Page 11 (1/2)

Just outside Botello Darh The handkerchief he&039;d left behind seeht out of the stone of the wall "Still there," he said, somewhat unnecessarily HeWe were all twitching a little, except Terrin, of course Botello&039;s burglar alaron-with-a-sore-head noise routine, then assaulting us with bad s they were harrip on- which I did Terrin ignored all of us, forging ahead All he did was to raise his arm once, and both noise and stink had ceased

"Tasty," he said There was a decided bounce in his step again He y like ice tea on a hot day

The distractions gone, Shankey trotted ahead to the site of the secret door He tried to pull the handkerchief out, but it stuck fast until he pushed The stone slab door swiveled easily Must have been a hell of a good engineering job to ed inside I gestured for Fili in there but broken junk," I told her

She gave hter or sock me one and couldn&039;t quite make up her mind "I&039;d rather wait out here"

"So would I, but his nibs ant you inside Co happen to you"

She made a little sound to indicate faint confidence in that proathered her skirts up and stepped in Shankey hesitated, like he wanted to bolt someplace very much elsewhere, then duty overca

"Day-um," said Terrin "Don&039;t you have maid service down here?" He kicked at pottery shards with his purple high-tops

"No," she said, looking around, visibly shivering "Botello never told me about this room"

"I just bet he didn&039;t If I had a hidey-hole like this I sure wouldn&039;t share But you found out about it, anyway" He shot her one of his patented, don&039;t-you-tell-in&039;-lies looks

She totally s "Yes, I found out I followed hi toward the tunnel and its defunct alarms

"He dispelled the protections whenever he ca you followed him more than once?" I asked

"Yes He&039;d tell rounds or be reading late in his study or soh to believe hiust there Couldn&039;t blah to leave a raving gorgeous gal like Filima all on her lonesome What a dickhead

"Instead," she continued, "he would come down here"

"Can&039;t see the attraction ic room upstairs?"

"Yes, but not like this one I&039;d have sensed so of what he was up to"

"And that would be?"

"Nothing good"

Froain, that ithout saying, but I wanted her to beto the floor and a scatter of especially lethal-looking shards of polished stone

She nodded

"Where&039;s the table it sat on?"

"There was none He had it on a stand, like a dressing rooe?"

She held her hand up just above her own height "Wide, too Like a doorway"

"Huh," he grunted "Check this out" He buood close look, seeing a few dozen s back from the pieces In a normal mirror it should have been just parts ofht it had to do with polarization and the material, but had never followed up on the idea "What about it?"

"There&039;s not that much here I&039;ve brokenone"

"Maybe the rest is under the other debris"

"Not in this spot"

I noticed that there wasn&039;t much broken pottery stuff near where the mirror ht next to it That Sherlock Holmes movie I&039;d once seen came back to mind Too bad he wasn&039;t here to help out I&039;d have preferred to have hi for the next few minutes, not et Filiot so addressed, but recovered He uard only wears armor on formal occasions"

"Well, that&039;s a leather vest, isn&039;t it? That should protect you"

"From what?" Now he looked as uneasy as his juht here" I pointed to the body-shaped bare spot

"Why not you?"

" &039;Cause I don&039;t have the vest"

"I&039;ll loan it to you"

Terrin scowled "Just do it!"

Shankey very gingerly did so Muttering Couldn&039;t bla his arms out to fit the space "Like this?"

Fili, but she didn&039;t look well It was hard to judge her color by the lantern light, but I could guess she&039;d gone all ashy again and then soaped at us both, then shot quickly to his feet "Found who?"

"Lord Botello," I told him "If he died here, that would explain the floor&039;s condition and those drag marks in the tunnel dust"

"My lady, is it true?" He turned a little ashy hi for the door

Terrin got in front of her, not in a threatening way - he had his hands in his jeans&039; pockets - but his attitude stopped her cold "Uh-uh Tiht Botello died?"

"I can&039;t talk about that here!"

"Sure you can This is the best place"

"It&039;s horrible I hate it!"

"That&039;s just you; I like things just fine"

"Terrin" I began

He glared ather out If she&039;s too freaked out"

"Awright, awright!" He waved his ar impatience "Lady, you are in a heap of trouble and so&039;s the rest of this sorry planet You wanna save the world, you gotta tell us what happened, and I awds," she o

Filima had spent a fortune on the silken wisps of pale fabric that floated about her otherwise nude body like smoke, but had Botello noticed?

No Damn him

He&039;d sirunt of acknowledgment for what should have been a spectacular erotic surprise She had yelled after hi to spark soht He seemed not to have heard and continued down the hall to his private study

She executed a perfect dancing turn in front of her dressing roo Her face would freeze like that unless Botello likewise turned hi of the diverse effects of both honey and vinegar on flies she co a more cheerful expression and didn&039;t quite achieve it Her face was soes

Da one of their nu interest in her Maybe she should go ahead and let Lord Cadmus follow up on his puppy love crush on her At least then she&039;d get some appreciation for her efforts If only Botello would -

Oh, forget it You&039;re not getting any tonight

What was he up to? What could possibly be er, hot, half-naked woic to please hiave her a headache What was the attraction?

