Marool glared, meeting eyes as cold as her own were hot. “You are presumptuous, Madame.”
“Not at all. When we received word of this last evening, I went to the Temple to consult the Hags personally on the matter. It is not their intention that the Houses shall be robbed of their students. Bane, and Dyre, and Mouche will work in your stables or your gardens, replacing certain other laborers who are, for a time, unavailable to you. Such work is all they will do. And if their skin is marred, or their appearance changed, or if they are ill fed or their bones twisted or broken … “
Marool stormed out into the hall, and thence was led by Simon to Madame’s office. Mouche moved uncertainly. Madame stepped beside him, murmuring: “Mouche, go with them. Be polite. Be subservient. Do your work. Do not tempt the woman to violence … “
“Madame … “ he whispered. “Madame … “
“Yes, boy. What is it?”
“That picture outside my room. It’s her, isn’t it? That is Mistress Mantelby.”
Madame paled. She shivered, then drew herself up once more. “Yes, Mouche. That is Mistress Mantelby. And the best way to avoid drawing her attention is to seem uninteresting. Do you understand? Be unattractive and dull. Totally dull.” She gave him a significant look and gestured toward the door.
Still he hesitated. The sight of Marool’s face had been terrible, but more terrible yet was the thought of leaving House Genevois, leaving his secret way within the walls, leaving … that one whom he watched in the night hours. “Madame. Are the Timmys really gone?”
She shivered, only slightly, reaching forward to stroke his face with her ringers. “What Timmys? I know nothing of any Timmys. Nor do you, if you are wise. Go, Mouche. And may fortune be with you.”
On her lips, it had the sound almost of a prayer.
35—Timmy Talk
If Mouche had been there to open his hidden gate and creep into the walls, he would have found the space packed with Timmys: Timmys listening at cracks, peering through eye holes, observing what the humans were doing as they or their predecessors had been observing almost since humans had first arrived. Though it had been some time before Timmys had been seen by the second wave of settlers, Timmys had seen the settlers from the beginning.
“This creature coming,” said one Timmy, who had been in the walls of the temple when D’Jevier and Marool had conversed, “This Questioner-idi coming, if idi finds out we have been treated badly, idi may seek to redress our wrongs, to do justice.”
“That must not happen,” cried others. “Our wrongs must not be redressed. Justice would upset everything!”
There was agreement. Justice would be the last straw.
“Why can’t tim-tim go now,” sang one, two, a dozen, their voices making a sad harmony of the words.
“It is not the time,” replied others, an antiphon. “Tim-tim must await the time.”
“But the jong grow strong,” sang the first ones. “And the jong wax large, like moons, and Niasa turns and turns.”
“Even so, it is not the time.”
“The earth shakes with the turning of Niasa. She will waken! She will break the egg!”
“Even so.”
After a long silence, one offered, “Whether it is the time or not, word must be sent to the bai. The depths must be informed of this dangerous idi, this Questioner.”
Others agreed. There was a generalized and rather antlike scurry as some set out and others arrived, this one and that one being assigned to this peephole or that crack, and a small group started on a journey to the depths where they would inform the great ones of the dangerous Questioner who was coming.
Those remaining behind stayed at their peepholes in the walls. “The woman-gau took Mouchidi,” said Mouche’s goddess, the one he had intuitively called by her tim-tim name, Flowing Green. “They took the one I have hopes of!”
“Not far,” reassured another. “He goes to House Mantelby. Tim-tim are in all the walls there, watching the terrible ones and the bad woman.”
“I will go there,” said the green-haired one. “I have many long hopes of Mouchidi. I read his face and see him feeling what we feel. I see how he joys. I see him perceive Her pain.”