Cazak was perhaps not quite as confident as he looked. He hesitated. “Go on,” Don said to him. “I know she’s just being stupid about you. She’d fly away if she really meant it.”
Cazak advanced. Callette heard his talons clicking on the ground and said, “Go away. You’re too small.”
Cazak, with some caution, poked his head over Callette’s winged shoulder so that he could look her in one eye. She turned her head away. “Come on, Callette,” Cazak said. “You know most males are my size. We never let that bother us. Why should you?”
“Because!” snapped Callette.
The griffins crowded behind Don exchanged looks, knowing perfectly well that Callette could have put out one of Cazak’s eyes if she had wanted to, but none of them dared speak. Griffins were used to being far more public about these things than humans were.
“Promise at least to let me paint that picture of you,” Cazak said.
Callette bent and nibbled absently at one of the rungs of the ladder. She had, she knew, felt acutely out of sorts ever since she came home, downright crotchety, in fact. Now she suddenly felt fine—peaceful inside, happy really. Cazak must be why. How stupid! The wooden rung snapped. “Bother!” she said. “Now you made me break the ladder. All right, paint your picture. Then we’ll see. I may hate you.”
Cazak laughed. “No, you won’t. Callette, I love you even more when you’re being grumpy!”
“You can’t start painting yet,” said Callette. “I really and truly have to go to the University and warn them. There may be an emergency there. That’s where Blade and Kit are,” she told Don over her shoulder, “visiting Elda.”
“Then we’ll go with you,” Don said. “There are enough of us here to deal with most emergencies.”
SEVENTEEN
AT THE UNIVERSITY there were now fourteen dead mice laid out under the council table and most of the teaching staff were gathered around Querida. There was as yet no sign of any new emergency. Querida, taking the very reasonable line that no one could do anything about the missed moonshot, was dealing with other matters instead. The wards were proving very hard to restore. They seemed to resist anything that Querida did. Consequently, she was in a very sharp temper as she leafed through piles of essays and exam papers.
“Why is it that nobody ever gives any mark higher than a B?” she demanded. “Why are they nearly all given a B, for that matter? Half of these deserve to fail, to my mind. Finn?”
Finn, who was having a miserable afternoon, replied as he had replied many times before, “Corkoran had this policy, you see, that we should turn out as many working wizards as—”
He broke off in some relief as Sabrina came trotting in with the fifteenth mouse. “Good cat!” said Querida. “By ‘working wizards,’ Corkoran meant half-trained magic users, I gather. He means to clutter the world with incompetent warlocks who can’t tell a spell from a shopping list, does he? I think it’s getting a little stuffy and mouseish in here. All of you come outside for a breath of fresh air.”
Flury followed the procession as it trooped out into the courtyard. Because he was by now feeling sorry for Finn, and for Myrna and Umberto, though not so much for Dench and some of the others, he said, “While we’re out here, ma’am, perhaps you’d like to take a look at Wizard Wermacht?”
“Oh, yes,” said Querida. “Thank you for the reminder, Flury. Myrna, run and fetch Wermacht—no, you’re preg
nant, aren’t you? What a silly state to be in. Then Finn must—”
Flury galloped off before Finn was forced to take any more orders and returned on three legs, lugging the bar stool. He set it down in front of Querida with a clatter. She looked at it. Everyone else looked at it. It stood there.
“Wermacht!” Querida called sharply. “Come on out!” Nothing happened. Querida began to mutter and work on it. Finally she went so far as to lay her little, withered hands on the leather seat, saying as she did so, “Umberto, what are you staring at? Everyone, help me! This wizard was clearly an utter bungler, and I can’t do this alone.”
“Er—” said Umberto.
“Who is this Wermacht, anyway?” Querida demanded. “I never met him.”
“He graduated two years ago with top marks,” Finn explained. “Never fell below a B, and—”
“Don’t tell me!” Querida snapped. “Corkoran had this policy!”
“Er—” Umberto began again.
“Flury!” Querida said, exasperated. Bar stool or man, this Wermacht was going to have to be fired, along with Dench and six others almost equally incompetent. And Corkoran, before any of the others. It was a real nuisance having to find lecturers to take their places. Even if she called the old wizards out of retirement, she would still have to do some of the teaching herself, which was maddening when she wanted to be working on the Waste. “Flury, can you do anything about this Wermacht person?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am,” Flury said glumly. “I’ve tried. I thought I ought to try because I encouraged him to get like this in the first place.”
“Will you stop apologizing!” Querida hissed.
“Er—Querida,” Umberto managed to say, while Querida was taking a breath before she told Flury just what she thought of griffins who made wizards turn themselves into bar stools and then crawled about it. Like Elda, she found Flury’s humility highly irritating. “Querida, I think we’re about to have an international crisis. King Luther and Emperor Titus—”
Querida spared an unbelieving look across the courtyard. There, sure enough, to the left stood Emperor Titus beside his unfurled banner of the golden griffin on the purple ground, surrounded by neat ranks of glistening soldiery. Titus had his arms folded and his legs astride in a thoroughly warlike posture. He was staring across at the rigid figure of King Luther on the right. King Luther only had six soldiers and Isodel to support him, but he had his arms folded, too, and the glare he was giving Titus more than made up for his lack of an army. It looked as though the only thing that was stopping an immediate small war was the crowd of interested students flocking into the courtyard to see what was going on.