by Tom Holt
The newcomer was thinking something through. “You say your husband drank some local milk and you didn’t see him for three days. Did it turn him invisible?”
She laughed. “He was stuck on the toilet, poor old soul. But the water’s all right. Not like the Bristows in that ghastly place in Portugal.”
“I see,” the newcomer said. “So you don’t actually know where you are.”
She found that mildly annoying. “Well, no, not in a point-at-a-map-and-say-you-are-here sense, I suppose not. But it doesn’t actually matter, does it? Home is where the heart is, my gran used to say.”
The newcomer nodded slowly. “I think, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to try phoning again.”
By now she reckoned she could trust him not to loot the place or start pawing the contents of her underwear drawer. She handed him the phone. “You know the way.”
He wasn’t gone long. “Still no answer,” he said sadly.
“Did you leave a message?”
He shook his head. “You said something about a van Goyen portal.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Sorry.” He smiled. “You said there was a whatsit. The way you got here. I’m guessing, since I don’t think I come from this place, I must’ve got here the same way as you. Maybe if I go back through the whatsit, I can find out a bit more.”
That seemed like a sensible idea. “You could try that,” she agreed.
“I think I will, then. Where do I find it?”
“Ah.”
His mouth twitched just a little bit. “Ah?”
“I don’t actually know where it is.”
“Fine.”
“It sort of comes and goes,” she explained. “Probably because of multiverse thingy. But it’s all right, because the little men from the management company deal with all that, as well as doing the deliveries. If you ask them, I’m sure they’ll point you in the right direction.”
“Excellent. Where do I find them?”
Pat frowned. “I couldn’t rightly say,” she admitted. “They come here, we don’t go to them. But we see them most days, when they bring stuff we’ve ordered from home. There’s an old man who looks like Albert Steptoe and a skinny kid who eats all the time.”
Something in that description made the newcomer blink. “Right,” he said.
“You look like something just rang a bell.”
“Very fleeting mental image,” the newcomer said. “Came and went in a flash. Which would suggest I’ve met these people at some point.”
“So you must’ve come through the whatsit, like you just said.”
“Probably something like that.” There was a faraway look on his face, and she got the feeling he was preoccupied with something else. “So when are these men likely to come here next?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m expecting a Waitrose delivery, but that usually comes on a Thursday, and I know Barry’s sent away for some DVDs and a new golf umbrella from Amazon, but if I know him he’ll have chosen the Super Saver delivery to save a few pennies, and that always takes ever such a long time.” A terrible thought struck her as she spoke. The newcomer was, after all, One of Us, helpless and alone in a strange land. The sacred laws of hospitality would, therefore, seem to apply. Fine, she was all in favour of sacred laws, provided they didn’t park themselves in her home for three to six days, needing to be fed, housed and entertained. But if the stranger were to look at her with those soft brown eyes and say, I don’t suppose I could possibly wait here till they show up next, I promise I won’t be a nuisance, what excuse could she possibly make?
An ounce of pre-emption is worth a pound of cure. “Here’s a thought,” she said. “Terry and Molly Barrington live just down the road from us, and they’re always sending off for stuff. You could try popping across to their place. Then, if they aren’t expecting anything, you can come back and wait here. How would that be?”
“It sounds like a very good idea. How far away is their house?”
“Actually, it’s a sort of tower. You can see it from our front door.”
Which was perfectly true, on a clear day. And it couldn’t be much more than thirty miles, forty-five at the outside, and he’d have the flash of the sunlight on the tower battlements to guide him every step of the way, so not much risk of getting lost. And the Barringtons liked having people to stay, they’d said so often enough. “I’ll make you some sandwiches,” she said, as much to her conscience as to the newcomer. “We’ve got some cold chicken from the weekend.”
After he’d gone, she sat by the pool for a bit, reading her book. Several times she could have sworn the damn plant tried to tickle her ankles with its horrid fronds, but, whenever she looked at it, it was perfectly still.
