They all went. They forgot supper and ate sandwiches from the buttery, after which they spent the rest of the evening there. Elda couched against the wall where the now extremely battered cloakrack was propped, sipping beer through a straw and wondering what humans saw in it, while Claudia leaned against Elda, feeling safe at least for the moment, and Ruskin, perched on a bar stool to bring him level with everyone else, told Felim more and more loudly how it might be possible to make wings and enchant them so that a dwarf might fly. Lukin simply grinned and wrapped his arm around Olga.
Much later, when the students had dispersed with much happy shouting and quite a lot of discordant singing, Finn walked purposefully through the courtyard—disturbing as he went a crowd of mice gathered around a dropped sandwich—and down to the main gate, where he let himself out by the small postern. He would try the White Lion first, he thought, and then the Golden Eagle and the Mage. If he drew blanks there, it would have to be the Red Wizard, the Blue Boar, the Green Dwarf, and the Griffin, followed by the Dragon, the Pumphouse, and Tilley’s Wines, and after that some of the lower taverns. The city had a great many inns and several big hotels, such as the Imperial Arms and the Harping Bard, where the senators and the dwarfs had probably stayed. It promised to be a long night.
But Finn was lucky. Corkoran was in the White Lion, sitting at a table filled with carefully lined-up wine bottles and a half-full one in front of him. In the rest of the room all the chairs had been put on top of the tables and the landlord was leaning on the bar, looking tired and impatient.
“Come on, Corkoran,” Finn said. “Time to go home.”
“Got no home,” said Corkoran. “Not anymore. Turned out to starve when I was fifteen. Tours sacked the place. Walked all the way to the University.”
“The University,” Finn said, “is your home now. You’re head of it. Remember?”
“Not. That’s Querida,” said Corkoran. “I’m only Chairman of the Board.”
“That’s the same thing these days,” Finn pointed out. “Come along, Corkoran, we need you. We had a plague of griffins this afternoon, and there was no one in authority to deal with them. One of them knocked down the statue of Policant.”
“Mice,” said Corkoran. “You must be drunk, Finn. Mice is what we’ve got a plague of. Mice don’t knock down statues. They eat moonships.”
Finn sighed. “You were probably on your tenth bottle at that stage. Come along back now. You’ve drunk quite enough, and the landlord wants to close.”
“Can’t,” said Corkoran. “Won’t. Got no reason to do anything anymore, Finn. My moonshot’s over. Finished. Everything eate
n and cut to pieces.”
“I know,” Finn said sympathetically. “I went to your lab to look for you. It was those assassins, wasn’t it?”
“You should have let me dump them on the moon!” Corkoran cried out. “It’s all your fault, Finn!”
“I should have taken them off you and sent them back to Ampersand,” Finn said. “I’m sorry now that I didn’t. But it’s no use crying over spilled milk, Corkoran—”
“I’m not crying,” Corkoran explained. “I’m drowning my sorrows.”
“You certainly are!” Finn agreed, looking at the rows of bottles. “For the last time, Corkoran, are you coming back with me or not? You’re giving a lecture tomorrow, and I’m not going to give it for you.”
“Myrna will,” Corkoran said. “Nice obliging woman. Ask her if you don’t want to do it.”
“Oh!” said Finn. “Bother you then!” He activated the transport spell he had brought with him, with the result that Corkoran woke up in his own bed the next day, fully dressed and feeling like death and without the slightest idea how he got there.
THIRTEEN
WHILE THESE THINGS were going on in the University, pigeons from it were winging in several directions. One speeding eastward passed quite low above the string of ten dwarfs, riding ponies and celebrating as they rode. They laughed and raised their jeweled cups to it.
“That could be ours,” said Dobrey.
“Nonsense,” said Genno. “We sent ours before we left.”
“Well, anyway,” Dobrey said complacently, “the other forgemasters will have our news long before we get home. Fellow tribesmen, we are now the richest fastness in the world. People will come from all over the world and pay gold to learn the truth from this book.”
“We’ll drink to that!” shouted the rest.
Two pigeons meanwhile flew south. One was wounded, but still gained steadily on the pigeon sent by the senators. The largest number of pigeons, however, went west. The biggest group flew in a miserable gaggle and were followed by four others almost as miserable. Derk had told them all, before he hired them out, that if anyone hurt or mistreated them, they were to come straight home to Derkholm. So this was what they were doing. They passed underneath Callette, winging the other way, and shortly after that under five griffin strangers flying after her. A while later Kit came thundering over them. They found this dimly reassuring. Everything that flew respected Kit these days. They arrived in the Derkholm pigeon loft more or less at the same moment that Blade—having translocated in from the coast, saying he had just had a message for help from the University, which was what sent Kit thundering off there—kissed his distraught mother’s cheek, told her he had to go and help Kit but that they would both be back for supper, and translocated out there himself.
The other pigeons were horrified at the condition of the fugitives. They set up such a din that Old George, who was on his way to feed them, anyway, almost ran up the ladder. He ran down again almost at once and raced off to find Derk. Derk was on the terrace with his two winged youngest children, a vast terrace that had sometime ago been covered with a protective spell that kept out the weather but did not stop anyone from walking or flying through it, so that all the griffins could join in family life there.
“Those pigeons,” Old George panted. “That lot you sent to the University. About half of them’s come back in a terrible state! Bleeding. Feathers missing. One’s going to lose an eye if you don’t do something quick!”
Derk was quite glad of the distraction. Mara had just dashed indoors crying about Lydda, and he was not sure what to do about either of them. He was upset by Lydda’s sudden marriage himself, anyway. He felt quite as bad as he had on the day Shona took herself off to the East Coast with her Geoffrey. He did not feel he could help Mara at all.
“Go and kiss your mother better,” he said to Angelo and Florence, and pelted for the loft.