"My lord?" Cadmus now lay flat on his back, obviously exhausted and very shaken.
"I"m right here." Botello stood over him like a mountain. Smiling.
"Are you all right?" "Yes, but what exactly happened?"
"It was Botello Darmo, I can"t explain how he did it, but-gawds, my gut"s full to bursting." Cadmus groaned and turned on his side.
Yes, well, Botello had indulged quite heavily at the dining table. Time to indulge some more now that he was in a body and in complete control of it. He was so very, very starved.
"Let me help you, my boy." Reaching down, he took Cadmus"s hand. The man was a fool, but hedid have magical energy, a goodly amount, and taking it fresh was far better than the stored stuff of the room.
Cadmus pa.s.sed out long before Botello finished draining him.
Chapter Eleven.
Just outside Botello Darmo"s Black Room Shankey held his lantern high. The handkerchief he"d left behind seemed to be sprouting right out of the stone of the wall. "Still there," he said, somewhat unnecessarily. He must have been nervous.
I understood the feeling. We were all twitching a little, except Terrin, of course. Botello"s burglar alarms were still in place, first hitting us with the dragon-with-a-sore-head noise routine, then a.s.saulting us with bad smells. Knowing they were harmless didn"t help. Filima had a tight grip on my arm-which I didn"t mind-and Shankey kept muttering-which I did. Terrin ignored all of us, forging ahead. All he did was to raise his arm once, and both noise and stink had ceased.
"Tasty," he said. There was a decided bounce in his step again. He must have been sucking down magical energy like ice tea on a hot day.
The distractions gone, Shankey trotted ahead to the site of the secret door. He tried to pull the handkerchief out, but it stuck fast until he pushed. The stone slab door swiveled easily. Must have been a h.e.l.l of a good engineering job to make that happen.
Terrin had his own lantern and plunged inside. I gestured for Filima to proceed me, but she balked.
"Nothing in there but broken junk," I told her.
She gave me a funny look, as though she might burst into laughter or sock me one and couldn"t quite make up her mind. "I"d rather wait out here."
"So would I, but his nibs will want you inside. Come on. He won"t let anything happen to you."
She made a little sound to indicate faint confidence in that promise, then gathered her skirts up and stepped in. Shankey hesitated, like he wanted to bolt someplace very much elsewhere, then duty overcame desire and he followed his lady. Muttering. "Day-um," said Terrin. "Don"t you have maid service down here?" He kicked at pottery shards with his purple high-tops.
"No," she said, looking around, visibly shivering. "Botello never told me about this room."
"I just bet he didn"t. If I had a hidey-hole like this I sure wouldn"t share. But you found out about it, anyway." He shot her one of his patented, don"t-you-tell-me-no-friggin"-lies looks.
She totally missed it, busy being wall-eyed about the surroundings. "Yes, I found out. I followed him one night."
"Through allthat ?" asked Shankey, pointing toward the tunnel and its defunct alarms.
"He dispelled the protections whenever he came down," she explained.
"Meaning you followed him more than once?" I asked.
"Yes. He"d tell me he"d be going for a midnight walk on the grounds or be reading late in his study or something like that. He expected me to be stupid enough to believe him."
Lot of disgust there. Couldn"t blame her. On the other hand, Botello had been stupid enough to leave a raving gorgeous gal like Filima all on her lonesome. What a d.i.c.khead.
"Instead," she continued, "he would come down here."
"Can"t see the attraction myself," I said. "But didn"t he have a magic room upstairs?"
"Yes, but not like this one. I"d have sensed something of what he was up to."
"And that would be . . . ?"
"Nothing good."
From the heebies I was getting by being here again, that went without saying, but I wanted her to be more specific.
"Was this his scrying mirror?" asked Terrin, pointing to the floor and a scatter of especially lethal-looking shards of polished stone.
She nodded.
"Where"s the table it sat on?"
"There was none. He had it on a stand, like a dressing room mirror. It was quite large."
"How large?"
She held her hand up just above her own height. "Wide, too. Like a doorway."
"Huh," he grunted. "Check this out." He b.u.mped stone with his toe. I dropped to my haunches for a good close look, seeing a few dozen small replicas of myself peering back from the pieces. In a normal mirror it should have been just parts of me in the reflections, but scrying mirrors are different. I thought it had to do with polarization and the material, but had never followed up on the idea. "What about it?"
