Chapter 34: Part 34

Boddy kept watch for the first hour or so while Daniel and the constructor Lady Liu had hired built a security system or whatever for Daniel, but frankly, there wasn’t much point. Mister Westlake was unarmed, though for a constructor that was always a fluid statement. More to the point, if Westlake wanted to do anything to Daniel, Boddy’s ability to respond would be extremely limited, since he couldn’t project into Daniel’s mindscape.

Which meant that for the first hour or so, Boddy was left with his thoughts. He was still having plenty of trouble with those, though. It was hard to reconcile the Master Carver he knew and respected with the man who had apparently tried to sell nine Houses out to an Alley House. Maphandler, formerly Porter, had been his friend. So had the other Boddy, the one who took a knife right before this trip.

It was Archie that hurt the worst, though. Boddy had always had a soft spot for the House’s youngest full-time worker. Her grandfather had been like an old uncle to Boddy, and Archie herself had been like his favorite niece. He had watched her growing up, supervised her taking her first tasks as a Gofer. Hell, Boddy knew more than a little bit about how the archives process worked just from the times he had dropped off lunch for Archie and Old Archie. They had been family, both to Boddy and to his older siblings and parents. And when Boddy’s family had all taken positions at another House, he had been taken in by Old Archie. Well, sort of. By that point Boddy was an adult with a name and a job and a room of his own. But he knew Old Archie would always be there if Boddy needed him. And up until the day of Old Archie’s passing at the age of eight centuries and a bit, Boddy had leaned on him. That had been a couple decades ago. Boddy was entering his fourth century now, Archie was halfway through her second.

It would be just as bad, he knew, if Archie was not involved. Because if that was the case, then his friend had been replaced. He could think of plenty of ways that Master Carver could accomplish that, and few of them involved the original Archie still being around. At best she would be imprisoned somewhere, but hobs were house spirits and House spirits. Confined spaces were fine, but limiting spaces? That was unbearable. It had been bad enough being in the car with Daniel as a bee, or now to know that he couldn’t freely travel the Lane. Actual imprisonment would have seared his mind.

He got up. Daniel and Mister Westlake were still focused on their projected selves; though Boddy had paid enough attention to the earlier conversation and chastisement to realize that they could easily do that and walk around outside at the same time. He supposed it was fair, considering the importance of what Daniel was learning. But it meant that his presence in this room was somewhat superfluous.

The House of Inheritance, as always, managed to lay itself out like an ancient family home. He missed his House with its more-or-less consistent architecture, but if there was anywhere a house spirit could easily navigate, it was a house, little h or big H either one. He let his feet take him down the hall, through a door that looked exactly like the others, up two flights of stairs, another hall, down a flight of stairs, then all the way to the far end of a final hall. His senses told him what he needed was on the other side of this door.

And there it was. The recreation room. The rumpus room, sometimes. The den, in other domains. He didn’t know what they called it here, but he smelled the stale odor of potato chips and heard cheering about some sporting event that was likely playing on the screen. He managed a sort of weak smile as he pushed open the door.

A crowd of off-duty cobbles were gathered on a couch facing one large screen. Boddy was surprised to see Steward in an armchair nearby, wearing his natural tiger-like face and focused intently on the game. A few other House staff members of other kins were there as well, even including a hob, to Boddy’s surprise. Usually hobs and cobbles agreed not to work under the same roof. It wasn’t necessarily a hatred thing, but more of a mutual respect.

A couple of heads turned in Boddy’s direction as he took in the scene. One cobble’s eyes went inquisitive, the others dismissed Boddy as unimportant, or at least unlikely to disrupt their day off, and grabbed bowls of popcorn (realis popcorn, Boddy could smell it from here) as they turned back to the game.

He met the inquisitive eyes and nodded, the polite nod of one professional to another. Then to the group at large, he asked “What’s the score?”

One of the assorted cobbles answered. “We have Narcissists up three runs on the Grand Ol’ Id. But Id has the bottom slot and there’s plenty of innings left to play.”

Inter-house baseball, then. Boddy didn’t follow it closely, but he knew some basic info. “Mind if I pull up a seat?”

The inquiring cobble hopped up over the back of the couch in answer, grabbing a pair of chairs from a stack near the kitchenette. Boddy approved. A good rec room should have a place to make refreshments. It even had a tiny little wet bar. To his surprise, the whole bar, the couch, the television, and most of the dishes were realis. The House of Inheritance could make almost anything the Household would need, but they still relied on so much realis that it was almost like being in human shape again.

The cobble, a woman in her third or fourth century, set both chairs down by the end of the couch. Boddy selected the one on the outside, letting the cobble sit closer to her friends or family on the couch. Silently, they both watched the game for a little while.

“You’re Bodyguard, right?” The cobble woman asked after a few minutes. “From Community? You came here with the thought constructor?”

“One of them, yeah. Your Lady sent for a second one to give my one a bit of assistance.”

“Right, I heard about that. Your human is Mister…Cover? Corners! Mister Corners?”

“Well, I’d say he’s no more ‘my’ human than I’m ‘his’ hob, but yeah. That’s the human I am currently traveling and working alongside.”

