To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online Page B

a few small cafés and stores were scattered along the block. She paused at the corner of Seventieth and Second to greet the big stocky duffle-coated doorman there, who always stooped to pet her. He was opening the door for one of the tenants: now he turned, bent down to her. "Hey there, Midnight, how ya doing?"
    "No problems today, Ffran'hk," Rhiow said, rearing up to rub against him: he might not hear or understand her spoken language any more than any other ehhif, but body language he understood just fine. Ffran'hk was a nice man, not above slipping Rhiow the occasional piece of bologna from a sandwich, and also not above slipping some of the harder-up homeless people in the area a five- or ten-dollar bill on the sly. Carers were hard enough to come by in this world, wizardly or not, and Rhiow could hardly fail to appreciate one who was also in the neighborhood.
    Having said hello in passing, she went on her way down the block, not bothering to sidle even this close to home. Iaehh rarely came down the block this way anyhow, preferring for some reason to approach from the First Avenue side, possibly because of the deli down on that corner.
    She strolled down the sidewalk, glancing around her idly at the brownstones, the garbage, the trees, and the weeds growing up around them; more or less effortlessly she avoided the ehhif who came walking past her with shopping bags or briefcases or baby strollers. Halfway down was a browner brownstone than usual, with the usual stairway up to the front door and a side stairway to the basement apartment. On one of the squared-off tops of the stone balusters flanking the stairway sat a rather grungy-looking white-furred shape, washing. He was always washing, Rhiow thought, not that it mattered much to how he looked. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
    "Hunt's luck, Yafh!"
    He looked down at her and blinked for a moment. Green eyes in a face as round as a saucer full of cream, and almost as big; big shoulders, huge paws, and an overall scarred and beat-up look, as if he had had an abortive argument with a meat grinder: that was Yafh. However, you got the impression that the meat grinder had lost the argument. " 'Luck, Rhi," he said cheerfully. "I've had mine for today. Care for a rat?"
    "That's very kind of you," she said, "but I'm on my way to dinner, and if I spoil my appetite, my ehhif will notice. Bite its head off on my behalf, if you would...."
    "My pleasure." Yafh bent down and suited the action to the word.
    She trotted up the steps and sat down beside Yafh for a moment, looking down the street while he crunched. Yafh was one of those People who, while ostensibly denned with ehhif, was neglected totally by them. He subsisted on scraps scavenged from the neighborhood garbage bags, and on rats and mice and bugs— not difficult in this particular building, its landlord apparently not having had the exterminators in since early in the century.
    "You off for the day?" Yafh said when he finished crunching.
    "The day, yes," she said, "but tomorrow early we have to go to Hlon'hohn."
    "That's right across the East River, isn't it?"
    "Uh, yes, all the way across." Rhiow put her whiskers forward in a smile. So did Yafh.
    "They're making you work again, 'Rioh," Yafh said. The name was a pun on her name and an Ailurin word for "beast of burden," though you could also use it for a wheelbarrow or a grocery cart or anything else that ehhif pushed around. "It's all a plot. People shouldn't work. People should lie on cushions and be fed cream, and filleted fish, and ragout of free-range crunchy mouse in a rich gravy."
    "Oh," Rhiow said. "The way you are."
    Yafh laughed that rough, buttery laugh of his: he leaned back and hit the headless body of the rat a couple of times in a pleased and absent way. "Exactly. But at least I'm my own boss. Are you?"
    "This isn't slavery, if that's what you're asking," Rhiow said, bristling very slightly. "It's service. There is a difference."
    "Oh, I know,"