in that hearty way you do when you are very nervous indeed. “All right. I believe you. You needn’t drop me out.”
Cat laughed too. “I wouldn’t drop you. I’d levitate you into a tree. Haven’t you ever wanted to fly?”
Joe stopped laughing and wriggling. “Haven’t I just!” he said. “But my family says boys can’t use broomsticks. Go on. Fly me down to the village. I dare you.”
“Er – hem,” said someone in the doorway.
Both of them looked round to find Chrestomanci standing there. It was one of those times when he seemed so tall that he might have been staring straight into Joe’s face, and Joe at that moment was a good fifteen feet in the air.
“I think,” Chrestomanci said, “that you must achieve your ambition to fly by some other means, young man. Eric is strictly forbidden to perform magic inside the Castle. Aren’t you, Cat?”
“Er — ” said Cat.
Joe, very white in the face, said, “It wasn’t his fault – er – sir. I told him to prove he was an enchanter, see.”
“Does it need proving?” Chrestomanci asked.
“It does to me,” Joe said. “Being new here and all. I mean, look at him. Do you think he looks like an enchanter?”
Chrestomanci turned his face meditatively down to Cat. “They come in all shapes and sizes,” he said. “In Cat’s case, eight other people just like him either failed to get born in the other worlds of our series, or they died at birth. Most of them would probably have been enchanters too. Cat has nine people’s magic.”
“Sort of squidged together. I get you,” Joe said. “No wonder it’s this strong.”
“Yes. Well. This vexed matter being settled,” Chrestomanci said, “perhaps, Eric, you would be so good as to fetch our friend down so that he can go about his lawful business.”
Cat grinned up at Joe and lowered him gently to the carpet.
“Off you go,” Chrestomanci said to him.
“You mean you’re not going to give me the sack?” Joe asked incredulously.
“Do you want to be sacked?” Chrestomanci said.
“Yes,” said Joe.
“In that case, I imagine it will be punishment enough to you to be allowed to keep your doubtless very boring job,” Chrestomanci told him. “Now please leave.”
“Rats!” said Joe, hunching himself.
Chrestomanci watched Joe slouch out of the room. “What an eccentric youth,” he remarked when the door had finally shut. He turned to Cat, looking much less pleasant. “Cat —”
“I know,” Cat said. “But he didn’t believe —”
“Have you read the story of Puss in Boots?” Chrestomanci asked him.
“Yes,” Cat said, puzzled.
“Then you’ll remember that the ogre was killed by being tempted to turn into something very large and then something small enough to be eaten,” Chrestomanci said. “Be warned, Cat.”
“But —” said Cat.
“What I’m trying to tell you,” Chrestomanci went on, “is that even the strongest enchanter can be defeated by using his own strength against him. I’m not saying this lad was —”
“He wasn’t,” said Cat. “He was just curious. He uses magic himself and I think he thinks it goes by size, how strong you are.”
“A magic user. Is he now?” Chrestomanci said. “I must find out more about him. Come with me now for an extra magic theory lesson as a penalty for using magic indoors.”
But Joe was all right really, Cat thought mutinously as he limped down the spiral stairs after Chrestomanci. Joe had not been trying to tempt him, he knew that. He found he could hardly concentrate on the lesson. It was all about the kind of enchanter’s magic called Performative Speech. That was easy enough to understand. It meant that you said something in such a way that it happened as you said it. Cat could do that, just about. But the reason why it happened was beyond him, in spite of Chrestomanci’s explanations.
He was quite glad to see Joe the next morning on his way out to the stables. Joe dodged out of the boot room into Cat’s path, in his shirtsleeves, with a boot clutched to his front. “Did you get into much trouble yesterday?” he asked anxiously.
“Not too bad,” Cat said. “Just an extra lesson.”
“That’s good,” said Joe. “I didn’t mean to get you caught – really. The Big Man’s pretty scary, isn’t he? You look at him and you sort of drain away, wondering what’s the worst he can do.”
“I don’t know the worst he can do,” Cat said, “but I think it could be pretty awful. See you.”
He went on out into the stableyard, where he could tell that Syracuse knew he was coming and getting impatient to see him. That was a good feeling. But Joss Callow insisted that there were other duties that came first, such as mucking out. For someone with Cat’s gifts, this was no trouble at all. He simply asked everything on the floor of the loose box to transfer itself to the muck heap. Then he asked new straw to arrive, watched enviously by the stableboy.
“I’ll do it for the whole stables if you like,” Cat offered.
The stableboy regretfully shook his head. “Mr Callow’d kill me. He’s a great believer in work and elbow grease and such, is Mr Callow.”
Cat found this was true. Looking after Syracuse himself, Joss Callow said, could never be done by magic. And Joss was in the right of it. Syracuse reacted very badly to the merest hint of magic. Cat had to do everything in the normal, time-consuming way and learn how to do it as he went.
The other part of the problem with Syracuse was boredom. When Cat, now wearing what had been Janet’s riding gear most artfully adapted by Millie, had got Syracuse tacked up ready to ride, Joss Callow decreed that they went into the paddock for a whole set of tame little exercises. Cat did not mind too much, because his aches from yesterday came back almost at once. Syracuse objected mightily.
“He wants to gallop,” Cat said.
“Well he can’t,” said Joss. “Or not yet. Lord knows what that wizard was up to with him, but he needs as much training as you do.”
When he thought about it, Cat was as anxious to gallop across open country as Syracuse was. He told Syracuse, Behave now and we can do that soon. Soon? Syracuse asked. Soon, soon? Yes, Cat told him. Soon. Be bored now so that we can go out soon. Syracuse, to Cat’s relief, believed him.
Cat went away afterwards and considered. Since Syracuse hated magic so much, he was going to have to use the magic on himself instead. He was forbidden to use magic in the Castle, so he would have to use it where it didn’t show. He used it, very quietly, to train
