The exercise:
Write about: moving on to the next step.
Finished the mail out this morning, then finished getting ready for tomorrow's Board meetings. Hoping for a relatively quiet day, but no matter what happens I'll be happy to have that pain in the butt done.
2 comments:
Well done on getting everything to the point where you can happily hand it all off to your protegée without feeling bad about it :)
The UK is very nice, much nicer than Malta. Just having trees everywhere makes a real difference, but even the people are nicer (and thinner, not that particularly counts but you notice the differences more the first few days back). I am happy to be back here.
Moving on to the next step
Dread pinged Fabian later that afternoon to suggest meeting for a drink in the Admiralty bar at 7, and Fabian gratefully accepted. Then he returned to wading through the minutes of another Director-level meeting, trying to prepare himself for what looked to be the most boring meeting ever convened. The meeting was still a week away, but the tedium of the internal detail, and the overwhelming feeling that this was utterly unnecessary made it hard to concentrate on what had happened last time -- which Fabian felt could adequately be summarised as 'nothing'. Rystin's words kept dancing in his head whenever the minutes started droning on about the relative stock levels of paper accessories in the Eden Gardens depositories and he sat there, massaging his temples, wondering if the lack of wisp-elf support wasn't indeed more important than how much toilet roll was available in March.
The knock at his door was so welcome that he was out of his seat and opening it before he remembered that he could just have called out 'come in'. A smile wreathed his face as the idea that he was so bored that he preferred being a doorman and he yanked the door slightly harder than he needed to. The smile faded as he found no-one stood outside.
"Huh?" he murmured, and then his questing eyes found a piece of paper on the floor. "Huh!" he said softly, but more determined, and picked it up.
There was a sensation like ants crawling over his skin for a second or two and then a bright flash of light. He started, and took a couple of steps back. Running footsteps sounded from both ends of the corridor and his eyes widened and his heart-rate surged. Feeling suddenly dry-mouthed and scared he stepped back again, and again, and then fell over his still-book-laden visitor's chair and sprawled on the floor.
"Director! Are you alright? I think he's been hit!"
"What?" Fabian struggled to sit up, pulling his legs back and off the chair and getting a view of something other than the ceiling. A mage-guard was kneeling a little away from him and another was coming to a stop in the doorway.
"Director? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Too many," said Fabian, feeling annoyed. "Um, three, though it would help if you weren't shaking so much. What just happened?"
"You were attacked!"
"No, I wasn't. I picked a piece of paper up off the floor." Fabian waved it at the mage-guard and noticed that there was something written on it. "A note, by the looks of things."
The mage-guard tried to take it, and Fabian snatched it away. "I haven't read it yet."
"There was a spell on that paper," said the mage-guard making another grab for it. Fabian put it behind his back. "It triggered the wards around the door."
"Was that the flash of light?"
"You saw that? OK! That's good, that means the spell probably diffused against the ward. We'll need to check you over, of course, and we'll need that paper as well."
Fabian glared at the guard and gripped the paper in both hands while he read it. Then, shaking his head, he handed it to the mage-guard and allowed himself to be helped up.
"I have an appointment at 7," he said. "Try to not to make me late for it, ok?"
Greg - thanks, and I'm glad you've had a nice return to the UK :)
Jeez, another attempt on poor Fabian. Glad the guards were close at hand, but perhaps now they'll have the sense to be a bit closer at hand.
Post a Comment