"There"s not that much here. I"ve broken mirrors before and they make a nasty mess. A big one."
"Maybe the rest is under the other debris."
"Not in this spot."
I noticed that there wasn"t much broken pottery stuff near where the mirror must have stood. Then there was the body-shaped clear area right next to it. That Sherlock Holmes movie I"d once seen came back to mind. Too badhe wasn"t here to help out. I"d have preferred to have him do the talking for the next few minutes, not me, but he wouldn"t know how to push the issue to get Filima to talk.
"Uh, Captain Shankey . . . you got some armor on, don"t you?"
He gave a start at being addressed, but recovered. He must have the heebies, too. Bad. "No, the house guard only wears armor on formal occasions."
"Well, that"s a leather vest, isn"t it? That should protect you."
"From what?" Now he looked as uneasy as his jumpy pal Debreban.
"The floor. I want you to lie down right here." I pointed to the body-shaped bare spot.
"Why not you?"
" "Cause I don"t have the vest."
"I"ll loan it to you."
Terrin scowled. "Just do it!"
Shankey very gingerly did so. Muttering. Couldn"t blame him. He made a good job of it, though, spreading his arms out to fit the s.p.a.ce. "Like this?"
Filima"s turn to make a noise, a soft choking. No fainting, but she didn"t look well. It was hard to judge her color by the lantern light, but I could guess she"d gone all ashy again and then some.
"Was that how you found him?" I asked her.
Shankey gaped at us both, then shot quickly to his feet. "Found who?"
"Lord Botello," I told him. "If he died here, that would explain the floor"s condition and those drag marks in the tunnel dust."
"My lady, is it true?" He turned a little ashy himself.
"I want to leave," she said, starting for the door. Terrin got in front of her, not in a threatening way-he had his hands in his jeans" pockets-but his att.i.tude stopped her cold. "Uh-uh. Time to spill. What happened the night Botello died?"
"I can"t talk about that here!"
"Sure you can. This is the best place."
"It"s horrible. I hate it!"
"That"s just you; I like things just fine."
"Terrin . . ." I began.
He glared at me.
"You"re freaking her out. If she"s too freaked out . . ."
"Awright, awright!" He waved his arms. There was nothing magical in the gesture, just him venting impatience. "Lady, you are in a heap of trouble and so"s the rest of this sorry planet. You wanna save the world, you gotta tell us what happened, and I meaneverything ."
"Oh, gawds," she moaned.
Darmo House, Two Weeks Ago Filima had spent a fortune on the silken wisps of pale fabric that floated about her otherwise nude body like smoke, but had Botello noticed?
No. d.a.m.n him.
He"d simply walked out of their bedroom with barely a grunt of acknowledgment for what should have been a spectacular erotic surprise. She had yelled after him how much the outfit had cost, hoping to spark some kind of reaction, if only a fight. He seemed not to have heard and continued down the hall to his private study.
She executed a perfect dancing turn in front of her dressing room mirror, then spoiled the finish by scowling. Her face would freeze like that unless Botello likewise turned himself around. Thinking of the diverse effects of both honey and vinegar on flies she composed herself, attempting a more cheerful expression and didn"t quite achieve it. Her face was somber and sad, like those of other women in unhappy marriages.
Dammit. How she hated being one of their number.
And d.a.m.n Botello for losing interest in her. Maybe she should go ahead and let Lord Cadmus follow up on his puppy love crush on her. At least then she"d get some appreciation for her efforts. If only Botello would- Oh, forget it. You"re not getting any tonight. What was he up to? What could possibly be more entertaining to him than an eager, hot, half-naked woman? Magic? She dabbled in magic to please him, but it always gave her a headache. What was the attraction?
He wouldn"t be in his study, that was for certain. Was he going to take another walk around the grounds? Read another book he had to finish? What an insult to her to think she"d fall for those old excuses one more time. He"d be down in that not-so-secret chamber of his again. Not with another woman, either. Filima had eliminated that possibility early on. She"d know how to deal with a flesh-and-blood rival. His obsession with magic was something else again.
Her image in the mirror was back to scowling again. It didn"t look good, but that was how she felt, dammit.
