I was feeling bad about those four mages again. “I got them into bad trouble,” I said. “Arnold and them. Pretending to be a novice that way. I could tell they were in trouble by the frantic way they were hunting for me.”
Maxwell Hyde gave a sigh. “Probably. I’ll check up—have to anyway—but frankly, I don’t see what else you could have done without being shot as a spy. You played it right by instinct, as far as I can see. Go on.”
I did, and he interrupted me again to ask about the black panther in the wood and again to ask me about when the mages were looking for me there. “Misty, were they? Now, think carefully. Would you say they were only partly there, while you were really there?”
“That’s what it seemed like,” I said. “I didn’t know if they could see me or not. That’s why I went up the dark path, to get away from them. But I sat down then and decided in the end that I’d better go and find Romanov.”
“Now, hang on,” Maxwell Hyde said. “You told me Romanov seemed to despise you and you were obviously pretty scared of him. Exactly why did you think Romanov was the man to consult? Did it feel like a compulsion at all?”
“It could have been,” I admitted. “I know it seems odd, when I knew he’d been offered money to get rid of me, but I think I went because he was excellent, really. He was a hundred times better than Arnold and his lot. And I could pay him, too. Besides, wasn’t that spell already on me, from when Romanov came to find me? He was ill before I got here.”
“We’ll consider that in the right place,” Maxwell Hyde said. “Could have been overkill, you see. Carry on.”
I went on, until I came to where I met Maxwell Hyde himself. He made faces there. I think he was ashamed of being so drunk. Then we both heard a sudden humming at the back of the kitchen and whirled round. There was a large fridge standing there, working away.
Maxwell Hyde bounced up. “Ah,” he said. “Romanov’s feeling better.” He looked inside the fridge with appreciative noises, and fetched out a big piece of cheese and a cluster of strawberry puddings. They had strange writing on the cartons, but they tasted like strawberry mousse to me. We both had one, and he took one through to Romanov.
I was glad of the interruption. I was still having such a mixture of feelings about meeting that girl Roddy—or I was embarrassed, or something—that I wanted to leave her out of it altogether. Now I had time to work out how not to mention her, so I sat and stared at the range and thought. It wasn’t a range anymore, really. It was a white thing with doors and no sign of a fire. Nothing like so comforting.
Then Maxwell Hyde came back and went on listening to me, with his leather-patched elbow on the table and his sharp, soldierly chin in his hand. I went on seamlessly to my time in Loggia City, then to meeting Mini, and then to the end, and didn’t mention Roddy at all. Maxwell Hyde nodded and grunted a bit, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Right,” he said when I was up to the place where the flier took off. “Plenty of food for thought there. Some of it I’ll need to think about a bit. But there are two things that spring to mind straightaway. First, about just when this anti-Romanov working was put on you. I wondered about the Prayermaster doing it for a while. It’s their kind of thing. They do a lot of dirty work under the name of prayer. But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that it was done in London, by this person who sent you off. Under my nose, too.” He sniffed in an irritable way. “Says volumes for how nervous I was,” he said. “I should have spotted it. Anyway, does that make sense to you?”
I nodded. It did seem likely.
“Then you’ve got an enemy,” Maxwell Hyde said. “Someone who dislikes you as much as he dislikes Romanov. Any ideas?”
All I could think of was that this enemy was something to do with my real father’s Koryfonic Empire. We discussed that for a bit, but in the end Maxwell Hyde shook his head sharply.
“No,” he said. “Won’t wash. Person has to have it in for Romanov even more than for you. I’ll check with Romanov, of course, but I’d take a strong guess that he’s never gone near that Empire. Got more sense. Anyway, to get on to the second thing. I’d be interested to know at what point you moved back ten years. It took me all night to suss out how to do that, even after I’d discovered I’d have to. When did you realize?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I just went here. But …” I thought about it. “It could have been when the path forked,” I said doubtfully. “Something was a bit wrong then—but I don’t know.”
“Any idea how you did it?” Maxwell Hyde asked. I shook my head, and he sighed. “No, it was all blind instinct, I suppose,” he said. “Ah, well. The nasty part seems clear enough, though. The Prayermaster gets you to lead him to Romanov and arrives here with these two boys. Whereupon they do him in. Any idea why?”
I thought of the implacable schoolmaster face with its gold-rimmed glasses and found the corners of my mouth pinching in. “If you’d met him, you’d know. They must have hated him, really hated him.” Maxwell Hyde shot me one of his looks. “They were horrible kids,” I said. “I’ve no sympathy for them either. But think of the worst schoolmaster you ever had.”
Maxwell Hyde winced a bit. “Right,” he said. “Right. Prayers and beatings, you think? So we have two vicious young killers loose with a flier, who know how to find Romanov.” He sprang up again. “I’ll just go and warn him, I think.”
While he was gone, I ate two banana puddings and a chocolate one and felt better. It looked as if Maxwell Hyde hadn’t noticed that I’d left out meeting Roddy, and he was definitely not suspecting me of murder anymore, though I think he’d wondered. This was a relief.
“I’ve let Romanov know,” Maxwell Hyde announced, coming back, “and he says he’ll alter this island as soon as he can, so they can’t find him again. But the mystery thickens about this enemy you both have. He’s never touched your Empire, so it can’t be that. And he had no connection with you whatsoever before yesterday. So we’re stuck there, too. But I said we’d get rid of the Prayermaster for him. Come along.”
He went to the outside door and beckoned with the folded sheet he was carrying. I swallowed and went with him, wishing I hadn’t eaten those extra puddings.
That side of the island was already farther away. We’d walked nearly three hundred yards before we met Mini, hanging around beside the goat. Both of them looked miserable.
“My tummy’s funny,” Mini explained sadly.
“How many apples did you eat?” I said.
“Two whole treefuls,” she admitted.
“Then you know who’s to blame,” I said. “Try filling up with hay. What’s wrong with the goat?”
“She doesn’t like being tied up,” Mini said.
“Tell her my heart bleeds,” I said.