Part 28 (1/2)

'We were just,' Galahaut went on, 'helping your father have a really good sort-out of his sock drawer.'

'Really.'

'And then,' Galahaut persevered, 'he said he felt a bit tired and went to sleep, and so we thought we'd come and find you. But here you are anyway.'

The girl gave him a look. 'I don't believe you,' she said.

'You don't?'

'No, I don't'.

'Oh.'

'I think,' the girl said, 'that you're trying to steal Daddy's special Socks. I think you're burglars.'

'What makes you think that?'

'You are, aren't you?' the girl said. 'I think you tricked your way in here pretending to be knights, but really you're just sock-thieves. Probably,' she added, remembering a phrase from a book she'd been reading, 'an international gang.'

'Oh, we're knights all right,' Boamund interrupted. 'There's no question of that.'

The girl sniffed. 'Knights fight fair,' she said. 'Knights don't tie people up and go emptying drawers out on the floor. Burglars do that.'

'Knights do too, sometimes. It's all a matter of what's right in the particular circ.u.mstances.'

The girl shook her head. 'Daddy told me to be specially on the look-out for burglars,' she said. 'And he told me that if ever I saw any, I was to get this gun from his study and shoot them.'

'Gosh,' Boamund said. Galahaut smiled.

'And you always do what Daddy says?' he enquired.

'Always.'

'What a terribly dreary life you must lead.'

The girl frowned. 'What do you mean?' she asked.

Galahaut raised an eyebrow. 'I mean,' he said, 'I don't suppose you get out much, do you? No going to parties or anything like that.'

'Certainly not.' The girl looked pensive as she fidgeted with the safety catch of the rifle. Pensive but extremely dangerous.

'Can't be many people of your own age around here,' Galahaut went on. The girl nodded.

'None,' she said. 'Except for some of the pages, of course. Some of them are quite nice, or at least one of them...' She hesitated for a moment. 'But Daddy says I'm not to talk 2o the pages. He says . . .'

Galahaut raised his eyebrow a little bit more. It was very eloquent. But the girl suddenly shook her head.

'What's that got to do with burglars?' she said.

'Um...'

'You're just trying to confuse me,' the girl went on. 'That's a typical burglar trick, trying to confuse people. Knights wouldn't do that. They'd think it wasn't chivalrous.'

Slowly, she raised the rifle towards her shoulder, and Boamund shut his eyes. This didn't fit in with his preconceptions about damsels in distress at all.

A moment later he heard a hissing noise and a thump. At first he guessed the thump must be his own dead body collapsing to the floor; but after a few seconds he revised this opinion and opened his eyes again.

The girl was lying on the floor, snoring gently, and Toenail was putting an aerosol can back in his satchel.

'Knew it'd come in handy,' said the dwarf. 'Marvellous stuff, Mace. Works wonders with large dogs, too. I couldn't find a sack, by the way, but I thought a couple of pillow cases might do instead. Is that all right?'

Galahaut, who had gone a very funny colour, extricated himself from the corner of the room, into which he had backed, and grinned.

'Jolly good timing, that,' he said shakily. 'Nice work.'

'Thank you,' Toenail replied, rather taken aback. He tried to remember if anyone had ever thanked him before; good question. 'I met this woman out in the laundry room who said I was needed back here, so I came in.'

'What woman?' Boamund asked.

'Dunno,' Toenail replied. 'Just a woman. Appeared out of nowhere holding a pair of binoculars, gave me a message about you two being in the ... you two wanting me for something, and vanished again. Might have been a hologram, even.' He opened a pillow case and began filling it with socks.

'We still don't know which pair is which, though,' Boamund observed. 'You know, I do think it'd be a good idea if we found out. Otherwise . . .'

The other two looked at him.

'Bo,' Galahaut said, 'I don't want to seem slapdash or anything, but if it's all the same to you, I'd rather we escaped with our lives first and saved the underwear-sorting part of it till later. If that's all right with you, I mean.'

'I wonder who that woman was. She might have known.'

'Who?' Toenail asked, looking up from the pillow case. 'The hologram, you mean?'

'That's if it really was a hologram,' Boamund said. 'What is a hologram, anyway?'

Toenail was about to explain when a sound outside the door checked him. The sound, if he wasn't very much mistaken, of hooves. Feet, too. Lots of them.

'Oh G.o.d,' he said, 'more of them.' He reached for the aerosol, shook it and made a face. 'Not much left in there,' he muttered. 'May I suggest that you hide?'

'Where?'

Toenail nodded towards the fireplace. 'You could try the chimney,' he said.

'Good Lord,' Simon Magus said. 'How on earth did they manage that?'

Mahaud looked up from her Scrabble pieces. 'Manage what, dear?' she said.

'That young Snotty and the other one,' said the magician, putting the binoculars down. 'They've got away froze that lunatic girl after all. There's more to Boamund than I thought, apparently.'

Mahaud smiled. 'That's nice, dear,' she said. 'Now, what can I make with this lot?'

She studied her hand carefully. There was a C, an H, an E, an AandaT.