The Anubis Gates (40 page)

“Well,” answered someone else dubiously, “they think you’re out of the country. How would you explain your presence here?”

There was something about the second voice that profoundly upset the crawler, and it sat up so quickly that it left the ground and hovered for a few moments like a nearly worn out helium balloon, and when it touched down again it kicked strongly and flew twenty feet into the air so as to be able to see.

Two men were walking across the field away from the burning tents, and the slowly descending creature stared in horror at the taller of them.
Yes, very tall,
it thought,
and—Isis!—a full mane and beard that seem to be blond! But by what damnable aid did he get out of that inn? And back to now? Who is this man Doyle?

It began flailing and swimming to get back to the ground quicker, for it had to follow him. If there was any spark of purpose left in the deteriorated ka that had once been Doctor Romany, it was to see, finally, Doyle dead.

The induced fever was breaking, and Doctor Romanelli stared angrily at his placidly sleeping patient.
Damn you, Romany,
he thought,
let me know how it proceeds. This fever story won’t hold up much longer—I’m going to have to either kill him or let him recover.

The doctor laid his palm on Lord Byron’s forehead, and swore softly, for it felt cool. The sleeper shifted, and Romanelli tiptoed hastily out of the room.
Sleep on, my lord, he thought; for a little while longer—at least until I hear from my incompetent duplicate.
He strode into the disordered room he was using for a workshop, looked hopefully at the lit but inert Candle of Far Speaking, then sighed and let his gaze drift out the open window to where the sun was sinking over the hills beyond Missolonghi. The broad Gulf of Patras was already in shadow, and several fishing boats were plying for home, their triangular sails bellying in the evening breeze.

A sputtering from the table made him whirl and stare at the candle, which had begun to glow more brightly. “Romany!” he called into the flame. “Do you succeed?”

The candle flame was silent, and though it was glowing more brightly every second, it had not taken on the spherical shape.

“Romany!” the wizard repeated, louder now, not caring if he woke Byron. “Shall I kill him now?”

There was no reply. Suddenly the almost blindingly bright candle bent in the middle, like a beckoning finger—Doctor Romanelli grunted in surprise—then it split softly open in the middle and spilled a steaming flood of wax out onto the table top. As the candle folded down to a sizzling puddle Romanelli saw that the whole snaky length of the wick was glowing yellow-white.

Damn me,
he thought,
that means Romany’s candle is at this very moment burning up. His tent must have caught fire. Could he have lost control of the yags? Yes, that must be it—they got too excited, and burned down his camp. There’s no way they’ll be ready to burn London tomorrow, then; they’ll be sated and sluggish for weeks. Romany, you blundering, damned… forgery!

He waited until the wick stopped glowing and the puddle of wax had begun to scum over as it cooled, and then he went to the closet and unbuckled a trunk and carefully lifted out of it another candle. He unwrapped it, lifted the frosted glass hood of the room’s lantern to touch it alight, and in a few moments the new candle’s wick bloomed with the magical round flame.

“Master!” Romanelli barked into it.

“Yes, Romany,” answered the Master’s groaning voice at once. “Are the yags agreeable? Is the toy sufficiently—”

“Damn it, this is Romanelli. Something’s gone wrong at the London end. My candle just melted when I tried to contact him—you understand? His candle has burned up somehow. I think he must have lost control of the yags. I don’t know whether to kill Byron or not.”

“Roman-Romanelli? Burned up? Killed? What?”

Romanelli repeated his news several times, until the Master had finally grasped the situation.

“No,” the Master said. “No, don’t kill Byron. The plan may still be salvageable. Go to London and find out what’s happened.”

“But it will take me at least a month to get to England,” Romanelli protested, “and by then—”

“No,” the Master interrupted. “Don’t travel—go there instantly. Be there tonight.”

The last glowing sliver of the sun winked out behind the Patras hills, and there were no more boats out on the gulf. After a pause, “Tonight?” Romanelli echoed in a hoarse whisper. “I… I can’t afford that kind of thing. Magic like that… if I’m to be expected to function at my best when I get there… “

“Will it kill you?” grated the Master’s voice out of the flame.

Sweat stood out on Romanelli’s forehead. “You know it won’t,” he said, “quite.”

“Then stop wasting time.”

