The Purple Emperor

by Herbie Brennan

  Soon know, he thought. Poor Flapwazzle.

  Suddenly he could see a roiling, surging force of water filling the entrance of the side drain like a manic tide. Astonishingly, he felt completely calm. He might be about to die, but there was absolutely nothing he could do.

  Then, like a tide, the water retreated. The great flush still roared through the main sewer, but it had drained away from the side tunnel completely. Henry realised he was holding his breath, and released it explosively. He was safe! It was going to be all right!

  Then suddenly he was being dragged towards the tunnel mouth.

  There was nothing to hold on to. The walls of the side drain were wet with slime. His feet could get no purchase on the floor. There was a whistling of wind in his ears as if he were being buffeted by a storm. As he slid towards the entrance and that boiling mass of water, he realised what had happened. The sweep of water in the main tunnel was so great it was creating a vacuum in the side drains. As air rushed in to fill the vacuum, he was being swept towards the deadly torrent. The elemental noise of wind and water rose until it filled his universe.

  Then stopped.

  He could hear the roar of water receding distantly, but the vacuum popped and the wind noise died at once. He climbed unsteadily to his feet, gasping for breath. There were scratches on his arms and legs, but otherwise he was just fine; and he was no longer being sucked towards the main sewer. The flush was over. He’d survived.

  Although it would be hours before the next torrent, Henry decided he wasn’t going to stay inside the sewers a minute longer than he had to. Not that he was certain he’d have been prepared to risk the river anyway. In his last swimming lesson he’d managed only half a length of the pool before floundering. Now he was alone, it felt far more secure to stay on dry land if he possibly could.

  Over the next hour, he investigated four side drains, one of them so confined he had to crawl along it on all fours. Three of them ended in gratings so firmly fixed he couldn’t move them. The fourth seemed to be a ridiculous dead-end until he noticed the pipes that drained into it from the ceiling. None of them was big enough for him to insert anything bigger than his arm.

  He was beginning to wonder if he might have to risk the river after all when the main tunnel forked and he saw distant daylight in the passage to his right.

  For a moment he wondered if it might be wishful thinking, but the light in the distance was nothing like the green glow of the fungus closer by. It was the bluish white of a bright, cloudy day. He could almost taste it streaming down into the sewer. He turned into the right-hand tunnel, increased his pace, then started to run. He felt an elation out of all proportion. The light might be nothing, nothing at all, unreachable perhaps, but it was still light and he was still alive—he’d survived.

  It was unbelievable. He’d found an inspection trap! Henry stared and, while he’d never been much for religion, he found himself offering up a little mental prayer. It couldn’t be better. What he was looking at was a large metal grille set into the ceiling with daylight (no doubt at all about that now) streaming through. The grille was hinged, so it was clearly meant to be opened. But best of all, it hung above an alcoved terrace with a flight of broad stone steps leading up to it. He could reach it easily.

  Henry ran up the steps, almost tripping on his feet in his haste. There was a small observation platform at the top and he stepped on to it, heart pounding. He reached up to push the grating, then stopped. It had one of those peculiar little box locks they used here in place of padlocks. The damn things usually had a magical charge and he had no idea at all how to open them. His heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach. It couldn’t be locked, it couldn’t be. But he knew with his luck it definitely could.

  He pushed the grille anyway. It rolled aside smoothly at the first touch. Henry stared at it. The lock was either broken or someone had left it open. Daylight beckoned. He moved back on to the broad stone steps and took the last three at a run.

  He was free!

  Fifty-Three

  Chalkhill drained the last of his glass and felt the music wind itself around his brain as a pleasing backdrop to Cyril’s words. He held up a mental hand to stem the wangaramas’s flow. (He was getting good at this.) ‘You say you’ve infiltrated all the important power centres in the Realm?’

  ‘Most of them. Some of Hairstreak’s household. The Imperial Court, although that’s getting turned around a bit now. The Council of —’

  ‘So you’re linked with some important people?’

  ‘Oh yes. Oh yes indeed.’

  ‘Then why pick me for Purple Emperor?’

  He thought there would be a hesitation, then possibly some judicious flattery and enough waffle for him to extract the real reason. But the wyrm answered at once. ‘Because you’re perfectly placed for the job.’

  Perfectly placed? ‘Perfectly placed?’ Chalkhill asked.

  ‘Our philosophers say we need an easy transition for the revolution to succeed, a smooth transfer of power between the existing legislation and our chosen host. In other words, the mass of common people must accept their new ruler. They won’t know he has a wyrm inside him, of course.’

