The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

Voilà, messieurs . A whole street of eateries for your honors.” Clearly, he had us spotted as English—or, considering Arnold and perhaps Chick, too, not French anyway. The place he’d brought us to was a row of little cafés, and they all had big hand-done notices in their windows. SCARMBLED EGG , one said, and SNALES was another. LEG OF FROG WITH CHEEPS and STAKE OR OLDAY BREKFA , said others.
    We all cracked up. It had been a long day, and it felt good to be able to scream with laughter. “I am not,” howled Dave, staggering about on the cobbles and wiping tears off his face, “repeat not , going to eat cheeping frog legs!”
    â€œLet’s go for the scarmbled eggs.” Chick laughed. “I want to know what they do to it.”
    So, in spite of Arnold’s saying he rather fancied the stake, we went into the SCARMBLED EGG one. We charged in, still laughing, and snatched up menus. I think the proprietors found us a bit alarming. They brought us a huge carafe of wine straightaway, as if they were trying to placate us, and then looked quite frightened when we all discovered we needed to visit the gents and surged up to our feet again.
    There was only one of it, out in the backyard past the telephone and the kitchen, where a large fat French lady glowered suspiciously at us as we waited for our turns. I was last, being only the novice, so I had to stand a lot of the glare.
    But when we came back to our table, things were almost perfect. We swigged the wine and ordered vast meals, some of it weirdly spelled and the rest in French, so that we had no idea what would be coming, and then we ate and ate, until we got to the cheese and sticky pastry stage, where we all slowed down cheerfully. Dave began saying that he wanted to look at the nightlife very soon.
    â€œIn a while,” Arnold said. “I suppose I’d better take your reports first.” He lit one of his horrible Aztec smokes and took out a notebook. “Chick? Any attempts to break through the East? Any threats?”
    â€œNegative,” said Chick. “I’ve never known the otherwheres calmer.”
    The others both said the same. Then Arnold looked at me. “How about your patrol? What’s your name, by the way?”
    They’ve finally asked! I thought. “Nick.”
    Arnold frowned. “Funny. I thought it was something like Maurice.”
    â€œThat’s my surname,” I said, quick as a flash. “And I do have something to report. A fellow called Romanov turned up and he—”
    That caused a real sensation. “Romanov!” they all shouted. They were awed and scared and thoroughly surprised. Arnold added suspiciously, “Are you sure it was Romanov?”
    â€œThat’s who he said he was,” I said. “Who is he? I never met anyone so powerful.”
    â€œOnly the magical supremo,” Chick said. “Romanov can do things most magic users in most worlds only dream of doing.”
    â€œHe can do some things most of us never even thought of,” said Pierre. “They say he charges the earth for them, too.”
    â€œIf you can find him,” Arnold said wryly.
    â€œI’ve heard,” said Dave, “that he lives on an island made from at least ten different universes in at least seven different centuries. Went there to escape his missus.”
    â€œSensible fellow,” murmured Arnold.
    â€œHe escapes there to avoid being pestered to do magic,” Pierre said. “I’d heard he was self-taught. Is that true?”
    â€œYes, that’s the amazing thing about him,” Dave said. “According to what I heard, he was born in a gutter on quite a remote world—Thule, I think, or maybe Blest—and he pulled himself out of poverty by teaching himself to do magic. Very unorthodox. But he had a gift for it and discovered things no one else knew how to do, so he charged high and got rich quick. He could probably