LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I’ll go and look,” said Shona. “Mum, you look ready to faint. Sit down.”

      “Not indoors! Look through the windows,” said Mara. “We stretched the house – any of it might come down! Be careful!”

      “Yes, yes,” Shona said soothingly as Derk scrambled in through the front door. In some mad way, the front door was still standing. A mound of rubble had shot out through it, and past it on either side. Bertha went bounding in ahead of Derk. As Derk climbed carefully through a chaos of fallen beams and bricks, he heard her start barking in short triumphant bursts.

      From further inside the chaos, Kit’s voice said distinctly, “Shut up, you stupid dog.”

      Poor Bertha. It was not her day. Derk heaved a sigh of relief.

      “Lucky we’re all wizards here,” Barnabas said behind him. “Finn, you make sure the side walls don’t fall in, while Derk and I see what we can do ahead.”

      As Derk crawled on through a criss-cross of rafters draped with cobwebs and sheets from the second floor linen cupboard, he felt the walls on either side groan a little and then steady under Finn’s spell. They found Kit a yard or so further on, dumped in a huge black huddle and coated with plaster and horsehair, in a sort of cage of splintered roof beams and broken marble slabs. Out of it, his eyes stared enormous, black and wild.

      “Have you broken anything?” said Derk.

      Kit squawked. “Only the new marble stairs.”

      “Wings and legs and things, he means, you stupid griffin,” Barnabas said.

      “I’m – not sure,” answered Kit.

      “Good. Then we’ll get you out,” said Barnabas. “Where’s the dog?”

      “She went squirming out at the back,” said Kit. “She smelt the kitchen.”

      “Oh gods!” said Derk. “Lydda was probably in there!”

      “One thing at a time,” Barnabas said. “This is going to take a separate levitating spell for each beam and most slabs, I think. Finn, can you join us?”

      Finn came crawling through, white with dust and very cheerful. “Oh yes,” he said. “I see. Can do. Derk, you’ll now get to see some of the techniques we use when we put cities back together after the tours leave. You take the left side, Barnabas.”

      Derk crouched against a piece of timber and watched enviously. It was like a demonstration for students. Neatly and quickly, with only a murmur here and there, the two wizards inserted their spells under each baulk of wood or stone, and then around Kit. After a mere minute, Barnabas said, “Right. Now activate.” And the entire tangle of beams and marble slabs unfolded like a clawed hand and went to rest neatly stacked against the walls. “Can you move?” Barnabas asked Kit.

      Kit said, “Umph. Yes.” And then, as he rose to a crouch and started to crawl forward, “Yeeow-ouch!” Derk watched him struggle forward across the rubble that had been the hall. At least all Kit’s limbs seemed to be working.

      “Look on the bright side,” Finn said. “You’re halfway to a ruined Citadel already. Want us to stabilise it?”

      “Yes, but how do we get up to the bedrooms?” Derk said, looking up at the ragged hole in the roof. “And Shona’s piano was up on the second floor.”

      “It’s still up there,” said Barnabas, “or we’d have met it by now. Better reassemble the stairs, Finn, and slap some kind of roof on, don’t you think? Derk, you’re going to owe us for this.”

      “Fine. Thanks,” said Derk. His mind was on Kit. Kit squeezed out through a gap beside the front door and flopped down on his stomach with his head bent almost upside down between his front claws. “My head aches,” he said, “and I hurt all over.” He was a terrible sight. Every feather and hair on him was grey with dust or cobwebs. There was a small cut on one haunch. Otherwise, he seemed to have been lucky.

      Derk looked anxiously around for some sign of the others. Mara had gone too, but he could hear her voice somewhere. In the chorus of voices answering, he could pick out Elda, Blade, Lydda, Don and Callette. “Thank goodness,” he said. “You don’t seem to have killed any of the others.”

      Kit groaned.

      “And you could have done,” added Derk. “You know how heavy you are. Come along to your den and let me hose you down with warm water.”

      Kit was far too big to live in the house these days. Derk led the way to the large shed he had made over to Kit, and Kit crawled after him, groaning. He made further long, crooning moans while Derk played the hose over him outside it, but that seemed to be because he had started to feel his bruises. Derk made sure nothing was broken, not even the long, precious flight feathers in Kit’s great wings. Kit grumbled that he had broken two talons.

      “Be thankful that was all,” Derk said. “Now, do you want to talk to me out here, or indoors in private?”

      “Indoors,” Kit moaned. “I want to lie down.”

      Derk pushed open the shed door and beckoned Kit inside. He felt guilty doing it, as if he was prying into Kit’s secrets. Kit did not usually let anyone inside his den. He always claimed it was in too much of a mess, but in fact, as Derk had often suspected, it was neater than anywhere in the house. Everything Kit owned was shut secretly away in a big cupboard. The only things outside the cupboard were the carpet Mara had made him, the huge horsehair cushions Kit used for his bed, and some of Kit’s paintings pinned to the walls.

      Kit was too bruised to mind Derk seeing his den. He simply crawled to his cushions, dripping all over the floor, too sore to shake himself dry, and climbed up with a sigh. “All right,” he said. “Talk. Tell me off. Go on.”

      “No – you talk,” said Derk. “What did you think you were playing at there with Mr Chesney?”

      Kit’s sodden tail did a brief hectic lashing. He buried his beak between two cushions. “No idea,” he said. “I feel awful.”

      “Nonsense,” said Derk. “Come clean, Kit. You got the other four to pretend they couldn’t speak and then you sat there in the gateway. Why?”

      Kit said something muffled and dire into the cushions.

      “What?” said Derk.

      Kit’s head came up and swivelled savagely towards Derk. He glared. “I said,” he said, “I was going to kill him. But I couldn’t manage it. Satisfied?” He plunged his beak back among the cushions again.

      “Why?” asked Derk.

      “He orders this whole world about!” Kit roared. It was loud, even through the horsehair. “He ordered you about. He called Shona a slavegirl. I was going to kill him anyway to get rid of him, but I was glad he deserved it. And I thought if most people there thought the griffins were just dumb beasts, then you couldn’t be blamed. You know – I got loose by accident and savaged him.”

      “I’m damn glad you didn’t, Kit,” said Derk. “It’s no fun to have to think of yourself as a murderer.”

      “Oh, I knew they’d kill me,” said Kit.

      “No, I mean it’s a vile state of mind,” Derk explained. “A bit like being mad, except that you’re sane, I’ve always thought. So what stopped you?” He was shocked to hear himself sounding truly regretful as he asked this question.

      Kit reared his head up. “It was when I looked in his face. It was awful. He thinks he owns everything in this world. He thinks he’s right. He wouldn’t have understood. It was a pity. I could have killed him in seconds, even with that demon in his pocket, but he would have been just like food. He wouldn’t have felt guilty and neither would I.”

      “I’m glad to hear you think you ought to have felt guilty,” Derk observed. “I was beginning to wonder

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