Ask anyone who knows them what single word springs to mind when you say wraiths, and chances are they’ll say aaargh, whereupon you’ll say apart from that, and they’ll frown and reply, well actually it’s two words, does that count? The two words in question are work ethic.
The Slaves of the Curse are the willing horses of Evil, the grafters, the first to arrive and the last to leave. If Evil had bank holidays, wraiths would spend them at the office, or pounding the trail in all weathers, uncomplaining, conscientious, always putting the job and the outfit first. Some say they do it for the uniform. Others, more cynical, say they have no choice, because of the dark spell that binds and possesses them, and there’s an element of truth in that. The power of the rings they wear has long since eaten away the last vestiges of individuality, transforming them into little more than extensions of the Dark Mind. A hand, the cynics say, could no more disobey the brain than a wraith point out that actually it’s owed six weeks’ paid holiday from last year, and if He wants it done so badly, why doesn’t he do it Himself?
Nearly all wraiths. There are a few who aren’t quite so remorselessly enthralled; and it was one of these who happened to be on duty at the station house when the Black One himself came stomping in through the door.
Because of the sense-of-duty thing, nobody in the Hierarchy expects wraiths to make themselves deliberately inconspicuous when they’re on call; and an unscrupulous officer could use that to her advantage. When the adamantine door flew open and the Black Voice yelled, “Shop!”, the officer in question was huddled by the fire trying to keep warm, mostly because her mantle and hood were hanging on a hook behind the door.
I’m going to be in so much trouble, she thought. But possibly not, if she kept perfectly still and quiet as a little mouse. Requiring no breath, she had no need to hold it.
The Dark Lord was looking round the room. Then he stopped. He was looking straight at her.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “You’re out of uniform.”
Oh, snot, she thought. So it’s true about the Black Eye.
“Let me guess,” the Terrible One went on. “It’s honking it down outside, so you’ve hung your kit up to dry, which accounts for why you’re sitting in front of the stove with nothing on. Which is fair enough. Yes?”
She tried to agree, but all that came out was a little squeaking noise.
“Thought so,” said the Voice of the Abyss. “Here.” He threw her a blanket. “I have to say, this is not the sort of conduct I expect from one of the Enthralled. Skiving off, were you?”
Here it comes. “Yes, sir.”
The Dark Face grinned. “Good on you,” he said. “If there’s one thing makes me want to throw up, it’s sucking up to the boss. A shortcoming,” he added, “to which your lot are distressingly prone. You won’t catch a goblin brown-nosing, I can tell you that.” He sat down on the table and let his legs swing. “You the duty spook?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded. “Got a job for you. Right up your alley, I should think.”
“Yes, sir!”
Mordak pulled a face. “Oh, don’t you start. Try and look a little bit disgruntled and pissed off, if only for my sake. Now, then. In the deepest, darkest cell in the lowest level of
the dungeons, there’s a goblin.” He drew a claw across his throat. “Capisce?”
“Sir.”
“Jolly good. Make a good job of it, and there’s a good chance promotion—”
He must’ve caught the look of dismay that flicked across her face before she could stop it.
“—will pass you by for some considerable time,” he continued smoothly. “Failure, on the other hand, will see you bumped up to captain so fast your feet won’t touch. Do I make myself clear?”
“Sir.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” he said, a split second too late. She froze the salute as best she could, and he nodded his appreciation. “And you can tell your fellow see-throughs that the next one of them who clicks his heels at me had better be clog-dancing. All right, carry on.”
She didn’t manage to catch her breath until he’d been gone for best part of a minute. The Dark Lord! Himself! Of all the station houses and guard posts in all the dark strongholds in all the Realms, why did he have to walk into hers? Not quite what she’d expected, though; maybe that was this New Evil everyone was so snotty about. If so, she decided, she was all for it.
Now, then. Execute a goblin; shouldn’t be any problem with that.