  ‘That’s what I was asking,’ Chalkhill said. ‘Why on earth should anybody accept me? I’m not of royal blood, I’m not even noble except in the broadest sense of the word.’

  ‘But you won’t become Emperor as you. You’ll become the first Emperor Hairstreak.’

  There was a huge silence, as if the inside of Chalkhill’s head had turned into a vast, empty cathedral. The wyrm’s last words floated down like gentle snowflakes and suddenly he knew exactly what they meant. ‘You want me to go on with the impersonation!’ he exclaimed excitedly. ‘When Comma is to be crowned, you want me to go as Hairstreak, but when I assassinate Comma—it’ll be Comma I assassinate now, of course, not Pyrgus — you want me to take his place. As Hairstreak.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Cyril smugly. ‘You’re thinking like a wangaramas already.’

  It was the most peculiar plan he’d ever heard, but it might work. Hairstreak was a member of a noble house, related to the old Emperor by marriage. More to the point, he had the support of half the Realm—he was the acknowledged leader of the Faeries of the Night. Coups had succeeded with a lot less going for them.

  Except for one thing, of course.

  Chalkhill frowned. ‘What about the real Hairstreak? He’s not going to sit around and watch me take the kingdom wearing his face.’

  ‘The real Hairstreak won’t be at the Coronation — he told you that himself.’

  ‘No, wait a minute—he told me he wouldn’t be at the Coronation when Pyrgus was going to be crowned. There’s no reason for him to stay away from Comma’s Coronation. Comma is his puppet.’

  ‘That’s true, but he doesn’t plan to go to Comma’s Coronation either. He thinks the Faeries of the Light might accept the situation more easily if he keeps a low profile for a while.’

  It made sense. All the same … ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘We have it from his Gatekeeper.’

  Chalkhill blinked. ‘You have a worm in Cossus Cossus?!’ he asked incredulously. It was just too delicious to be true. ‘I always thought he had a funny walk.’

  ‘Cossus is one of our more important symbiotes. So you can take it our friend will not be at the Coronation. Once you kill Comma and proclaim yourself Emperor, you can denounce the real Hairstreak as an imposter, and have him arrested and hung.’

  ‘But won’t he tell everybody he’s the real Hairstreak?’

  ‘Of course he will, but who’s going to believe him over the new Emperor? Besides, we’ve infiltrated his personal bodyguard as well as Cossus Cossus. With the wangarami helping, it’ll be a piece of cake—all you have to do is find somewhere to lie low until we need you.’

  Lying low was the least of his concerns. Chalkhill already knew exactly who could sort that out for him. There was only one other thing he could think of to worry about. �
�I don’t have the illusion spell we were going to use—Hairstreak was going to supply that.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Jasper,’ the wyrm said exasperatedly. ‘You think the entire resources of the Wangarami Nation can’t stretch to a simple spell? Except it won’t be an illusion spell—it’ll be a permanent transformation.’

  ‘You mean I’ll look like Hairstreak for the rest of my life?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Cool!’ Chalkhill exclaimed aloud. Everybody was afraid of Hairstreak, and the man was worth an absolute fortune. Power! Wealth! Fame! All in a single transformation spell!

  A passing waiter brought him another glass of the intoxicating music.

  Fifty-Four

  Waiting in the Great Hall, Fogarty wondered what had happened to Henry. Wasn’t like the boy not to tip up when he said. Especially when he was so obviously sweet on Blue.

  He pushed himself out of his chair and walked stiffly to stand beside Gonepterix at the window. After a silent moment he suddenly realised that the view through the window was no illusion spell. He really was looking at a rocky shoreline and an angry sea.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ he asked.

  ‘Off world,’ Gonepterix said. He looked a little startled.

  ‘Off world?’

  ‘For security,’ Gonepterix explained.

  These faeries could move you off planet? Fogarty frowned. It had to be portal technology of some sort. Except he’d seen no portal. But however they did it, the logistics were mind-boggling. You had to find the right sort of planet for a start—somewhere you could breathe where the sun didn’t fry you and the gravity didn’t crush you. Then you had to target its coordinates. Then you had to open up a space-time doorway, something like a wormhole, only bigger. Then —

  It was slipping away from him. The whole thing was incredible, yet they’d done it so casually. Thank God all they wanted was to be left alone. With technologies like this, they could take over the entire Realm in a fortnight, then swallow up Hael and the Analogue World for dessert.

  ‘How far are we from the forest?’ he asked Gonepterix.

  To his astonishment Gonepterix didn’t hesitate. ‘Thirty-eight thousand light years.’

  Fogarty blinked. Maybe it wasn’t just the pretty face that made him Consort. Fogarty was about to push things further when Blue and Pyrgus walked back into the Hall.

