They waited, and saw the City as best they could, and became very expert of ridding themselves of mud in short order. In particular, they spent a fair amount of time visiting with Ouhish and Hwallis at the British Museum. Hwallis had been delighted to hear about the recovery of the full spell for protection against the Winter: but the news about what was required to activate it had come as a blow.
The intervention, however, was Rhiow’s and Huff’s main care, and they made their preparations slowly, despite the impatience of some members of the team. Look, it’s been two days now, Arhu said, late on the eighth, and I don’t know how much more petting we can stand. If it’s not Herself, then it’s the princes and princesses. And all the servants are trying to make friends with us too.
I should think you could do very well out of this … Urruah said. Like the others, he was down on the twin of their ‘derelict’ platform, where the timeslide spell was ‘stabled’ until they would need it again.
Do you mean food? Please! Don’t even mention it, Siffha’h said. I’m so stuffed I’m losing the ability to scamper.
Huff smiled at that. A historical moment, he said.
Have you heard from Auhlae?
Yes. Nothing unusual as yet. So far the gates are behaving themselves.
Rhiow put her whiskers forward, glad to hear it. She had also been glad when Auhlae volunteered to mind the gates during the intervention. It had taken a weight off Huff’s mind: he had been very nervous indeed of the prospect of bringing her here.
Just hold on the best you can, you two, she said. It’s only a couple of days more. Have you seen the Mouse?
Yes. A very inoffensive-looking little ehhif, Arhu said. It’s no wonder he was so good at the second-story work before McClaren hired him for this job: he’s pretty small. He works in the gardens every day, putting plants in pots and taking them out again, and no one gives him a second look.
Well, you’re ready for him…
There are more protections waiting to be activated around that bed than any ehhif needs, Siffha’h said. And we’re there too: she insists on us sleeping with her. But he’s not going to have a chance to make it this far, anyway. Come tomorrow afternoon, he’s going to find himself locked in the Albert Tower with no way out … and the morning after, the police will take him away.
They’ll probably charge him with suspicion of theft when they find out what kind of work he used to do, Arhu said. I won’t mind. I see the way his little eyes look at things. It’s not a mouse he reminds me of: it’s a rat.
Rhiow shivered a little. The image of a rat’s mind in a man’s body bothered her. Well, she said, keep an eye on things. Urruah has gone to the House to see about that letter.
Good, Arhu said. This is a nice place … but I’ll be glad when this lady is safe. She’s got her problems, but none that deserve being killed for.
There’s also the slight problem of what would happen after she was killed…
Don’t remind me. Well, keep us up to date, Siffha’h said. It really will be kind of a relief to get out of here. She cries about Albert every night, like it’s a ritual, and the pillows get all wet. I’m amazed she doesn’t catch cold.
Rhiow’s tail twitched. “Do what you can for her,” she said. “A purr at the right time can do wonders.”
We will.
Rhiow sighed and lay back on the concrete. She was missing Iaehh already, and she was beginning to get that twitchy, uncomfortable feeling that comes of staying out of one’s home time too long. In addition, she was beginning to feel peculiarly … exposed. I just wish I knew to what. But the feeling of something watching them, with bad intent, was getting very strong.
No matter. It won’t take very long now. Urruah will sort that letter out … and then we can frame the Mouse and go home.
But something kept suggesting to Rhiow that it would not be that simple…
The morning of the ninth of July came up, hot and still, with crickets creaking in the crevices of stone walls and under the foundations of houses. It was hot everywhere, from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
Nearer the John O’Groats end of things, just after the time when the milk arrives after dawn, the postman came up the walk of a small neat semidetached home in Edinburgh city. Before he could knock, the latch was lifted, and a small dapper man came out. The postman handed him several letters, which the man went through swiftly. One of these he opened: then, as the postman was on the way down the walk to the street, the small man called him and stepped back inside the door of the house for a moment. When he emerged, he handed the postman another letter. The postie took it and went his way.
In the Palace of Westminster, unseen, a gray-striped tabby cat walked calmly down the Commons’ Corridor, looking at the paintings that adorned the walls there: the last sleep of the Duke of Argyll, the acquittal of the Seven Bishops in the reign of James II, Jane Lane helping Charles II to escape.
Marvelous stuff, Urruah thought to himself, but is it art? Most of it, he thought, was the kind of painting which a partisan of a subject does to try to convince other people that it’s of as much historical or cultural value as he thinks it is. Figures of old-time ehhif gestured heroically or stood in stoic silence, and all of them, to Urruah’s educated eye, had ‘Establishment’ written all over them. Urruah walked among them with amusement, heading for the House of Commons, and restraining his urge to sharpen his claws on the more bombastic of the murals.
He was sidled, naturally, and therefore had to sidestep to miss the occasional ehhif parliamentarian making for the House. They seemed to hold their meetings very late. It was nearly midnight: even bouts of hauissh, the feline pastime which most nearly includes politics, did not usually take place quite this late. Whatever, Urruah wasn’t terribly concerned about what hours they kept, except as it involved one man: McClaren.
He paused by the doors to the House, a little off to one side, and listened before going in.
“ … because the expense would be so great,” an ehhif was saying in a great deep rolling voice; “whilst perhaps in the next parish there might be a clergyman who turns to the east when he celebrated the Holy Communion. If a parishioner called upon the bishop to prosecute in that case, then there would be no difficulty, it would be easy to prosecute for the posture … but by no means easy to prosecute for the doctrine. Is it not a monstrous proposition that when unsound doctrine is preached, one must proceed by the old, slow, cumbersome ecclesiastical law, and yet there should be a rapid prosecution for gestures …”
Urruah stood there trying to make head or tail of this for some minutes. It seemed that the ehhif was talking about communicating with the One, which was certainly a courtesy and a good idea generally: but these ideas of ehhif as to how the One liked to be communicated with seemed amazingly confused, and also seemed to be very hung up on obscure symbology which had to be exactly observed and duplicated, or else there would be no communication. If they really think this, Urruah thought, maybe it’s no wonder they’re so asocial. The Universe must seem to them like a place run by ants. Rude, illiterate ants…