‘Old friend, I want to thank you for your help.’
‘Can’t say we did much,’ Corin shrugged.
‘You were here for me – that’s what counts. And however it happened, the manticores are out of danger for the moment. So now I need to make official contact with the Table of Seven.’
Corin glanced at him quickly. ‘You’re not thinking of hiking through the forest, are you?’
‘Shouldn’t I be?’
‘Not on your own, you shouldn’t. First of all, knowing you, you’d probably get lost. Secondly, the forest manticores are by far the most dangerous breed of the whole species. Dangerous and unpredictable.’
‘Yes, but if you leave them alone, they’ll leave –’ Pyrgus began to protest.
Corin cut across him. ‘Get real, Pyrgus. I know you’re an animal-lover, but they can still kill you. We’ll come with you.’
Pyrgus looked at Corin, looked at the men ranged in military ranks behind him. ‘Will you? Would you? Will you really?’
Corin glanced across his shoulder. ‘What do you say, men?’
And the men raised their torches in salute and shouted, ‘Yes!’
The march through the forest was uneventful – so much so that Corin began to worry. ‘With a party this size we should have hit at least one security spell by now,’ he told Pyrgus eventually. ‘This forest edges the grounds of Kremlin Karcist. There’s no way they’d let it go unprotected – open invitation.’
‘Maybe they rely on the forest manticores to keep people out,’ Pyrgus suggested.
‘Have you seen any manticores?’
‘Actually no,’ Pyrgus said. ‘But I thought it was just the sounds of a big party that was keeping them away.’
‘Then a fat lot of protection they’d be, would they?’ Corin said. ‘But I happen to know there were magical protections in this area. At least there used to be. Some of them set to stop large groups as well. One or two people you can leave to the manticores, but a group the size of ours should set off alarm bells all over the place. I’ve been using a detector since we moved into the trees and there’s not a sign of anything. It’s as if …’ He hesitated. ‘If I didn’t know the Companions better, I’d say it’s as if somebody switched them off.’
‘Let’s just thank the Gods there aren’t any,’ Pyrgus said philosophically. ‘Makes life easier for us. Once we reach the Kremlin we’ll be fine: I’m known to Table members and I shall vouch for the rest of you. I’ll tell them we came through the forest to keep my mission secret: they’ll appreciate something like that.’
‘OK,’ Corin said, without much conviction, and Pyrgus noticed he continued to keep a cautious watch at every step they took. But Pyrgus knew something was wrong the moment they stepped from the forest into the Kremlin grounds.
The manicured lawns and carefully tended borders were a mess. Shrubs, bushes, even ornamental trees had been uprooted and the grass was shredded so badly he could see the brown soil beneath. Beyond, the sentry posts were all but flattened, and there was no sign of any guards. He stared across at the building itself and saw at once that the window to the right of the main entrance was broken. The entrance itself was unguarded and the double doors wide open – unheard of in the annals of revolutionary Haleklind.
Pyrgus and Corin turned to look at one another. ‘Something’s happened,’ Pyrgus said unnecessarily. They stared together back at the building, then, driven by some instinct, began to run towards it. Corin’s men hesitated, then ran with them. As they approached the main entrance, a small figure emerged.
Pyrgus stopped dead. ‘Mella!’ he exclaimed.
Mella looked at him. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
Fifty-Two
It was one of those conversations that was destined to be replayed in Henry’s mind until the day he died: bewildering, astounding, memorable … although it began mundanely enough:
Henry said, ‘How dare you threaten to pee on my foot. That’s absolutely disgraceful behaviour for a young lady. And I will not stand for it.’ Especially not on the foot you’ve just peed on, his mind told him irreverently. He tried to sound stern, but was having trouble keeping a straight face.
Mella said, ‘Lord Hairstreak’s behind it.’
‘Lord Hairstreak’s behind what?’
