THE SEA HAG(10)

Chester paused. Instead of flaring up angrily again, Dennis smiled to show that he knew Chester was trying to trap him.

"I know the use of the apparatus, Dennis," Chester said, the approving smile in his voice matching the boy's reflected expression.

"Then let us see what the apparatus will tell us, my friend," Dennis said, squeezing the raised tentacle as he led the way to the door. "If Parol can't help us, we'll look into his rooms while he's occupied with the dragons."

Dennis kept a cheerful lilt in his voice, while his quivering stomach was all too aware that 'Parol's rooms' had been the Wizard Serdic's rooms not long before.

But the feeling of doom that lay over Emath frightened Dennis more than memory of Serdic could.





CHAPTER 5




Serdic had appropriated a ground-floor wing of the palace. It extended along the seacoast rather than the harbor which the suites of the royal family overlooked, so Dennis and Chester had most of the building's convoluted length to traverse.

When they started out, the boy felt furtive: he was going to sneak into somebody else's private rooms. Then Dennis noticed that the servants he met jumped and bowed to him with more than their normal courtesy.

There wasn't a great deal of work to do about the palace except on special occasions like the Founder's Day ceremonies. The servants he ran into in these sprawling corridors where neither he nor his family had much reason to walk—were here to avoid notice. They didn't expect to be bothered by their superiors while they ate, chatted, or diced in desultory games.

Dennis didn't expect to find Rifkin, the butler, among the idlers, though.

The butler's voice, loud and demanding in its timbre, came from what should have been and empty room. There was a woman speaking also, but her words were scarcely a breathless whisper beneath the butler's insistence.

The boy paused and cocked an eyebrow at Chester.

"Do not hesitate to do what is right, Dennis," the robot said tartly.

Dennis rapped on the door with his knuckles.

"Go away, fool, or I'll have you flayed!" Rifkin bellowed from within.

"Rifkin!"

There was a silence as palpable as an indrawn breath. The door flew open. The butler was tugging the ends of his sash together with one hand and holding the doorknob with the other. He was a big man but soft, a moon-shaped head above a pear-shaped body, and at the moment his pale fingers had the look of uncooked sausages.

"Your highness!" he said in amazement. His voice had its usual rounded dignity, but the look in his eyes awaited the garrote.

There was a rustle within the room. One of the maids—a young girl, younger than Dennis—pushed out between Rifkin and the doorframe with a gasp. She sprinted down the hall and around a corner, trailing sobs.

Dennis stared at the butler. "Has Councilor Ramos' room been cleared yet, Rifkin?" he said without emotion.

Rifkin made a little bow. "It will be seen to immediately," he said.

"I woke you last night and asked you to take care of it at once!" Dennis said.

Instead of thundering with command, Dennis' voice was getting high. His skin became prickly-hot all over. He was frustrated and angry—and those emotions threw him back to other moments of anger and frustration, the times he'd tried to talk as a man with his father and had been slapped verbally as a child.

He was afraid he was going to cry.

"Yes, of course, highness," Rifkin replied as his hands did up his sash and his face pretended it had never been untied. The first panic had passed, and the butler was in full control of the situation again. "And I'll see to it at once. Even in such a—if I may say—humiliating circumstance as that one, your highness' word is our law."

"Why didn't you—"

"Perhaps your highness might wish to consult his father now that your highness has had time to reflect on the matter?" Rifkin continued smoothly. He smiled.

"Do as you're ordered!" Dennis shouted as he turned away. Shouting because at any lesser volume his voice might have choked, turning because he wasn't sure what his eyes were going to do.

"Yes, of course, your highness," the butler murmured unctuously to Dennis' back as the boy stumbled toward a staircase to the ground floor.

"Chester, why can't I...?" Dennis said with his teeth clenched against his own emotions. "Why won't anybody...?"

Instead of spouting some scrap of the wisdom programmed into him in a far time on a distant planet, Chester wrapped a tentacle around Dennis' waist with a touch as delicate as that of a spiderweb.





CHAPTER 6




The entrance to what had been Serdic's wing of the palace was off a small rotunda at the base of this staircase. The rotunda was empty except for litter and a vague smell. There was regular traffic to the wizard's quarters, meal-trays being brought and removed—but the adjacent part of the palace didn't get cleaned.