In Your Dreams (11 page)

Mr Tanner's mum looked sad. ‘They belong to the Bank,' she said, ‘so they get the money. But we get ten per cent, which'll please our Dennis. Or,' she added, ‘we could keep them. Two for you, three for me – we'd be rich. Very rich.'

Paul's turn to hesitate. If the baby wyverns were doomed anyway, and if the blood money was going to go to JWW and the Bank . . . If he was rich, there were all sorts of things— But where would be the point in that? He was still bound to JWW by the terms of his contract, money couldn't change that. And there was also a small matter of having to live with himself.

‘I don't want them,' he said. ‘You can have them, if you like.'

Mr Tanner's mum stared at him. ‘Bloody hell,' she said. ‘Why?'

Paul shrugged. He wasn't sure himself. ‘Better you than the Bank, I suppose. Anyway, it was you who got rid of the wyvern, so I guess . . .' He'd run out of things to say.

‘Thanks,' Mr Tanner's mum said quietly. ‘Nobody's ever given me anything like that before. Not that I need the money, mind,' she added, ‘but it's the thought that counts.'

It occurred to Paul that he'd probably just done a very stupid thing. ‘This doesn't mean—' he said quickly.

‘I know.' The very lovely girl who Mr Tanner's mum was being at that moment smiled at him, and there was no trace of a grin. ‘That's what makes it – well, unusual, because you
don't
fancy me rotten. Anyway,' she said, suddenly brisk, ‘let's get the eggs and get out of here.'

Twenty minutes later, they had the eggs. They were heavy, but small enough to fit in the suitcase that Paul had brought along to hold his dragon-slaying gear. They wrapped up the dead wyvern in a black dustbin liner they'd begged from the Bank staff; Mr Tanner's mum hoisted it up onto her shoulder, saying she had a use for it. Paul didn't want to know what that might be.

‘Well,' he said awkwardly, ‘thanks. I'd better be getting back.'

‘You're trying to get rid of me,' Mr Tanner's mum replied (accurately). ‘But I've got cash for a cab fare, and you haven't.'

Paul smiled weakly. ‘That's all right, then,' he said.

Mr Tanner's mum had no trouble finding a taxi; she raised her arm, and there one was. If it was magic, it was probably the simple, bitterly unfair kind that looks after pretty young women and leaves gormless-looking young men to fend for themselves. As they walked into reception together – Mr Tanner's mum was holding Paul's arm, and he was too preoccupied to make her stop – Melze looked up from whatever she'd been doing and stared at them. Correction; she stared at Paul and
scowled
at Mr Tanner's mum. It took Paul a moment to figure out that Melze wouldn't know who the lovely young female beside him really was.

Gosh
, he thought.

Then Melze looked away, her body language explaining to Paul that he didn't exist. He felt a powerful urge to explain (‘It's not what you think, really she's this incredibly ugly goblin. Go on, turn back into a goblin so Melze can see . . .') but resisted it manfully and pressed on towards the fire door. He wasn't looking, but he had an idea that Mr Tanner's mum was smirking.

‘Don't know what you see in her, anyway,' she said, as they climbed the first lot of stairs. ‘Mind you, she's an improvement on that bony little cow who dumped you. Still, you want to make sure you keep her away from the cream cakes and the choccy biccies.'

‘Shut up,' Paul replied. ‘Please.'

‘Whatever.'

As Paul had hoped, the closed-file store was deserted. He shut the door, opened the suitcase, and handed over the wyvern's eggs. They were still, he realised guiltily, quite warm.

‘You sure about this?' Mr Tanner's mum asked, as he held out the first pair to her. ‘If you've changed your mind—'

‘No, really.' Mostly he just wanted rid of them. ‘You have them, just get them out of my sight.'

‘All right.' Mercifully, she took them and loaded them into a cardboard box that she'd found on the floor. ‘Now you bugger off,' she said. ‘I may see you later.'

Paul fled.

