by Sam Gayton
(A NOTE ON THE WAR COUNCIL)
The Czar’s War Council had five members in all. There was Ugor the Warmaster, who was strong; Pieter the Tallymaster, who was mathemagical; Blüstav the Alchemaster, who was useless and banished; Sir Klaus the Spymaster, who was [CLASSIFIED]; and Lord Xin the Heirmaster, who was cruel.
All of their jobs revolved around the Czar’s ceaseless appetite for conquering. It was Ugor’s job to lead the armies off to battle; Pieter’s job to make sure they had enough swords and bullets; Blüstav’s job to magic up enough silver to pay for it all; Sir Klaus’s job to make sure the battle wasn’t actually an ambush; and finally it was Lord Xin’s job to make sure the next ruler of Petrossia was just as vicious and bloodthirsty as his father.
Apart from Alchemaster Blüstav, who had managed to turn himself into a pile of coins, no member of the War Council was doing worse at their job than Lord Xin. Alexander was proving to be a hopeless conqueror and a dreadful pupil. He had no butchery. No bloodthirst.
Instead, there was a stubborn streak of kindness in him.9
Lord Xin had tried his best to nurture his pupil’s appetite for violence. Alexander had a whole bedroom full of crossbows. And yet, to this day, the prince hadn’t murdered anyone. Not even accidentally.
The Heirmaster was beginning to get worried. Not just for the Empire’s future, but for his own as well. If Alexander didn’t start showing some improvement—perhaps by tormenting Bloodbath, for example, or bullying that wimp of a Tallymaster, or even just refusing to say please and thank you—then Lord Xin might find himself banished too, like Alchemaster Blüstav had been.
Which is why, when the Heirmaster strode into the kitchens, looking for his pupil, and spotted the prince playing hide-and-seek on the shelf with two forbidden friends, Lord Xin began to smile.
It was time to teach Alexander a lesson he would not forget.
* * *
9. One hot day in Swoon last year, the Heirmaster had even discovered Alexander putting sombreros on the severed heads spiked atop the palace gates—to stop them from getting sunburn.
6
The Heirmaster’s Lesson
Reaching down, Lord Xin took the slender silver pipe that swung from his belt like a sword. It was not a flute but a flyte, an instrument that gave anyone skilled enough to play it the ability to fly.
Raising the flyte to his lips, Lord Xin trilled a low rising note. His feet rose up off the flagstones, above the stoves, toward the shelves. The din of the kitchen died down to almost silence as the cooks and maids stopped to gawp up at him. They quickly turned away and resumed their work again, though. It was not wise to stare too long at a member of the War Council.
On the shelf, Pieter shoved his hands into his pockets so Lord Xin wouldn’t see them trembling. He tried to calm himself down using his usual method: first, he gave his fear a number roughly equivalent to how scared he was (at the moment, he was around five hundred and sixty-three thousand and eight times more afraid than usual), then found the number’s square root, and kept going until his fear reached almost zero.
We’ll be fine, he told himself, while Lord Xin’s flyte got louder and nearer. Alexander knows what to say. He got lost while playing, and we’re helping him get back upstairs.
The song trilled, closer and closer. Lord Xin stepped over the air as the musical notes stepped up and down their stave. He stopped playing, and fell down onto the windowsill beside them as lightly as a panther.
“Young Majesty,” he said to Alexander, clipping his flyte back on his belt. “You’re late for lessons. We were going to learn how the Czar kidnapped the Duke of Madri’s poodle.” 10
“I got lost, Lord Xin,” Alexander blurted out, eyes darting around. “I was playing sieges, and I charged down here, and Pieter and Teresa were helping me get back upstairs to the Royal Chambers, and they’re not my best friends either so you can’t chop off their heads because we didn’t even eat any birthday cake.”
It took every ounce of control Pieter had not to groan and slap his palm against his forehead. Opposite him, he saw Teresa’s shoulders sag ever so slightly. Even Lord Xin looked disappointed. He gave a despairing sigh and rolled his eyes.
“We practice lying for two hours a day,” he said to Pieter and Teresa. “He’s actually getting worse.”
