“Pre-event arrangements,” Rhiow said, “nothing more. Everybody, it’s wise that the Silent Man should know we’re clear on what the plan is. We go in together as his entourage, and let the PR people have their joke and take their pictures. Afterwards, we scatter. Amuse the guests, try not to damage the dogs any more than necessary for good order and discipline, have the occasional hors d’oeuvre. Occasional,” she said, eyeing Urruah. “No getting up on the tables, no matter how the guests invite you to. Arrange for food to fall on the floor when necessary. Shouldn’t be hard, as from what Sheba says, this group is likely to be so awash in alcohol pretty soon that they wouldn’t recognize an, uh, intervention if it climbed up their clothes with all its claws out singing ‘Great Queen Iau Had A Cow.’ Otherwise… just keep your ears and noses open for any sign of the kind of thing that Helen noticed in Anya Harte today. If there are any other People there who’re kindly disposed, chat with them, hear what they might have to say, don’t bring up what we are or do unless you must. If they recognize you for what you are by the look of you, downplay your role, don’t get into long explanations: you’re just here with the Silent Man. Which is true enough. When it’s time to go, he’ll let Helen know and she’ll call us all silently. Any questions?”
“About the hors d’oeuvres…”
“Yes?”
“How many is ‘occasional?’”
Whack! “Oww!!”
“Thank you, Sheba. I owe you one.”
“My pleasure.”
The Silent Man chuckled inaudibly in his throat, reached back for Sheba: she climbed up to her usual place on his shoulder. We ready? he said.
“I believe so,” Helen said.
The Silent Man got out, opened the back door for the People, then went around to Helen’s door, opened it. But she didn’t move.
Problem?
“Not at all. You go ahead,” Helen said. “I need a moment to powder my nose.”
The Silent Man smiled, closed her door carefully, and headed for the big front door of the Dagenham place with Rhiow and her People in tow.
The house was another of those structures that seemed to be having some kind of identity crisis as regarded its architecture. It had a broad curved front with columns right along the curve, but these sorted very strangely, to Rhiow’s eye, with the multiple peaked roofs behind the façade. “Italian revival,” Urruah said as they strolled up to it.
“Great,” Rhiow said. “Another building that’s going to need CPR.” Through the tall windows running under the colonnade, Rhiow could see rooms brilliantly lit, and in them crowds of ehhif, the queens almost all in bright colors, the toms all in somber shades. Even through the glass, a subdued hubbub of voices could be heard.
Outside the tall carved wooden front door, the Silent Man paused, looked down at the group around his feet. Rhiow looked up at him. “Unless something comes up,” she said, “I won’t be too far from you. If you need something done, just speak to me as you’ve been doing. I’ll answer in a way that no one will hear, either your people or mine.”
He gave her a quizzical look. ‘Something done?’
Like the production of an excuse to leave early, Rhiow said privately.
He smiled — the expression more than usually edged, since he was its target. Does it show that much? And he reached up and pressed the button to ring the doorbell.
The door swung open, managed by a dark tom-ehhif in black with touches of white. The Silent Man stepped in, took off the overcoat he was wearing over his own black-and-white regalia, and handed the coat and his hat to the ehhif who’d opened the door.
The tom vanished. Rhiow glanced around, glad of the excuse to hold still for a moment, as the sudden assault on the senses took a few moments to manage. Besides the echoing noise of music, voices, laughter, clinking glassware – for the huge circular front hall was floored in a checkerboard of polished marble – the scents hit any incomer in a rush of outflowing warmer air, and had to be dealt with. Food, drink, perfume, ehhif sweat and ehhif pheromone, the traces of several different varieties of houiff and various People, most of them strangers to the house, at least one a resident.
“Whew,” Urruah said from behind Rhiow. “How many do you make it?”
“A hundred or so?” Rhiow said.
“Could be a lot more,” Arhu said, stalking up beside her. “This is a fairly big place.”
“Possibly more like two hundred,” Hwaith said, coming up from behind. “There are as many cars parked in the lot up here as there were out on the street.”
