Marcia sighed as if expecting trouble. “Tentacle,” she said.
“No.”
“Stop messing around,” said Marcia. “Of course it is.”
“Why?” Tertius Fume leaned back against the door, folded his arms and regarded Marcia with a superior air. Beetle, who was not a violent boy, felt like giving him a good kick.
“I have not the faintest idea why,” said Marcia irritably, “but that is not the point. One doesn’t have to know why; a password just is. Now let us through. Tentacle. Tent-a-cle.”
“No. I’ve changed it.”
“You can’t change a password without clearing it first with the Password Committee, of which I am Chairwoman. And you haven’t. Tentacle it was and Tentacle it remains.”
But the great iron door to the Vaults stayed firmly closed. Tertius Fume looked at Marcia with an amused expression and started examining his ghostly fingernails as if Marcia was no longer of any consequence at all. Beetle began to think that there was some truth in the old story that Tertius Fume had been assassinated by a group of disaffected scribes.
“Very well,” said Marcia. “You leave me no choice but to OverRide the password. Stand back, Beetle.”
“Ah. Just testing,” said Tertius Fume a little hurriedly. “You’ve passed. In you go now, and don’t mess anything up.”
“Idiot,” said Marcia under her breath.
Beetle took a couple of lamps from the rack outside the door and lit them. Marcia gave the door a bad-tempered shove.
It creaked open and the smell of damp earth and musty paper wafted into the stairwell. Inside the Vaults, Marcia locked the door and did an Alarm on it. If Tertius Fume was going to sidle up and eavesdrop she wanted some warning.
Marcia was still seething about the ghost. “He doesn’t like women, that’s his trouble,” she told Beetle. “He never did that with Alther, but ever since I took over he’s done that every time. Every time. It drives me crazy.”
“We just call him Old Goat-Face,” said Beetle.
“Do you?” Marcia laughed. “Well, I don’t suppose he would like that. Now, Beetle, I would like The Live Plan of What Lies Beneath, please.”
“Oh, right.” Beetle sounded surprised. “Um, let me get you a seat.” Beetle placed the lamps on a great lump of a table that looked as though it was carved out of stone, and rubbed the dust off the seat of the old chair beside it with the end of his sleeve. Marcia sneezed. She sat down and wrapped her purple cloak tightly around her against the damp air of the Vaults. “Oh, and Beetle—could you bring the most recent ExtraOrdinary Apprentice Urn?”
“No problem. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Marcia watched the flame from his lamp guttering in the drafts that blew through the ancient ventilation system, as Beetle disappeared into the farthest reaches of the Vaults. Beetle knew his way around the Vaults with his eyes closed—something that he had actually done for his Intermediate Manuscriptorium Management Exam—and he was back quickly with his arms clasped around a huge lapis lazuli blue and gold urn. The lamp hung from a spare finger and on top of the urn a long cylinder wrapped in cloth was balanced precariously.
Extremely carefully, Beetle set the urn and the cylinder down on the table, and he placed his lamp beside it. In the light of the flame the lapis lazuli gleamed a beautiful deep dark blue and the streaks of gold that ran through it shone with a warm glow.
“Would you like to take these up to the Hermetic Chamber?” Beetle asked Marcia.
“No, thank you, Beetle,” Marcia replied. “I have no wish to go to the Chamber. In fact I am glad that Miss Djinn is not here. I would like to speak to you in confidence.”
“Me?” gasped Beetle.
“Indeed. In your capacity as Inspection Clerk. And because I trust you.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Beetle flushed.
“Of course I trust your Chief Hermetic Scribe implicitly,” Marcia said. “But she does have a tendency to complicate matters, if you know what I mean?”
Beetle nodded. He knew exactly what Marcia meant.
“Would you take out the Plan, please?”
Beetle unwound the discolored cloth from the long silver tube. The end of the tube was sealed with purple wax, which was stamped with the imprint of the Akhu Amulet. The amulet, which hung around Marcia’s neck, had been the symbol and source of the power of the ExtraOrdinary Wizards since Hotep-Ra himself.
From her ExtraOrdinary Wizard gold and platinum belt, Marcia unclipped what appeared to be a long silver lozenge.
She muttered something under her breath and, like the claws of a cat unsheathing, a shiny, slightly curved silver blade silently shot out. Beetle watched, fascinated, as Marcia ran the razor-sharp blade around the wax on the end of the tube so that it parted like butter. She drew out a thick roll of paper and unrolled it. From a shelf under the table Beetle took four ornate gold paperweights with silver handles and placed one on each corner.
Marcia took out the tiny spectacles that she used for close work. She perused the complex diagram, running her finger along the path of the Ice Tunnels, muttering to herself. Beetle had politely stepped away but Marcia beckoned him over.
“You know the two tunnel ghosts—the brothers who were trapped in the Emergency Freeze and have been looking for a way out ever since?”
“Eldred and Alfred Stone?”
“That’s them. Well, apparently they have
found a way out. Alther—you know the ghost of Alther Mella? You’re too young to remember but he was our last ExtraOrdinary Wizard.” Beetle nodded. He had met Alther many times recently while Septimus had been learning to use the Flyte Charm. “Well, Alther saw them a couple of nights ago.”
“Actually,” said Beetle, “now I think about it, I haven’t seen them in the tunnels for some time.”
“Really? This is not good news, Beetle. Not good news at all…aha. Now come and have a look. There is something going on here.” Marcia stabbed a long finger at a fuzzy area on what appeared to be a tangle of worms, snaking and folding in and out of one another.
Beetle had never seen a Live Plan before. As he looked he was sure he saw something on the edge of the Plan move.
“Did you see that?” gasped Marcia. “It moved.”
“It’s doing it again,” said Beetle. “I think it’s the hatch under old Weasal’s place.”