The cobble woman didn’t reply for a long time. Boddy turned back to the game, letting the sporting event occupy as much of his thoughts as he could. He was no great student of statistics and sports trivia, but he also didn’t have a lot of thoughts to spare, so it worked. He was jerked to alerntess by the cobble woman’s voice again. “Can I ask you something, Bodyguard?”

“You may, if you tell me your name.”

“I am Youngest Aunt. We don’t customarily use personal names in this House, but I understand that it’s common in your House, so you can call me Annie, if you must.”

“Youngest Aunt is fine. You can call me Boddy if you like,” Boddy responded. “What’s your question?”

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“Why are you and Mister Corners back here? For that matter, why did you come here to begin with?”

Boddy leaned against the back of his chair, looking at the ceiling briefly while he considered his answer. A particularly dazzling play elicited cheering from the cobbles and even a couple of claps from the rakshasa as he was about to answer, so he paused for a few seconds while everyone calmed down.

“We came here the first time by accident. Daniel--that’s Mister Corners--got attacked by a metaphor of his own creation. A true one--constructed one--though we didn’t know it until after it was running loose. It put him into a sleep that we fully expected would be a coma. Miss Wanderer was with us at the time, from House Curiosity. She believed that if we could get Daniel somewhere safe, he would wake up eventually. Maphandler--that’s another hob from Community who was with us then--found the nearest House that was allied to Community. Turned out to be here.

“This second time, we’re here because Daniel and I landed on the wrong side of a set-up. The delivery we thought we were on was…” Boddy trailed off, trying to decide how much he could share. Lady Liu knew some of it, though not the details of the item nor the origins of Rookie. Her House staff would likely all know as much as they needed to as soon as they needed to. Youngest Aunt here probably already knew the broad strokes just through gossip. “Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly what we expected. Some things went South. Maphandler tried to attack Daniel, assisted by the House we thought we were delivering to. I tried to protect him. After a scuffle, Daniel and I ended up out in realis for a day, hidden, or hidden enough. Once we collected our resources and regained some energy, we decided to come back through, but your House was the only doorway we knew that would admit Daniel.”

“Why not your own House?” The woman asked, tilting her head so that her long chin swung almost like the pendulum of a clock.

“Maphandler used to be Porter over there,” Boddy answered. It was technically the truth. “We weren’t sure how well that would work out if he was willing to attack Daniel already.”

“So you think Maphandler may have betrayed your House?”

Boddy looked down at the cobble. She was smaller than he was. Unlike him, her fur and skin were a brownish color, like tanned leather. Made sense, he supposed. The original human story had involved a shoemaker, right? She was looking straight ahead, eyes unfocused, but she noticed him turn his head and met his eye. There was something she wanted to share with him, he realized. But she didn’t know whether she could trust him with it.

He decided to tell her the truth. Or at least a bigger portion of it than he had openly told anyone except Lady Liu, and he knew Daniel hadn’t spoken to anyone but Mister Westlake. “Not exactly. We--I--think that the House hired Daniel as a scapegoat for something terrible. I’m not sure who else on the staff I can trust, or even if the Master of the House is involved. So we came here. You’re allies of our House, but your Lady isn’t known for tricks and treachery. Daniel has only met members of maybe four or five Houses, and his only invitations were here, Curiosity, and Community. I’m not a doorman, so I didn’t know how to get to Curiosity, but Daniel had an invitation for here. Seemed safer than going back home, at the time.”

“Until those thugs ambushed you on the front lawn.” Youngest Aunt offered, very quietly.

“Until that, yeah. But even then, they’d only arranged for Lady Liu to keep out of it, and she broke that agreement when it became clear they were trying to harm us. Too late to help, but it still means something for your Lady’s reputation.”

The cobble turned back towards the screen, saying nothing for several minutes. Boddy didn’t press. If she planned to tell him whatever it was she knew, she would tell him.

“What do you plan to do now?” she eventually asked, not turning to look at him. Boddy glanced aside, then turned back to the game himself.

“We’re going to gear up and head back to my House. Our House. Daniel was hired there, it’s his too, in a sense. We’re going to find out who’s working against the House, who they’re working with, and we’re going to put a stop to all of them.” He tightened his fist in his lap as he spoke. His speech surprised him. He hadn’t consciously made the decision to deliver justice out, because that wasn’t a decision that a bodyguard made. He wasn’t sure what his new name would be in the end. But he was certainly prepared to find out.

“Good,” was all that Youngest Aunt had to say about that. She smiled, slightly. She and Boddy turned to watch the game. He felt that he had gained an ally here, even though she had not actually revealed whatever it was that she was considering revealing.

In the seventh inning, one of the Tiny Siblings came in at a patter and tapped Boddy on the sleeve. “Mister Daniel has finished his session and is asking for you, Mister Boddy.”

Boddy rose to go, saying brief and polite farewells to the sports fans in the room. As he put his chair back by the wall, Youngest Aunt appeared at his elbow carrying her own chair. She passed him a slip of paper. He met her eyes and she flicked them towards the door. Assuring the Tiny Sibling that he could find his own way, Boddy returned to Daniel’s room. Once he was out of eyeshot of the cobbles, he read the note.

 

Mister Bodyguard, I believe you and Mister Daniel may need to see something that was delivered to my House three weeks ago. Meet me in the Green Study in an hour.

 

It was signed by Lady Liu.

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