Mr Fogarty was frowning fiercely. ‘If it’s a zombie deal, people will know he didn’t sign of his own free will. Nobody will take the pact seriously.’
‘Ah,’ Pyrgus said, but then looked too close to tears to continue.
‘That’s why Lord Hairstreak is claiming Daddy was only in a coma,’ Blue said. ‘If there was no death, there was no resurrection. Hairstreak will say Daddy is acting of his own free will.’
‘Is he still here?’ Mr Fogarty asked suddenly.
‘Who?’
‘Your father.’
Blue shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know. He came with Duke Hamearis, but left after he told us to honour the pact.’
‘What about Hairstreak’s sidekick? This Duke person?’
Blue glanced at Pyrgus, who shook his head. Pyrgus said, ‘He went off half an hour ago.’
‘Pity,’ Fogarty said. ‘We might have kidnapped him. We need a little leverage over Hairstreak.’
Madame Cardui spoke for the first time. ‘I’m afraid this has gone beyond simple solutions, Alan.’ Blue glanced at her in surprise. She’d never heard anyone call Mr Fogarty ‘Alan’ before. ‘This is a very emotive issue, my deeahs, and a truly dreadful situation. How long before that wretched little man makes the pact public?’
The wretched little man was clearly Lord Hairstreak. Pyrgus said, ‘He wants me to step down as Emperor Elect. The pact will be published as soon as I do so.’
‘How long can you stall him?’ Fogarty asked.
‘It will have to happen before my Coronation.’
Madame Cardui said, ‘Then we must draw up our plans without delay.’
Blue nodded. She wished Henry were with her. Why on earth hadn’t he followed on as he had promised?
Twenty-Four
The Facemaster sighed. ‘Mr Chalkhill, will you please try to concentrate?’
‘But I’m improving,’ Chalkhill protested. ‘I’m definitely improving.’
They were alone together in the vast Practice Hall of Hairstreak’s Assassins’ Academy, with its highly-polished oakwood floor and mirrored walls. Their images extended to infinity. The Facemaster was a dark-haired man with a lean, muscular body and a cool, professional air.
‘Improving?’ he said. ‘Yes, slightly. But there is still a way to go, Mr Chalkhill. Frankly, if you were to attempt your mission tomorrow, you would fail. And then where would we be?’
I’d be dead, thought Chalkhill. And you’d be trying to explain to Hairstreak why you failed to knock me into shape. The Facemaster knew all about his mission, only one of four to do so, as far as Chalkhill was aware. The remaining three were Chalkhill himself, Lord Hairstreak and the wizard retained to cast the transformation spell—a Halek-trained ninny called Puderow, Plumduff, Psodos ... something of that sort. Everyone else involved with the Coronation had been told Hairstreak himself would be attending. There was not so much as a hint abroad that Chalkhill would be taking Hairstreak’s place. Assuming Chalkhill ever got beyond his basic training.
Of course, if he didn’t get beyond his basic training, Hairstreak would have him murdered. Something slow and painful, no doubt.
‘I don’t see why all this is necessary,’ he said petulantly. ‘The illusion spell will make me look exactly like His Lordship.’
‘Yes it will, Mr Chalkhill, but it will not help you move like him, which is what we’re working on now. You realise what the problem is, of course—it’s your bulk.’
‘My bulk?’ Chalkhill echoed, appalled. He was a little overweight certainly, perhaps enough overweight to be called cuddly, but he hardly thought anyone in their right mind would refer to him as bulky.
‘You’re a bigger man than Lord Hairstreak,’ the Facemaster frowned, ‘so you move differently. I’m not criticising you, but it’s something we have to change. I’m bigger than Hairstreak too, but watch ’
It was positively creepy. As the Facemaster set off across the room again, he seemed to shrink. His right shoulder dropped in a characteristic Hairstreak posture. His features composed themselves into a grim, unforgiving mask. But most of all, his walk became an arrogant, insectile scuttle. There was no transformation spell, no physical resemblance at all, but you could almost imagine you were watching Black Hairstreak himself.
‘Now you do it,’ Facemaster Wainscot told him.
