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Instead of using a free-standing pavilion, he&039;d shrouded a small interior room entirely with the trendy black velvet - layers and layers of it So much that I wanted to own stock in the town&039;s fabric concession and o down in Rumpock history as the dude who invented their first vacuuh dust in here to dress an Okie set for a remake of The Grapes of Wrath
"Whuuaa - aahhh - choooo!" was htfully loanedit was the one he&039;d ja tunnel door I used it anyway, so thoroughly that he told me to keep it
While I wiped ot busy at a paper-blanketed forht have served as a work desk It was so buried under books and other office-style clutter I couldn&039;t tell The dust got worse for their excavations, but I stuck it out until Filima, who already had a head start on nasal proble retreat
Terrin, apparently ied into the hall Fili contest, which I won, but only because er practice field
"What a o in there It wasn&039;t because he had secrets, he just knew the first thing I&039;d do would be to call in the cleaning ht," I said "Didn&039;t you feel the y?"
She nodded
But Shankey shook his head like a guy trying hard to get a joke "It gave ic feels like?"
"His kind" Meaning Botello, who had a very negative style
My nose was clear now, and since Shankey was absolutely unaffected by the dust I got the idea that we&039;d run into another type of burglar alaric Botello was looking to be a little more brainy than I&039;d estimated, or at least subtle A non-practitioner would find nothing of interest or sense in the arcane books and papers The ones who y symptoms times twenty they&039;d be forced to leave He&039;d probably worked a neutralizer into the spell so as to exclude himself Terrin should have been forced out by now, but he was a special case, being a lot e of things
"Dark ic," Shankey muttered
"Don&039;t worry By the time Terrin&039;s done the roo, won&039;t that be bad for hiray, green with orange polka dots,to recover what&039;s been drained out of him" Which could amount to a lot of whammy juice He&039;d been seriously bad off earlier today I hoped he&039;d get enough stored to allow us to split this world, but not so soon that we couldn&039;t help Fili to her sleeves, but fro off in aze Uh-oh
"Captain, I have a very serious request to ask of you"
He did that coain "My lady"
"A request, not an order"
Shankey went to an at-ease posture "Ma&039;am?"
"It&039;s to do with all that I spoke of downstairs in that awful roo about it to anyone until and unless I tell you otherwise I could order you as your liege-lady, but I&039;d rather ask you as a friend"
The look that caht then and there if she&039;d asked him to jump off a cliff into a lion pit he&039;d have done it - as her friend Heck, I ht do it too, and I wasn&039;t at all ready to commit to a relationship
"My lady honors me," he said, pretty humble
"Will you?"
"Yes, my lady What was said in that room stays there I understand the consequences"
"It&039;s for Darmo House, not me"
"It&039;s for all of us," he said, solemn
If I hadn&039;t known he was already involved with the house cook I&039;d have told the of cooks"Now that that&039;s out of the way, how &039;bout sohtly
They stared, but what the hey, I hadn&039;t eaten since lunch, just soe as it was, I&039;d finally used it up, especially in the last hour or so Trudging through tunnels and listening to harrowing stories about fighting demons does that to me
"But we don&039;t have tiet that?" I wanted to know Tense lady, but she had good reason She needed to relax; we all did I opened the door to the room
Terrin was seated before the pile of arcane stuff, focused on paperwork There was noticeably less dust, and by half-closing my eyes I couldinto a spot between his shoulder blades They swirled into it like water down a drain, going right through his Hawaiian shirt and the T-shirt he wore under it He had a special tattoo on his back, which was linked to hiselse about him Some days it was hard to tell if he was dedicated, driven, or just filling in tiht noas business as usual "Dudeyou gonna be awhile?"
He gave a grouchy grunt that could have
"Ooo-kay We&039;ll be in the kitchen when you&039;re done"
Grunt Of the "don&039;t bother me" variety
"Boy, is he in a chatty ht he never would button it Come on, I need a beer-and-pizza fix"
"What&039;s pizza?" asked Shankey
The Overduke&039;s Palace, a Parlor
"Orders is orders ma&039;am," said Captain Rockbush stoically "His lordship is the only one who can revoke &039;em"
"But if e heard is true, then it was not Lord Anton who gave those orders," Velhter know Lord Anton froht shorter and dead these teeks"
"But Lord Anton has been possessed by Botello!"
