LITMIR.BIZ

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house too.”

      “Don’t. Most of it has to come down anyway – on Mr Chesney’s orders,” Derk said. “So you were crouching in the bushes by the terrace fuelling your bloodlust, were you?”

      “Shut up!” Kit tried to squirm with shame and left off with a squawk when his bruises bit. “All right. It was a stupid idea. I hate myself, if that makes you feel any better!”

      “Don’t be an ass, Kit.” Derk was thinking things through, fumbling for an explanation. Something had been biting Kit for months. Long before there was any question of Derk becoming the Dark Lord, Kit had been in a foul, tetchy, snarling mood – bloodthirsty, as he called it himself – and Derk had put it down simply to the fact that Kit was now fifteen. But suppose it was more than that. Suppose Kit had a reason to be unhappy. “Kit,” he said thoughtfully, “I didn’t see you at all until you arrived between the gateposts, and when you were there you looked about twice your real size—”

      “Did I?” said Kit. “It must have been because you were worried about Mr Chesney.”

      “Really?” said Derk. “And I suppose I was just worried again when I distinctly heard you tell me Mr Chesney had a demon in his pocket?”

      Kit’s head shot round again and, for a moment, his eyes were lambent black with alarm. Derk could see Kit force them back to their normal golden yellow and try to answer casually. “I expect somebody mentioned it to me. Everyone knows he keeps it there.”

      “No. Everybody doesn’t,” Derk told him. “I think even Querida would be surprised to know.” Damn! He hadn’t told Barnabas about that accident yet! “Kit, come clean. You’re another one like Blade, aren’t you? How long have you known you could do magic?”

      “Only about a year,” Kit admitted. “About the same time as Blade – Blade thinks we both inherited it from you – but we both seem to do different things.”

      “Because of course you’ve compared notes,” said Derk. “Kit, let’s get this straight at once. Even more than Blade, there’s no question of you going to the University—”

      Kit’s head flopped forward. “I know. I know they’d keep me as an exhibit. That’s why I didn’t want to mention it.”

      “But you must have some teaching,” Derk pointed out, “in case you do something wrong by accident. Mara and I should have been teaching you at the same time as Blade. You ought to have told us, Kit. Let me tell you the same as I told Blade. I will find you a proper tutor, both of you, but you have to be patient, because it takes time to find the right magic user – and you’ll have to be patient for the next year at least, now that I have to be Dark Lord. Can you bear to wait? You can learn quite a bit helping me with that if you want.”

      “I wasn’t going to tell you at all,” Kit said.

      “So you bit everyone’s head off instead,” Derk said.

      Kit’s beak was still stuck among his cushions, but a big griffin grin was spreading round the ends of it. “At least I haven’t been screaming you’re a jealous tyrant,” he said. “Like Blade.”

      Well I am, a little, Derk thought. Jealous anyway. You’ve both got your magical careers before you, and you, Kit, have all the brains I could cram into one large griffin head. “True,” he said, sighing. “Now lie down and rest. I’ll give you something for the bruises if they’re still bad this evening.”

      He shut the door quietly and went back to the house. Shona met him at the edge of the terrace, indignant and not posing at all. “The younger ones are all safe,” she said. “They were in the dining room. They didn’t even notice the roof coming down!”

      “What?” said Derk. “How?”

      Shona pointed along the terrace with her thumb. “Look at them!”

      Blade sat at the long, littered table. So did Mara, Finn and Barnabas. Lydda and Don were stretched on the flagstones among the empty chairs. Callette was couchant along the steps to the garden, with her tail occasionally whipping the cowering orchids. Elda was crouching along the table itself. Each of them was bent over one of the little flat machines with buttons, pushing those buttons with finger or talon as if nothing else in the world mattered.

      “Callette found out how to do this,” Don said.

      “She’s a genius,” Barnabas remarked. “I never realised they did anything but add numbers. I made her a hundred of them in case the power packs run out.”

      Elda looked up briefly when Derk went to peer across her feathered shoulder. “You kill little men coming down from the sky and they kill you,” she explained. “And we did so notice the roof fall in! The viewscreens got all dusty. Damn. You distracted me and I’m dead.”

      “Is Kit all right?” Blade asked. “Hey! I’m on level four now. Beat that!”

      “Level six,” Callette said smugly from the steps.

      “You would be!” said Blade.

      “Level seven,” Finn said mildly. “It seems to stop when you’ve won there. Will the house do like this, Derk?”

      The middle section of the house was there again, in a billowy, transparent way. Derk could see the stairs through the wall, also back in place. The piece of roof that had fallen in was there too, hovering slightly like a balloon anchored at four corners. At least it would keep the rain out until it all had to be transformed into ruined towers, Derk supposed.

      “It’s fine,” he said. “Thanks.” He put a hand on Barnabas’s arm. “I hate to interrupt, but Querida had an accident a while ago, round by the paddock. I think she broke a couple of bones. She wouldn’t let me see to them. She’s gone home.”

      “Oh dear!” said Barnabas. He and Mara came out of their button-pushing trances, looking truly concerned.

      “You should have brought her up to the house at once!” Mara said.

      “She wouldn’t let me do anything,” Derk explained. “She translocated.”

      “She’s done this before,” Barnabas said. “Five years ago some fool Pilgrim broke her wrist and Querida got us all fined by translocating straight home and refusing to come back. We had to do without an Enchantress for the rest of the tours. I think shock takes her that way.”

      Finn stood up anxiously. “We’d better go to the University and check.”

      Barnabas sighed and got up too. “Yes, I suppose so.”

      He and Finn stood there looking at Derk expectantly.

      “Oh. Sorry,” Derk said. “What do we owe you for restoring the house?”

      The two wizards exchanged looks. “Thought you’d never ask,” said Barnabas. “We’ll accept a bag of coffee each, please.”

      “Phew!” said Shona, when the two wizards had finally gone. “I think this was the most upsetting day I’ve ever known. And the tours haven’t even started yet!”

      “I should hope not,” said Mara. “There are several thousand things to do before that.”

      

      rom Blade’s point of view, the several thousand things to be done were all learning: learning the rules in the black book, the routes in the pink list and the green pamphlet and the adventure points marked on the map. He had never found anything so boring. He was used to learning things in an interesting way from his parents, among a crowd of griffins who were all

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