Wizard and glass - Stephen King [189]
She was drawing in breath for a fresh string of them when an idea struck her. A wonderful idea. A brilliant idea. She had wanted Susan Delgado to cut off her hair. That hadn’t worked, and she didn’t know why . . . but she did know something about the girl, didn’t she? Something interesting, aye, so it was, wery interesting, indeed.
Rhea had no desire to go to Thorin with what she knew; she had a fond (and foolish, likely) hope that the Mayor had forgotten about his wonderful glass ball. But the girl’s aunt, now . . . suppose Cordelia Delgado were to discover that not only was her niece’s virginity lost, the girl was well on her way to becoming a practiced trollop? Rhea didn’t think Cordelia would go to the Mayor, either—the woman was a prig but not a fool—yet it would set the cat among the pigeons just the same, wouldn’t it?
“Waow!”
Thinking of cats, there was Musty, standing on the stoop in the moonlight, looking at her with a mixture of hope and mistrust. Rhea, grinning hideously, opened her arms. “Come to me, my precious! Come, my sweet one!”
Musty, understanding all was forgiven, rushed into his mistress’s arms and began to purr loudly as Rhea licked along his sides with her old and yellowing tongue. That night the Cöos slept soundly for the first time in a week, and when she took the glass ball into her arms the following morning, its mists cleared for her at once. She spent the day in thrall to it, spying on people she detested, drinking little and eating nothing. Around sunset, she came out of her trance enough to realize she had as yet done nothing about the saucy little jade. But that was all right; she saw how it could be done . . . and she could watch all the results in the glass! All the protests, all the shouting and recriminations! She would see Susan’s tears. That would be the best, to see her tears.
“A little harvest of my own,” she said to Ermot, who now came slithering up her leg toward the place where she liked him best. There weren’t many men who could do you like Ermot could do you, no indeed. Sitting there with a lapful of snake, Rhea began to laugh.
3
“Remember your promise,” Alain said nervously as they heard the approaching beat of Rusher’s hoofs. “Keep your temper.”
“I will,” Cuthbert said, but he had his doubts. As Roland rode around the long wing of the bunkhouse and into the yard, his shadow trailing out in the sunset light, Cuthbert clenched his hands nervously. He willed them to open, and they did. Then, as he watched Roland dismount, they rolled themselves closed again, the nails digging into his palms.
Another go-round, Cuthbert thought. Gods, but I’m sick of them. Sick to death.
Last night’s had been about the pigeons—again. Cuthbert wanted to use one to send a message back west about the oil tankers; Roland still did not. So they had argued. Except (here was another thing which infuriated him, that rubbed against his nerves like the sound of the thinny) Roland did not argue. These days Roland did not deign to argue. His eyes always kept that distant look, as if only his body was here. The rest of him—mind, soul, spirit, ka—was with Susan Delgado.
“No,” he had said simply. “It’s too late for such.”
“You can’t know that,” Cuthbert had argued. “And even if it’s too late for help to come from Gilead, it’s not too late for advice to come from Gilead. Are you so blind you can’t see that?”
“What advice can they send us?” Roland hadn’t seemed to hear the rawness in Cuthbert’s voice. His own voice was calm. Reasonable. And utterly disconnected, Cuthbert thought, from the urgency of the situation.
“If we knew that,” he had replied, “we wouldn’t have to ask, Roland, would we?”
“We can only wait and stop them when they make their move. It’s comfort you’re looking for, Cuthbert, not advice.”
You mean wait while