Chalkhill tried. Oh how Chalkhill tried. He dropped his shoulder, scrunched his body and made sortie after sortie across the polished floor. He studied his reflections in the mirrored walls. He tried to think himself into Lord Hairstreak like an actor taking on a part. He walked and walked and tried and tried until his feet began to ache.
‘It’s no good,’ the Facemaster said at last. ‘We’ll have to use the worm.’
Twenty-Five
Brimstone was puffed by the third circuit of the fire, but thankfully the priest signalled them to stop. ‘Stand side by side,’ he instructed loudly. Then, dropping his voice, he whispered in Brimstone’s ear, ‘And try to look as if you’re enjoying it.’
Too breathless to answer, Brimstone contented himself with delivering a cutting look. Then he turned to smile briefly and hypocritically at his bride. She smiled back cheerfully. Five husbands! If she really did put them all down, she must have a fortune squirrelled away. This wedding could prove an exceptionally profitable enterprise.
‘Friends,’ announced the priest in the general direction of the down-and-outs who looked as if they hadn’t a friend between them, ‘we’re gathered here for blah-de-blah etcetera rhubarb and etcetera, ah-hummmm.’
Brimstone looked at him in astonishment.
‘Full ceremony costs extra,’ the priest whispered. ‘Bride won’t pay, but I can charge it on to you if you like.’
Brimstone shook his head firmly. ‘Get on with it,’ he hissed.
‘Having dispensed with the religious introduction and the blessing,’ the priest intoned, ‘we move on to the symbolic portion of the rite. The bride, as you can see, is carrying a spiny cactus to symbolise the thorns of adversity experienced by all couples in the course of their life together. I now ask the bride to hand those thorns to her groom who, in accepting the gift, solemnly pledges himself to bear those thorns for her henceforth and for evermore, ah-hummmm.’
Fat chance, Brimstone thought, but he reached for the cactus anyway, taking care to grip it by the pot. The down-and-outs applauded listlessly.
‘Hold it up!’ the priest whispered.
Brimstone held the succulent above his head. This time it was the Widow Mormo who applauded. Five husbands! That had to be some sort of record; and if it wasn’t, it was certainly worthy of admiration.
One of the nymphs tripped forward and relieved Brimstone of his cactus. She had the wasted body and blank stare of a simbala music addict, but she wasn’t so far out of it as to forget to ask him for a coin to mark her part in the ceremony. Brimstone gave her a groat and she danced away looking cross.
‘Just the impediments now,’ whispered the priest. ‘Then I can make it legal.’ He raised his voice to fill the church. ‘I now call on any here present with a prior claim to this woman to enunciate such claim clearly and fully as an impediment to the Holy Ceremony of Marriage we are here to undertake; and I further call on any here present who knows of this or any other impediment to come forward now and so enunciate or henceforth keep shut his mouth.’
This should tell us if any of the last five has survived, thought Brimstone in a moment of rare whimsy. The priest studied the ceiling of his church for a long moment, but nobody piped up to protest.
The priest hitched up his robe as if preparing for a quick exit now the rite was nearly done. ‘I now call on any here present,’ he repeated, ‘with a prior claim to this man to enunciate such claim clearly and fully as an impediment to the Holy Ceremony of Marriage we are here to undertake; and I further call on any here present who knows of this or any other impediment to come forward now and so enunciate or henceforth keep shut his mouth.�
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This time it was Brimstone who looked up at the ceiling. A decent pause, the final legalities, then off to the woods to kill her.
It was a very happy wedding day.
Twenty-Six
The worm was more like an eel or a snake, except it was segmented and protected by a natural, glistening armoured shell. It stared at Chalkhill with black, beady eyes from the bottom of a heated glass tank. There was a sandy floor to replicate the desert of its natural environment and a few desiccated plants to keep it company. Slices of ordle had been scattered on a flat-topped rock.
Chalkhill looked at the Facemaster.
‘It’s a symbiote,’ Facemaster Wainscot explained. He clearly caught Chalkhill’s blank look for he added, ‘A creature that works in cooperation with another creature to mutual benefit.’ He sounded as if he were reading from a reference book. ‘It will assist you to walk properly.’ He blinked, then clarified, ‘So you look like Lord Hairstreak.’