"Perhaps so,you a tale so as to inal I&039;ve not heard better"
"But he positively reeks of sulfur - doesn&039;t that tell you so?"
"Only that Lord Anton was at work in his Black Roos Not my place to make inquiries into his business, e of one of the coroaned "It&039;s all right, Velawds, a dead man at that And they say the dead don&039;t lie"
The other guard, posted at the door by Rockbush, stifled a snort of reaction Whether it was amusement or derision was hard to say Rockbush was ratherin palace deportlare The doctor stood by a , looking squintily thoughtful
"Perhaps Lord Perdle ested
"Maybe," said Velma "But he&039;s not here in the palace It would be very hard to convince hiood ination"
"I&039;m really very, very sorry," Cadmus moaned "I knoon&039;t help, but there it is"
"I&039;ly "But right noe need a way of putting Anton back where he belongs"
"No question about it With Botello pretending to be overduke there&039;s all et up to"
"I&039; Anton out of Hell," she snapped
Cadmus winced "Um, yes, sorry That must be our first course of action"
"So what do we do?" she demanded
He opened hisa bit, but came up empty there, as well Had the few hours he&039;d spent in a mindlock destroyed his ability to reason? I hard not to shiver as various possibilities about his own iruesoeon bound up in different kinds of torture devices; the rest had to do with quickerto hear about the stuff when at a party with a ghost story the about them firsthand Botello would want this inconvenient witness quite thoroughly gone
"Logically," said the doctor, "we must confront Lord Anton - that is to say Botello If he is Botello Are you sure?"
"Abundantly so, h"
"Certainly he would, whether or not what you told us is true But the motivation behind the denial will be different for each man If he is Lord Anton he will have one sort of reaction If he is Lord Botello, another But how to determine which is which? Perhaps the lady would be able to shed soet it," said Velma "Let&039;s just assume he&039;s Botello and take it froonna be easier to get forgiveness than permission"
"Permission to do what?"
"I don&039;t know! Cadain "Magic training, but no one I can feel it inside, that is, I can&039;t feel it inside This happened to me once before when I had a really bad cold, was flat on ain physically I was still recovering astrally Took ain"
"Indeed," said the doctor "I&039;ve heard the sanancy affects their working powers What about now?"
"Now?"
"Recovering what you&039;ve lost"
"That&039;s the dodgy bit; there&039;s no y to be had Botello&039;s drained it all away"
"All of it?"
"Yes! That&039;s why there are no Talents left in Rumpock!"
"That&039;s not just a ruht the Hell-river first rolled through were gone byHe never told me what happened to them, but I think they&039;d been absorbed into it"
"Absorbed Uh-hu Talent hi, though"
"Because of the river! It did so to nearly everyone&039;s memory Oh, bother You believe it, don&039;t you, Veled "But back to the et Botello out of hiic?"
"We can&039;t"
"Weof the re Talents? You and Anton talked about it at dinner"
"But I wasn&039;t there That was Botello in my body, remember?"
She nodded "And neither of us noticed any difference in yourAnton&039;s Botello"
Cadmus looked up, nonplused and annoyed "Youodd aboutyou norentlemanly word Bloody Botello Not only had he done a ood at it Cad," re to coether and work out a way of getting rid of the Hell-river They would either talk it all out or he told et a really clear vision of a solution Seeood now, unless they can put Anton back where he belongs"
"You&039;ll have to warn theawd knohat he&039;ll do next He&039;ll be the only one with ical power, mountains of it"
"There&039;s not that ic&039;s not all that strong"
He gaped at her People without Talent just didn&039;t know It was like explaining music to the tone-deaf "Not on this side of Reality It&039;s more subtle here But on Othersidelike in Hellit&039;s beyond iining "Okay, fine, but Botello&039;s on our side of Reality, so he&039;ll be limited in what he can do"
"No he won&039;t! I think he&039;s going to have the same impact here as he did when he was in Hell"
"That&039;s bad, right? So then we&039;ve really got to get Anton back How?"
Cadood manners and bellow out to her face that he didn&039;t knohen a perfectly wonderful, absolutely brilliant thought blossomed in his mind
But before Cadmus could voice it, Captain Rockbush clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder "That&039;s all for now, sir, your lordship&039;s feeling better, and I&039;ve got ood fellow"