The Purple Emperor

by Herbie Brennan

  Pyrgus said quietly, ‘It was signed by our father.’

  ‘You see? You see?’ Comma asked no one in particular. He looked shrewdly at Pyrgus. ‘It’s no good tearing it up, Pyrgus—I have other copies and so does Lord Hairstreak.’

  Pyrgus dropped the paper to the floor.

  Blue said, ‘Comma, Daddy doesn’t know what he’s signing now. This is all Lord Hairstreak’s doing and he only wants you to be Emperor so he will become Regent.’

  A thought occurred to Pyrgus. Hairstreak could kill Comma before he came of age. Certainly Hairstreak would never relinquish the throne once he became Regent.

  ‘He told me you’d say that,’ Comma said. ‘He told me you’d try to stop me becoming Emperor.’

  ‘Of course you can’t become Emperor,’ Blue said firmly. ‘There’s no question of your becoming Emperor. Can’t you see what Hairstreak is up to? Can’t you —’

  ‘He told me you’d say that as well, Blue,’ Comma said. ‘And he told me what to do about it. Are you going to let me be Emperor, Pyrgus?’

  Pyrgus started to shake his head. ‘Comma —’

  Comma darted to the door and jerked it open. ‘Quickly!’ he called excitedly.

  General Ovard stepped into the room. Behind him marched a full contingent of Palace Guards. Pyrgus noticed Ovard was wearing formal uniform as if dressed for a State occasion. The old General looked pained but determined. He glanced sternly from one face to another.

  ‘They won’t let me be Emperor,’ Comma shouted, his voice high. ‘I showed them the Order. Pyrgus just threw it on the floor!’

  General Ovard focused on Pyrgus. ‘It’s a properly executed Order, Crown Prince. Signed by your father, stamped with the Imperial Seal.’

  ‘It’s a plot by Hairstreak,’ Mr Fogarty sniffed.

  I don’t like the bit about Hairstreak becoming Regent any more than you do, Gatekeeper,’ the General said. ‘But I swore an oath, and if that’s what my Purple Emperor has ordered, that’s what’s going to happen.’

  ‘The Purple Emperor is dead, Ovard. You saw the body.’

  ‘I saw a body in stasis,’ Ovard said. ‘Alive or dead, they all look much the same like that. But he looked alive enough to me when he handed me the Order.’

  ‘Daddy’s still here?’ Blue exploded. ‘Here in the palace?’

  ‘He was at the barracks. Lord Hairstreak was with him. I don’t know where they are now, but I do know this is a legal Order, Serenity.’ Ovard seemed troubled, despite his words, but determined.

  ‘I don’t want any more talking!’ Comma shouted suddenly. ‘No more talking, any of you. You have to listen to me now, and do what I say!’

  Pyrgus glanced at the ranks of soldiers lined up behind Ovard.

  Comma caught the look and started to smile slyly. ‘I’m Emperor Elect now and this is my first proclamation. Lord Hairstreak said if you tried to stop me, I was to put you all in prison and have you executed. But I’m not going to do that. You’re my half-brother and half-sister. You’re my family. So I’m not going to do that, whatever Lord Hairstreak says. But I can’t have you making trouble and arguing with everything I say, so I am going to send you into exile. All of you—Pyrgus, Blue and you, Gatekeeper. I’m going to give you half an hour to get your things and leave the palace. General Ovard, I order you to see they do!’ He tossed his head grandly and marched from the room.

  There was a long, grim silence. Eventually Mr Fogarty said, ‘Can he do that, General?’

  ‘He just has, Gatekeeper,’ said General Ovard.

  Twenty-Eight

  ‘Perfect!’ called the Facemaster excitedly. ‘Look, look, look at yourself in the mirrors!’

  Chalkhill didn’t have to. He knew he was walking like Lord Hairstreak now. Not just walking, but carrying himself like Hairstreak, making gestures like Hairstreak, even sounding like Hairstreak when he spoke. But there was a price.

  His bottom was on fire, for one thing. His nose itched perpetually. His limbs were stiff and out of control, as if he were a puppet pulling its own strings.

  But the worst of it was the voice in his head.

