Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones [70]
Paolo looked at her warily. He had already discovered that Renata was, as Aunt Gina would say, sharp enough to cut herself, and he did not like the way she was looking at him. “He saw me at the Palace of course,” Paolo said.
“No he didn’t,” said Renata. “He drove the coach. He knows your name and he knows why you came, doesn’t he? How?”
“I think he must have been standing behind us on the Art Gallery steps, and we didn’t see him in the fog,” said Paolo.
Renata’s shrewd eyes continued the look Paolo did not like. “Good try,” she said. Paolo tried to break off the look by turning and sauntering on along the quays. Renata followed him, saying, “And I was meant to get all embarrassed and not ask any more. You’re sharp enough to cut yourself, Mr. Montana. But what a pity. Marco wasn’t in the fight. They wanted him for the single combat, that’s how I know, and he wasn’t there, so Papa had to do it. And I can tell that you don’t want me to know how Marco knows you. And I can tell Marco doesn’t, or he’d have stopped me going by saying who you were. So—”
“You’re the one who’s going to cut yourself,” Paolo said over his shoulder, “by being too clever. I don’t know how Marco knew me, but he was being kind not say—” He stopped. He sniffed. He was level with an alleyway, where a peeling blue house bulged out onto the jetty. Paolo felt the air around that alley with a sense he hardly knew he had, inborn over generations of spell-making. A spell had been set here—a strong spell, not long ago.
Renata came up behind. “You’re not going to wriggle out—” She stopped too. “Someone made a spell here!”
“Was it Angelica? Can you tell?” Paolo asked.
“Why?” said Renata.
Paolo told her what Chrestomanci had said. Her face went red, and she prodded with her toe at a mooring chain in the path. “Individual style!” she said. “Him and his jokes! It’s not Angelica’s fault. She was born that way. And it’s not everyone who can get a spell to work by doing everything wrong. I think she’s a sort of back-to-front genius, and I told the Duchess of Caprona so when she laughed, too!”
“But is the spell hers?” asked Paolo. He could hear gunfire, from somewhere down the river, mixed with the dull booming from the hills. It was a blunt, bonking clomp, clomp, like a giant chopping wood. His head went up to listen as he said, “I know it’s not Tonino. His feel careful.”
“No,” said Renata, and her head was up too. “It’s a bit stale, isn’t it? And it doesn’t feel very nice. The war sounds awfully close. I think we ought to get off the quays.”
She was probably right. Paolo hesitated. He was sure they were hot on the trail. The stale spell had a slight sick feeling to it, which reminded him of the message in the yard last night.
And while he hesitated, the war seemed suddenly right on top of them. It was deafening, brazen, horrible. Paolo thought of someone hold-ing one end of an acre of sheet metal and flapping it, or of gigantic alarm clocks. But that did not do justice to the noise. Nor did it account for some huge metallic screeches. He and Renata ducked and put their hands to their ears, and enormous things whirled above them. They went on, whatever they were, out above the river. Paolo and Renata crouched on the quay, staring at them.
They flapped across in a group—there were at least eight of them—gonging and screeching. Paolo thought first of flying machines and then of the Montana winged horse. There seemed to be legs dangling beneath the great black bodies, and their metal wings were whirling furiously. Some of them were not flying so well. One lost height, despite madly clanging with its wings, and dropped into the river with a splash that threw water all over the New Bridge and spattered Renata and Paolo. Another one lost height and whirled its iron tail for balance. Paolo recognized it as one of the iron griffins from the Piazza Nuova, as it, too, fell into a spout of water.
Renata began to laugh. “Now that is Angelica!” she said. “I’d know her spells anywhere.”
They leaped up and raced for the long flight of stairs