Диана Дуэйн - THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON

some very ornamental scars, and a set of the biggest, sharpest, whitest teeth that Rhiow could remember seeing on one of the People in several lives. She occasionally wondered, when Urruah pulled dumb stunts like this, whether those teeth went straight up into his skull and filled most of it, leaving less room for sense.
"That houff," Urruah said, as they crossed Fifty-second, "took my mouse."
"Wait a minute," Saash said. "You're trying to tell us that you actually caught a mouse, when there was all that perfectly good MhHonalh's food in the Dumpster?"
Urruah gave Saash a scathing look. Saash simply blinked at him, refusing to accept delivery on the scorn, and kept on walking. "It was a terrific mouse," Urruah said. "It was one of those bold ones: it kept jumping and trying to bite me in the face. I was going to let it go after a while: you have to respect that kind of defiance! And then that miserable ehhif shows up at shift-change and lets his houff off the chain where they keep the thing all night, and it comes running out of there, jumps into the street practically on top of me, and eats my mouse! Must have a lot of wolf in it or something. But what would you have done?"
"Not ride it down the street and nearly get myself shot," Rhiow said dryly. "Or the poor houff. A good slapping around would have been plenty. And do you really expect a houff to mind People's manners? It didn't know any better. But that ehhifs reckless with the houff. And it must have been awfully hungry. I wonder what can be done about your poor mouse-eater…."
"Not our problem," Urruah said as they crossed Fifty-first.
"Everything in this city is our problem," Rhiow said, "as you know very well. I'd say you owe that houff a favor, now; you overreacted. Better arrange a meeting with one of our people on the houff side and see what can be done about him. I'll expect a report tomorrow."
Urruah growled under his breath, but Rhiow put her ears back at him. "Business, Urruah," she said. "There's work waiting for us. Put yourself aside and get ready to do what you were made to."
He sighed, and after a half a block his whiskers went forward again. 'Tell me it's the northside gate again."
Rhiow grimaced. "Of course it is."
"Somebody did an out-of-hours access," Saash said, "and left it misaligned." "The substrates still hinged?"
"Hard to tell from just the notification, but I hope so. If we go in prepared to do a subjunctive restring—"
And they were off, several sentences deep into gate-management jargon before the three of them crossed Fiftieth. Rhiow sighed. Saash and Urruah might have frictions, but the technical details of their work fascinated them both, and while they had a problem to solve they usually managed to avoid taking their claws to one another. It was before work, and after, that difficulties set in; fortunately, the team's relationship was strictly a professional one, and no rule said they had to be friends. For her own part, Rhiow mostly concentrated on balancing Saash and Urruah off against one another so that the team got its work done without claws-out transactions or murder.
Just south of the southwest corner of Fiftieth and Lex was then: way down into Grand Central. Outside the delicatessen on the corner, a street grating that covered the west-side ventilation shaft was damaged, leaving room enough to squeeze through without mussing one's fur. They slipped down through it, Urruah first, then Saash and Rhiow, and followed the downward incline of the concrete shaft for a few yards until they were out of sight of the street. All of them paused to let their eyes settle, now blessedly relieved of the bright sunlight. The dimness around them began to be more clearly stitched and striated with the thin radiance of strings, properly separate now, and their colors distinct rather than blindingly run together.
"Smells awful down here today," Saash said, wrinkling her nose.
"Just your delicate sensibilities," Urruah said, grinning. "Or the flea powder."
Saash lifted a paw to cuff him, but Rhiow shouldered between them. "Not now. Your eyes better? Then, let's go on."
The concrete-walled shaft was four feet wide and no more than two feet high, low enough to make you keep your tail down as you went. It stretched for about thirty feet ahead before turning off westward at a right angle, where it stopped. Under the end of the shaft was a concrete ledge, much eroded from waste water dripping down it, and below that, a drop of some ten feet to the "back yard," the northeastern bank of sidings where locomotives and loose cars were kept when the East Yard was congested with trains being moved.
One after another they jumped down, avoiding the eternal puddle of water that lay stagnant under the shaft– opening in all but the driest weather. In the darkness the clutter and tangle of strings was more visible than ever, and many of them were pulled curving over to a spot between Tracks 25 and 26, blossoming outward from it in all directions like a diagram of a black hole's event horizon. That particular nodal symmetry meant an open worldgate, and was the signature of Rhiow's business and her team's. With worldgates in place and working properly, wizards out on errands didn't have to spend their own precious energy on rapid transit to get where the Powers That Be assigned them. Without working gates, solutions to crises were slowed down, lives were hurt or untimely ended, and the heat-death of the Universe progressed unchecked or sometimes sped up.That was what all those in the team's line of work were sworn to stop; and moments like this, as Rhiow stood and eyed the incredible mess and tangle of malfunctioning strings, made her wonder why they all kept trying when things kept going this spectacularly wrong.
The strings curving in to the nodal junction shivered with light and with the faintest possible sound, as if all being plucked at once. And the curvature wasn't symmetrical: there should have been a matching "outward" curvature to complement the "inward" one. Taken together, the signs meant an unstable gate, which might shift phase, mode, or location without warning. 'Time?" Rhiow said.
'Twenty after," Saash said.
They sprinted through the darkness, across the tracks. Though even a cat's eyes take time to adjust to sudden darkness, they had the advantage of knowing their ground; they were down here three times a week, sometimes more, slipping so skillfully among the tracks and buildings that they were seldom seen. Urruah went charging ahead, delighted as always by a challenge and a chance to show off; Rhiow was astonished to see him suddenly stumble as he came down from a jump over track. Something squealed as he fell on it.
"Irh's balls," he yowled, "it's rats! Rats!"
More squeals went up. Rhiow spat with disgust, for the rats were all over the place, like a loathsome carpet: she'd been so intent on the gate that they hadn't even registered until she ran right into them. Some rats now panicked and ran off shrieking down the tunnels, but for every three that ran, one stayed to try to slash your leg or ear.
Rhiow prided herself on having a fast and heavy paw when she needed it, and she needed it now. She disliked using the killing bite until she was sure the thing being bitten couldn't bite her back in the lip or the eye: the only way to be sure was to crush skulls and break backs first, so she got busy doing that, hitting wildly around her. Up ahead of her, Urruah was yowling delight and rage, and rats flew from every stroke. But Saash, Rhiow thought in sudden concern. She's no fighter. What if—
She looked over to the left. Saash was crouched down, her eyes gone so wide that they were just black pools with a glint of rim; a rat nearly her own size was crouched in front of her, preparing to jump. Saash opened her mouth and hissed at it.
The rat blew up.
And here I was worrying, Rhiow thought, both revolted and impressed. "Saash," she shouted over the squeals and the cracking of bones, heading after Urruah, "can you extend the range on that spell? We don't have time for this!"
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