  ‘Strictly speaking,’ it was saying in a grating, high-pitched tone that was irritating beyond belief, ‘we are no longer separate entities, but a fusion. Yes, a fusion of body and mind, some would say of spirit as well, spirit or soul, if those two are different, but here we enter into the realm of theology, don’t we, since there are those—the Halek Clans, for example — who deny the spiritual dimension altogether. Thus we —’ And on and on and on interminably.

  Do be quiet, be quiet, be quiet! Chalkhill screamed inside his skull. The worm had talked non-stop from the moment it was inserted. If it went on very much longer, he was going to go mad. ‘Why won’t this thing shut up?’ he asked the Facemaster.

  ‘The worm? They do that, I’m afraid. Most people get used to it eventually.’

  ‘Most people?’ Chalkhill echoed. ‘What about the ones who don’t?’

  ‘They usually hang themselves.’

  ‘Which creates an interesting legal dilemma,’ said the worm in Chalkhill’s mind, having clearly eavesdropped on the spoken conversation. ‘Should one bring a charge of suicide, or murder? There are those lawyers who hold that the symbiotic relationship creates, in effect, a new entity, in which case hanging must be deemed an act of suicide. But there are others who would argue that the two sentient entities—wangaramas wyrm and faerie—remain distinct, if interlinked, in which case the suicide of one involves the murder of the other. In Jessup v. Trentonelf, however, Lord Justice Bedstraw ruled on the possibility of collusion by the wangaramas, which raises the spectre of assisted suicide, an offence in itself which, while carrying a lesser penalty than first degree murder, will nonetheless —’

  ‘Can’t they just have the worm removed?’ asked Chalkhill, desperately ignoring the inner monologue. ‘Can’t I just have the worm removed?’ He could just possibly survive until he slaughtered Pyrgus at his Coronation, but after that he wanted the worm out again within the hour.

  ‘I’m afraid removal is a little more tricky than insertion. The procedure takes about six months.’

  ‘Six months?’ Chalkhill exploded. ‘I can’t have this thing rabbitting inside my head for six months!’

  There was a small commotion at the door of the Practice Hall as a messenger in Hairstreak livery pushed arrogantly past the guards.

  ‘All this, of course, represents the situation from the faerie perspective,’ the worm was saying, ‘but we may gain fresh insights by examining the other side of the equation, so to speak. At the recent Wangaramas Grand Convention, or WGC as it is more conveniently known, there was a fascinating debate —’

  Facemaster Wainscot contrived to look sympathetic. ‘Six months is actually a conservative estimate,’ he told Chalkhill. ‘But the only viable alternative is surgery, which I’m afraid kills one host in three. Not something to be recommended.’

  ‘Which one of you is Chalkhill?’ asked the messenger loudly.

  ‘He is.’

  ‘A simplistic question, but one which opens up what we wangarami refer to as a "can of men". What is at stake here is the necessity of defining identity, which may appear straightforward at first blush, but —

  ‘I am.’ What now, Chalkhill wondered. What else had Hairstreak got in store for him?

  ‘Lord Hairstreak presents his compliments,’ said the messenger stiffly, ‘and begs me to inform you that he shall no longer be requiring your services in the capacity he discussed with you due to a sudden fortuitous change in circumstance. In short, the operation’s off.’

  Chalkhill stared at the man in horrified bewilderment.

  Twenty-Nine

  This wasn’t the palace. It had been the palace when he looked into the portal and it seemed like the palace when he threw himself through, but it wasn’t the palace now. Henry was standing on a vast, level plain with really weird maroon-coloured grass growing up around his ankles. Henry kept thinking ab
out Pyrgus, who had used one of Mr Fogarty’s portal controls and ended up in Hell. Was this Hell? Henry looked around. It didn’t seem hot enough, but what did he know? He’d never been in Hell before.

  But he’d never been anywhere like this before either. The grass was freaky. It grew in tufts and each blade wasn’t a blade at all, but a thin strand. And it was far tougher than ordinary grass. He couldn’t uproot it or break it or anything. It didn’t smell like grass either. If anything, it smelled like wool, which probably meant there had been sheep this way lately. Did sheep go to Hell?

  The plain went on and on, but there was something wrong with the horizon. Henry found his distance vision wasn’t too good—which was something else he didn’t understand—but the plain didn’t curve against the sky, it just sort of … stopped. Actually he wasn’t sure he was looking at a horizon at all. It was almost like a sheer cliff, except huge. It was just about the highest cliff he’d ever seen, so high he couldn’t really see the top.

