Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-01-14T12:19:34+00:00

* * *

SIXTEEN

« ^ »

Rupert Venables continued

Will and I made some cardboard-flavoured Earl Grey and sat at the other end of my room so as not to disturb Rob. Here Will fed the quack chicks the last biscuit but one and made himself a badge like mine out of the last biscuit, while I briefed him on the current state of the fatelines. As I was definitely going to wipe that list, it was really only necessary to hold the lines as they were until I had time to do something about the puzzling behaviour of Andrew.

‘Very strange, that,’ Will mused. ‘It sounds almost as if he might have been stripped.’

‘I’d thought of that,’ I said, ‘except that stripped people are usually dead.’

‘Not all of them,’ said Will. ‘There was a mage in Thule who went round as two people for years.’

‘Yes, but if Nick’s right, Andrew’s four people at least. I saw two of him myself,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t think that can be the answer. God knows what is, though. Anyway, keep firm hold on his line – and if you find someone’s been messing with the node again, just put it quietly back. I think it’s a fellow called Gram White who’s doing the messing. I’m going to put a stopper on him tomorrow if I can.’

‘The sooner the better,’ Will agreed. ‘Amateur mage, is he? Probably hasn’t a clue what he’s doing. What do all the people at this convention think when they don’t find their rooms where they left them?’

‘They all say this hotel’s very confusing,’ I said, ‘but they mean they think they just keep getting lost.’

‘There’s why I don’t live on Earth,’ Will said. ‘Everyone always has to have the rational, scientific explanation for something, even if it’s so obviously wrong you could scream.’

Rob was deeply asleep when we got up to leave. He was another matter I was going to have to deal with later. Meanwhile, to make sure that no one from the hotel or the Convention happened to barge in on him, I put the strongest possible wards round the room. It would be difficult for people to find a rational, scientific explanation for Rob, not if they met him face to face in my room, hard though they had all tried earlier. Will promised to keep checking up on him. He left the quack chicks running about in there on the carpet. This, he said in his blandest way, would help him remember to keep coming up here. Typical Will, that. I think he does things like that because he knows I like to be orderly. At least, if he had got round to winding me up, it meant that Will was recovering from the shock of hitting Rob. I was glad about that.

We went down in the same lift Rob had come up in. Zinka, bless her, had expunged the blood, but the thing seemed to be running now at half speed. Another thing I had to see to later.

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