She caught herself shivering, even though she’d put on her mantle and hood. Shouldn’t be any problem, she repeated firmly to herself, we did it often enough in class, and it can’t be much different with a real one. Except that the ones we did in class weren’t, well, alive. Shouldn’t make any difference, though, should it?
Should it? No, of course not. Rule one: the wraith who’s tired of killing is tired of life. She knew that all too well, having once had to copy it out a thousand times for running in the corridors. It had been lodged in her mind for so long that she’d never given it a moment’s thought. Even now, if she closed her eyes, she could see good old Miss, or, rather, her cardigan, sensible shoes and walnut-sized fake pearls, leading Year Four in the chant: What do we do? What are we for? Killing the foes of dear old Snordor! She could remember the pride and the nervousness as she walked out in front of the whole school on Speech Day to recite the Fifty-Two Vulnerable Points; did it well, too, got them all right and never a stutter. Well, now. Finally the time had come to put all that into practice. Good.
Um.
Pull yourself together, girl, and get on with it. She went to her locker and got out her dagger, a genuine Snorgul-blade, deeply engraved with Black Runes; they spelt out her name and class number and the year she’d won Best Improver in Grade Three Stealth & Menaces. I expect you’ll get lots of use out of it, the Headmistress had told her, with a big wink; and they’d shaken hands, all very grown up, and she’d backed away blushing furiously as all her classmates clapped and cheered. She slipped the scabbard into the loops on her belt and straightened her hood in front of the mirror. For the old school, she thought. You can’t let them down. Not Miss Most Likely To Succeed of FA 2376.
Ten minutes later she was standing outside a cell door, accompanied by a petrified looking goblin captain. “That’s her,” the captain said. “In there.”
“What did you just say?”
“I said, that’s—”
“Her?”
“See? You heard me the first time.”
“Don’t be stupid. It can’t be a her. There are no goblin females.”
The captain snickered. “Well, in about a minute and a half there won’t be. She’s the only one. Prototype,” he explained. “Didn’t work out, see. So, clear up the mess and move on.”
That sort of nipped at her, like a small, aggressive dog. “What went wrong? Did she turn out sickly and weak?”
“Look for yourself.”
She threw back her hood, then peered through the window in the cell door. Then she turned back to the captain. “What’s wrong with that?” she said.
The captain shrugged. “They don’t bother explaining stuff like that to the likes of me. But my theory is, they’re scared.”
“Scared.”
“Too right. I mean, if they made a whole bunch more like her, where would the rest of us be? Out of a job, is where. Next thing you know, they’d be taking over.”
Wraiths do not debate policy with goblins, so she couldn’t very well say any of the things that came rocketing into her mind at that point; just as well, because another thing wraiths simply don’t do is criticise the decisions of the Dark Hierarchy. Fine. “You,” she said. “Go away.”
The goblin saluted smartly and ran away down the corridor. In his haste he’d forgotten to give her the key to the cell door. Not such an insurmountable problem as you might think. She leaned forward and blew a jet of the Black Breath into the keyhole. Then she gave the door a smart shove with the heel of her hand. The wards of the lock snapped like icicles, and the door swung inwards.
The she-goblin looked up at her and frowned. Not afraid, just puzzled.
“Listen. Can you understand me?”
The she-goblin started to nod, then appeared to remember something and shook her head. Then she pulled a face and said, “Drat.”
“You can talk.”
“Yes, but the—somebody told me not to.”
“Listen very carefully. I’ve been sent to kill you.”
The she-goblin’s eyes grew very round. “Oh. Why?”
“Because you’re better than they are, and you’re a girl.” She waited to see how the she-goblin took it. A slight frown, and a nod that seemed to say told you so. “I don’t think that’s fair,” she added. “Do you?”
“I think it’s horrid.”
“Yes, well. Actually, I think it’s stupid. So this is what we’re going to do.”
