Deep Secret (26 page)

Such was my distraction that the nearest I got to the panel I had meant to attend was when I edged through an agitated knot of people outside the main hall clustering round Tina Gianetti.

“I tell you it’s a migraine!” Gianetti was yelling. I remember she looked very unwell.

“Nonsense, darling. You should know a hangover when you see one at your age,” said a man in a suit next to her – her agent? boyfriend? both? “Take another aspirin.”

“I tell you I am incapable of chairing this or any other panel today!” Gianetti screamed. “They’re all futile anyway. All they do is bitch.”

“Why not go in there and see how you do, Ms Gianetti?” Maxim was suggesting in the soothing tones of pure desperation, as I edged by.

Later on in my rovings, I learnt that this was what she did. I met Kees Punt in the sandwich bar. “And that was just about
all
she did,” he told me with his mouth full. “She leant back in her chair and let the speakers get on with it. It was a great joke, because each of them bobbed up and said that their own book was the only good fantasy ever written – except for the great Ted Mallory, who said he was not going to compete.”

“He had a hangover too, I think,” I said.

Hangovers or not, both Tina Gianetti and Ted Mallory happened to be in the hotel foyer that afternoon when Will made his unintentionally dramatic entry.

Rupert Venables continued

I
went down to the foyer to meet Will, still trying to digest my discoveries of the morning. I was not happy with myself. There was still no sign of Andrew and, as for Maree, I found I was actively avoiding her. I had seen her in the distance several times and had deliberately gone the other way. I checked the foyer anxiously as I came down the stairs, in case she was there. At first sight, the place seemed empty of anyone but the doll-like Finnish receptionist, Odile. Outside the big glass doors, the wide space of the market street was likewise empty. Will was to arrive immediately outside those doors. I put myself where I could be sure of seeing him the instant he came, ready to make a diversion in the unlikely event of Odile’s noticing something strange about his arrival, and then checked the mirrors in the ceiling for hidden observers.

And there they both were. Tina Gianetti was crouched in a chair behind a potted palm tree to one side of the foyer, undoubtedly hiding from her suited boyfriend. She seemed to be holding an icepack to her forehead. Ted Mallory was asleep behind a fern on the other side. I winced a bit, by association, at the sight of Mallory, but I didn’t think either of them was capable of noticing much. I strolled about, hands in pockets, waiting, unworried by anything but the oddness of Andrew and my trouble over Maree.

Almost at once, the long-suffering Maxim Hough bounded down the stairs into the foyer area, saying loudly, “OK, OK, we’ll have it out here, Wendy. I don’t want the whole con stirred up again.”

He was followed by a large lady, whining belligerently. “There’s nothing to have out, Maxim. I was clearly told I was running my women writers’ workshop now in Universe Three.”

She was followed by Mervin Thurless, who was yelling, “I don’t care what you decide! Just get this obese dyke out of my workshop!”

“I’m not standing here to be insulted, Maxim!” Wendy trumpeted.

Ted Mallory sat up and scowled. Tina Gianetti curled down further in her chair. Maxim ran his hands through his blond Egyptian curls and got himself between Thurless and the large Wendy. “It’s a clear case of double-booking,” he said, raising and lowering both hands in imploring chopping motions.

And there was an almighty squeal of tyres from outside the glass doors. Next second, something large and four-legged banged through those doors, crossed the foyer too fast for me to see it clearly and vanished up the stairs in a spatter of blood. The receptionist came to curiously robotic life. She swung round, pointing stiffly, and cried out, “No horses allowed in this hotel! No horses in the hotel!”

“My God!” said Thurless. “Someone just rode a horse through here!”

In the overhead mirror, I had a sight of Tina Gianetti, bolt upright and staring from dark-pouched eyes. At the same moment, I was seized, fiercely and tremulously, from behind. I spun round to find myself nose-to-nose with Ted Mallory, who was staring much like Gianetti.

“Tell me I haven’t got DTs, man!” he said chokingly. “Tell me I didn’t just see a centaur come through here!”

A
centaur
! I thought. Oh my God! Simultaneously, I realised that Wendy had fainted. She was in a rather large heap on the floor, with Maxim and Thurless crouching over her. In a moment of panic and inspiration, I remembered things I had not even known I had read in today’s convention programme. “It’s the masquerade tonight,” I told Ted Mallory. “Someone’s in costume already.”

“But it was pouring with blood! I thought I saw it pouring with blood!” he said.

“Tomato ketchup,” I told him soothingly. “Tomato ketchup.”

The glass doors clashed again behind him. Will staggered through them, white as a sheet, and stared at me beseechingly. Beyond the doors I could see his pseudo-Land Rover crookedly stopped halfway up the shallow steps outside. For a nasty instant I thought Will was injured too.

“It’s all right,” I said to Ted Mallory. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll look into it, I mean. You go and look after Gianetti and the receptionist.” I pushed him that way. Gianetti was now laughing in a way that sounded like oncoming hysterics and Odile was green.

He shambled off. I dashed over to Will. “A centaur!” Will said. “I hit a centaur, Rupert! We both came through at the same spot at the same moment and I
hit
him, Rupert!”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll go and find him, see how badly he’s hurt. You get that vehicle out of sight in the staff car park and then come to my room – number 555.”

Will nodded shakily and staggered for the doors again. I avoided the efforts of Maxim, Thurless and Ted Mallory to grab me and demand explanations I couldn’t give, and sprinted up the stairs.

It was not hard to track the centaur. He was bleeding quite badly. The carpet was printed with small neat crescents, widely spread in a panicked gallop, accompanied by a red trail to the left of them that glistened like Janine’s jumper. I raced along it, wishing more and more devoutly that I was any real good at healing, followed it as it veered sideways – the waiter who had been pushing the tall trolley that caused the veer was still there, and stared at me as piteously as Will had. “Masquerade. Tomato ketchup,” I told him as I swerved round him and his trolley – and found myself in the main function hall.

