Part 42 (1/2)
”No?” Melissande smiled. ”Then perhaps I took them from her cold, lifeless hand after a brutal, cowardly thief a.s.saulted her on the dark streets of South Ott.”
”I don't believe you,” whispered Permelia, her voice ragged. ”Eudora's not dead. She can't be dead.”
”Oh please, Permelia,” she said, and gave her scorn free rein. ”Do you honestly expect us to believe you care two hoots what happens to Eudora Telford? If you cared you never would've sent her out to do your dirty work, would you? You used that poor silly woman, Permelia, and now she's paid a heavy price.”
Oblivious to the wizards staring at her with shock and dawning disgust, ignoring Ambrose's rising ire, Permelia took one unbalanced step forward. ”No. No. I won't believe you,” she said, a thread of hysteria sounding in her voice. ”Eudora's not dead. This is a trick. You're trying to trick me.”
”If there's any tricking going on here, Permelia, you're the one doing it!” shouted Ambrose. ”And now look what's happened! You've ruined everything!”
”I've ruined everything? I have?” shrieked Permelia, rounding on him. ”How can you even suggest such a thing?”
”Easily!” he snapped. ”If you'd done a better job of running the office you wouldn't have hired a petty thief and you'd not have had to invite this-this interfering Cadwallader gel into our midst! And if you'd minded your own business and let me worry about the company we'd be back on the road to solvency by now!”
”The company is my business!” said Permelia, hands clenched into unladylike fists. The stern, haughty president of the Baking and Pastry Guild was nowhere to be seen. ”I'm its last hope of survival, Ambrose!”
He laughed. ”You?”
”Yes, me!” Permelia panted. ”Am I the one who's run Wycliffe's practically into receivers.h.i.+p? Am I the one who's virtually bankrupted Father's legacy by insisting on all those ridiculous scooters and velocipedes and cut-rate cars that can't drive three miles without falling apart? Was that me? Were those my ideas, Ambrose?”
”No, they were mine!” he retorted, spittled with fury. ”And they were good ideas, Permelia, ideas that would have tided us over, but you'd never get behind them, you'd never let me spend the kind of money I needed to spend to make them work properly! Always bossing me, always throwing your weight around, just because you're two years older than me!”
”Ambrose, I am a hundred years older than you,” snarled Permelia. ”At least if we were counting time by common sense. Those stupid inferior vehicles were never going to work properly! Nor should they have. We do not truck with such inferior modes of transportation, you fool. This is the Wycliffe Airs.h.i.+p Company! We sail through the skies, we don't grub along on the ground.”
”Yes! Yes! I know!” Ambrose retorted. ”You're not the only one who loves airs.h.i.+ps, Permelia! The cars and the velocipedes were to be a stopgap. Just a stopgap. I was doing everything in my power to save the company-and what were you doing? Getting in my way and-and-bleating about your stupid Golden Whisk and how to bake the perfect pumpkin scone!”
Permelia Wycliffe clutched at her ruthlessly styled hair, dislodging several jet-tipped hairpins. To Melissande it was clear that she and her brother were suddenly oblivious to their surroundings, oblivious to herself and Bibbie, and Gerald, to all the gaping, incredulous wizards. Were tumbled instead into some poisonous sibling nightmare where the rest of the world had simply... ceased to exist.
The ragged circle of wizards was broken apart now. They were too stunned to do anything but watch their employer and his sister with dropped jaws and wide eyes. Bibbie and Reg were watching too, the pair of them reprehensibly entertained, and Gerald-Gerald- Melissande saw that he'd ever-so-un.o.btrusively eased himself out of the way, to stand just far enough back so he might be nondescriptly overlooked.
Lurching forward, Permelia slapped her brother's face. ”I was not bleating, Ambrose, I was taking care of Father's legacy.”
”And so was I!” Ambrose shouted, clutching at his red-blotched cheek. ”A d.a.m.ned sight better than you ever have, my gel!”
