They stepped into the air together and were gone: the tear in it healed up behind them.
Huff stared after them. “How does he do that?” he said. “There wasn’t even any noise from the displacement of the air.”
Rhiow shook her head. “In some ways, he’s become a gate himself,” she said. “Otherwise … I don’t understand it. Ask Her. Meanwhile—what about that timeslide?”
It took several more hours to get it working to both Urruah’s and Fhrio’s liking. Rhiow tried to catch a nap while this was going on, but her anxiety kept waking her up, so that when Urruah finally came to rouse her, she was awake anyway.
“Is the slide ready?” Rhiow said, stretching fore and aft.
“As far as I can tell. For all Fhrio’s rotten temper,” he added very softly, “he’s a good gating tech, and there’s nothing wrong with his understanding of timeslide spells. He rearranged some subroutines I’d thought looked pretty good, and I have to admit that now they look better.”
“Annoyed?” Rhiow said.
“Me? Nothing wrong with me that a pizza won’t cure,” Urruah said. ” … And the end of this job. We can jump again in fifteen or twenty minutes. Fhrio is doing the last fine-tuning: Siffha’h says she’s ready to go again, and Auhlae concurs.”
“Good.” She glanced around. “Where are they?”
“They’ve gone off to relieve themselves first. Huff went off too, just for a snack of something.”
“Right.”
They went over together to look at the timeslide. Rhiow walked around it thoughtfully, trying to see what Fhrio had done. He was sitting, gazing at the whole structure with his eyes half-shut, a little unfocused: a technique Rhiow used herself, sometimes, to see the one bit of a spell or a routine that was out of place.
She stopped at one point and looked to see where a whole group of subroutines had been added, a thick tangle of interwoven branchings in the “hedge”. There were numerous calls on spatial locations which were not far from this one, as far as Rhiow could tell, and all of which were in this time. “What are these?” Rhiow said curiously.
Fhrio glanced up. “I found myself wondering,” he said, “whether we were sending a lion to kill a mouse … I mean, by looking for our pastlings one at a time by tracing specific accesses one at a time. I thought, since the ehhif here have support systems that are supposed to be picking up their lost and sick people from the City area, at least … why don’t we let it work for us? So this set of routines visits every ehhif-hospital in the Greater London area, and scans it for a few seconds for anyone in that facility who wasn’t born within the last hundred years. If it finds anyone like that, it picks them up and brings them along with us, in stasis. Then we get back here and analyze their temporal tendencies in situ, with the gate to help, if we can get the online gate logs to cooperate.”
Rhiow looked the construction over. It was elegant, compact, and looked like it ought to work … but many constructs of this kind looked like they should, and the only way you could find out was by testing them live. “Fhrio,” she said, “It is handsome-looking, and beautifully made. Let’s run it and see what it does.” She paced around to the other side of the timeslide, checked her name in passing, then leapt into the circle and looked thoughtfully at the other sets of coordinates stacked up in the routines to be examined: mostly derived from microtransits of the malfunctioning gate. “If Siffha’h can push us through to all of these,” Rhiow said, “we’re going to be in great shape.”
“I hoped you’d think so,” Fhrio said. And he looked over at Urruah, and bared his teeth in amusement. “Pity you weren’t smart enough to manage something like this, ‘oh expert one’. Even your own team leader admits it.”
Urruah blinked and opened his mouth.
“Urruah,” Rhiow said softly, “would you excuse us?”
His eyes went wide. “Uh, sure,” he said.
He went away with great speed, Rhiow didn’t know where: nor did she care at the moment. “All right, Fhrio,” Rhiow said. “I’m tired of hearing it in the background, or unsaid. Get on with it and say what you have to say.”
He stared at her, his ears back. “I don’t like him around here,” Fhrio said after a moment. “Or the other one. There are too many toms around here as it is. Huff and I have about worked things out. We’re all right together, if not precisely in-pride. But those two! Him, with his big balls hanging out, leering at Auhlae. And him, with his little balls hanging out, just a furry little bundle of drool and hope and hormones, leering at Siffha’h. They both give me the pip … and the sooner they’re out of here the better I’ll like it.”
“Well,” Rhiow said, and nearly bit her tongue, she could think of so many things to say, and so few of them appropriate. “Thank you for letting me know. In Urruah’s case, he’s always been one for appreciating the queens, though in Auhlae’s case, he knows she’s mated and happily so, and you’re completely mistaken about his intentions toward her. If you don’t believe another wizard telling you so, then you’ll have to go have it out with him … after I finish with you. For the second time, that is, after I extract from your hide the price of calling the competence of one of my teammates into question, and for suggesting that I might agree with you in your assessment. And as for Arhu, whatever business he has with Siffha’h is theirs to determine, not yours or mine: she’s her own queen now, no matter what your opinions on the matter may be. What you think of that stance is your business … but if you meddle with a young wizard under my protection, I will shred your hide myself, and see if you have the nerve to do anything about it. So beware how you conduct yourself.”
Fhrio stared at her as if she had suddenly appeared out of the air from another planet. “Meanwhile,” Rhiow said, “I intend to do my job to the best of my ability, no matter how pointlessly annoying I find you. You seem to be doing your job … marginally. But if you can’t manage your reactions to my team a little more completely, I’ll require Huff to remove you from this intervention … which is within my rights as leader of a senior gating team sent on consultation. Then we’ll bring in as a replacement someone less talented, perhaps, but a little more committed to not damaging the other wizards whom the Powers have sent to save this situation … and, entirely incidentally, you. Now take yourself away until Huff comes back, and be glad I’ve left your ears where Iau put them, instead of so far down your throat they’ll make bumps in your tail.”
He stared at her without a word, and after a long moment he turned away.
Rhiow sat down and licked her nose four times in a row, feeling hot under her fur: furious with herself, furious with Fhrio, and just generally very upset. She was bristling, and her claws itched, and she was mortified. I hate being this way, she thought. I hate having to be this way. I hate having to pull rank. Oh, Iau, did I do wrong?
The Queen was silent on this subject, as on so many others. Rhiow breathed out and tried to get control of herself again. She was so busy concentrating on this that she didn’t notice when Siffha’h came in and jumped into the circle beside her.
“I said, are you all right?” Siffha’h said.
“Oh. I will be shortly,” Rhiow said. “Thanks for checking.” Siffha’h had straightened up and was now staring across the platform. Rhiow glanced that way to see what was there. It was Arhu. He was staring back. For a long few moments it held: then, to Rhiow’s surprise, it was Arhu who lowered his eyes first and looked away.