In fact there are fashions in wizardry as in more mundane arts, and this tendency to look like elderly aldermen was only temporary. Previous generations had gone in for looking pale and interesting, or druidical and grubby, or mysterious and saturnine. But Keli was used to wizards as a sort of fur-trimmed small mountain with a wheezy voice, and Igneous Cutwell didn’t quite fit the mage image.
He was young. Well, that couldn’t be helped; presumably even wizards had to start off young. He didn’t have a beard, and the only thing his rather grubby robe was trimmed with was frayed edges.
‘Would you like a drink or something?’ he said, surreptitiously kicking a discarded vest under the table.
Keli looked around for somewhere to sit that wasn’t occupied with laundry or used crockery, and shook her head. Cutwell noticed her expression.
‘It’s a bit alfresco, I’m afraid,’ he added hurriedly, elbowing the remains of a garlic sausage onto the floor. ‘Mrs Nugent usually comes in twice a week and does for me but she’s gone to see her sister who’s had one of her turns. Are you sure? It’s no trouble. I saw a spare cup here only yesterday.’
‘I have a problem, Mr Cutwell,’ said Keli.
‘Hang on a moment.’ He reached up to a hook over the fireplace and took down a pointy hat that had seen better days, although from the look of it they hadn’t been
very
much better, and then said, ‘Right. Fire away.’
‘What’s so important about the hat?’
‘Oh, it’s very essential. You’ve got to have the proper hat for wizarding. We wizards know about this sort of thing.’
‘If you say so. Look, can you see me?’
He peered at her. ‘Yes. Yes, I would definitely say I can see you.’
‘And hear me? You can hear me, can you?’
‘Loud and clear. Yes. Every syllable tinkling into place. No problems.’
‘Then would you be surprised if I told you that no one else in this city can?’
‘Except me?’
Keli snorted. ‘And your doorknocker.’
Cutwell pulled out a chair and sat down. He squirmed a little. A thoughtful expression passed over his face. He stood up, reached behind him and produced a flat reddish mass which might have once been half a pizza
*2
. He stared at it sorrowfully.
‘I’ve been looking for that all morning, would you believe?’ he said. ‘It was an All-On with extra peppers, too.’ He picked sadly at the squashed shape, and suddenly remembered Keli.
‘Gosh, sorry,’ he said, ‘where’s my manners? Whatever will you think of me? Here. Have an anchovy. Please.’
‘Have you been listening to me?’ snapped Keli.
‘Do you feel invisible? In yourself, I mean?’ said Cutwell, indistinctly.
‘Of course not. I just feel angry. So I want you to tell my fortune.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, it all sounds rather
medical
to me and—’
‘I can pay.’
‘It’s illegal, you see,’ said Cutwell wretchedly. ‘The old king expressly forbade fortune telling in Sto Lat. He didn’t like wizards much.’
‘I can pay a
lot
.’
‘Mrs Nugent was telling me this new girl is likely to be worse. A right haughty one, she said. Not the sort to look kindly on practitioners of the subtle arts, I fear.’
Keli smiled. Members of the court who had seen that smile before would have hastened to drag Cutwell out of the way and into a place of safety, like the next continent, but he just sat there trying to pick bits of mushroom out of his robe.
‘I understand she’s got a foul temper on her,’ said Keli. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t turn you out of the city anyway.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Cutwell, ‘do you really think so?’
‘Look,’ said Keli, ‘you don’t have to tell my future, just my present. Even she couldn’t object to that. I’ll have a word with her if you like,’ she added magnanimously.
Cutwell brightened. ‘Oh, do you know her?’ he said.
‘Yes. But sometimes, I think, not very well.’
Cutwell sighed and burrowed around in the debris on the table, dislodging cascades of elderly plates and the long-mummified remains of several meals. Evnetually he unearthed a fat leather wallet, stuck to a cheese slice.
‘Well,’ he said doubtfully, ‘these are Caroc cards. Distilled wisdom of the Ancients and all that. Or there’s the Ching Aling of the Hublandish. It’s all the rage in the smart set. I don’t do tealeaves.’
‘I’ll try the Ching thing.’
‘You throw these yarrow stalks in the air, then.’
