Auhlae looked shocked.“The crowned portcullis,” she said. That’s the stationery used by theehhif in the House of Commons. You’re telling me that the person starting this plot off is a Member of Parliament?!”
Arhu squinted.“The House of Commons. Is that one of the buildings in that big spiky place by the river? The one with the big clock?”
“Yes,” Huff said. “The whole thing together is the Palace of Westminster.”
“That’s it, then. I see the river out his window as he’s writing,” Arhu said, still squinting slightly, and rocking back and forth a little, an odd motion, as if he was on wings. “It’s getting late … the Sun is going down. He folds the letter up and puts it in an envelope, and he takes a pen and starts writing something up in the corner … No, he stopped. He’s just writing in the middle of the envelope now.”
“The address,” Rhiow said.
“I guess.”
“What does it say?”
“His handwriting’s hard to read.” Arhu was silent for a moment. “ ‘Edinburgh’? Where’s that?”
“In the north of the country,” Fhrio said.
“Then he looks around in his desk drawer for something,” Arhu said, still rocking slightly. “A little piece of paper. He sticks it onto the letter, in the corner.”
“Stamping it rather than ‘franking’ it,” Auhlae said. That way it won’t look any different from otherehhif’sletters, at least on the outside.”
“I see. All right. Then he puts the letter in a box on a bookcase by the door, and goes out,” Arhu says. “He goes down to the big room where we saw the people shouting, before.” He blinked. There are already a lot ofehhif there, all shouting and waving papers around. They’reloud,down there.”
“They do that,” Huff said. “Don’t ask me why. It’s traditional.”
“And these are the people who run the country?” Rhiow said. “Why do theehhifhere let them carry on like that?”
“Maybe they like to watch a good fight?” Urruah said.
“They’re not allowed actually to fight with each other,” Huff said. The two sides are kept a sword’s length and three feet apart on purpose.”
“So all they do isyellat each other all night? All those toms?” Urruah twitched his tail in bemusement. “No singing?”
“Not in there,” Huff said. “What can I tell you … they’reehhif.”He put his whiskers forward.“But the letter?”
“I don’t see it go out,” Arhu said, “but I could hear him thinking that that’s what would happen to it. That would be the evening of the seventh, for a letter to get up north and an answer to come back on the ninth.”
“If we were to steal that letter,” Auhlae said, “while he was downstairs in the House shouting at the other MPs, when he came back, he would think that whoever picks up the post had already come to take it away. Then he would think that everything was going according to plan, and he wouldn’t do anything which would stop the plan until it was already too late:wewould have stopped it. The Mouse wouldn’t run …”
“And in the meantime, we can do something abouthim,”Huff said.“Theehhif plotting this must have planted him in the Queen’s household a good while before, for him to be able to get out when he wanted and sneak around like that. They would have come to trust him …”
“Then let’s ruin that trust,” Rhiow said. “Let’s transit him to somewhere in that great castle that he has absolutely no business being, and leave him trapped there. When the staff find him, they’ll throw him out of the place themselves, and never let him back in again.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Auhlae said, waving her tail approvingly. There are plenty of such places—” Then she stopped and put her whiskers so far forward that Rhiow thought they might take leave of her face. “Let’s lock him up in the Albert Chapel,” Auhlae said. “It’s old, with lots of gates and bars: Henry the Seventh built it as a tomb for himself. But the Queen turned the place into a memorial for her poor mate when he died, and now it’s all full of gold and jewels and precious things that she had put there in his memory. Let the Mouse sit inthereall one night, with no way to get out, and let the castle staff find him in the morning …”
There was general laughter and approval at the idea, and Artie clapped his hands.“One thing, Arhu,” said Huff. “Whowas it that wrote the first letter … the one which caused the second one to be sent?”
Arhu squinted again.“Let me watch him for a moment,” he said. “There was something on his door. When he goes out again …”
There was a little silence while everyone let him work. Artie looked up, then, and said,“Who’s going to do guard duty on the Queen?”
Rhiow glanced at Huff. They both turned and looked at Arhu.
He went wide-eyed.“Ohno!” he said.
“It’s the best bet,” Huff said. “She was known to have a soft spot for little kittens.”
“I’ll ‘little kitten’ you, you big—”
“Arhu,” Rhiow said, slightly exasperated. “It’s useful being cute. Exploit it a little. You can take the poorehhif’smind off her troubles for a while.”
“What am I supposed to do? Play with string?” Arhu looked scornful.
“If necessary, yes,” Huff said. “Make sure you ingratiate yourself sufficiently with her, and she won’t want to let you out of her sight … which, for our purposes, would be absolutely perfect.”
Arhu was opening his mouth to disagree again.“You will also probably eat like royalty,” Urruah said.
Arhu shut his mouth and looked thoughtful.
“I hate to mention it,” Rhiow said, “but the other one who is probably going to be perfect for this job is Siffha’h. Another ‘cute’ one.”
Arhu straightened up again.“No way!”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Rhiow said, in a tone of voice meant to suggest that the discussion would have only one possible ending. “What about that door, Arhu? What’s on it?”
He breathed out in annoyance and squinted at nothing again.“It’s not coming.”
“Thevhaiit’s not,” Urruah said, and gave him a look.
Arhu made the disgusted face again, then went slightly vague in the eyes, as if trying harder.
“McClaren,” he said suddenly. “Does that make sense?”
“Is that what’s on the door?” Fhrio said.
Arhu twitched his tail“yes’.
“Bad,” Fhrio said. “The only ones who get their names on their doors are Government ministers …”
Auhlae and Huff looked grim.“Rhi, who was he?” Urruah said.
“From what Hhuhm’hri told me, probably the Chanceller of the Exchequer,” she said, listening anew to the material she had read into the Whispering. “They changed these jobs around every now and then, though not as often as they do now. I would probably need to talk to Ouhish to get a more accurate date.”
“I’m not sure we need it,” Huff said. “We know he’s involved. I would love to find some way to betray his part in the conspiracy as well … but it may not be possible. Almost certainly the letter he writes to the third party in Edinburgh isn’t going to contain anything which would incriminate him: he wouldn’t be so stupid, even in those less investigative days, as to commit something of that kind to House stationery. He probably used that more as a guaranteed form of identification to his contact than anything else.”
They all lay and thought for a moment.“No,” Huff said, “unless someone comes up with a brilliant idea on how to reveal him, we’re going to have to be satisfied with stopping the attempt itself and removing the assassin permanently from the Queen’s ambit. Any other thoughts?”
If there were any, they were briefly derailed as the air down at the end of the platform tore softly, and a taloned shape stepped through.
“Ith!” Artie cried, jumped up and ran to him, and shook Ith’s claw in a manner so suddenly and incongruouslyehhif-adultthat Rhiow burst out laughing, and had immediately to pretend to have a hairball. While this was going on, Ith greeted Artie and came pacing over to the teams. He crouched down on those long back legs, the great-claw of each foot grating on the stone.