John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

And, when your hand does come across the huge, ungainly W-shaped hinge, it is important to remember that you are in a corridor only three feet high, because if you raise your head too fast, or try to jump for joy, you will bang your head with a loud noise on the stones above you. Ouch.

Good thing you are still wearing your lucky aviatrix cap. The leather, with all that hair tucked under it, offers some protection.

And then a voice comes: “What noise was that noise, friend Fraud?”

The voice of Mr. ap Cymru answered him: “What noise, Excellency?”

“Hush! It may be our little wandering wanton, back from her peripatetic peregrinations.”

A moment of silence crawled past even more slowly than I had been crawling. Fear, and the bump on my head, had cleared my wits somewhat. I could hear the voices had come through the wall; through the very hidden door panel I had my hand on.

After a while, ap Cymru said, “Excellency, I don’t think…”

“ ‘Then you shouldn’t speak!’ Aha Ha! Loyalest of all my disloyal loyalists, I hereby forbid you from feeding me such obtusely obvious straight lines again. I declare this declaration to be an imperial one, and I will backdate it to this day once I am Imperator. Now be quiet more quietly.”

I moved my hand back and forth across the panel. A metal nub came under my thumb, with a smaller nub projecting from it. When I pushed, the metal nub slid in a semicircle, and a peephole opened.

So there actually were peepholes, after all.

The ray of light was brilliant after my long darkness. I put my eye to it, was dazzled for a moment, and then saw where I was.

I was looking at the Common Room. The door was open. Through the door, I could see partway down the corridor, and see the huge oaken door to my room. Even from here, I could see the padlock was open, hanging like a metal question mark, threaded through the eye of the open hasp.

In the Common Room, I saw the one television we were allowed was on, with the sound turned down. It was BBC2, and they were showing a game show. I have no idea what their normal programming is at 2:00 in the morning, but that seemed strange.

Next to a table littered with cigarette butts, a man was standing facing away from me, leaning his bottom, almost sitting, on a long black umbrella. He had on a yellow mackintosh, and, peeping over the edge of his collar and cuffs, I could see the white folds of a heavy wool sweater. From behind, I could tell that he had long black hair, as long as mine.

Despite the heavy cold-weather gear on the upper half of his body, his legs were sheathed in skintight fabric of garish green and black Lycra, like the pants professional bicyclists wear. They came to about midcalf. His feet were bare, except for some athletic tape he had wrapped around his lower calf and the balls of his feet. His toes and ankles were bare.

He had the legs of an athlete; his thighs and calves were knotted with muscle, but sleek and steel-hard, and the skintight leggings showed it off.

For a moment, I thought he had a stiff, black tail on which he rested his weight. But no.

The tightly wound black umbrella on which he half-leaned, half-sat, was one of the type with a large stirrup-shaped handle that unfolds into a tiny stool seat. The handle was unfolded at the moment, and he was using it as designed.

After what I had seen this evening, a man sitting on an umbrella-stick did not seem that odd. Of course, there were several perfectly fine seats and an overstuffed couch in the student Common Room, so maybe it was odd after all.

Tucked under one arm was what looked like a metal Frisbee, or maybe a pie plate. That was odd, just because I wasn’t sure what it was.

When two lengths of electrical cable moved on the floor, and turned out to be not electrical cable at all, but two snakes, one white and one black, things started looking more odd.

Mr. ap Cymru came into view.

He was crawling along the ceiling like a spider.

His arms and legs were twisted backwards in their joints in a fashion that was hard to describe and horrid to look at. His feet were flat on the ceiling, with his heels pointed inward and his toes pointed outward; his knees extended in two great triangles past his bottom. His elbows, likewise, were waving in the air at angles no unbroken human bones could achieve. And his hands—which seemed to be exuding some sticky sap or gunk—were placed so that his fingers were all turned toward him and his thumbs were pointing away from his body. The whole thing looked like something Colin had done to his soldier dolls back when he got tired of them, the ones with fully posable limbs.

OK. This was certainly odd.

Ap Cymru rotated his head through 180 degrees like an owl, and spoke down toward the other man: “Excellency, that noise did not sound like a footstep.”

“Ho hem. Maybe it was the sound of someone’s grade average falling. This is alleged to be a school, you know. It is an excellent place to learn a lesson. Would you like me to teach you a lesson, Fraud?”

“Excellency, I have not betrayed you.”

“And you give me your word, as a traitor?”

“Whom have I betrayed, Excellency?”

“Boreas told you his plans in confidence.”

“Sir, he did not explicitly say not to tell you.”

“Hum hemp hump. Well, I can see that. How could he overlook to say, by-the-by, don’t spill my plans to the one person everyone thinks is dead, buried alive, having fallen farther than an anvil dropped from the zenith can fall in nine times the space that measures day and night, into the Tartarian Pit, after having been shot in the mouth and the eye by the Queen of Huntresses, whose bow of certain death leaves no prey alive? Yes, you are right. An obvious angle. The windbag should have covered it. Hired a lawyer before speaking to you.”

“Lord, why would I lie to you?”

“Why would the Goddess of Lies in disguise lie to the Father of Lies? Hmm… let me think…”

“Boreas had schemed to lure the Uranian girl from her room tonight, in such a fashion as to put her in his debt. Perhaps she is less venturesome than he assumed.”

“No, she is merely more clever than he assumed. No matter.”

Now the man in the mackintosh jumped to his feet, snatching up the umbrella from behind him. He snapped the handle shut and struck a pose.

“I am a god, one of the Twelve! Boreas is a god as well, true, but his domain is only over the air that moves between north-northwest and north-northeast. My angle of action is larger.

“Fate is my toy to toy with as I will. I ordained that what Boreas wove into the tapestry of destined things would come unravelled. I ordained that the girl would find her bauble tonight; it has happened, or will. I ordained that she and I would meet; I assume she is watching us now.

“Little girl, wherever you are, in this dimension or in another, hear my words: I am your friend at a time when you will need friends most needfully. I offer you rescue, advice as honest as will suit my needs, power, glory, wealth, blah, blah, blah. The whole nine yards. I will grant you three wishes, but do not ask for immortality without asking for eternal youth. Think it over.

“OK, lesson over. Were you taking notes, Taffy ap Cymru? That is how to be a master of intrigue.”

Ap Cymru rotated his head left and right. “Do you say she is in this room, invisible?”

“No. She is in plain sight, just not in our plain sight. Time’s up! Are you going to turn me in?”

“Sir?”

“You could get a very good price for my head.”

“Excellency, you will give me a better price for helping you keep it on your shoulders. When you are Father of Gods, make me Father of Lies.”