The two came closer, most of them out of sight from her point of view now except for their shoes. One pair of them, the other ehhif’s shoes – a pair of brown wingtips — stopped as he looked at something in the wine rack above Rhiow. She held her breath. “How many of them even understand what’s going to happen?” the ehhif said. “Or what’s going to be asked of them?”
The second pair of shoes kept going. Down low, Rhiow felt a breath of air– one of her People transporting out with maximum caution. Oh please let them mistake it for a draft, she thought. Better to do that from behind them rather than in front of them, they’d be more likely to believe a draft was coming that way – For the thought of the crowding shadows that Arhu had Seen was much with her. Too easy for them to alert this man or someone working with him if they get really conscious of us —
“If they haven’t figured it out by now, then we don’t need them,” Dagenham said. “It’s been spelled out again and again. Now that the last package has arrived, we’re in the endgame. If they make the offer, it goes easier with them. If they try to hedge their bets by not offering…”His footsteps kept on going down the wine cellar, paused at last.
Clink, clink, went one bottle against another. Across the way, behind one of the opposite wine racks, Rhiow saw a white-and-black patched form sliding along the wall toward the door, paying no mind to any spiders’ complaints. A second later the shape was gone, with even less wind this time. Sif. Good.
“Maybe they’re just not sure,” said the second ehhif’s voice. Rhiow cocked an ear. All of a sudden he was sounding familiar somehow. Was he at the party? Could have been — There had been such a press of ehhif there, so much noise…
Another breath of wind, even more slight this time. Aufwi, she thought. Or Urruah. I shouldn’t wait, I should go… “There’s no time left for that,” Dagenham said, against more clinking. “You of all people should know. You’ve got all your choices made, even this last-minute one – “
“Well, why not?” said the second ehhif, and Rhiow could hear the shrug in his voice. “If They want her, fine. If not, I’ll have the use of her for a while…” He paused: clink, clink. “Red or white?”
Wait, Rhiow thought. Wait, I do know him–
“For this?” Dagenham chuckled. “Red. Don’t want to dilute the color scheme…”
They started back toward her. No more time: she had to go. Rhiow activated the transit spell with the greatest care—
Darkness, and a space small for her, as Rhiow could tell by the feeling she got from her whiskers even without moving to check the impression. In front of her, a crack-defined square with faint light coming through it. Warmth from above: that would be the water heater Arhu had shown her. And partly between her and the light, something was swiftly fading into solidity—
Images of possible lurking shadow-imps flooded over her. Rhiow fumbled hastily in her mind for a spell as the dark thing came darker, came real…
It dropped its jaw at her, and bronze eyes glinted in the light from the crack around the door. It was Hwaith.
Rhiow sagged with relief, but also annoyance.“How does this keep happening?” she said. “You’re just stalking me, that’s all…”
“I promise you, it was an accident,” Hwaith said, and Rhiow was surprised to hear that he sounded as testy as she felt, at least for the moment. “Took the coordinates our young cousin gave me and never gave it a second thought. So blame him. Or blame it on sa’Rraah if you feel the need, andwe’ll take it out of Her hide later.”
Rhiow crouched there and tried to manage her annoyance.“All right,” she said, and for the next few moments sat quiet and listened.
She could hear a faint buzzing at the edge of hearing. She glanced up at the water heater, wondering if the noise had something to do with its electrical system. But that didn’t seem to be the source. “Hwaith,” she said, “you have the Ear…”
“It’s them, all right,” he said. “What Arhu heard.” His ears were flicking with his own annoyance. “They’re like rats in the walls here. Disgusting things…”
Rhiow tried to calm herself down a little, concentrating on her breathing, which sounded loud to her. Nothing to do now but wait until Arhu reports in… Yet at the same time she was quite aware of how not so much as a hair of Hwaith’s fur was touching hers, despite how small this space was. Without looking as if he was crowding away from her, nonetheless he was; and after that first glance he wouldn’t now look at her.
Rhiow stayed crouched down and breathed for a while, waiting to see if the tension would relax at all. It didn’t. And there’s spellwork coming, she thought. This isn’t good. It could interfere with the way the team operates, and most especially now that can’t be allowed…
“Hwaith,” she said.
He turned one ear in her direction, didn’t move otherwise, didn’t speak.
“About before…”
The ear flicked, but that was all.
Rhiow sighed.“Hwaith…” She wasn’t quite sure where to begin. “And what you said. It’s not that I’m not honored…indeed, flattered…”
He finally flicked a lazy glance at her. She eyed Hwaith’s whiskers carefully in that darkness, judging how far forward they were set. Hwaith’s look was entirely neutral.
“But you have to know it’s impossible,” Rhiow said, as gently as she could. “Leaving aside the issue of our separate times – it’s just not a thing that can happen….”
“’Impossible,’” Hwaith said, giving Rhiow a challenging look. “If we were younger wizards, it’s not a word either of us would be using.”
“Of course that’s where the youngest of us get their advantage,” Rhiow said. “But we’re both well past that stage now: not just lives along, but years. Wizards our age have to rely on expertise rather than mere blunt power.”
“And always run the risk of forgetting how our own definitions of possibility limit what we can do,” Hwaith said. The tone wasn’t accusatory: he might have been discussing the weather. “And as for the lives: that’s exactly the point. Neither of us is in a place in our travels where we canafford to just say ‘Maybe next time will work out better.’ Are we?”
For some seconds Rhiow was silent. Her soul was suddenly full of the echoes of her shock at discovering, not so long ago, that Saash— Saash who she thought she’d known so well — was nine lives along and nearing that final threshold that no wise Person approached without some unease. No one had any way to know whether he or she was one of those whose lives had brought them so closely into tune with the Powers’ way of being that they would inherit the gift that Aifheh and Sehau had won in sa’Rraah’s despite. Many People made light of that gift, saying that nine lives should be enough for anybody, and that an eternity of service afterwards was more than even the Gods had a right to demand. But Rhiow wasn’t one of these.
The issue of the number of one’s lives behind and the number yet to come was one not lightly discussed by any Person, wizard or not. Rhiow noticed that Hwaith had not volunteered any specific data. But he’s smart enough to read the signs, she thought, being familiar with them in himself… “Hwaith,” Rhiow said at last. “Why me? It can’t be … mere physical issues…”
Hwaith did put his whiskers forward then.“You have a bit of a blind spot,” he said, “for the physical issues.”
Then he hurriedly ducked away from the swipe she aimed at him.“So,” Hwaith said, though good-humoredly, “that prey was well spotted. Rhiow, what would be wrong with someone finding you beautiful? And I’m not talking about just the way you move. Or the wise way you handle your team. Why would it make me an idiot to say that I like your eyes? And what looks out of them.”
She was warmed, and embarrassed, both at once.“You are an idiot,” she said. “And by that measure we’re well matched, because so am I for letting you go on like this! Sweet Iau, Hwaith, consider the circumstances! Ehhif sacrifice, earthquakes, the Lone Power being wooed by some bigger darker power trying to use Her as a tool to destroy the world, and the Queen only knows how many other worlds too – this is not a time to be thinking about romance!”