”How, you fat buffoon?” Permelia taunted with shrivelling contempt. ”By digging through Father's old papers and finding the very worst possible wizard he'd ever refused to hire and then hiring him yourself? By paying him to wreck the portal system? Because n.o.body in the Government would notice? And you have the nerve to say you possess superior judgement, Ambrose? You don't possess the judgement of a flea!”
”Oh? Oh?” choked Ambrose Wycliffe. ”And I suppose your decision to pa.s.s company secrets to a foreign power demonstrates your superior reasoning skills?”
Permelia shoved him hard in the chest. ”I had to, Ambrose! You gave me no choice! It was only a matter of time before someone died in one of those portal accidents, you blithering dunderhead! I had to save the company from your imbecilic solution. It was my duty to Father!”
”But you haven't saved it, have you?” Ambrose demanded. ”Instead you've managed to get a man killed and implicate us in high treason to boot! They'll throw us in prison for the rest of our lives, Permelia. We'll never breathe free air again.” Seizing his sister's shoulders, he hauled her nose-to-nose with him. ”Was it worth it, sister? How much did your foreign friends pay you, eh? How much money will you never have the chance to spend?”
”Fool,” she spat at him. ”I didn't do it for money. I did it for the chance to take control of the company. The company that always should've been mine, that would've been mine, if Father hadn't been so stupidly short-sighted about gels. You're just like him, Ambrose. Narrow-minded and bigoted, puffed up with self-conceit. I had to stop you any way I could. And Manawa was only too happy to help me. She understands about women and power. We hatched the whole scheme between us. Let Wycliffe's go out of business, just another casualty of the thaumaturgic revolution, and in return for a few stupid airs.h.i.+p drawings she'd arrange to buy the company-through a third party, of course-and then you'd be thrown out on the sc.r.a.pheap where you belong and I would be installed as the new company director. I would see Wycliffe's attain its true potential! A task for which you are eminently unsuited!”
Ambrose let go of her and fell back, his mouth opening and closing with outraged disbelief. ”You're-you're raving, Permelia. You're utterly deranged! You stupid-stupid gel! If somehow you escape arrest I'm going to have you committed to an asylum! You stole Wycliffe's best airs.h.i.+p designs and gave them to the wife of the-”
”Don't say it!” shouted Melissande, as Gerald's eyebrows shot up in alarm. ”In fact, don't either of you say another word! I think you've both said quite enough already!”
”I want her taken into custody!” cried Ambrose Wycliffe, spinning round. ”She's mad, I tell you, utterly mad! She should be locked away. I'll have her locked away. Just don't blame me, I had nothing to do with this! I had nothing to do with anything! I'm an innocent man. This is all Permelia, the stupid gel. Father was right-women aren't to be trusted. I'm the victim here, I tell you!”
”Innocent, Ambrose? Innocent?” Permelia laughed wildly, a horrible, howling cackle. ”The only thing you're innocent of is having the smallest amount of entrepreneurial vision! You're a moron, an idiot, and you always have been! Put me in an asylum? I'll see you dead first!”
And then everything went horribly wrong.
With an infuriated roar, Ambrose whirled and grabbed Permelia around the throat and started choking, his already florid face suffused tomato-red. They overbalanced and fell sideways across the nearest laboratory bench. As Permelia coughed and gasped, and the watching wizards dithered like hens in a thunderstorm, Melissande turned to Bibbie.
”Come on, Bibs, don't just stand there! You're the genius witch, do something, quick!”
”Like what?” Bibbie retorted. ”I don't do martial thaumaturgy! And if I try I could blow them both up!”
Oh, how ridiculous. And Gerald wasn't any help either-drat his ludicrous Third Grade cover story! She rounded on Robert Methven. ”Then you do something, Mister Methven. You're a First Grade wizard, aren't you?”