All right. Enough was too much. To h.e.l.l with whatever he was working on; she was his wife and it was past time he realized he had to show at least a minimum of consideration to her. Gawds, he was more polite to the servants. If he couldn"t sc.r.a.pe up a little respect then they had no business being married.
She"d go back to the dancing stage and life on the road rather than deal with this kind of frustration day after day.
Edge-of-a-cliff time, she realized. Or, less dangerously, a crossroads. She"d come to one without being too consciously aware of having traveled. The last time had been when he"d proposed. Yes or no. Either answer promised to lead down profoundly different paths for her life. Right up to the last instant she"d not known what her reply would be. She"d finally smiled, blurted outyes , then they"d embraced and celebrated. What had prompted that answer? Oh, yeah, she"d been in love with him. She could be in love with him again, deeply, sincerely, if only he"d wake up to what wasn"t happening between them.
Well, she"d wake him up tonight, one way or another.
Filima changed out of her fragile seduction costume and into a more practical dress. Not one of her newer ones; the bas.e.m.e.nt and the tunnel were a filthy mess, so there was no sense in wrecking anything nice. No need for anything alluring, either. If he hadn"t noticed her new sleeping gown, he certainly wouldn"t be swayed by anything else in her wardrobe. She slipped on st.u.r.dy shoes, too, being disinclined to collecting stubbed toes while wandering around in the dark down there.
Thankfully, the hallway was clear. Good. She had no fondness for every servant in the house knowing her private business. Gawds, the whole town would hear of this brawl before breakfast if she wasn"t careful. She knew rumors were afoot; Velma had told her as much during their occasional lunches together.
"You need to dump him and get back on the road," her best friend from the old days cheerfully advised.
"You don"t need to put up with that kind of c.r.a.p. There"s a hundred other guys out there better than him.
Maybe not as rich, but better."
"I didn"t marry him for money," said Filima. "Not too much, anyway. He was nice at first, really cared for me."
"They all do, honey. Once they get that ring on your finger it changes them. You"re fun to start with, then sooner or later, if they get stupid about it, you become part of the furniture."
"But they"re not all like Botello." "Doesn"t matter to you so long as Botello is like Botello," Velma pointed out. She was very pragmatic about such issues. "Like me and Anton. He"s a good egg, but the moment he drops to one knee and proposes I"m out of there."
"But you could be the overd.u.c.h.ess of Rumpock."
"I"m a person, not a t.i.tle. No thanks. I like being his girlfriend, but "wife" is a job with too many strings attached."
The trouble was, Filimaliked being Lady Filima Botello Darmo. And she liked Botello. Had loved him.
Could love him again. When he wasn"t being such an a.s.s. He"d been an a.s.s for a very long while now.
Time to sort things out one way or another.
Filima eased into the hall, walking sedately so as not to draw attention from some sleepless lackey. It was past midnight and unlikely anyone would be up so late. Two back staircases later and she was in the bas.e.m.e.nt fumbling to light a lantern with the candle she"d brought. She dripped wax all over, but got a good flame going. Not that it was much help down here. Why couldn"t Botello have his pastime in a better section of the house? When this was done, she"d get all the servants organized into a cleaning army and make a serious a.s.sault on this jumble. Gawds, there was junk here going back for generations . . . but if she decided to leave then it wouldn"t be her problem, so why waste effort planning something that might not happen?
Because I don"t want it to be over. If he"d just wake up . . . I"m the best thing that ever happened to him. How could he forget that?
She found the door leading to the secret tunnel and hauled it open. It had been no great surprise to her to learn of its existence; every old house was supposed to have a hidden tunnel. But the adventure stories she"d heard as a child involving romantic trysts or escaping royalty had made them much more exciting or even scary. This stuffy foolishness was just another route to the stables, and a grubby one at that.
The secret chamber was something else again. The first time she"d followed Botello down here, she"d lost him, thinking he"d gone on to the stables to meet up with some woman. Only on the third trip had she noticed the marks in the floor dust, the hairline crack in the wall, and discovered his workroom. She"d felt both relief and annoyance that it was only a second Black Room for him and not a love nest. She"d opened the door just enough to see he was in the midst of some spell, then left in disgust. Well, not this time. There would be no casually dropped questions over dinner about his magical projects, allowing him an opportunity to open up and share-make that confess. He never answered anyway, poring over a book instead. Had she tied some pages to her body he might have looked up once in a while.