Chalkhill peered at the worm. It was nearly seven inches long and exuded some sort of foul-smelling slime over its armoured scales. ‘Let’s get this straight,’ Chalkhill said. ‘This thing is going to help me walk like Hairstreak?’
The Facemaster nodded soberly. ‘Yes.’
‘And what do I do for it?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You said it was a symbiote. Mutual admiration society. Tit for tat. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.’ Chalkhill understood symbiote all right—it was the way he’d functioned most of his life. ‘What’s the quid pro quo?’
‘The worm takes a little of your pigmentation to use in its mating ritual.’ He caught Chalkhill’s expression again. ‘Apparently female worms prefer male worms to have white spots. This one doesn’t, so it will extract some of your skin colour to make them.’
‘What effect does that have on me?’ Chalkhill asked suspiciously.
‘You’ll look a little pale.’
‘Is it painful?’
‘Not even slightly.’
It didn’t sound too bad to Chalkhill. ‘What do I do? Keep the worm with me in my pocket? Something of that sort?’
The Facemaster hesitated. ‘Ah … not exactly. The symbiote must be absorbed into your body.’
Chalkhill’s jaw dropped. ‘I have to swallow it?’
The Facemaster shook his head. ‘Human saliva is toxic to the species, I’m afraid. Consequently the insertion must be made in one nostril. The worm slides down your throat, crawls through the stomach into the large intestine, thence to the small intestine and, ultimately, the bowel, where it takes up permanent residence in your bottom.’
Chalkhill stared at him in horror. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ he asked incredulously. ‘You want me to stuff that thing up my nose and let it crawl down through my guts?’
‘It’s no fun for me either,’ said the worm.
Twenty-Seven
Despite everything, Pyrgus slept late next morning. The others must have been exhausted too, for none of them came to wake him. He woke to sunshine and a feeling of dread. After a moment he knuckled the sleep from his eyes and climbed out from under the layer of woolly endolgs who acted as both inner guards and eiderdown. ‘Morning, Boss,’ they chorused cheerfully.
‘Morning,’ Pyrgus grunted. He grabbed the towels someone had laid out for him and headed for the cleansing cubicle. He was never very good first thing in the morning, but this morning was much worse than usual. Last night’s discussions had lasted almost until dawn and produced nothing in the way of a solution.
‘Good morning, Your Royal Highness,’ purred the soft, spell-driven voice of the cleansing cubicle. Pyrgus groaned. Even this damn thing must have heard the latest developments: it had been calling him Emperor Elect since his father’s murder. The news had to be all over the palace by now.
The cubicle filled with hot mist as he stepped inside and pseudopods extended to scrape sweat and impurities off his back. Small streams of perfumed water oozed up around his feet, insinuated themselves between his toes and began to curl around his legs. Soothing music crept along the edge of audibility, extracting stress from his shoulders and neck.
What to do? There was another meeting scheduled in —
‘Seventeen minutes and thirty-eight seconds,’ the cubicle told him. It wasn’t sentient or even really telepathic, just expensive. He often felt guilty just using it. Life was hugely simpler when he had hidden among the people and had nothing more to worry about than fights with his father.
— seventeen minutes and thirty-eight seconds and something had to be sorted soon. There was no way he was going to let Lord Hairstreak get away with this, not now, not ever, even if he had to … had to … had to what? It was no use waiting for the others to supply him with a plan. He had to come up with one himself. Something swift, decisive and utterly ruthless. He had to take the initiative!
The trouble was his mind just wouldn’t function.
The cubicle sensed his dilemma and slammed a blast of ice-cold water against his naked body. Pyrgus yelped and leaped outside. But as he reached for the towels to dry himself off, he had to admit his head was clearer now. Perhaps he could refuse to acknowledge the pact, claim his father was still dead and Hairstreak had forged his seal and signature. What could Hairstreak do about it?
He could produce the Purple Emperor, Pyrgus thought. His father was a slave to Lord Hairstreak now.
He dressed slowly as depression seeped over him like grey-black ooze. In situations like this, there was only one consolation:
Things couldn’t get any worse.
Pyrgus walked into the meeting to discover things were getting worse.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked at once.