  The sky was weird as well. It was blue all right, but that was the only familiar thing about it. No clouds and, to be honest, it looked like a rigid dome, like those old medieval paintings of the vault of heaven. But that was probably his eyes as well. He just couldn’t seem to get them to focus properly.

  Which might account for the look of the trees. There were trees scattered across the plain, growing in oddly geometrical groups of four. Four here … four there … four over there … Nothing in between, no undergrowth, just straight, round trunks with not a branch or leaf. He’d never seen trees grow like that before. But then he’d never seen trees that sort of … sort of … sort of grew together at the top to make a wooden roof before. What was wrong with his eyes? Where on earth was he? This definitely, positively, was not the Purple Palace.

  He glanced behind him, more in vague hope than any solid expectation. The portal was no longer there. Which was really how he’d thought it would be. It had started to collapse as he jumped through. Henry’s heart suddenly started to race. What would have happened if it had collapsed exactly when he was passing through it? Would it have killed him? Would it have cut him in half, leaving his head and torso bleeding in the Faerie Realm while the bottom bit kicked and writhed in Mr Fogarty’s back garden?

  Henry took a couple of deep breaths to pull himself together. The fact was it hadn’t killed him. He was alive and well and in one piece with nothing to worry about.

  Except he didn’t have a portal control. The one he’d made was lying in another world now, probably burned out if all that sparking was anything to go by. Which was no big deal if he’d reached the Purple Palace, which had a portal of its own to get him back. But he hadn’t reached the Purple Palace. He’d reached somewhere else with stupid-looking grass and he had no way back!

  Don’t panic, Henry told himself. There’s no need to panic. All he had to do was walk until he found a village or a town. Or even a farmstead. This wasn’t Hell—he was sure of that now. No heat, no demons, nobody with pitchforks. So it had to be just a peculiar area of the Faerie Realm. Once he found people, he’d just ask them to direct him to the Purple Palace. He might even cadge a lift, but if not he could walk there. Didn’t matter how long it took. Well, it did—Blue would still be wondering what had happened to him but that couldn’t be helped. All he had to do was find some people. If he followed the sun he could be sure of always walking in the same direction. He wouldn’t get lost. Nothing to it.

  He couldn’t see the sun.

  He had to be able to see the sun. The vault of the sky was a cloudless blue, but there was no sun. There was light—it was like daylight—but he couldn’t see the sun. This wasn’t his eyes, although his eyes were still having trouble focusing—the sun simply wasn’t there!

  Henry pulled himself together with an effort. He didn’t need to navigate. Since he didn’t know where he was going, navigation didn’t matter. He was as likely to find people in one direction as another. The thing to do was to stop wimping and get started.

  Henry began to trudge across the open plain.

  There was something on his back! The moment he moved, he could feel it. It was gripping him around the shoulder blades and flapping loosely in a truly horrible, awful, nightmarish way. Without thought he reached round and his hands gripped something ghastly and fragile and insectile and —

  And ticklish.

  In a moment of pure wonder, Henry discovered he’d grown wings.

  Thirty

  He’d got all excited about his prospects for the future, wasted hours of effort, and endured the huge indignity of having a worm inside his bottom. All for nothing! Why had Hairstreak called off the mission? Chalkhill wondered furiously.

  ‘I can help you there,’ the wangaramas wyrm told him.

  ‘Can you?’ Chalkhill thought at it. He had managed to tune out some of the incessant chatter, but the wyrm was still capable of attracting his attention when it wanted to.

  ‘Course I can,’ the wyrm assured him. ‘All I have to do is poll the Network.’

  ‘What’s the Network?’ Chalkhill asked, frowning.

  ‘The wangarami are telepathic,’ the wyrm explained inside his head. ‘Amongst ourselves, that is, not with other species, except during an actual symbiosis, of course, such as we have now. I’ve always believed the characteristic speaks of a certain superiority, but that is, of course, a matter of philosophical discussion among wangarami wise wyrms, so that ‘

  ‘What’s the Network?’ Chalkhill repeated mentally to shut it up.