She did. They looked at the ensuing pattern.
‘Hmm,’ said Cutwell after a while. ‘Well, that’s one in the fireplace, one in the cocoa mug, one in the street, shame about the window, one on the table, and one, no,
two
behind the dresser. I expect Mrs Nugent will be able to find the rest.’
‘You didn’t say how hard. Shall I do it again?’
‘No-ooo, I don’t think so.’ Cutwell thumbed through the pages of a yellowed book that had previously been supporting the table leg. ‘The pattern seems to make sense. Yes, here we are, Octogram 8,887: Illegality, the Unatoning Goose. Which we cross reference here . . . hold on . . . hold on . . . yes. Got it.’
‘Well?’
‘Without verticality, wisely the cochineal emperor goes forth at teatime; at evening the mollusc is silent among the almond blossom.’
‘Yes?’ said Keli, respectfully. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Unless you’re a mollusc, probably not a lot,’ said Cutwell. ‘I think perhaps it lost something in translation.’
‘Are you sure you know how to do this?’
‘Let’s try the cards,’ said Cutwell hurriedly, fanning them out. ‘Pick a card. Any card.’
‘It’s Death,’ said Keli.
‘Ah. Well. Of course, the Death card doesn’t actually mean
death
in all circumstances,’ Cutwell said quickly.
‘You mean, it doesn’t mean death in those circumstances where the subject is getting overexcited and you’re too embarrassed to tell the truth, hmmm?’
‘Look, take another card.’
‘This one’s Death as well,’ said Keli.
‘Did you put the other one back?’
‘No. Shall I take another card?’
‘May as well.’
‘Well, there’s a coincidence!’
‘Death number three?’
‘Right. Is this a special pack for conjuring tricks?’ Keli tried to sound composed, but even she could detect the faint tinkle of hysteria in her voice.
Cutwell frowned at her and carefully put the cards back in the pack, shuffled it, and dealt them out on to the table. There was only one Death.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I think this is going to be serious. May I see the palm of your hand, please?’
He examined it for a long time. After a while he went to the dresser, took a jeweller’s eyeglass out of a drawer, wiped the porridge off it with the sleeve of his robe, and spent another few minutes examining her hand in minutest detail. Eventually he sat back, removed the glass, and stared at her.
‘You’re dead,’ he said.
Keli waited. She couldn’t think of any suitable reply. ‘I’m not’ lacked a certain style, while ‘Is it serious?’ seemed somehow too frivolous.
‘Did I say I thought this was going to be serious?’ said Cutwell.
‘I think you did,’ said Keli carefully, keeping her tone totally level.
‘I was right.’
‘Oh.’
‘It could be fatal.’
‘How much more fatal,’ said Keli, ‘than being dead?’
‘I didn’t mean for you.’
‘Oh.’
‘Something very fundamental seems to have gone wrong, you see. You’re dead in every sense but the, er, actual. I mean, the cards think you’re dead. Your lifeline thinks you’re dead. Everything and everyone thinks you’re dead.’
‘
I
don’t,’ said Keli, but her voice was less than confident.
‘I’m afraid your opinion doesn’t count.’
‘But people can see and hear me!’
‘The first thing you learn when you enrol at Unseen University, I’m afraid, is that people don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing. It’s what their minds tell them that’s important.’
‘You mean people don’t see me because their minds tell them not to?’
‘’Fraid so. It’s called predestination, or something.’ Cutwell looked at her wretchedly. ‘I’m a wizard. We know about these things.’
‘Actually it’s not the
first
thing you learn when you enrol,’ he added, ‘I mean, you learn where the lavatories are and all that sort of thing before that. But after all that, it’s the first thing.’
‘
You
can see me, though.’
‘Ah. Well. Wizards are specially trained to see things that are there and not to see things that aren’t. You get these special exercises—’
Keli drummed her fingers on the table, or tried to. It turned out to be difficult. She stared down in vague horror.
Cutwell hurried forward and wiped the table with his sleeve.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, ‘I had treacle sandwiches for supper last night.’
‘What can I
do
?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Well, you could certainly become a very successful burglar . . . sorry. That was tasteless of me.’
