The Silenced Tale, стр. 54

Elgar sucks down hard on the sobs that want to crawl out of his throat, pulling his cap down so no one can see his face, trusting his PA to guide him through the airport to the parking garage.

“Here, boss,” Juan says, and Elgar folds himself into the passenger seat of his car while the porters heft their bags into the trunk. Elgar does up his seat belt, then hunches down, unwilling to look at or deal with the world.

A few minutes later, Juan jumps in. “Okay, boss. Vet clinic. Here we go.”

They roll out of the parking garage, the traffic light for this time of early afternoon, and Juan eases the car onto the ramp that will merge them into highway traffic and take them back to Elgar’s neighborhood. There’s a stop light at the bottom of the ramp, but instead of slowing on the approach, Juan starts going faster.

Elgar yanks his head up, startled, as Juan jerks in his seat and slams his foot down hard on the brakes. He lays on the horn.

“Shit!” he yelps, jamming the brakes again. “Shit, shit! Boss, cover your face. I can’t get it to stop. We’re going to—”

Forsyth

Several hours later, Finnar pings again, and I pop upstairs to check what the program has found, dread yanking at my heart. It takes a long time for me to come back down again. Each step down into the warm domesticity of my home seems as if bringing this news into it will soil what Pip and I have worked so hard to build.

“I’ve made a horrific mistake,” I say, joining Pip in the living room, where she and Alis are trying, unsuccessfully, to nap. Pip has called in sick to work for the rest of the week, which I feel is wise. Neither of us want her to have a magical fit in front of her class. “I must go to Seattle directly.”

“Oh god,” Pip breathes. “Why?”

“Elgar is in the hospital.”

“What?” Pip screeches.

Alis jerks at the sudden loud sound. “Da!” she says, indignant, as if inviting me to share in her recrimination of her mother for being so uncivilized.

“Sorry, baby,” Pip says, and tugs gently on Alis’s foot in apology.

“It all happened so fast, I have barely had time to follow the connections. My creator is a pincushion. That was surgery, Pip. Surgery. On his skull.”

“Okay, first, how about you take some deep breaths for me,” Pip says. I realize I need them, and do as she suggests. “Right. Okay. Surgery. On his skull.”

“To alleviate the swelling.”

“From the . . . okay, start at the beginning here, spymaster. You’re losing me.”

Alis squirms to be let down, and goes immediately to her little reading armchair, busying herself with a picture book about the life cycle of penguins. Who tap dance, apparently. As best as I am able, I fill Pip in on what I’ve found. It fills me with shame to have to admit, aloud, that I have failed him so spectacularly.

“Oh, but I am a terrible spymaster,” I confess, miserable, and Pip pulls me down against her chest so that I may listen to her heartbeat, may revel in the close, warm scent of my wife. “This is all my fault. I hesitated when I should not have. I should have warned him, or—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Pip says softly, kissing the very center of my ever-widening bald spot. I grumble at her for reminding me that it exists. “You don’t actually have powers of prognostication, you know.”

“But I should have—”

“No.”

“Pip—”

“Nuh-uh.”

I sit up, meeting my wife’s kind gaze, and she cups my cheeks, keeping my head still as she forces me to meet her eyes. “How could you possibly love such a silly, stupid, useless man as me?”

Pip’s brow wrinkles, her eyebrows arching up in the middle, her mouth pulling down. “Bao bei,” she says softly. “You’re not silly, or stupid, or useless.”

“My creator is being stalked and threatened. His cat is dead. All because I have been unable to definitively track the movements of the singular, most powerful archvillain of his series. This is because of me.”

“Say that again,” Pip says gently.

“This is all because of me?” I echo, aghast that she wishes me to repeat it.

“No, the bit before that.”

“I have been unable to definitively track the movements of the singular, most powerful archvillain of his series?”

“Yeah.” Pip leans forward and kisses me again—once on the lips, once on the tip of my overlarge nose. “Even Kintyre Turn couldn’t defeat the Viceroy.”

“But I should have been able to—”

“Forsyth,” Pip interrupts, and there is steel in her voice now. She will not be crossed. “Stop wallowing. Elgar is alive. He’s recovering. You said so yourself.”

I nod miserably, and remain silent. For some reason, my wife chooses to reward me for this with another slow, lingering kiss.

“Okay, so, you’re going to Seattle,” she says, and it sounds less like she’s repeating the facts I told her, and more like she’s trying to convince herself it’s a good idea.

We both of us look over to the trio of armchairs around the fireplace and bookshelves. Alis is content, flipping through the book and narrating the pages in rapid babble to Library.

“I can’t come,” Pip says, and it’s both a confession and a complaint. “Alis—” she begins, even as I say:

“The magic.”

“The magic?”

“We are aware that you are acting as the Viceroy’s pressure valve. But is he? And if you move closer to him, may he not feel it? You know he is far from you. What if he feels you getting closer?”

Pip nods tightly, jaw clenched, watching Alis.

“Pip,” I begin, but she says:

“No. Fuck. No, you’re right. I get it. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. But I get it.”

“I hate to leave you both,” I say. “I’m not even certain if I should. Pip, if I leave you two behind, and someone comes—”

“I’ll call the cops.”

“I would feel better if you had a gun of your own.”

Pip looks startled. “Really?”

“I would feel much