They were together in the Throne Room now, with the door to the ante-room firmly closed and spell securities protecting their privacy. Their sudden departure had earned him a glare from Blue and he couldn’t blame her: walking out like that wasn’t merely rude, but massively undiplomatic. Still, it was done now and Mella was looking up at him with that world’s-about-to-end expression teenaged girls adopt when they’re trying to convey something they think is important. She wasn’t much older than her mother had been on the day he first saw her. He tried very hard not to look at Mella fondly.
‘Lord Hairstreak is behind the Haleklinders’ invasion plan. You have to throw him into a deep, dark, smelly dungeon.’
‘Lord Hairstreak is behind the Haleklinders’ invasion plan?’ Henry echoed. The urge to smile at her had suddenly evaporated. How did Mella know about the Haleklinders’ invasion plan?
‘Daddy,’ Mella said severely, ‘Mother’s told you not to repeat things back to people in the form of a question. You have no idea how irritating it can be.’
‘You have no idea how irritating it can be to have a brat for a daughter,’ Henry told her. ‘How did you know about the invasion plan and what makes you think Lord Hairstreak has anything to do with it?’
‘My sister told me,’ Mella said.
‘Stop playing games, Mella. You don’t have a sister.’
That was when she told him everything.
Blue was in a foul mood when she joined them in the Throne Room. ‘Have you any idea how big a breach of protocol –’ she began.
Henry opened his mouth to interrupt her, but Mella beat him to it. ‘Mother,’ she said, ‘you have to lock up Uncle Hairstreak.’
‘I don’t want another word out of you,’ Blue said sharply. She shook her head grimly, lips tightly pursed. ‘You’ve caused so much trouble for your father and me –’ She stopped suddenly and stared at her daughter. ‘I have to what?’
‘He tried to make the Haleklinders invade us and then he was going to kill you and Daddy and put the other Mella on the throne and –’
Blue picked up on it as quickly as Henry had. ‘How do you know about the Haleklinders’ invasion?’ she asked at once.
The trouble was, Henry thought, his wife and daughter were exactly alike: stubborn, opinionated, bossy, impatient. As a result, they fought all the time, even when Mella wasn’t behaving like a brat. He adopted his most calming voice, although he knew from experience it usually irritated them both, and said firmly, ‘Leave this to me, Mella. And you, Blue, please be quiet and listen.’ He almost added, for a change, but stopped himself in time.
Blue glared at him. From the corner of his eye he could see their daughter glaring at him as well. Henry ignored them both. He’d decided there was only one way to handle the new developments – heck, even to make sense of them – and that was to take one step at a time. The most urgent step, it seemed to him, was to tell Blue what Mella had just told him. The next most urgent was to decide what to do about it. Assuming Blue believed it. Henry wasn’t sure he believed it himself. He took a deep breath.
‘This is a bit complicated,’ he began, ‘but Mella’s just told me –’
The Throne Room doors burst open to a howl of protest from the magical securities, but Pyrgus was still a Crown Prince, so they could do nothing to stop him. He slammed the doors shut with his foot and hurried excitedly towards them. ‘You’ll never believe what’s happened in Halek—’ he began, then caught sight of Mella. ‘How did you get here ahead of me? That’s impossible!’
Mella smiled at him benignly. ‘Hello, Uncle Pyrgus.’
‘Has she told you?’ Pyrgus asked. He looked from Blue to Henry, suddenly smiling broadly. ‘Has she told y
ou what she did to the Table of Seven?’
‘That wasn’t me, Uncle Pyrgus,’ Mella said. ‘That was the other Mella.’
‘You’re behaving like a child!’ Blue snapped. ‘What have you done to the Table of –?’
‘Look,’ Henry said, ‘if the rest of you can be quiet for a moment, I think I should explain that Mella claims there are two –’ He stopped dead as the Throne Room doors opened again. He stared. It was one thing to have Mella tell him that utterly fantastic story about Lord Hairstreak and his clone. It was quite another to come face to face with the living proof of it.
‘Hello,’ said the young figure in the doorway. ‘I’m Mella II.’
