafh was one of those People who, while ostensibly denned with ehhif, was neglected totally by them. He subsisted on stolen scraps scavenged from the neighborhood garbage bags, and on rats and mice and bugs—not difficult in this particular building, its landlord apparently not having had the exterminators in since early in the century.
“You off for the day?” Yafh said, when he finished crunching.
“The day, yes,” she said, “but tomorrow early we have to go to Hlon’hohn.”
“That’s right across the East River, isn’t it?”
“Uh, yes, all the way across.” Rhiow put her whiskers forward in a smile. So did Yafh.
“They’re making you work again, ’Rioh,” Yafh said. The name was a pun on her name and on an Ailurin word for “beast of burden’, though you could also use it for a wheelbarrow or a grocery cart or anything else that ehhif pushed around. “It’s all a plot. People shouldn’t work. People should lie on cushions and be fed cream, and filleted fish, and ragout of free-range crunchy mouse in a rich gravy.”
“Oh,” Rhiow said. “The way you are …”
Yafh laughed that rough, buttery laugh of his: he leaned back and hit the headless body of the rat a couple of times in a pleased and absent way. “Exactly. But at least I’m my own boss. Are you?”
“This isn’t slavery, if that’s what you’re asking,” Rhiow said, bristling very slightly. “It’s service. There is a difference.”
“Oh, I know,” Yafh said. “What wizards do is important, regardless of what some People think.” He picked the rat up one more time, dangled it from a razory claw, flipped it in the air and caught it expertly. “And at least from what you tell me you have it better than the poor ehhif wizards do: your own kind at least know about you … But Rhi, it’s just that you never seem to have much time to yourself. When do you lie around and just be People?”
“I get some time off, every now and then …”
“Uh huh,” Yafh said, and smiled slightly: that scarred, beat-up, amiable look that had fooled various of the other cats (and some dogs) in the neighborhood into thinking that he was no particular threat. “Not enough, I think. And things have been tough for you lately …”