The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,51
take out the British air cover. And that will be enough to ensure the success of the invasion of England. And after that—” His voice sank to a whisper, “—they’ll give me anything I want.”
Ten
SARA WAS WAITING for him when he got to his attic room. The door was barricaded; he tapped at it softly and spoke her name, and after a moment heard a chair being moved. Her hair was rumpled, half the buttons torn off her dress to show a sailor’s paradise of bosom, her smile sardonic. “Big hotshot wizard and you can’t levitate a little chair?” The electric bulb over the bed was on; Rhion automatically switched it off and took a match from his pocket to light the candles. In the diffuse glow of the yard lights outside Sara put her hands on her hips. “Now, look, boychik, I’ve had enough...”
“I hate that light,” he said wearily, pushing up his glasses to rub his eyes. From his trouser pocket he took the notes he had been given—notes von Rath had insisted on going over with him, while Gall cleaned up something in the corner of the temple that clattered with soft metallic noises—and put them in the drawer with the wristwatch he never wore these days. “Horst brought you up here?”
She sniffed, sitting back on a corner of the bed but watching him warily. “After a couple of the boys in the watch room who’d heard old Pauli declare open season got done pawing me, yeah.”
He winced. “I’m sorry.”
“The hell you are. You got a cigarette?”
He shook his head. “I don’t smoke.”
“You and Hitler.” In the candlelight her eyes were dark and very angry. “You’re all bastards.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“Home?” She laughed bitterly. “I haven’t got a home. You think after all this I’m gonna be able to go back to Aunt Tayta and Uncle Mel in New York and be their little girl again?” She turned her face from him, the wide mouth clenched taut under its smeared lipstick. He wanted to go to her, to comfort her as he would have comforted anyone in that much pain, but he knew if he touched her she’d break his jaw.
Then she drew a deep breath, forcing some of the tension to ease. “Oh, hell,” she said in time. “I get pinched and kissed all the time at the tavern—it wasn’t anything I don’t do every day.” Rhion thought about the two Storm Troopers and wisely said nothing. “ ‘Invest in good faith,’ Uncle Mel is always saying—he’s a tailor. ‘Make them smile when they remember you.’ Auntie would kill him if she knew how I was applying that particular sample of avuncular wisdom.”
And still she watched him, like a cornered animal, waiting for him to make a move toward her, to prove to her that he was, in fact, like very other man. After a long minute, when he didn’t, she said in a much quieter voice, “I want to see my Papa. You say you’re a wizard. You show me him in that damn crystal of yours.” She jerked her head toward the scrying crystal’s hiding place in the rafters and he realized she must have taken some opportunity, either now or during her earlier searches of the place, to go through his room. “Then I’ll go back to town.”
Rhion took a deep breath, brought over a chair, and fetched the crystal down. “I can’t show you him.”
Her mouth twisted. “What a surprise!” she said sarcastically. “How come it’s always the wizard who gets to squint into the crystal ball? It’s only his word to the marks what this person or that person is doing.”
“Well, it’s the goddam best I can do!” Rhion flared. “Now do you want it, or do you just want to get the hell out of here and let me go to bed? Jesus, why do I always end up dealing with you at three in the morning?”
“I want to see him,” Sara said, her voice suddenly small and tight, and looked away.
She had, as she’d said, slept her way through every SS barracks between here and the Swiss border to find him. Rhion felt the anger go out of him, remembering that. Of course she expected him to cheat her. Sitting on the bed with her disheveled hair and rumpled dress, she looked very young and alone. Rhion moved the chair out of the way, wincing as the cut on the back of his arm pulled, and said,