The goblin captain was in the guardroom with his feet up, eating pickled lips and reading an interesting article in Bows & Arrows when the door swung open and the wraith strode in. He resisted the temptation to jump to attention. “All done?”
“What do you think?”
“That’s all right, then. I’ll send my lads along to clear away.”
A faint, scratchy noise, like fingernails on desiccated skin. “You can if you like.”
The captain frowned. “Problem?”
“She was a tricky one,” the wraith replied. “Steel wouldn’t touch her, not even a Snorgul-blade. So I froze her with the Black Breath. You’re welcome to try moving the body, but don’t expect to have any fingers left afterwards.”
The captain pulled a why’s-it-always-me face. “Fine,” he said. “What do you suggest?”
“Not my job, waste disposal,” the wraith said haughtily. “I leave the bagging and tagging to the little people, such as yourself. However,” she added, “if it was my problem, which it isn’t, I’d get half a dozen other ranks I never really liked very much, tell ’em to wrap up nice and warm, and send them in there with a couple of long hooks, a handcart and an old door or something like that. Haul the dear departed onto the door, lift the door up on the cart, wheel it round to the garbage chute and shoot it out the side of the mountain for the crows to get rid of. Only whatever you do, don’t get any closer than you can help, not unless you believe frostbite will enhance your appearance.”
Some time later she scrambled up the foothills of the mountain, to the hole in the rock through which the garbage chute emptied out. She was only just in time. She’d barely draped the net across the outlet when an ominous rumbling made her jump back out of the way. A massive dark shape shot past her and hit the net, which stopped it. She gave it a quick look, then settled down in the shade and read a book for an hour or so, until the Horrible Yellow Face emerged from behind the mountain peak and bathed the outlet in warm golden light. She read a few more pages, then looked up. Water was starting to trickle down the chute in a thin, steady stream. She closed her book and put it away in the folds of her robe, then said, “Hello.”
“C-c-c…”
“Hold still,” she said. “You’re not properly thawed out yet.”
“C-c-c…”
“I bet you are, b
ut there’s not much I can do about it till you’re fully defrosted. Till then, don’t move and think happy thoughts.”
Some time after that, she threw the she-goblin a rope so she could haul herself off the chute, and stood by with a thick wool blanket. “And don’t moan,” she said. “I stuck my neck out for you. If anyone ever finds out what I just did, I have an idea that immortality will prove to be something of a mixed blessing.”
The she-goblin gazed blearily at her over the hem of the blanket. “Thanks,” she said, and sneezed.
“Oh, that’s all right. I’m still not entirely sure why I’m doing all this, bearing in mind it constitutes being nice, and I’m supposed to be the baddest of the bad.” She shrugged. “I guess it counts as treachery and betrayal of trust, and you can’t get more evil than that, can you?”
The she-goblin was picking ice out of her hair. “What do I do now?”
“Absolutely no idea. Go out there, be whatever you want to be, fulfil your potential. Just do me a favour and fulfil it a long, long way away from here, all right?”
“I promise.”
“Good. Well, we bad girls have got to stick together, I guess.”
She waited until the she-goblin was out of sight in the eaves of the wood, then turned round to head back to the fortress. She went about ten yards, then stopped dead.
“Um,” she said.
Mordak, the Dark Lord himself, was sitting cross-legged on a large rock directly ahead of her, nibbling the honey and almond coating off a slice of Swiss troll. “Hello again,” he said. “You’re supposed to be on duty.”
“Um.”
“It’s all right.” Mordak sighed. “I know exactly what you just did, so please, don’t bother trying to lie to me, because I can see right through you. Or, rather,” he added, “I can’t, but you know what I mean.” He threw the rest of the troll behind a shrivelled thorn bush. “Oh dear,” he said. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Um.”
“Rhetorical question.” He laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not going to eat you. In fact,” he said, stifling a yawn with the back of his paw, “I’m not going to do anything to you at all.” He paused for a reaction but she was too frozen to move. “Ask me why.”