‘
I
thought so.’
Cutwell patted her ineptly on the hand, and Keli was too preoccupied even to notice such flagrant
lèse-majesté
.
‘You see, everything’s fixed. History is all worked out, from start to finish. What the facts actually
are
is beside the point; history just rolls straight over the top of them. You can’t change anything because the changes are already part of it. You’re dead. It’s fated. You’ll just have to accept it.’
He gave an apologetic grin. ‘You’re a lot luckier than most dead people, if you look at it objectively,’ he said. ‘You’re alive to enjoy it.’
‘I don’t want to accept it. Why should I accept it? It’s not my fault!’
‘You don’t understand. History is moving on. You can’t get involved in it any more. There isn’t a part in it for you, don’t you see? Best to let things take their course.’ He patted her hand again. She looked at him. He withdrew his hand.
‘What am I supposed to do then?’ she said. ‘Not eat, because the food wasn’t destined to be eaten by me? Go and live in a crypt somewhere?’
‘Bit of a poser, isn’t it?’ agreed Cutwell. ‘That’s fate for you, I’m afraid. If the world can’t sense you, you don’t exist. I’m a wizard. We know—’
‘Don’t say it.’
Keli stood up.
Five generations ago one of her ancestors had halted his band of nomadic cut-throats a few miles from the mound of Sto Lat and had regarded the sleeping city with a peculiarly determined expression that said: This’ll do. Just because you’re born in the saddle doesn’t mean you have to die in the bloody thing.
Strangely enough, many of his distinctive features had, by a trick of heredity, been bequeathed to his descendant
*4
, accounting for her rather idiosyncratic attractiveness. They were never more apparent than now. Even Cutwell was impressed. When it came to determination, you could have cracked rocks on her jaw.
In exactly the same tone of voice that her ancestor had used when he addressed his weary, sweaty followers before the attack
*5
, she said:
‘No, No, I’m not going to accept it. I’m not going to dwindle into some sort of ghost. You’re going to help me, wizard.’
Cutwell’s subconscious recognized that tone. It had harmonics in it that made even the woodworm in the floorboards stop what they were doing and stand to attention. It wasn’t voicing an opinion, it was saying: things will be thus.
‘Me, madam?’ he quavered. ‘I don’t see what I can possibly—’
He was jerked off his chair and out into the street, his robes billowing around him. Keli marched towards the palace with her shoulders set determinedly, dragging the wizard behind her like a reluctant puppy. It was with such a walk that mothers used to bear down on the local school when their little boy came home with a black eye; it was unstoppable; it was like the March of Time.
‘What is it you intend?’ Cutwell stuttered, horribly aware that there was going to be nothing he could do to resist, whatever it was.
‘It’s your lucky day, wizard.’
‘Oh. Good,’ he said weakly.
‘You’ve just been appointed Royal Recognizer.’
‘Oh. What does that entail, exactly?’
‘You’re going to remind everyone I’m alive. It’s very simple. There’s three square meals a day and your laundry done. Step lively, man.’
‘Royal?’
‘You’re a wizard. I think there’s something you ought to know,’ said the princess.
T
HERE IS
? said Death.
(That was a cinematic trick adapted for print. Death wasn’t actually talking to the princess. He was actually in his study, talking to Mort. But it was quite effective, wasn’t it? It’s probably called a fast dissolve, or a crosscut/zoom. Or something. An industry where a senior technician is called a Best Boy might call it anything.)
A
ND WHAT IS THAT
? he added, winding a bit of black silk around the wicked hook in a little vice he’d clamped to his desk.
Mort hestitated. Mostly this was because of fear and embarrassment, but it was also because the sight of a hooded spectre peacefully tying dry flies was enough to make anyone pause.
Besides, Ysabell was sitting on the other side of the room, ostensibly doing some needlework but also watching him through a cloud of sullen disapproval. He could feel her red-rimmed eyes boring into the back of his neck.
Death inserted a few crow hackles and whistled a busy little tune through his teeth, not having anything else to whistle through. He looked up.
H
MM
?
‘They – didn’t go as smoothly as I thought,’ said Mort, standing nervously on the carpet in front of the desk.