Pieter began to back away from the Heirmaster. Teresa did the same. Over by a crate of dry sliced bread, she mouthed the words, “We’re toast.”
“Don’t hurt them, Lord Xin!” Alexander ran forward, eyes trembling with tears.
“Quiet!” Lord Xin’s face twisted into a snarl. “This is to teach you a lesson, Young Majesty. Friends make you weak. Friends will betray you. So watch closely. I do this for your own good.”
In an instant, Lord Xin’s dagger, made from the curved claw of a roc, was in his hand. Alexander threw back his head and started to wail.
“Wait, Heirmaster!” Pieter held up his hands, trying to take control, trying to save them. He spoke in his sternest voice. “As a fellow member of the Czar’s War Council, I remind you that you have no authority to harm us.”
Lord Xin’s laugh was high and fluttery like a love song. “Incorrect, Tallymaster. Only the Czar can decide if you die. But as for the Spice Monkey . . .”
In an instant, the Heirmaster’s dagger was at Teresa’s throat. Pieter did not even have time to cry out. Lord Xin moved faster than a blur . . .
. . . so did Teresa. Her hand flew from her pocket in a spray of black dust, and the Heirmaster stumbled back with a shriek, wiping ground peppercorns from his eyes. Hot tears of hate streamed down his cheeks.
Teresa turned to run, and jerked to a stop. Lord Xin had caught hold of her plait. Winding her hair round his wrist like a rope, he hoisted her up into the air. Teresa cried out, feet kicking six inches off the shelf—then suddenly Lord Xin was scrabbling at his face, howling. A blazing pip chili had been stuffed up each of his nostrils. The green stems curled out of his nose like tusks.
He hacked with his dagger—Pieter’s heart skipped in his chest—but it was a wild slice, and Teresa fell back to the shelf again. Her long white plait had been sheared off just below her neck. It swung limply from Lord Xin’s fist.
Crouching down, Teresa had just enough time to scatter a fistful of hazelnuts behind her as she rolled to safety. Lord Xin stabbed at her a second time. Stepping forward, he slipped on them, arms flailing, perilously close to the shelf edge.
Seizing a bread roll, stale and hard as a rock, Teresa hefted it once and threw.
Her aim was perfect.
Clonk!
With a howl, the Heirmaster teetered off the edge and vanished. He let out a long, high-pitched scream that pierced Pieter’s ears. It cut out suddenly. Far below, the kitchen went back to its hubbub of voices and pans.
Pieter waited for shrieks from the cooks, the shattering of dropped china, yells for guards. Nothing came. Perhaps they’d thought the scream was a whistling kettle. Perhaps the steamy air had hidden the body for a few moments. They had to escape before the guards were called.
He ran straight for Teresa. Alexander did too. Neither of them bothered to go to the edge and look down at the Heirmaster’s body. They were seven shelves above the granite flagstones. You didn’t need to be a mathemagical genius to know that Lord Xin wasn’t coming back up after falling that far.
“Teresa!” he cried, head reeling, thoughts a jumble. “Are you hurt?”
Teresa touched her head gingerly and winced. “I’ve had better haircuts. He won’t be getting a tip, that’s for sure.”
She gave them one of her looks (the one with the sideways head and the wry smile). But her hands were trembling, and Pieter could see how shaken she really was. That had been close. Too close. He could still see in his mind the sharp claw of Lord Xin’s dagger at her throat. There were several million parallel universes now, in which she was the one lying dead on the ground. The thought made him feel faint.
Alexander’s eyes were r
aw and shiny. He looked like he might burst into tears again. He threw himself forward, hugging her tightly. “I hate birthdays,” he sniffed, voice muffled against her chest. “I thought you were going to die, like my mama.”
“She will die a lot more slowly and painfully than the Czarina did,” a voice hissed behind them.
They all whirled around to see Lord Xin, scarlet faced and sweating. He tugged the blazing pip chilies from his nostrils like they were tiny, fiery turnips. He sneezed a gout of sizzling snot onto the shelf.
Pieter blinked, thinking: Impossible, you’re dead, I heard you fall. . . .
