Gwendylyr gave Raspu no respite, nor time for questions.

"The linen closet," she said as they passed a half-open door on their right, and she pulled Raspu to a brief halt.

Caught in Gwendylyr's efficiency, Raspu pushed the door fully open and looked in.

The closet was a mess. Sheets and pillowcases tumbled uncaring from shelves and drifted in creased and grey rivers across the flagged floor.

There was a small dog curled in a nest of scratched and tangled blankets in a far corner. It had left a foul-smelling mess on a pile of flannels.

"Do you see what I mean?" Gwendylyr said. "Give them an hour to their own devices ..."

"I don't understand what is happening," Raspu said, loathing the uncertainty in his voice.

"My dear man," Gwendylyr said, her voice husky with solicitousness, "you are here to set all this to rights."

She smiled, and Raspu took half a step backwards.

"If you can," she continued. "If," her smile broadened and became almost predatory, "you make the right choices.

"Now, here," Gwendylyr pulled Raspu down to the next door and kicked it open with her foot, "is the butler's closet."

Like the linen closet, the butler's closet was lined with shelves. And, as in the linen closet, the contents of the shelves — dusters, cans of boot polish, candles, flints, sewing threads and bobbins, flea powder for dogs, bundles of sharpened pencils, yellowed stationary, blocks of starch, bottles of ink, smelling salts, emetic salts, several years supply of old newspapers and enough wads of tobacco to keep an entire army unit happy for over a month — had spilled beyond their allocated space and spread across the floor.

"You'll have to fix it," Gwendylyr said. "No way around it."

"But —"

"I just can't believe how the staff have let things run down!" Gwendylyr reached behind the door of the closet and, in a motion so swift and magical Raspu could not follow it, whipped a butler's uniform from a hook. With a cracking flap and a cloud of dust she clothed Raspu in his new attire.

"There!" Gwendylyr said, tweaking straight the heavy woollen vest and pulling out the wrinkles in Raspu's coat-tails. "At last you look the part."

Raspu blinked, wondering what had happened. This was all rather overwhelming.

"You must keep your tie straight!" Gwendylyr muttered, tugging at the offending article. "Else how will you maintain respect?"

Raspu roared, the sound frightful in the confines of the butler's pantry, and seized Gwendylyr by the shoulders.

"I will not put up with this any longer!'''

"Excellent!" Gwendylyr cried. "That's the ticket! I knew I'd done the right thing in asking you to set things to rights!"

And before Raspu could do anything else — tear her apart, burn down the building, cause havoc, terror and pestilence — Gwendylyr had propelled him out the door and down the corridor towards a plank door (painted a depressing shade of brown) with a small, round, brass doorknob.

She pulled the Demon to a halt before the door and looked at him sternly.

Raspu shifted from foot to foot, grimacing at the tight leather shoes encasing his feet.

His hands, clad in fawn (although now somewhat stained) cotton gloves, flexed at his sides.

"Behind that door," Gwendylyr said, "await the staff."

She managed a genteel shudder as she momentarily closed her eyes.

"And," Gwendylyr opened her eyes, "beyond that door lies a choice."

Raspu hissed. "The test! The challenge!"

Gwendylyr grinned, and Raspu did not like the expression behind her eyes very much at all.

"Yes. The test. This will not be a battle of magics or swords, Demon, but a far more desperate battle. A man who cannot govern his household cannot be trusted to govern himself. Thus your challenge.

Beyond that door lies a household in desperate need of a firm hand. Impose order and control over the household, impose your undisputed rule, and you will win the challenge by demonstrating your right to rule yourself — your right to self-determination. If you cannot govern the household, you will fail, and will —"

Raspu snarled, already triumphant. This a challenge? Ha! "No need to explain the consequences of failure, woman, because I will not fail! "

"Fabulous! Just the man I needed!"

Raspu's face twitched and he took a deep breath, controlling his urge to decapitate her here and now. Later. There would be time later.

"I am the Demon of Pestilence," he finally said. "I can decimate populations, inflict plagues across continents, cause life itself to become nothing but a never-ending scourge. Think you that I can't manage a bunch of twaddle-headed maidservants?"

He straightened, lifted his chin, pulled down the cuffs of his black coat, and seized the doorknob.

With an efficient twist he opened the door, stepped inside, and slammed it behind him.

Gwendylyr folded her hands before her, her face expressionless.

Chapter 49

The Butler's Rule

Raspu stepped inside the kitchen, took in the scene in one appalled and angry glance, and roared.

Maidservants, asleep on the rug before the fire, screeched and leapt to their feet, hastily trying to pat their hair into some order.

Footmen, huddled over a poker game under the dish-racks, pushed chairs and stools to the floor as they hastily rose.

The cook lumbered out of the cold room, a jug of cream in her hands and smears of the clotted stuff about her chin, and stared gape-mouthed at the Demon-butler.

Five small children of indeterminate usefulness and sex scrambled out from the stove alcove, biscuits and cakes tumbling from their hands, and stood before the draining boards, forming a ragged, wailing line of carefully-managed pathos.

Two dogs burst out of a cupboard door, each with a half-eaten joint of meat in their jaws, and fled through an open window.

Several dishes crashed to the floor as they jumped over one of the benches, and a huge canister of flour fell to the floor.

Quiet and stillness descended as Raspu stared about.

Flour drifted down and coated all.