‘Good or bad?’
‘No one knows.’
We stood in silence for a moment.
‘Perhaps if I were to talk to the Dragonslayer?’ I ventured.
‘Is there one?’
‘There has to be, doesn’t there? It was part of the Dragonpact.’
‘You could try. It’s possible that the Dragon may not die. After all, seers and pre-cogs only see a version of the future. There are few premonitions—if any—that can’t be altered.’
Wizard Moobin left soon after and I gazed at the roses as they twinkled and faded as the magic wore off. Then Owen of Rhayder knocked on my door. He was our second carpeteer. Owen had defected to Hereford from the ramshackle Cambrian Potentate in Mid Wales about ten years previously, which wasn’t hard to do if your particular skill was carpet.
‘Look at this, Jennifer, girl,’ he said crossly, unfurling the carpet and letting it hover in the middle of the room.
‘There’s mangy for you.’
He waved a table light under the carpet and the light gleamed through the threadbare old rug.
‘As soon as a hole opens up I’m going to retire. I don’t want to go the way of Brother Velobius.’
Brother Velobius had run a magic carpet taxi service about thirty years ago, in the days before all sorts of regulations seriously hampered the carpet business. On a high-speed trip to Norwich Brother Velobius and both his passengers died when his Turkmen Mk18-C ‘Bukhara’ carpet broke up in mid-air. The Air Accident Investigation Department painstakingly rebuilt the carpet, and eventually concluded that the break-up was caused by rug fatigue. All carpets were vigorously tested after that and none passed the stringent safety rules for passenger carrying, and they were relegated to solo operation and delivery duties. But that wasn’t alclass="underline" operators were told to carry licences, a registration number, navigation lights for night flying and a mandatory upper speed limit of 100 knots. It was like selling someone a Ferrari and telling the new owner not to change out of first gear.
‘It looks like we’re going to lose the live organ transportation contract,’ I told him.
His face fell and he lowered the carpet to the floor, where it rolled itself automatically and hopped into the corner, startling the Quarkbeast, who dived under the table in fright.
‘So it’s pizza and curry deliveries, then?’ he asked bitterly.
‘We’re in negotiations with FedEx to make up the shortfall.’
‘Deliveries aren’t the spirit of carpeting, Jenny, bach,’ he said sadly. ‘Organ delivery made us relevant.’
‘I’m really doing my best, Owen.’
‘Well, perhaps your best is not good enough.’
He glared at me, unfurled his carpet and was off out of the window, streaking back towards Benny’s Pizzas to do some deliveries.
Mutiny
‘I’m not paying,’ announced Mr Digby angrily, waving the bill I had hurriedly written out for the rewiring and replumbing job. ‘I specifically said plastic piping.’
It was the following morning, and Mr Digby had turned up as soon as we had opened the office.
‘We don’t work in plastic,’ announced Full Price.
‘We don’t work in plastic,’ I repeated.
‘Listen,’ said the man, whose patience was deserting him rapidly, ‘if I ask a plumber to replumb the house and I specify plastic, then that’s what you’ll use. I pay the bills, I call the shots.’
‘If you understood how sorcery works, you would know that long-chain polymers do not react as well—’
‘Don’t try to blind me with your voodoo science!’
‘Very well,’ I said with a sigh, ‘I’ll instruct my people to remove all the plumbing immediately.’
‘No you won’t!’ said Mr Digby angrily. ‘If I catch you on my property I’ll call the police!’
I stared up at the red-faced individual and wondered whether the sorcerer’s code of ethics couldn’t be relaxed for just a moment; I thought our irate customer would make a fine warthog.
‘I’ll meet you halfway.’
He grumbled for a bit as Price rose in disgust and walked out of the door.
‘The more you do this,’ I said, altering the total on the bill and recalculating the VAT, ‘the fewer sorcerers there will be to do this sort of work. The next time you want any plumbing done you’ll have to get a builder in and tear all the plaster off the wall.’
‘What do I care?’ sneered the man selfishly. ‘The job is done.’
He stormed out and Price came back in. He wasn’t very happy.
‘It took us only half a day to do his house, Jennifer. An army of plumbers couldn’t do it that fast and I got a splitting headache to boot. We should have taken him to court.’
I got up and placed the cheque he had written in the cash tin.
‘You know as well as I do the courts rarely side with the Mystical Arts. All he has to do is invoke the 1739 Bewitching Act and you could end up on a ducking stool—or something worse. Is that what you want?’
Full Price sighed.
‘I’m sorry, Jennifer. It just makes me so mad.’
The phone rang and Tiger picked it up.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘Kazam Mystical Arts Management, can I help you?’
There was a pause.
‘No, I’m sorry, madam, we can’t turn people into toads. It’s usually permanent and highly unethical... no, not even for cash. Thank you.’
At that moment, Lady Mawgon strode in with Moobin close behind. She didn’t look too happy—furious, actually.
‘I’ve explained about Mr Digby to Full Price,’ I said, feeling mildly nervous. Mr Zambini had been gone six months, and although I had so far avoided any arguments, they would eventually happen, I knew it—and, as likely as not, they would come from Mawgon.
‘We’re not here about that,’ said Lady Mawgon, and I noticed several other Zambini Tower residents at the door. Some were on the active list, like Kevin Zipp, and others not, like the Sisters Karamazov. There were also ones I hadn’t seen for a while, such as Monty Vanguard the Sound Manipulator, and an old and very craggy sorceress who looked as though she were half tortoise—long-retired eleventh-floorers, the pair of them.
‘What can I help you with, then?’
‘Am I to understand,’ began Lady Mawgon, trembling with indignation, ‘that Mr Trimble of the ConStuff Land Development Agency offered Kazam two million moolah for the precise time of the Dragondeath?’
‘He did, and I said I’d think about it.’
‘Isn’t that the sort of decision that we should all make in the absence of Mr Zambini?’ asked Lady Mawgon.
‘Two million moolah is a lot of moolah,’ added Price.
‘And could pay for all our retirements,’ put in Monty Vanguard.
‘I’m not sure the deal is still on the table,’ I said, trying to stall for time.
‘Mr Trimble just called me,’ said Lady Mawgon. ‘The deal is definitely still on.’
‘Listen,’ I said, suddenly feeling hot all over, ‘we don’t know for sure the Dragondeath is going to happen. The link between magic and Dragons is not proven, but there’s not a sorcerer in the building who doesn’t believe it’s there. There’s a whiff of Big Magic in the air, and I don’t think we should be cashing in on the Dragondeath—it’s just not what we do.’
‘Who are you to decide what it is we do?’ demanded Lady Mawgon imperiously. ‘Try as you might, you cannot be Mr Zambini, and never will be—you are simply a foundling who got lucky.’
Several of the other sorcerers winced. None of them would have gone that far. Lady Mawgon was making it personal, which it wasn’t.