It was Gatekeeper Fogarty who answered. ‘Your half-brother has something to tell you.’
Blue said, ‘I explained you had important things to do, but he insisted. He won’t tell us what it is.’
Pyrgus glared at Comma, who seemed to be growing fatter lately. ‘Well, what is it?’ He noticed Madame Cardui wasn’t present. Perhaps Blue had sent her off somewhere. And there was still no sign of Henry. He’d have liked Henry to have been here. Somehow he felt better with Henry around.
Comma said, ‘That’s no way to talk to your Emperor Elect.’
‘Apparently I’m not Emperor Elect any longer,’ Pyrgus told him drily. ‘That’s why I don’t have time—’
‘I know you’re not Emperor Elect,’ Comma said. ‘I’m Emperor Elect—that’s what I just said.’ He glared at Pyrgus as fiercely as Pyrgus had glared at him. ‘You never told me Father was still alive, you big pig!’
‘Comma —’ Blue tried to put in. Suddenly she was looking at Comma more sympathetically than she had done in months.
But Comma was not to be diverted. He looked angry and tearful at the same time. ‘You pretended to me he was dead. So did you, Blue. You ganged up on me and told me my father was dead!’
‘Nobody ganged up on you, Comma—’ Fogarty began.
Comma ignored him. ‘Well, he isn’t dead!’ he shouted at Pyrgus. ‘He was never dead. And now he wants me to be Emperor.’
For a long moment Pyrgus could do no more than look at him. Then he said, ‘So you’ve been told already.’
‘He wants me to be the next Emperor. Not you, Pyrgus—me! Father doesn’t want to be Emperor any more because of his deformity. He wants me!’
Suddenly there was too much going round in Pyrgus’s head. How had Comma found out so soon? The Duke of Burgundy had undertaken there would be no announcement until Pyrgus formally stepped down. And beyond the immediate questions there were others. What was he, Pyrgus, going to do about it? What was he going to do about—? He couldn’t even think about it properly.
It was Blue who asked, quite gently, ‘Who told you about Daddy, Comma?’
And Comma said triumphantly, ‘Lord Hairstreak!’
Mr Fogarty tried to rescue the situation. ‘This isn’t the way you think it is,’ he said. He glanced across at
Pyrgus as if wanting him to explain.
But Pyrgus couldn’t explain, not properly. How could he explain a spiritual abomination to somebody Comma’s age? How could he explain the animated shell that was now controlled by Lord Hairstreak? How could he explain all that to a boy who just wanted his father to be alive? After all, it was what Pyrgus wanted too.
Blue said, ‘Lord Hairstreak tells lies.’
Comma rounded on her, eyes blazing. ‘Is he telling lies about Father being alive?’
Blue shook her head. ‘Not exactly. What he —’
‘What do you mean, Not exactly? Father’s either alive or dead. He can’t be not exactly alive. I used to think you were better than Pyrgus, Blue, but you’re not. You’re just as bad as he is. Father is alive. You didn’t want me to know that because you didn’t want me to be Emperor. But your rotten scheme didn’t work. You’re not my friends. You’ve never been my friends. But Lord Hairstreak’s my friend now.’
‘Hairstreak isn’t your friend,’ Mr Fogarty said shortly. ‘Hairstreak isn’t anybody’s friend.’
But Comma ignored him. ‘Look,’ he said excitedly. ‘Look at this!’ He pulled a parchment scroll from the pocket of his jerkin. It looked eerily like the scroll the Duke of Burgundy had carried with the details of the pact. Comma pushed it towards Pyrgus, waving it underneath his nose.
Pyrgus took the document with a heavy heart. Somehow he knew, he just knew, what it would contain. He looked at Comma for a moment longer, then glanced down at the parchment. His eyes skimmed the writing with a sense of horrid expectation.
‘What’s it say?’ Blue asked quietly.
Pyrgus took a deep, rattling breath. ‘It’s an official authorisation for Comma to become next Purple Emperor with Lord Hairstreak acting as Regent until he comes of age.’
‘Little git!’ Mr Fogarty grunted explosively. Presumably he meant Lord Hairstreak.
‘See who signed it?’ Comma shouted. ‘Read out who signed it, Pyrgus!’
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