Fifty-Three
It was so cool! First off, there was lots and lots of seriously good food, including her fave, candied mushrooms. Then there was sitting at the top table with the other Mella beside her. (She was wearing her official princess crown and they’d sweetly made a replica for Mella II, which just showed their parents could be quite decent really when they put their minds to it.) Then there was the fact that everybody, but everybody wanted to hear their story, even though it was the talk of the city and they’d heard it all before. Then, best of all, there was Victorinus – Papilio Victorinus – the Duke’s grandson, who was so fit he was positively radical. She could hardly wait to see him with his shirt off in the celebration games. But he wasn’t in the games yet: he was sitting beside her, staring into her eyes, and asking her to tell him (again!) how she’d saved the entire Realm. She could imagine that Victorinus might have caused just the teeniest, tiny bit of trouble between her new sister and herself if he hadn’t been a twin. His brother, Papilio Pharnaces, was distracting Mella II even as they spoke.
‘It confuses me, bella,’ Victorinus told her breathlessly, ‘this story I have heard, that you were eaten by the beast.’ He spread his hands helplessly and smiled. ‘Yet, here you are, so beautiful my poor heart aches.’ His eyes were huge and brown, his lashes long. He was two years older than she was – how fabulous was that?
Mella gave a brittle little laugh. ‘I wasn’t eaten, silly,’ she told him happily. ‘It was all a set-up to fool Lord Hairstreak.’ Her mother had warned her not to mention Lord Hairstreak’s name, but she couldn’t see how to tell the story without it; and besides, everybody knew about Lord Hairstreak’s involvement, even though he kept denying it. ‘Mella II and I changed clothes to make him think she was me and I was she and the Yidam – you know what a Yidam is, don’t you, Victorinus –?’
Victorinus reached out langorously to take a grape. ‘Big scary Old God,’ he said.
‘– the Yidam could make the manticores do anything and he had this special one called Aboventoun who had loads of fake blood and pretended to attack me and kill me and carry me off, only it wasn’t really me, it was Mella II and I was watching and screaming and dressed like Mella II so Hairstreak would take me back to the Palace thinking I was Mella II. You see, he thought Mella II would do everything he told her and take my place at the Palace, but instead he brought me right back to where I wanted to be so we could be sure my parents would believe it when I told them everything. Wasn’t that cool?’
‘I wish I could have watched you and your sister changing clothes,’ Victorinus told her softly.
Along the table a little way, Mella II was talking to Victorinus’s brother Pharnaces. Or rather listening, warmed by the steady gaze of liquid eyes. ‘So beautiful and yet so brave,’ he was saying. ‘Such a devastating combination.’
Mella II giggled nervously. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say I was all that brave,’ she said coyly.
‘But, bella, you were, you were!’ Pharnaces exclaimed. ‘Single-handedly you overthrew the dreadful regime of Haleklind and removed the greatest threat to our beloved Realm the world has ever known.’
Mella II was having trouble breathing, due to unfamiliar body sensations. Her heartbeat was raised, her skin was tingling, her mouth kept smiling of its own accord. It was like being dreadfully, wonderfully ill with a fever. For some reason, Pharnaces seemed to send her into a delirium of delight. She licked dry lips and admired the curl in his hair.
‘Hardly single-handed,’ she protested. ‘I was helped by more than a thousand manticores.’
‘Ah, beauty and the beasts!’ Pharnaces breathed in the husky way he had that sent shivers down her spine. ‘Thrill me again, bella, with the story of what happened!’
‘Oh, it was nothing really,’ Mella II sighed. ‘But I’ll tell you anyway,’ she added quickly. ‘When Aboventoun carried me off, he brought me back to the herd and the Yidam – you know what a Yidam is, don’t you, Pharnaces –?’
Pharnaces reached out to take a grape. ‘Big scary Old God,’ he said.
‘– the Yidam could make the manticores do absolutely anything and he suggested that if I took the whole herd with me to Kremlin Karcist, it might help me persuade the Table of Seven not to use them as a weapon, but when the Companions saw them – you know what a Companion is, don’t you, Pharnaces –?’