He wouldn&039;t be in his study, that was for certain Was he going to take another walk around the grounds? Read another book he had to finish? What an insult to her to think she&039;d fall for those old excuses one more tiain Not with another woman, either Filima had eliminated that possibility early on She&039;d kno to deal with a flesh-and-blood rival His obsession with e in the ood, but that was how she felt, dah was tooon; she was his wife and it was past time he realized he had to show at least a minimum of consideration to her Gawds, he was more polite to the servants If he couldn&039;t scrape up a little respect then they had no business being e and life on the road rather than deal with this kind of frustration day after day

Edge-of-a-cliff tierously, a crossroads She&039;d co traveled The last time had been when he&039;d proposed Yes or no Either answer promised to lead down profoundly different paths for her life Right up to the last instant she&039;d not knohat her reply would be She&039;d finally smiled, blurted out yes, then they&039;d embraced and celebrated What had prompted that answer? Oh, yeah, she&039;d been in love with hiain, deeply, sincerely, if only he&039;d wake up to asn&039;t happening between theht, one way or another

Filiile seduction costume and into a more practical dress Not one of her newer ones; the basement and the tunnel were a filthynice No need for anything alluring, either If he hadn&039;t noticed her new sleeping gown, he certainly wouldn&039;t be swayed by anything else in her wardrobe She slipped on sturdy shoes, too, being disinclined to collecting stubbed toes while wandering around in the dark down there

Thankfully, the hallas clear Good She had no fondness for every servant in the house knowing her private business Gawds, the whole toould hear of this brawl before breakfast if she wasn&039;t careful She knew ru their occasional lunches together

"You need to duet back on the road," her best friend from the old days cheerfully advised "You don&039;t need to put up with that kind of crap There&039;s a hundred other guys out there better than him Maybe not as rich, but better"

"I didn&039;t marry him for money," said Filima "Not too much, anyway He was nice at first, really cared foron your finger it changes them You&039;re fun to start with, then sooner or later, if they get stupid about it, you become part of the furniture"

"But they&039;re not all like Botello"

"Doesn&039;tas Botello is like Botello," Velood egg, but the moment he drops to one knee and proposes I&039;m out of there"

"But you could be the overduchess of Rumpock"

"I&039;irlfriend, but &039;wife&039; is a job with tooLady Filima Botello Darain When he wasn&039;t being such an ass He&039;d been an ass for a very long while now

Tis out one way or another

Fili sedately so as not to draw attention froht and unlikely anyone would be up so late Two back staircases later and she was in the baseht a lantern with the candle she&039;d brought She dripped wax all over, but got a good fla Not that it was much help down here Why couldn&039;t Botello have his pastime in a better section of the house? When this was done, she&039;d get all the servants organized into a cleaning army and make a serious assault on this juenerationsbut if she decided to leave then it wouldn&039;t be her probleht not happen?

Because I don&039;t want it to be over If he&039;d just wake upI&039;et that?

She found the door leading to the secret tunnel and hauled it open It had been no great surprise to her to learn of its existence; every old house was supposed to have a hidden tunnel But the adventure stories she&039;d heard as a child involving ro royalty hador even scary This stuffy foolishness was just another route to the stables, and a grubby one at that

The secret chaain The first time she&039;d followed Botello down here, she&039;d lost hione on to the stables to meet up with some woman Only on the third trip had she noticed the marks in the floor dust, the hairline crack in the wall, and discovered his workroom She&039;d felt both relief and annoyance that it was only a second Black Room for hih to see he was in the ust Well, not this time There would be no casually dropped questions over dinner about hishim an opportunity to open up and share -over a book instead Had she tied soht have looked up once in a while

Putting the lantern down, she pushed gently on the swiveling door, peering ahead He had only a few candles lighted and the air was filled with - ! - that really horrible incense that s manure and old socks She&039;d forbade hiave her headaches was preferable Fine for her this tih; it put her in the proper mood for a confrontation she knew she would hatever the outco ? When did he get it? And how had he wrestled it down here? It had to weigh e contents of the chaan to understand just how s Quite a lot

And as that awful feeling of foreboding creeping up her spine? She only felt that at funerals when she forgot to shield her uish left behind in the graveyard by mourners for the dead Filima lowered her personal wards just a little and the sad stuff gave way to soical energy here was thick as the stink of death at a butcher&039;s shop, anything but wholesootten hi

"Botello," she said, firmly, in a clear voice "We need to talk"

He whipped around as though struck by lightning What a look on his face, first a flash of abject shock, a guilty start, then he turned positivelyhere!?"

"I&039; What is all this about?"

"None of your damn business! Get out!"

"Don&039;t you curse at rand denouement she&039;d envisioned devolved into yet another dreary salvo-trading domestic clash, no different froht in Rue when filling in for ailing leading ladies The ue had been et out!" he shouted

She stood her ground "Not just yet I&039;h to you We&039;ve been drifting apart for ages now and I want to know - "

"It can wait untilI&039;ve no time for this" He moved toward her

"You&039;ll just have to ic experiment"

"Yes, yes, of course, but I can&039;t talk now Forces are at work that I can&039;t stop; you couldn&039;t have picked a worse ?" What sort of spell existed that couldn&039;t be shelved if necessary? Unless he was intothe out-of-the-ordinary equiprowths on the walls, the feelings of dread, suddenly added up to disaster in hersorcery are you?"

"No, of course not!" He looked scandalized

But he&039;d hesitated just an instant too long before replying He never could hide his guilt froh in those books of yours to know the difference between norics and Darkside sorceries"

"That&039;s just in the books, written by ignorant people too afraid to do any real research There is no Darkside, only neutral et out of here and we&039;ll talk it over in theher toward the door

She balked "Not until I hear exactly what you think you&039;re doing" She knew her s and utterly stupid about others She&039;d blundered right into one of his more spectacular stupid patches

"It&039;s a very crucial experi you about it You&039;ll hear everything in the ht spot by the tiht - "

"Moon? How can you see the moon in this pit?"

He didn&039;t answer, but shoved her at the door, rather too hard She tripped on sohness, he only cursed again and dragged her up "Daether he&039;d never been violent She shook hihting an unexpected surge of tears "You hearshe saoulddoor and swung it shut again It ground softly into place with no satisfying slalad she&039;d left the lantern in the tunnel, else total darkness would have been her lot Botello hadn&039;t offered her so htless bastard