The little man walking along Leadenhall Street moved with a brash confidence that didn’t suit his appearance, for in the light from occasional windows and doorways that he passed, his clothes looked slept in, and his face, though bright-eyed and tightly grinning, was haggardly lined, and one ear was completely gone.

Many shops had closed for the night, but the new Depilatory Parlor was still spilling light across the cobblestones from its open doors, and the grinning little man entered and strode up to the long counter. There was a bell to ring for service, and he rang it as rapidly as if someone had promised him a shilling for each ping he could produce before being forcibly stopped.

A clerk hurried up on the other side of the counter, eyeing the little man carefully. “You want to stop playing with that?” he said loudly.

The ringing ceased. “I wishes to speak with yer employer,” the little man announced. “Take me to him.”

“If you’ve come to have some hair removed, you don’t need to talk to the boss. I can—”

“The boss I asked for, sonny, and the boss I’ll speak to. It’s to do with a friend of mine, you see—he sent me here, as it were. He can’t travel about because he—” and the man paused to give the clerk a massive wink, “—grows hair, terrible thick, all over himself. Eh? You understand? And don’t, sonny, try to go for yer tranky gun. Take me to the boss.”

The clerk blinked and licked his lips. “Uh… damn … okay, yes. Will you wait while I—no. Uh, will you come this way, please, sir?” He lifted away a hinged section of the counter so the little man could come inside. “Right through here. Now you won’t… do anything crazy back here, will you?”

“Not me, sonny,” the man said, evidently surprised and hurt by the very thought.

The two of them walked through a rear door and down a dim corridor, and were halted at the end of it by a man who stood up from a stool when they approached. “What’s this?” he asked, his hand going quickly to a bellpull rope. “Clients aren’t allowed back here, Pete, you know that.”

“This guy just now walked in,” said Pete hastily, “and he says—”

“A friend of mine grows fur all over his body,” the little man broke in impatiently. “Now take me to your bloody boss, will you?”

The hall guard gave Pete an accusing look.

Pete shrugged helplessly. “He… knew about it somehow. Told me not to go for it.”

After a moment of thought the guard let go of the bell rope. “Very well,” he said. “Wait here while I tell him.” He opened the door behind him and stepped through, shutting it carefully behind him, but the rope hadn’t even stopped swinging when he opened it again. “Pete,” he said, “back to the shop. You, sir, may follow me.”

“Aye aye, skipper.” The disheveled little man grinned and stepped smartly forward.

Beyond the door was a narrow carpeted stairway, and at the top was a hallway with several doors visible along it. The next to nearest one was open, and the guard waved toward it. “There’s his office,” he said, and stepped back. The little man brushed his joke wig hair back with ridiculous daintiness, then walked into the room.

An old man with hard, bright eyes stood up from behind a cluttered desk and pointed to a chair. “Sit down, sir,” he said in an impressively deep voice, “and let’s take it as given that I am thoroughly armed, shall we? Now I understand you—”

He paused, and looked more closely at his visitor’s face. “D-Doyle?” he said wonderingly. His hand darted out and turned up the wick of the lamp on the desk. “My God,” he breathed. “It is you! But… I see—I must have somehow overestimated Benner’s ruthless self-interest. He lied when he said he killed you.” His confidence was coming back, but there had been real fear in his face for a moment.

The other man was sitting back, grinning delightedly. “Oh, aye, he lied, right enough. But you might say I am dead.” He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. “Poisoned.”

A bit of the fear was again visible in the old man’s eyes, and to cover it he spoke harshly. “Let’s not indulge in riddles. What do you mean?”

The grin left the little man’s face. “I mean if I throws away me razor I won’t be bald much longer.” He held up one lumpy hand. “Can ye see the whiskers between me fingers? They’ve started already.” His cheeks accordioned back as he bared all his teeth in a savage smile. “And let’s… take it as given, sir, that I can leave here any time. If I have to flee, this body will stay here, but there’ll suddenly be a very scared and confused soul in it—and I’ll be miles away.”

Darrow went pale. “Jesus, it’s you. Very well, no, don’t flee, I don’t want to do you any harm.” He stared hard into the eyes that had been Doyle’s. “What did you do with Doyle?”