Pharnaces placed the grape between his perfect white teeth and bit into it very slowly. He did not take his eyes off hers, not for a single, shivery instant. ‘Big scary old Haleklinder,’ he said softly.
Mella II swallowed. ‘– When the Companions saw them, they ran away because manticores are really sweet, but they’re really, really scary at the same time, especially when there’s a whole lot of them, and then Uncle Pyrgus arrived, and of course I’d never met him before so I didn’t know who he was, but he had this Haleklind friend called Corin with him who wanted to overthrow the rotten old Table of Seven and free the manticores and make Haleklind much nicer and he took over the Government and called off the whole war. Corin did.’ She’d spilled it out all of a rush, which wasn’t remotely cool, but Pharnaces was still looking at her adoringly, so that was all right.
Queen Blue was climbing to her feet. Conversations round the tables ceased immediately as heads turned in her direction. ‘My friends …’ Blue said. She was speaking quietly, but had the knack of projecting her voice so that it carried clearly throughout the banquet hall. ‘… We are gathered here this evening to celebrate the arrival of a new addition to the Royal Family …’ There was a sudden burst of excited applause and a few strident whistles. Blue waited for the din to die down, then went on. ‘… A new addition to the Royal Family who has arrived from a most –’ She hesitated, pretending to search for the appropriate word, ‘– unexpected source.’
‘And nothing to do with King Henry!’ shouted a racous young earl who’d clearly had too much to drink.
Blue smiled as she waited for the laughter to die down. ‘A gift from my uncle – who unfortunately cannot be with us tonight – my uncle and former leader of the Faeries of the Night, now thankfully fully recovered from his tragic … accident, my uncle Lord Hairstreak …’ She waited for applause and it came, although notably subdued from those Faeries of the Light who were present. ‘My uncle Lord Hairstreak who has generously presented us with a perfect, fully grown, cloned sister for our beloved daughter Mella.’ She gestured, turning smiling towards Mella II. ‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would ask you to please be upstanding and raise your glasses in a toast to … Mella II!’
As Blue sat down again, Henry murmured, ‘You overdid the uncle bit.’
Blue was still smiling and acknowledging the congratulations of their guests. Out of the corner of her mouth she said, ‘I wanted to emphasise family unity. The last thing we need now is another Lighter–Nighter split.’
‘I think we should have jailed the old tort-feasor,’ Henry growled. ‘Locked him up and thrown away the key.’
Blue turned towards him. ‘Where’s the proof? We have no documentary evidence of his involvement with Haleklind, no evidence at all except hearsay. We may claim he wanted to replace our daughter with a clone. He says he was merely grooming Mella II as a gift. It would be political madness to move against him without a cast-iron case. Remember he used to be the leade
r of the Faeries of the Night and could well be again, now he’s got a new body. There’s nothing we can do except play along.’ She reached for her goblet and took a small sip. ‘There’s one positive thing about what’s happened: Hairstreak’s now out in the open, where we can keep an eye on him.’
‘Two,’ Henry said.
Blue frowned, puzzled. ‘Two?’
‘Two positive things …’ He glanced down the table.
Blue followed the direction of his gaze.
‘We now have twins,’ said Henry, grinning.
Epilogue
‘Do you think she’ll go back?’ Henry asked, gnawing away at something that had been troubling him.
‘Mella?’ Blue asked.
‘Yes.’
‘To the Analogue World?’
‘Yes.’
‘To see your mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘I expect she will,’ Blue said mildly. They’d had this conversation before and Blue was sick of it. She cast around for something that would shut Henry up. ‘Maybe you should take her.’
‘What?!’ Henry exploded.
‘Better than having her run away.’ Blue dropped her head as if studying some State papers so he couldn’t see the smile.
It had the desired effect. Henry stopped obsessing. Or at least stopped obsessing aloud.
The Faeman Quest Page 28