Mr Scunthorpe rifled through the sheets of paper in front of him.'Holly Devree?' He extracted a statement, picked up his glasses on their chain around his neck, placed them on his nose and read out loud: 'I don't know what happened. I was on my tea break. I never saw the man from the Department. This means my job, doesn't it? What am I going to do now? I've got a sick mother to support. Signed: Holly Devree.'
'No,' he whispered. 'That's not how it happened, Mr Scunthorpe. My word as a compliance officer.'
'Probationary compliance officer,' said Mr Scunthorpe, still frowning. "Very well then, Gerald. What's your version of today's unfortunate events?'
Haltingly, feeling as though he'd wandered into somebody else's insane dream, Gerald told him. When he was finished he sat back in his chair again. 'And that's the truth, sir. I swear it.'
Mr Scunthorpe closed his mouth with a snap. 'The truth?' 'Yes, sir.'
Mr Scunthorpe's face was so red he could have found work as a traffic light. 'You expect me to believe that a Third Grade wizard from Nether Wallop, who got his qualifications from some fourth-rate correspondence course, who got fired from his first job for insubordination and his second for incompetence, not only managed to single-handedly prevent a Level Nine thaumaturgical inversion but did so, moreover, by using the most expensive, the most finely calibrated, the most lethal First Grade staffs in the world? Is that what you expect me to believe?'
'Well,' he said, after a moment. 'When you put it like that…'Then he rallied.'But sir, far-fetched or not that's exactly what happened. I can't explain how, or why, but that's precisely what I did.'
'Dunwoody, what you're saying is impossible!' said Mr Scunthorpe, and pounded a fist on his desk. 'No Third Grade wizard in history has ever used a First Grade staff without frying himself like bacon. To suggest you managed it is to stretch the bounds of credulity across five alternate dimensions!'
The urge to punch Scunthorpe in the nose was almost irresistible. 'Are you calling me a liar?'
'I'm calling you a walking disaster!' Scunthorpe retorted. 'A carbuncle on the arse of this Department! Do you have any idea of the phone calls I've been getting? Lord Attaby! The Wizard General! Seven prime ministers and two presidents! And don't get me started on the press!'
Gerald stopped breathing. Scunthorpe was going to fire him. The intention was in the man's glazed eyes and furious, scarlet face. If he was fired from another job it'd be the end of his wizarding career. No-one would touch him with a forty-foot barge pole after that. He'd have to go home to Nether Wallop. Beg his cousins for a job in the tailor's shop his father had sold them. They'd give him one, he was family after all, but he'd never hear the end of it. I'd rather die.
'Let me prove it, Mr Scunthorpe,' he said. 'Fetch me a First Grade stall" and I'll prove I can use one.'
'Are you madV shouted Scunthorpe. 'After this afternoon's little exhibition do you think there's a wizard anywhere in the world who'd risk letting you even look at his First Grader, let alone touch it? And do you think I'd risk my job to ask them?'
'Then how am I supposed to show you I'm telling the truth?'
It was a fair question and Scunthorpe knew it. He snatched a pencil from his desktop and twisted it between his fingers. 'I'm telling you, Dunwoody, you won't be let anywhere near a First Grade staff. But — ' The pencil snapped. With enormous forbearance, Scunthorpe placed the two pieces on the blotter.'- if you can use a First Grader then a Second Grader shouldn't pose the slightest difficulty.' He stood and crossed to the closet in the corner of his office. From it he withdrew four feet of slender, silver-bound Second Grade staff. Holding it reverently, he turned. 'Lord Attaby gave me this staff with his own hands, Dunwoody. In recognition of my twenty-five years impeccable service to the Department. If I give it to you, here and now, will you promise not to break it?'
Gerald swallowed, feeling ill. 'I can't do that, sir. But I can promise I'll try.'
Pale now, and sweating, Scunthorpe nodded. 'All right then.' 'What do you want me to do?'
'Nothing spectacular!' said Mr Scunthorpe, darkly. 'Something simple. Noncombustible.' He nodded at the painting on the wall beside him, an insipid rendition of the first opening of Parliament in 1142.'Animate that.'
He swallowed a protest. Animation might be noncombustible but it was hardly simple. All right, for a First Grade wizard it was child's play and for a Second it was unlikely to cause a sweat. For a Third Grade wizard, though, animation required a command of etheretic balances that tended to induce piles in the unprepared.
Scunthorpe bared his teeth in a smile. 'I take it you do know an appropriate incantation?'
Sarcastic bugger. Yes. As it happened he knew all kinds of high-level incantations, and not all of them entirely… legal. Reg had insisted on teaching him dozens, even though his cherrywood staff was totally inadequate when it came to channelling them. Even though he, apparently, was equally inadequate. Learn them, she'd insisted. You never know when one might come in handy.
Maybe she'd been right after all. Maybe this was one of those times. And anyway, what did he have to lose?
He held out his hand for Scunthorpe's staff. Reluctantly Scunthorpe gave it to him. Closing his eyes, he took a moment to centre himself. To rummage through his collection of interesting but hitherto irrelevant charms and incantations until he found the one that would rescue him from his current predicament.
'Hurry up, Dunwoody,' said Scunthorpe. 'I've an appointment to see Lord Attaby. Somehow I've got to explain all this.'
'Yes, sir,' he said, still rummaging. Then he recalled a small but effective binding that would set the picture's painted crowd politely clapping.
The silver-chased staff in his hands felt heavy and cool. He couldn't detect the smallest sense of latent power from it. When was the last time Scunthorpe had used it? Or sent it out to be thaumically recharged? God help him if the damned thing had a flat battery -
'Hurry up, Dunwoody!' snapped Scunthorpe. 'I'm running out of patience!'
'Right,' he said, and settled his shoulders. Extended the staff until its tip touched the painting's frame, closed his eyes and in the privacy of his mind uttered the animation binding.
Nothing happened. No burning surge of power through the staff, no giddy-making roil of First Grade thaumic energy in his veins or repeat of that strange torqueing tearing sensation he'd felt in Stuttley's factory. Not even his usual Third Grade tingling. And no sound of tiny painted hands, clapping. No sound at all except for Scunthorpe's stertorous breathing.
He cleared his throat. 'Um. Why don't I just try that again?'
Before Scunthorpe could refuse he attempted to animate the painting a second time. Nothing. A third time. Nothing. A fourth ti-
'Forget it!' shouted Scunthorpe, and snatched back his precious silver-filigreed staff. 'You're a fraud, Dunwoody! After a performance like that I'm at a loss to understand how you even got your Third Grade licence! My Aunt Hildegarde's geriatric cat has more wizarding talent than you!'
Stunned, Gerald stared at the uncooperative painting. Then he fished inside his overcoat and pulled out his slightly singed cherrywood staff. Turning, he snatched the broken pencil pieces from Scunthorpe's desk, tapped them with his staff and uttered a joining incant, a task so simple it wasn't even included in the Third Grade examination. The pencil stayed stubbornly broken.
Oh God. 'I don't understand it,' he muttered. 'I've got nothing. Nothing. How can that be? Unless — ' Horrified, he stared at Scunthorpe. 'Do you think I burned myself out when I short-circuited the inversion? Do you think channelling all that raw thaumic energy through those First Grade staffs somehow used up all my power?'