Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [84]
So she had two choices: she could blunder about on the off-chance that she’d find him without being caught by the Wicked Witch of the West and Dopey – and probably executed for their entertainment, no doubt after a lengthy spell involving needles and electrodes and pain, or she could sit in Sensimi’s room, amuse herself with Looloo, and wait.
No contest.
So, her feet squelching just a little bit less now, Trix drew herself up and set off down the corridor, pausing to examine the vases and tasteless statues that sat on tables in every alcove, wondering whether any of them were worth the effort of stealing. Probably not. Not that she needed the money, of course, but taking interesting things was somewhere between a hobby and an obsession with her. She froze beside a table bearing a particularly tacky piece of crystal in the shape of an eagle (she never wanted to see anything made of crystal ever again!) as she heard voices from the right turn in the corridor just up ahead. Trix looked around and realised that she was just a few feet away from a rather impressive-looking door. She pressed her ear to the ornately carved wood but she couldn’t hear anything. Slowly and carefully, she turned the door handle and opened it just a crack, her body tensed for the inevitable squealing hinge. But it moved silently and she put her face to the gap: all she could see was a bit of wall, papered in dark purple with some gold swirly patterns on it. She pushed it a little further, listening intently. A dim lamp was on in the room, that much she could tell.
‘If that’s you, Trove, you can just clear off and let me sleep!’ someone bellowed, and Trix jumped. It sounded like an old man. The Imperator?
‘Did you hear me?’ came the voice again. Damn! What should she do? Just close the door and go, leaving him to think that it had been this Trove person?
Then she heard the voices from the corridor again, getting louder. Double damn! Was it the Imperatrix and her son again? She shrugged to herself: come on Trix – how difficult could it be to pretend to be a maid or a serving girl or whatever backward setup they had here? She’d been complaining to herself that she hadn’t had a chance to be anyone else since she’d got here, and the room was obviously dimly lit. Maybe, just maybe, she could pull this 152
off. Stooping slightly, keeping her face to the floor and trying to flip into the mindset of one of the Palace staff, she swung the door open and stepped in.
The room was smaller than she’d imagined – although the bed was a ludicrously large four-poster: the kind of thing that people with more money than style have to impress their friends. And stranded in the middle of it all was the tiny figure of an old man, propped up on pillows the size of sheep. She tried to keep her face pointing down as she closed the door gently behind her.
‘Oh,’ was all he said.
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought I’d check that you had everything you need.’
‘My dear girl,’ said the man, tipping his head back and peering through his glasses at her, ‘if you were really a member of the Palace staff, you’d know that not only do I have everything I could possibly want –’ Trix risked a glance at him and saw that he was smiling a pleasantly impish smile – ‘with one or two exceptions, but that anyone who comes unannounced into my room at this hour of the night would face summary execution at dawn.’ He stared imperiously at her – and then his dark, wrinkly faced creased up and he let out a howl of laughter. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he said, shaking his head and slapping his palms on the expanse of white bedding around him. ‘Couldn’t resist. Come here, girl. Come on, I won’t bite.’
Trix approached