  ‘The telepathic Web. Every wangaramas is plugged into it. Which means that any given wyrm—myself for example—has access to the knowledge, information, belief and memory structures of every other wyrm.’

  ‘What they know, you know?’ Chalkhill ventured uncertainly.

  ‘Potentially, yes.’

  ‘So if any other worm happens to know why Hairstreak called off my mission, you could tune in and find out?’

  ‘As you say,’ the wangaramas wyrm confirmed. ‘And I would prefer you didn’t use that word.’

  ‘What word?’ Chalkhill asked aloud, forgetting again.

  ‘"Worm",’ said the wyrm. ‘The correct term is "wyrm." Or better yet, "wangaramas".’

  Chalkhill couldn’t hear much difference between ‘worm’ and ‘wyrm’ but he thought it best to humour the creature. ‘Sorry,’ he said. Then to make amends added, ‘What should I call you? As an individual?’

  ‘Cyril,’ said the wangaramas wyrm inside his head.

  Since the messenger had delivered his message, the Facemaster had disappeared to instruct some other unfortunate and Chalkhill had taken the opportunity to make himself scarce. He was now in the grounds of the Assassins’ Academy, casually strolling towards the gate. He was far from certain whether the news the messenger had brought was good or bad. If Hairstreak no longer needed him, it could mean he was free to go his own way, do what he liked so long as he kept clear of the Imperial Authorities, which would be easy enough to do if he set himself up in Yammeth Cretch. On the other hand, it could mean that Hairstreak would have him killed, in which case he had to get out of Yammeth Cretch as fast as possible. It was a difficult dilemma. What he needed was more information.

  ‘Would you do that for me … Cyril?’ he asked ingratiatingly. ‘Would you plug into your Network and find out what Lord Hairstreak is really up to?’

  ‘Of course I would, Jasper,’ the wyrm said warmly. ‘If the data is there, I shall obtain it for you.’

  Without warning, it was quiet in his head. Chalkhill experienced a wave of relief so extreme he felt quite faint. Then suddenly it was bedlam. A thousand voices, a hundred thousand voices were wittering full blast. The volume level rose until he thought his skull must burst. He felt his vision fading and sank to his knees, clutching his temples.

  ‘Are you all right?’ a voice asked from outside him somewhere, but he could not work out who it belonged to.

  The inner voices stopped. In the blessed mental silence, h
e felt Cyril stir. ‘Well, that didn’t take too long,’ the wangaramas said. ‘And it’s good news, Jasper. Lord Hairstreak no longer needs you to kill Prince Pyrgus while he’s being crowned Purple Emperor because Prince Pyrgus will never be crowned Purple Emperor. Lord Hairstreak has pulled off an early coup. Prince Pyrgus and his supporters have been exiled. The Realm is now ruled by Lord Hairstreak acting as Regent for Prince Comma. It will all be public knowledge soon.’

  For a long moment Chalkhill simply couldn’t believe it. The entire Realm ruled by Hairstreak? That meant the Faeries of the Night had triumphed. It was incredible. It was wonderful. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. ‘Are you sure about all this?’ he asked.

  ‘I got it from a wyrm named Wilhelm in the bottom of one of Hairstreak’s PR advisors,’ Cyril assured him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the voice from outside asked again.

  Chalkhill blinked. It was a young woman, one of the Academy servants by her uniform. Fie smiled at her.

  ‘Never better,’ he said warmly. ‘Never better.’

  Thirty-One

  It was really peculiar. If he tried and thought about it, nothing happened. But if he didn’t think about it and just did it, the wings moved. Not a lot, admittedly, but some. The trouble was they didn’t move together. Sometimes one twitched, sometimes the other waved about a little. But there was no question of coordination, or any real strength.

  As he tried to move the wings, Henry discovered he had a brand new slab of muscle. It stretched between his shoulder blades and the wings were rooted in it like a tree. He could move the muscle too, if he wriggled about a bit, but again only weakly. He stood in the middle of the maroon plain, totally absorbed. It was scary, but the wing business was still the most exciting thing that had happened to him in years.

  The wings suddenly unfolded and stretched out behind him like a … like a … He couldn’t think like a what, but he could see himself in his mind’s eye as an incredible winged boy, standing statuesque and proud on the edge of unexplored terrain. It made him feel heroic and confident. But it would be a lot better if he could use the wings.