”What? What?” said Robert Methven, appalled. ”Me do something? But I can't! My specialty's aerodynamics!”
Melissande leapt to him and grabbed hold of his lab coat lapels. ”Really? How's this then? Thaumaturge those two apart or I'll kick you into b.l.o.o.d.y orbit!”
But before Robert Methven obeyed her-or Gerald broke his cover-Ambrose let out a blood-chilling scream. Melissande spun round, one hand reaching for Bibbie, to see that Permelia had plunged one of her jet-tipped hairpins deep in her brother's throat. Even as she stared, horrified, Ambrose's face began to turn black, his plump cheeks swelling and splitting and dribbling green gore. She felt the air stall in her lungs. Felt her stomach heave, rebelling.
Lional... Lional... his beauty destroyed by the dragon's green venom...
”Oh, Saint Snodgra.s.s,” breathed Bibbie, on a sob. ”She's hexed him. That's a killing hex. Oh, Mel.”
Ambrose was dying, slowly and in shrieking pain. The corrupted flesh was peeling from his skull, revealing teeth and tongue and lidless eyes. The lab erupted into chaos, wizards running and shouting and throwing themselves under benches or onto the floor. Melissande grabbed Bibbie and dragged her out of Permelia's reach, then yelped as she felt a hand close on her arm.
”Relax, it's me,” Gerald muttered. ”You two stay here. I'll grab Permelia and hex her docile while n.o.body's looking.”
”No, no, Gerald, hex her from here,” she said. ”She might-”
”Can't,” he said briefly. ”Someone will notice. Besides, Melissande, look at her. It's over. She's done.”
Ambrose sprawled on his back, a bloated, black-faced, green-smeared corpse. Silent now, his suffering mercifully ended. Permelia was weeping, terrible, tearing sobs, bent double and swaying, a heartbeat from collapse. Her iron-grey hair had fallen out of its bun, tumbling over her face in lank disarray.
But when Gerald reached her and put his arm around her shoulders she erupted with a piercing screech of rage. And the next thing Melissande knew he was on his knees, Permelia's fingers tight in his hair, with his throat stretched taut and a jet-tipped hairpin sunk tip-deep in his flesh.
”Stay back!” said Permelia hoa.r.s.ely. ”Stay back or he dies!” Her fingers tightened on the hairpin, and a trickle of blood seeped down Gerald's skin. ”One little push and it's all over. And if I see a single sign of thaumaturgy I will push, I will-”
On a howl of rage and in a flurry of feathers Reg dived from the ceiling like a bird possessed, all reaching talons and sharp, gaping beak.
”Get your b.l.o.o.d.y hands off him, you harpy!”
Startled, Permelia Wycliffe cried out and let go of Gerald and the hairpin to fling her hands desperately over her head. Reg set to with a vengeance, long beak stabbing, wings flailing and beating Permelia Wycliffe to her knees. When the woman was down, p.r.o.ne on the lab floor and crying for mercy, Reg spun in midair, her eyes alight with the flame of battle.
”Well don't just stand there gawping, you plonkers! Someone b.l.o.o.d.y sit on her before she tries to get up!”
Bibbie landed on Permelia so hard she nearly broke the woman's back.
”Gerald!” said Melissande and rushed to his side, dropping to her knees and trying to see the wound in his throat. ”Are you all right? Oh, you are an idiot! I told you to hex the b.l.o.o.d.y woman from a distance!”
Huffing and puffing, Reg landed on her shoulder. ”But he didn't listen, did he?” She shook her head and rattled her tail feathers. ”I don't know, suns.h.i.+ne. How many times do I have to tell you? Never underestimate a woman.”
Sitting up, Gerald accepted the hanky Melissande thrust into his hand and pressed it to the tiny dribbling puncture wound in his neck. ”Yeah,” he said. ”Especially a woman with feathers.” He kissed her beak. ”Thanks for that, Reg.”