My skin crawled with apprehension. Somehow, I didn't think the "master" Suettay had referred to was anyone human. I had a nasty, sneaking suspicion that I knew how high up in the nonhuman hierarchy that individual was - and what kind of revenge he would find most pleasing.
Chapter Fifteen
We landed sitting down-hard, and it hurt. The door boomed shut behind us.
Oddly, my initial impression was one of peace. It was so nice and cool after the heat of the torture chamber, and the darkness was soothing, especially since it was relieved by the dim glow through the little barred window in the door.
My second impression was one of amazing satisfaction. I had put a long-term crimp in Suettay's plans; there was no telling how long the queen would be tied up trying to figure out a way to cancel my existence. Apparently I was an odd enough customer that she would have to do it carefully. For a moment, I was tempted to believe it was the overwhelming strength of my "spells," the legacy of my nearly completed English major - but skepticism got the better of ego, and I realized that it probably had more to do with who had brought me into this cockamamy universe, than with me, myself. if I ever met that guy ...
I chopped off that line of thought as a new suspicion dawned. if I was such a delicate article, no wonder Suettay had tried to deal!
Which raised the possibility that she might try to bargain again; I decided I'd better get busy figuring out a new set of counterspells. if she had any brains, she'd gag Frisson at the outset. or kill him ...
I mumbled a quick charm to clear my head; I knew I couldn't concentrate through the pain. Then Gilbert swore, with loathing.
"What's the matter?" All other concerns were instantly forgotten.
"Something with warmth and fur did brush my thigh!"
"Don't try to hit it if you can't see it!" I had a sinking certainty that I knew what it was.
Then I heard a dry, high-pitched chuckle from the depths of the lightless hole.
I froze and hissed, "Everybody stay still!" Then, aloud, "Who's there?"
The chuckle came again, with a nasty edge to it.
It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "I warn you, I'm a wizard - and the queen herself has just found out to her sorrow that I'm not without power even here, within the realm of evil! Answer! Who are you?"
The chuckler was still. Then a rasping voice came out of the darkness. "Have you hurt the queen, then?"
"Not really," I said, "but I do seem to have snafued her system."
"I do not know that spell," the voice said. "Tell me, does it cause her humiliation?"
"Because she can't fix it? Yeah, I'd say so - and frustration. But nothing compared to what I'm feeling! Are you going to tell me who you are, or do I have to come over there and drag it out of you?" The day's woes suddenly boiled over. I shoved myself to my feet and strode toward the voice.
There was a scrabbling in the darkness ahead of me, and the voice hissed, "Beware! Or my pets shall have you!" There was something sinister in the way he said "pets" that made me halt, in spite of the loss of pride it entailed. "Blast! We need some light in here!"
"Nay!" the voice cried, but I chanted,
A torch flame flared in the darkness, and I saw a fat, bald man with a wrinkled, chinless face, deathly pale from being too long in darkness. His clothes were filthy rags, but they had once been fine robes. He flinched back from the light, baring long, yellow teeth. Half a dozen huge rats scrabbled back with him, lips writhing in snarls, long, stained incisors bared. A couple of them burrowed into his robes.
I swallowed. "I see your point." I cleared my throat and said, "Odd choice of associates, don't you think?"
"There's little enough else by me here," the bald man snarled, "and they are better company than most folk I have known." That was a signal, if I had ever heard one. I stilled inside, and inquired, "People done you wrong?"
The bald man laughed, a hissing series of expelled breaths. "Who among them has not? Yet I must own there was a rightness to it - for I did them harm, as oft as I might. Is not this the way of the world?"
"Nay," Gilbert croaked.
"Aye," Frisson contradicted. "Yet that's not to say it should be."
"Should be!" the bald man spit. "A pox upon your 'should be'! I will abide with what is, not with what 'should be'!"
"As you always have?" I murmured.
"Aye! There's at least some slight honesty to it! Your 'should be' is hypocrisy! "
"Not if we look for the better world," Frisson said softly.
"If all could behave as they should, look you, the world would become a far better place," Gilbert insisted.
"Yet your 'all' will not do so, not even a moiety!" the bald man declared. "Nay, I shall abide by my 'is'!"
"After all," I said, "it's done so well for you." The glare the bald man gave me was pure hate. "It did well indeed for me, young man, for three dozen years! Ever did I rise higher through the ranks of the queen's clerks, till I stood above them all as chancellor, with a dozen desks 'neath my sway, and twenty scriptoriums to each! Directly below the queen's privy chamber I stood, and would have risen to a post within it, had not misfortune intervened!"
"The queen's privy?" Frisson murmured. "I should think that an unfortunate position."
The bald man's eyes narrowed again. "Mock if you will! But those who are the queen's most senior servants have power indeed, because they are privy to her counsel!"
"So you were the top man in the second level of the bureaucracy," I interpreted.
The bald man frowned, peering keenly at me. " 'Bureacracy'? What is that? "
"Literally, 'government by desks,' " I answered. "It's the organization of clerks who actually run the country." The bald man held my gaze for a moment, then slowly nodded.
"Aye. 'Tis oddly said, but 'tis how Suettay doth govern."
"And," I inferred, "you made a little mistake in your climb to the top?"
"Aye, a small mistake only," the bald man grated, "and one that I should have seen would be so - for I did bethink me of a means toward greater power for the queen, believing she would create a new chancellery for it and for me, and raise me to the privy chamber. Yet she saw, and clearly, that such power might give me some chance to move against her, and therefore sent me here."
I nodded. "You did your job just a little too well. She realized the true scope of your ability, so she made haste to put you where you couldn't do her any harm."
"Would she had slain me instead!" the bald man hissed.
"That would have been nicer," I agreed. "Trouble is, it might not have made you enough of an example for ambitious young men who show too much initiative and do more than they're told. How many times has she pulled you out to parade before her clerks?"
The bald man frowned. "Twice, o'er the years-and, as you say, 'twas before her clerks assembled. Yet 'twas to demand of me the scope of my chancellery, matters which my successor had forgotten." I nodded. "And, conveniently, on the inauguration of the new chancellor, each time-just as a little warning to him. The bald man's eyes widened, burning. "
"'Tis even as you say! What a fool was I not to have seen it!"
"Understandable." I shrugged. "You fell victim to the bureaucrat's big weakness-you started caring about the job itself and forgot it was just supposed to be a means of personal advancement." The glittering gaze held for a minute, before the bald head nodded slowly. "Aye. Fool that I was, I thought that excellence of work would raise me up by itself."
"The race is not always to the swift" I quoted, "nor advancement to the most able - at his job, at least. It is to the most able, at currying favor and influence. Of course, if he can't do the job, he gets fired.