“I was in yer Steerforth Benner’s body, and I’d been in it long enough so’s it was furry as a bear; I ate a whole lot o’ strychnine and also a drug that makes you see things and act crazy, and then I chewed my tongue up real good—so he’d not have a chance to talk to nobody—and then just switched places with him.”

“Good God,” Darrow whispered in an awed tone. “That… poor son of a bitch… “

He shook his head. “Well, let the dead bury the dead. I’ve come a long way to find you—to strike a bargain with you. Damn it, I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my mind a hundred times, but now I can’t think where to begin. Let’s see—for one thing, I can cure your hyperpilosity, the all-over fur, any time, and as many times as you please, so from now on you’ll be free to take a new body only when you choose to—you won’t have to anymore. But that’s not the main item I want to bargain with.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Listen to this extract from a book I own. ‘It seems,’” he read aloud, “‘a man at another table took exception to some—as I heard the tale later—heathen sentiments the stranger had voiced, and seized the front of the offender’s shirt in order the more forcefully to convey his displeasure; the shirt tore, and the man’s breast being exposed, it was remarked that the hitherto concealed skin was covered with new whiskers, such as would show on a man’s face after not shaving for a couple of days. Mr.—” Darrow looked up and smiled. “I can’t let you know his real name yet. Let’s call him Mr. Anonymous. ‘Mr. Anonymous,’” he resumed, “‘exclaimed to the company, “I believe it’s Dog-Face Joe; Seize him and take off those gloves.” The gloves were promptly pulled off of the struggling man’s hands, which proved to be likewise bewhiskered. Mr. Anonymous silenced the uproar and declared that if justice was to be visited on this notorious murderer it would have to be done at once, without involving the slow wheels of the law, and so the man was dragged out into the yard behind the pub, and hanged from a rope which was tied to one of the warehouse cranes.’” Darrow put the paper down and smiled at the other man.

“An entertaining fiction,” pronounced the man in Doyle’s body.

“Yes,” agreed Darrow, “it’s fiction now. But in a few months it will be fact—history.” He smiled. “This is going to be a long story, Joe. Would you like some brandy?”

Again Doyle’s face grinned. “Don’t mind if I do,” Amenophis Fikee said.

In the sudden silence Horrabin, his sling still swinging from his violent gesticulations of a few moments before, stared at the shattered corpse on the flagstones beside the table and realized that the fallen beggar lord had put control of the situation back within his reach. He grinned merrily, clapped his painted hands and cried, “He didn’t quite make it to the table, did he?” The clown knew he had his audience’s attention again, so he reached unhurriedly for a joint of meat on his plate, gnawed it thoughtfully, and then tossed it all the way to the back of the hall, where the shambling derelicts fell upon it with a satisfactory noise of growling and scuffling. “None of you,” said the clown quietly, “will ever take anything from me but what I let you have.”

He looked up at the remaining beggar lords. Their spider web hammocks were still swaying back and forth across the abyss, though they’d stopped yelling and waving and now just peered cautiously down, their eyes glittering in the smoky red glow from the oil lamps. Horrabin’s gaze dropped to the corpse, and then swung to the thief lords sitting at the long table. Miller, the one who had been loudest in the mutinous uproar, avoided meeting his eyes.

“Carrington,” Horrabin said softly.

“Aye,” said his lieutenant, stepping forward. He still limped from the beating he’d taken in one of the Haymarket brothels, but the bandages were gone, and his look of frustrated anger was tonight especially intense.

“Kill Miller for me.” As the suddenly pale and gasping thief lord kicked his chair back and scrambled to his feet, Carrington drew a pistol from his belt, poked it casually in Miller’s direction and fired. The ball struck Miller in the back of the throat through his open mouth, punching out a hole over his collar.

Horrabin spread his hands as the body hit the stones. “You see,” he said loudly before the tumult could start up again—then went on more quietly, “I’ll feed all of you… one way or the other.”

The clown smiled. It had been good theater. But where was Doctor Romany? Had all his promises, as Miller had insisted, been lies to manipulate the London thieves into furthering some privately profitable scheme of his own? Horrabin, who knew more than the rest about what was supposed to have happened, was concealing a disquiet greater than Miller’s had been. Was the king assassinated yet? If so, why hadn’t any of the clown’s surface runners reported it? Or was the news being suppressed? Where was Romany?