First, he checked to see if Benny was back yet from doing the banking. But his office was empty, and the small door was ajar. Paul made a special point of not looking through it. Instead, he went back to his own office and looked up ‘wyvern' in the office-procedures manual's index. There were lots of references, mostly to do with statutory limitations on when, where and with what they could be killed. In fact, he'd broken at least six laws that afternoon, not that he cared too much about that. Nowhere in the legislation did it say
Thou shalt not kill wyverns
; the message that came across was more along the lines of
Thou shalt not kill wyverns the easy way
, which wasn't the same thing at all.

Paul was just checking out the commentary on section 665(ix)(2) of the Small Dragons (Extermination) Regulations 1997 (wyverns may not be shot with a mechanical crossbow exceeding 9 feet in width on Sundays between 15th June and 3rd November, except in Scotland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) when the door opened. This time, Mr Tanner's mum had reverted to her goblin shape. On balance, Paul decided, trying not to stare at the finger-long tusks, the chin bristles, the little dribble of slaver, he preferred her that way. Less intimidating.

‘Got something for you,' she said.

She opened her hand, and something fell onto the desk in front of him: a single red gemstone about the size of a tiny nugget of coal.

‘Thank you,' he said automatically. ‘Um, what is it?'

Grin. ‘You don't want to know.'

‘Tell me anyway.'

She shrugged. ‘It's a wyvern's third eye.' Paul winced while managing to keep perfectly still. It was a knack that he'd acquired since he'd been working for JWW. ‘It was a right bitch getting it out. Broke two screwdrivers.'

‘Fine,' Paul said. ‘What does it do?'

Bigger grin. ‘Pick it up.'

Paul hesitated. Clearly Mr Tanner's mum thought he'd be too squeamish. Not so wide of the mark, at that, but he picked it up anyway. ‘Well?'

‘Very good. Now look at it.'

He looked at it, focusing on the sharp, straight facet-lines. ‘I'm looking at it,' he said. ‘It's a small red stone, big deal—' Something turned off his speech at the mains.

It was like staring at a very small television through a dusty keyhole; but he could see a desk, and behind it—

‘In case you haven't guessed,' Mr Tanner's mum said, ‘it shows you stuff you can't normally see. If you practise, you can learn to see useful things. Otherwise, it just shows you your own true love, so it's a bit wasted on you. I mean, who needs a fantastically rare stone when all you've got to do is nip down the stairs to reception? Still, it's traditional: your first dragon – wyverns count as dragons, see, just about – you get to keep its eye.' She clicked her tongue; Paul was still gazing into the stone, as if nothing else existed. ‘Well,' she said, ‘I'll leave you to it, then. Really, if I'd known you had this thing about fat women—'

At some point, she must've stopped talking and gone away, because when Paul finally managed to look up, she'd gone. He blinked a couple of times, then looked back at the stone, just to make sure—

—And saw a thin, dark young woman with large eyes. She was picking her nose with the cap of a biro, and behind her head, through a window, Paul could just make out a hillside with big white letters on it.

Funny how, when you're fairly sure that at least one segment of your horrendously complicated life has finally fallen into place, even though everything else is still screwed up beyond any remote possibility of redemption, something will come along and twist everything through ninety-five degrees—

His own true love, apparently. Sophie.

Chapter Four

‘N
ot bad,' said Benny Shumway, holding the little red stone up to the light. ‘And I had this feeling when I first saw you that your arse was probably the deadliest weapon in your armoury. But you should've used the SlayMore, like I told you. Keep it simple and you won't go far wrong.' He handed back the stone, which Paul dropped into a matchbox and pocketed. ‘Who told you about this, by the way?'

For some reason, Paul had left Mr Tanner's mum out of his report. ‘I must've read about it somewhere,' he replied unconvincingly. ‘Is it right that you can use them for scrying and stuff? Only I'm supposed to have a knack for that sort of thing, so I thought—'

Benny Shumway nodded. ‘Can do, yes,' he said. ‘With a lot of patience, self-discipline and training, you can get to the point where they're almost an acceptable substitute for a laptop and a mobile phone. Personally, I could never be bothered. Better things to do with my free time.'

‘Oh,' Paul said. ‘Well, anyway. What are we going to do today?'

Benny was silent for a moment. ‘By way of vocational training, you mean? Nothing. Finished,' he explained. ‘We've covered it all. As far as I'm concerned, you now have all the knowledge and resources that you need to be a genuine, practical hero.' He grinned. ‘Doesn't that make you feel a whole lot better?'