There had been a panel in progress here and this was now in total confusion. But at least, I thought as I sprinted amongst the milling audience, these people, as befitted fantasy fans, were reacting with amazement rather than panic. “Masquerade,” I told a large man with F
ANGS!
on his T-shirt, who accosted me with questions. “Slight accident. Horse bolted.”

“What a
marvellous
costume!” cried a small lady with O
OOK
on her shirt. “This has made my day!”

Well that makes one of us! I thought. “Good. Great,” I gasped, zigzagging along the trail, giving out soothing cries of “Tomato ketchup! Masquerade!” as I went.

No one seemed to have tried to stop the centaur. Probably just as well. Someone could have been kicked. The trail swerved to the far doors, in a speckle of crimson and a smallish red handprint, and out into the corridor beyond. I raced round leftwards after it, among mirrors and round a right-angle turn, along again and round, and then round two more corners. Too many right-angles. I swore as I ran. Someone had been messing with the node again. Finally I whirled into the area above the foyer again where the lifts were. The nearer lift had smears of blood on the door. Its door was shut and the green arrow indicated the lift was in use, going up. The hurt centaur seemed to have gone to ground in the lift. It was hard to blame him, but someone losing blood like that had to be in urgent need of attention. I rammed my thumb on the call button and started hauling the lift back downwards, Magid-fashion.

It was seriously hard to haul. I was sweating with the effort and the lift was merely creeping down when Will panted up beside me, looking thoroughly distraught.

“The centaur’s in there?” he gasped. I nodded. “You’ve got to get him down then,” Will said. “They hide away to die when they’re hurt bad.”

“Then
help
me, damn you!” I snarled.

“Sorry,” Will said. He clapped his hand rather tremulously over mine and we both hauled. The centaur was apparently an extremely powerful magic user. We had to pull madly for a while. Then the lift came down with a rush. Its door swept open. We stared.

Maree and Nick Mallory were in there, supporting the centaur, one on either side. I am not used to centaurs. There was a moment when I saw a small bay horse with its head hanging down out of sight, wedged sideways across the lift, and its black tail swishing almost in my face, while its rider sat on the horse’s neck with one thin brown arm over Maree’s shoulders and the other arm held by Nick. The rider’s head was resting against Nick’s chest. Long black hair draped over Nick’s supporting hands. The human head was outlined against Nick’s shirt, Asian brown and exquisite in profile, and a large dark eye, almond-shaped and fringed with long black lashes, rolled sideways at us in terror. Though the face was larger than a human face all over, I think my first thought was, What a beautiful boy!
Two
beautiful boys. Nick, though he was much paler-skinned, had the same sort of dark good looks.

Then things snapped into focus. Horse and boy became one being, with a lot of blood on the lift floor. Maree jabbed at her glasses and raised her chin across the centaur’s bowed back. “I’m a trainee vet,” she said. “We
were
trying to get him to my room for first aid until you two fools interfered.”

“Take him to
my
room,” I said. “It’s nearer the lifts.” I hauled Will in behind me and wedged us both into the lift alongside the centaur. Will jabbed the button marked 5 and we shot upwards at an unholy speed. “Will hit him with his car,” I explained.

“Then he’ll be horribly bruised too,” Maree said. “Shit.”

The centaur’s head stirred against Nick’s chest. “Knarros sent me,” he said. He had a pleasant husky voice. “I was to come here because the Emperor’s dead.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m the Magid in charge. You came to the right place.”

The centaur became agitated at this. One rear hoof lashed the lift door and the husky voice cracked as he said, “You don’t understand! I have to fetch the right person! Knarros is forbidden to talk to anyone but the right person!”

“Steady, steady!” Maree said. She sounded like Stan putting a stopper on me.

I said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve arranged to go and talk to Knarros this evening.”

That was all there was time for before the lift banged to a halt on Floor 5. And it was just like our current luck that, for the first time ever, there was quite a crowd of people waiting to go down. About half of them were already in costume for the Masquerade. I stared out at a towering papier-mâché and plastic alien, a gentleman in Tudor court dress, two young men in almost nothing but boots, basques and bras, a slender girl apparently clad in a bead curtain, and at ordinary people clustered among them.

As Will and I edged out of the lift and Maree and Nick carefully manoeuvred the centaur round so that he could come out forward, all these people broke out cheering and clapping.

“
Ex
cellent!” they shouted. “Fantastic costume! Never thought of hiring a horse!”

Possibly this was because, as the centaur turned, his unwounded side was always towards them. The hurt side was towards me. Flaps of living horsehide hung down from it. I felt hurt too, with a terrible sympathetic soreness, and rather sick. At least the bleeding seemed to have stopped, although the lift floor was a marsh of blood. I slammed its door shut behind us all, sealed it Magid-fashion, and made sure that lift would not move from this floor until I was ready to deal with it. Will hurriedly brought the other lift up instead. The centaur was near fainting by this time. His hooves staggered and his legs splayed. Since the variously dressed folk getting into the other lift were all staring over their shoulders at him, Will said, smiling inanely, “He’s got to go away and practise, you know.”

“Well done, Nick!” the alien said, bending to enter the lift. He seemed to have conflated the centaur and Nick, regardless of the fact that the two were side by side. I thought, as I passed Maree my room key and got under the centaur’s left arm in her place, that it was the clearest case I had ever seen of someone simply not believing their eyes.

But Nick was highly annoyed by the confusion. He said, in an angry blare, “Before this, I thought the people at this con were the only ones I’d ever met who
understood
when things weren’t ordinary. But they’re just as bad as
anyone
.”