Then he saw the flyte in the Heirmaster’s hand, and his brain worked out the truth: the high-pitched scream had been the sound of the musical note that stopped Lord Xin from falling.
“Stay where you are!” he hissed when Teresa took a step toward him.
This time it was not the roc dagger in his hand, but a singing pistol. Teresa froze, and Pieter went icy with terror. The singing pistol was an assassin’s weapon. It came from Soy and was illegal in every other land on Earth. When the trigger was pulled, a tiny alchemical device inside the barrel changed the bang into the sound of a blackbird’s song.
“Don’t think I won’t kill all of you.” Lord Xin’s face was bright red with the chili heat and shame, and his eyes were swimming with mad, scalding tears. “I’ll do it, and no one will ever know it was me. The cooks didn’t see me fall. Now they won’t hear a thing. Empty your pockets of all those little tricks, girl. Now.”
He means it, Pieter thought. He’s so mad, he’d even shoot Alexander.
Beside him, Teresa must have realized the same thing, because slowly, she began to unbutton each patchwork pocket and send herbs and spices tumbling from her grasp.
“Good,” Lord Xin said, looking a little calmer. “Now come stand with me, Young Majesty.”
Alexander looked up at Teresa, and she nodded. He went, lip quivering, while Teresa emptied out the last of her pockets. Snoozeweed, lemon myrtle, dried nettlesting . . . they all formed a little pile around her feet.
“Wipe your eyes,” Lord Xin snapped, snatching Alexander by the scruff of his dressing gown. He aimed the singing pistol at Teresa’s heart. “Stand in front of me. Here. I want you to watch this.”
Pieter tried to square root his terror again, but this time it was just too enormous. The chances the three of them would survive the next few minutes were one in a million and getting astronomically smaller with each passing second.
“That pocket there too,” snarled Lord Xin, pointing his singing pistol to the woolen ginger pocket on Teresa’s thigh.
Pieter’s fists clenched. He knew what Teresa kept in that pocket. A claw-shaped glass bottle, full of a ginger-colored sludge that moved as lazily as syrup.
Their secret alchemy.
The Catastrophica potion.
And suddenly Pieter had an idea. An idea that could save them all. It was their only hope. Their months of experimenting, of try and fail and try again, had all distilled down to this one moment.
“Lord Xin, wait!” he cried. “That bottle is special. Teresa is—”
“Pieter!” she hissed. “Shut it!”
But he couldn’t. Not when this could save her life. “She’s an alchemist, Lord Xin. An alchemist who might actually be able to do alchemy! Do you know how many of them I have listed upstairs in my tallychamber? None! They all blow themselves up, or change themselves into coins like Blüstav did. But not Teresa. She’s a genius!”
“You’re lying,” Lord Xin said, his raw nostrils flaring. “Alchemy is chaos. It cannot be controlled. It wears off too quickly. I remember old Blüstav. A week at most, then poof! The potion wears off, and the thing changes back.”
“I’m better than Blüstav,” said Teresa suddenly, glancing over to Pieter as if to say, I know what you’re planning. “I made this potion to last for years.”
“Impossible!” Lord Xin snarled.
“Maybe even decades,” said Teresa, unstoppering the bottle of Catastrophica with her thumb. “Let me prove it to you.”
Pieter’s heart was slamming in his chest. In all their tests so far, the potion had been completely unpredictable. Perhaps this latest version would work. Or maybe it would just explode, like most of their other attempts.
Either way, his brain pointed out, it will deal with Lord Xin.
Hiding his fear, Pieter leaned forward and raised his eyebrows persuasively at him. “A new Alchemaster! Just think how you’ll be rewarded if you bring her to the Czar.”
The Heirmaster’s lust for reward fought with his thirst for revenge.
“Go on,” said Teresa, holding up the bottle. “Pick something for me to change.”
Lord Xin glanced around the shelf. The barrel of his singing pistol lowered for just a moment.
Teresa leaped forward, Catastrophica in hand.
* * *
10. Dog biscuits laced with snoozeweed, in case you were wondering.
(A NOTE ON WHAT IF)
If Teresa had been a little closer—
If her grip on the potion had been a little tighter—
If the hazelnut she slipped on had been a little smaller—
If Lord Xin had been a little slower—
If Alexander had been a little to the left—
Then this would be a very different story.