‘No,' Paul said.

‘Thought not. Truth is, the theoretical side isn't really worth spit, you've got to pick it up as you go along. Assuming you live long enough.'

‘Fine,' Paul said, frowning. ‘I thought I was going to be doing this for three months.'

‘Call it parole. Time off for mediocre behaviour. You complaining, or what?'

‘No, absolutely not,' Paul said. ‘I mean, it's been, um, interesting, but I don't really think it's my cup of tea somehow. I was better at finding bauxite, that's for sure. So now what?'

Benny laughed. ‘So now, you'll be delighted to hear, you're officially released from this department, and you move on to the next one. Since you've already done your time with Dennis Tanner, that'll probably mean either Effective, with Countess Judy, or Practical with Theo van Spee. Don't envy you either of those,' he added. ‘But after that you'll be ending up doing civil engineering with Cas Suslowicz, and that'll be an absolute doddle in comparison. I always say it's best to get the nasty stuff out of the way first.'

‘I see,' Paul said. ‘But what I actually meant was, what do I do
now
? Do I go back to my office and wait for someone to send for me, or should I go and find someone and tell them I've finished here?'

Benny shrugged. On the wall behind him, Paul noticed a framed print – three white kittens – that hadn't been there before. Neither, now he thought about it, had the wall; it was where the little door had been, but it had vanished. ‘Depends on how much of a hurry you're in,' Benny said. ‘If it was me I'd spend a day or so lurking in one of the empty offices upstairs, where nobody's likely to come looking for me. Flask of coffee and a good book, you could stay hidden for a week before anybody noticed.'

If Paul could've been sure Benny wasn't joking, he'd have been sorely tempted. ‘How'd it be if I went and asked Julie?' he said. ‘She generally seems to know what's going on.'

‘More so than anybody else in the building,' Benny confirmed. He yawned. ‘Well, thanks for all your help. I won't pretend you've got enough aptitude for pest control to line a small thimble, but it's been nice having someone to deal with all the crummy paperwork.'

‘My pleasure,' Paul replied. ‘When's Mr Wurmtoter likely to be back, then?' he added, not that he was particularly interested.

‘Any day now,' Benny said. ‘Can't be more specific than that; a job takes as long as it takes, and besides, he's got this habit of skiving off for a day or so once he's finished and then pretending he's been stranded in the desert or held captive in the dungeons of the Dark Lord. Really, of course, he's been off seeing the sights, lounging by the pool, going on coach trips. But he's a partner, so you can't say anything.'

As Paul had predicted, Julie knew exactly what he was supposed to do next. ‘The Countess will see you in her office at 2.15,' she said. On the opposite wall, the clock showed seven minutes to one. ‘You might as well take an early lunch,' Julie said, as though conferring on him the freedom of the City.

Actually, Paul was in two minds about that. What he really wanted to do was hang around reception and see if Melze wanted to come out for lunch. If it hadn't been for the vision he'd seen in the annoying little red stone—

Sort of a subconscious compromise; he hung about in the corridor agonising about whether it'd be the right thing to do until 12:59, then sprinted for the front office before they locked the street door. He got there just in time, and Melze was on her way out.

‘Long time no see,' she said, smiling at him like a searchlight. ‘I was just heading for that sandwich place round the corner. You coming?'

Easy as that. ‘Yes, all right,' he replied. Like Benny had just told him: keep it simple and you won't go far wrong. Indeed.

‘So,' she said, as they sat opposite each other across an old formica table. ‘What've you been up to, then?'

If only
, Paul thought. It'd be so easy to get along with Melze. When he'd been with Sophie it was all jagged pauses and unbridgeable silences; you had to be a mountaineer to get from one end of a conversation to another without falling down a crevasse. Before he'd met her, he'd been under the impression that love was everything, that once you'd acquired or attained love you were free and clear, and the world owed you happiness as a reward for valour. But now his own true love was in California, and here he was with someone he could talk to, if only—

‘Finished heroism,' he replied with his mouth full. There's no elegant way of eating a brittle-shelled ham roll. ‘Not sure what I'll be doing next. Either glamour or wisdom, I think.'