Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

“We don’t need to search the place,” Rhiow said. “The guests are going to be arriving pretty soon. All we need to do is position ourselves here and there inside the house and close to it, hidden, and wait to see where they go.”

“Not being seen is going to be the issue,” Siffha’h said. She was bristling.

So was Arhu. He was staring into the shadows behind the wine racks nearest him as if he thought the dusty bottles were likely to come at him. But it wasn’t just dust he was seeing. “The place is full of sthahheh,” he said, hardly above a whisper.

Rhiow glanced at Helen, not sure if she knew the Ailurin word. But Helen nodded. “Amrakyumara,” she said, a word of her own language, and “behind” this Rhiow immediately heard the Speech-word ukfasht. It was the blanket term for the dark beings that were not quite ghosts and not quite demons, never-embodied minor energies of darkness that gathered and clung around sa’Rraah and Her minions, battening on the power of Her hatred and Her desire for unlife.

“Where were they when we were here?” Urruah said under his breath.

“Probably penned up somewhere,” Arhu said. “But the shadows are all boiling with sa’Rraah’s nasty little pets. Like rats, rustling.” The fur was standing up all over him. “This place is one big garbage can to them, just waiting to be tipped over…”

“Penned up,” Rhiow said, thoughtful. The suggestion made her bristle. It was possible that Dagenham and whoever was working with him hadn’t wanted to take the chance that some of the ehhif visitors might be sensitive to such manifestations. She liked that possibility a lot better than the idea that the shadow-imps had been locked up because the conspirators thought that a few wizards might find a way to sneak themselves onto the guest list. And because I like the other possibility better, that means that this one is far more likely…

“Exactly how well can they see us, I wonder?” Aufwi said.

“For now, the way we see them,” Rhiow said. “As shadows: more sensed than truly seen. They need intention – evil intention – and concentration, to make them more than vaguely aware.” She started up toward the far end of the tunnel, which was barred by an elaborate iron gate, all curves and whorls of black metal. “Anyway, they’re not going to get that from us. What we need to concentrate on is finding where the ehhif meeting with Dagenham are going – “

That was when they heard a door open down the hallway past the iron gate, and the sound of footsteps down the hall.

All heads came up. “Arhu!” Rhiow said. “You’ve been in here most. Drop some out-of-the-way hiding places into our minds. We’ll all transit quickly in a lot of directions – attracting less attention or at least creating more confusion if anyone who understands what transits look like is watching. Keep the noise of it down, everybody! We’ll keep our heads down while Arhu goes to ground and Sees for a little. Arhu, find where the shadows are thickest – I’m betting that’s where tonight’s meeting will be. Don’t speak for a quarter of an hour ehhif time. Then just a burst to me. All of you, get ready to go!”

Helen vanished again, and the People swiftly melted into the shadows, waiting for the iron gate down at the other end to open. It would be only a matter of a few moments before before an ehhif or two walked in here, and their attention as usual would be on trying to make out where they were going, not what was going on behind them. Their eyes are always bad coming in out of light into dark, Rhiow thought, putting herself backwards into the dusty spot between two wine racks. Cobwebs plastered themselves all over her fur, and behind her a crowd of spiders cursed her out in tiny voices.

It wasn’t their voices she was intent on, thuough. “ – wasting the good stuff on them – “ said someone.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said a second, more familiar voice. “After the big one goes down, we’ll have enough of this stuff to swim in if we want it.”

Silhouettes stepped up to the gate: one tall, one smaller, slighter, both male. “Hard to imagine what that’s going to be like…” said the taller one.

Here, Arhu said to Rhiow, and showed her the spot he intended for her. She started to flick her tail in acknowledgement, and then stopped it to keep from discommoding any more spiders as the location manifested itself in her mind: a level up and down a hallway, tucked away underneath a tall cylindrical shape that Rhiow recognized as an old-fashioned hot water heater. She hooked the location’s coordinates up to the fast-transit spell she kept ready in her thought-workspace, but her mind wasn’t really on it. She was concentrating on the clatter of the big key in the lock, the casual laughter of the smaller of the forms. Dagenham, Rhiow thought.

The gate swung in with a creak: he stepped in, the other ehhif behind him. Rhiow kept perfectly still and concentrated on being as small and black as she could, while the two shapes came down the middle of the wine cellar-tunnel. “Haven’t had much time to spend on that,” he said to his companion. “Last-minute logistics are such a bitch. But it’s all coming together tonight at last…”

It amazed her, even in this dimness, to see how very differently Dagenham carried himself from the way he had at the party. No diffidence now, none of that unease of a functionary among persons far more important than himself. All that was cast away. At the moment Dagenham was wearing only casual dark trousers, a white shirt, suspenders; but now he was clothed in much more. From endless hours spent in New York streets watching every kind of ehhif, Rhiow knew the look and body language of success, of certainty, of arrogance among their kind, and Dagenham was wearing them all.

The two came closer, most of them out of sight from her point of view now except for their shoes. One pair of them, the other ehhif’s shoes – a pair of brown wingtips — stopped as he looked at something in the wine rack above Rhiow. She held her breath. “How many of them even understand what’s going to happen?” the ehhif said. “Or what’s going to be asked of them?”

The second pair of shoes kept going. Down low, Rhiow felt a breath of air – one of her People transporting out with maximum caution. Oh please let them mistake it for a draft, she thought. Better to do that from behind them rather than in front of them, they’d be more likely to believe a draft was coming that way – For the thought of the crowding shadows that Arhu had Seen was much with her. Too easy for them to alert this man or someone working with him if they get really conscious of us —

“If they haven’t figured it out by now, then we don’t need them,” Dagenham said. “It’s been spelled out again and again. Now that the last package has arrived, we’re in the endgame. If they make the offer, it goes easier with them. If they try to hedge their bets by not offering…” His footsteps kept on going down the wine cellar, paused at last.

Clink, clink, went one bottle against another. Across the way, behind one of the opposite wine racks, Rhiow saw a white-and-black patched form sliding along the wall toward the door, paying no mind to any spiders’ complaints. A second later the shape was gone, with even less wind this time. Sif. Good.

“Maybe they’re just not sure,” said the second ehhif’s voice. Rhiow cocked an ear. All of a sudden he was sounding familiar somehow. Was he at the party? Could have been — There had been such a press of ehhif there, so much noise…

Another breath of wind, even more slight this time. Aufwi, she thought. Or Urruah. I shouldn’t wait, I should go… “There’s no time left for that,” Dagenham said, against more clinking. “You of all people should know. You’ve got all your choices made, even this last-minute one – “