But this isn’t a tale of What If.
This is the tale of What Was.
7
Alexander Turns Furry
The catastrophe unfolded in dreadful slow motion. Pieter saw everything with awful clarity—but was unable to move fast enough to stop it from happening. Lord Xin brought the singing pistol up, and he was too fast, and Teresa was too slow, and the barrel was aiming straight at her heart.
But then Teresa trod on one of the hazelnuts she had scattered over the shelf a few minutes beforehand, and went sprawling head over heels.
Pieter’s ears filled with a chorus of birdsong, and behind Teresa something swift and deadly tore itself through the mint leaves and buried itself into the brick wall with a flash of blue sparks. It was only later on, when he saw the singing pistol’s smoking barrel, that Pieter realized Teresa had just accidentally dodged a bullet.
At the time, he was too preoccupied watching the bottle of Catastrophica to think about anything else.
It tumbled from her grasp as Teresa fell, spinning lazily, end over end, sending fat swirls of ginger potion sloshing into the air.
Towards Lord Xin, who ducked.
And Prince Alexander, who didn’t.
There was a wet splatting sound, followed by a moment of stillness, broken only by the steady drip of ginger sludge from Alexander’s hair, chin, ears, and hands. Crouched behind him, Lord Xin was completely dry. Only the barrel of his singing pistol was wet with the potion. The prince had been his barricade.
Teresa staggered to her feet, her expression slack with horror.
“Alexander!” she cried. “Get the Catastrophica off you!”
“The whaty-whatica?” said Alexander. He stood there in a puddle of potion. It glooped and slopped down his whole body in long syrupy strands.
“Holy Sohcahtoa,” Pieter breathed.
“Is it bad if I swallowed some?” Alexander said with a gulp. “It wasn’t mustard, was it? I’m allergic to mustard.”
Pieter and Teresa and Lord Xin all backed away from the Prince of Petrossia with a kind of horrified fascination. But the moments passed, and Alexander didn’t change. There was no magical transformation. Luckily, there was no explosion, either. Alexander was still the same little boy, sitting in his dressing gown, his ginger hair unbrushed.
“Wait a second,” Pieter said to Alexander. “You don’t have ginger hair!”
Beside him, Teresa let out a little gasp that was equal parts horror and triumph. “He does now,” she said.
Alexander tilted his head. “What do I have meow?” he said, then giggled. “I mean, what do I have now?”
>
That was how it began.
Pieter and Teresa’s alchemy did work. It was just taking its time, because cats are lazy and stubborn creatures, and any potion that changes you into one will do so exactly when and as it pleases.
Pieter sniffed. There was a smell of burning. It was getting stronger. He cried out—wisps of orange smoke were wafting out of the prince’s ears!
Now his nose!
Now a long twisting tendril curled from his behind like a tail!
Alexander hopped and crouched over the shelf. “What’s happening?” he said, more confused than afraid. “I feel like I’m full of fizzy juice!”
With a blink, his pupils flattened from circles to slits. Fur spiked up from his skin. Orange sparks jumped and fizzed, whizzing off his body and popping in puffs of pale pink smoke. It was as if he had fleas, and they had decided to set off a display of miniature fireworks.
Lord Xin backed away, staring at Prince Alexander, then at the singing pistol in his hand. The barrel had transformed into a long, curling tabby cat’s tail. “Alchemy!” he cried. “Actual alchemy! What are the odds?”
There was a sucking sound. Alexander was starting to shrink. His dressing gown fell down on top of him like a collapsed circus tent. Out of the sleeve walked a very tiny, very ginger, and very soggy kitten.
Pieter and Teresa looked down at their friend—Alexander, Prince of Petrossia, Only Son of the Czar, Heir to the Iron Crown.
“Meow?” he said to them.
PART TWO
Gargantua
Words were originally magic, and even today retain much of their old magical power.
—SIGMUND FREUD
I shall now become a lion.
—PUSS IN BOOTS, CHARLES PERRAULT
1
The War Council Gathers