Diane Duane - On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service

“Ruah, it can’t be helped,” Rhiow said. “They can take it up with the Powers themselves, if they like, but the Whisperer will send them off with fleas in their ears and nothing more. These things happen.”

“Yeah, well, what about you?”

“Me?”

“You know. Your ehhif.”

Rhiow sighed at that. Urruah was “nonaligned”—without a permanent den and not part of a pride-by-blood, but most specifically uncompanioned by ehhif, and therefore what they would call a “stray”: mostly at the moment he lived in a dumpster outside a construction site in the East Sixties. Arhu had inherited Saash’s position as mouser-in-chief at the underground parking garage where she had lived, and had nothing to do to keep in good odor with his “employers” except, at regular intervals, to drop something impressively dead in front of the garage office, and to appear fairly regularly at mealtimes. Rhiow, however, was denned with an ehhif in an twentieth-story apartment between First and Second in the Seventies. Her comings and goings during his workday were nothing which bothered Iaehh, since he didn’t see them: but in the evenings, if he didn’t know where she was, he got concerned. Rhiow had no taste for upsetting him—between the two of them, since the sudden loss of her “own’ ehhif, Hhuha, there had been more than enough upset to go around.

“I’ll have to work around him the best I can,” she said. “He’s been doing a lot of overtime lately: that’ll probably help me.” Though as she said it, once again Rhiow found herself wondering about all that overtime. Was it happening because the loss of the household’s second income had been making the apartment harder to afford, or because the less time Iaehh spent there, being reminded of Hhuha in the too-quiet evenings, the happier he was … ? “And besides,” she said, ready enough to change the subject, “it can’t be any better for you …”

Urruah made a hmf sound. “Well, it’s annoying,” he said. “They’re starting H’la Houheme at the end of the week.”

“I don’t mean that. I had in mind your ongoing business with the ‘Somali’ lady you’ve been seeing over at the Met. The diva-ehhifs ‘ pet’.”

Urruah shook his head hard enough that his ears rattled slightly. It was a gesture Rhiow had been seeing more often than usual from him, lately, and he had picked up a couple more scars about the head. “Yes, well,” he said.

Rhiow looked away and began innocently to wash. Urruah’s interest in the artform known to ehhif as “opera” continued to strike her as a little kinky, despite Rhiow’s recognition that this was simply a slightly idiosyncratic personal manifestation of all toms’ fascination with song in its many forms. However, lately Urruah had been discoursing less in the abstract mode as regarded oh’ra , and more about the star dressing room and the goings-on therein. Urruah’s interest in Hwith was apparently less than abstract, and appeared mutual, though most of what Rhiow heard of Hwith’s discourse had to do with the juicier gossip about her “mistress’s” steadily intensifying encounters with the oh’ra’s present guest conductor.

“Well, what the hiouh, ” Urruah said after a moment, “this is what we became wizards for, anyway, isn’t it? Travel. Adventure. Going to strange and wonderful places …”

And getting into trouble in them, Rhiow thought. “Absolutely,” she said. “Come on … let’s start getting the logistics sorted out.”

She turned and walked back up the platform, jumped down onto the tracks and started to make her way over the iron-stained gravel to the platform for Track Twenty-Four. Urruah followed at his own pace: Arhu leapt and ran to catch up with her. “Why’re you so down about it?” he said. “This is gonna be great!”

“It will if you don’t act up,” Rhiow said, and almost immediately regretted it.

“Whaddaya mean, ‘act up’? I’m very well behaved.”

Rhiow gave Urruah a sidewise look as he came up from behind them. “Compared to the Old Tom on a rampage,” she said, “or the Devastatrix in heat, doubtless you are. As People go, though, we have some work to do on you yet.”

“Listen to me, Arhu,” Urruah said, as they jumped up onto Track Twenty-Four and started weaving their way down it toward the entrance to the Main Concourse. “We’re going into other People’s territory. That’s always ticklish business. Not only that: we’re going there because there’s something going on that they couldn’t handle by themselves. They have to have feelings about that … and that we’re now going to come strolling in there with our tails up to fix things, supposedly, can’t make them overjoyed either. It makes them look bad to themselves. You get it?”

“Well, if they are bad—”

Arhu broke off and ducked out of the way of the swipe Rhiow aimed at his head. “Arhu,” Rhiow said, “that’s not your judgment to make. Certainly not of another wizard: not of regular People, either. Queen Iau has built us all with different abilities, and just because they don’t always work perfectly right now doesn’t mean they won’t later. As for their effectiveness: sometimes a wizard comes up against a job he can’t handle. When that happens, and we’re called to assist, we do just that … knowing that someday we may be in the same position.”

They came out of the gateway to Twenty-Four, squeezing hard to the left to avoid being trampled by the ehhif who were streaming in toward the waiting train, and came out into the Concourse. “We’re a kinship, not a group of competitors,” Urruah said, as they began making their way toward the Graybar Building entrance, hugging the wall. “We don’t go out of our way to make our brothers and sisters feel that they’re failing at their jobs. We fail at enough of our own.”

“So,” Rhiow said. “We’ve got a day or so to sort out our own business. Urruah, fortunately, doesn’t have an abode shared with ehhif, so his arrangements will be simplest—”

“Hey, listen,” Urruah said, “if I go away and they take my dumpster somewhere, you think that isn’t going to be a problem? I’ll have to drop back here every couple of days to make sure things stay the way I left them.”

Rhiow restrained herself mightily from asking what Urruah could possibly keep in a dumpster that was of such importance. “Arhu, at the garage, have any of them been paying particular attention to you?”

“Yeah, the tall one,” he said, “Ah’hah, they call him. He was Saash’s ehhif, he seems to think he’s mine now.” Arhu looked a little abashed. “He’s nice to me.”

“OK. You’re going to have to come back from London every couple of days to make sure that he sees you and knows you’re all right.”

“By myself?” Arhu said, very suddenly.

“Yes,” Rhiow said. “And Arhu—if I find, that in the process you’ve gated off-planet, your ears and my claws are going to meet! Remember what Urruah told you.”

“I never get to have any fun with wizardry!’ Arhu said, the complaining acquiring a little yowl around the edges, and he fluffed up slightly at Rhiow. “It’s all work and dull stuff!”

“Oh really?” Urruah said. “What about that cute little marmalade tabby I saw you with the other night?”

“Uh … Oh,” Arhu said, and abruptly sat down right by the wall and became very quiet.

“Yes indeed,” Urruah said. “Naughty business, that, stealing groceries out of an ehhif’s trunk. That’s why you fell down the manhole afterwards. The Universe notices when wizards misbehave. And sometimes … other wizards do too.”