  Fogarty caught Pyrgus’s expression at once. The boy looked almost ill, and it was Blue who turned to Queen Cleopatra and said decisively, ‘Your Majesty, my brother and I want to thank you for your offer of help and accept it gratefully.’ She looked from one face to the other as if challenging anyone to disagree. ‘Now perhaps we can discuss our plans.’

  Fifty-Five

  It was very, very cold. At first, Henry thought it might just be the contrast with the sewers, which had been hot as well as smelly, but his breath was steaming from his mouth now and there was a rime of frost on one wall near a door. Where was this place? He was obviously in the lower reaches of the palace, but where exactly? Some sort of food store? The room above the sewer inspection trap was a stone-lined chamber with two doorways and a window so high on one wall that it touched a corner with the ceiling. Otherwise it was empty. No cupboards, no tables, no shelves, no hooks or rails; nowhere you would store food.

  Why so cold? A temperature this low could not be natural. He couldn’t see any coolant pipes, but the Realm might have some sort of magically-based refrigeration — a special spell-coating maybe.

  Henry’s fingers started to go numb and he realised he could freeze to death while he was trying to work out why he was so cold.

  He made for the nearest doorway. The door wasn’t locked. But his breath still frosted in the next chamber, which was just as cold and much more gloomy: the only illumination came from a dim, cobweb-encrusted glowglobe at the bottom of a flight of steep stone steps leading upwards.

  Those steps intrigued him. He might be in the palace cellars—a likely place to be in the circumstances—and if so, the only way to go was up. He could get out of the palace and —

  And what? Follow Blue and Pyrgus to Haleklind? He didn’t even know where Haleklind was, but he’d worry about that once he had managed to get away from the palace and the loony old plud.

  Henry climbed the steps. The door at the top was firmly locked.

  Henry sat down on the steps to think. Why hadn’t he brought something useful with him? There was a toolkit in the house with a large wooden hammer (languishing on a shelf in the garage). There was … but what was the use? Even a penknife would have come in handy, but he no more had a penknife than he had a key.

  The door behind him opened.

  Henry twisted round to find himself looking at a group of women wearing the most fantastic gowns that shimmered and clung as they moved.

  ‘Hello,’ Henry said, scrambling to his feet. He felt suddenly embarrassed. He was wearing combat trousers and his BABE MAGNET T-shirt and everything, including his face, was filthy from the sewers. He stared at the women, wondering if they worked for Queen Quercusia, wondering if they’d guess he was an escaped prisoner. Eventually he swallowed and said stupidly, ‘I’m a bit lost.’

  ‘Then we’d better help you find yourself again,’ one of them smiled at him.

  Fifty-Six

  It was embarrassing, but very nice. The women brought him to a little room with a huge sunken tub filled with lovely foamy steaming scented water and insisted he have a bath. They didn’t leave the room while he took his clothes off, although they did turn their backs and, as he slid beneath the foam, he wondered, hoped, was terrified they might actually help him. But all they actually did was take his smelly clothes away.

  Henry lay in the tub and realised how exhausted he was. There was something in the water—some herbal additive maybe—that soaked the stress from his muscles. He noticed some of them were paining him, which wasn’t surprising considering he’d been shrunk to the size of a butterfly and nearly been drowned in a sewer, but the pain gradually soaked away as well. He wiggled his toes and thought of Blue. Funny thing was, she’d been in a bath like this the first time he’d seen her. Attended by her hand-maidens. His bath was a lot more private, but he had hand-maidens too, of a sort. He wondered who they were.

  He sank down quickly when one of them came in carrying towels with something colourful on top. They were very different, these women, different ages, different sizes, different looks, but they all walked the same way, really gracefully, and they all wore these amazing dresses—gowns, he supposed you’d call them—absolutely amazing the way they … sort of … clung and moved. The women were very nice too. They’d all been very nice to him, although they didn’t have much idea about privacy.

  ‘Brought you fresh clothes,’ the woman said, leaving the little pile at the edge of the tub. She smiled at him. ‘Come through when you’ve finished. We might even manage something for you to eat.’

  Henry watched her as she left, riveted by the last thing she’d said. A minute ago he’d been seriously contemplating resting his head against the side of the tub and letting himself drift off to sleep. Now he realised he was absolutely ravenous.

  He climbed out of the tub and dried himself quickly. There must have been something in the water—or possibly sprinkled on the towels—because the exhaustion left him at once. The hunger stayed, though.

  They hadn’t brought back his clothes. They’d left a colourful silk outfit comprising matching blouse, britches and socks that looked as if they’d come off a gipsy. He scrabbled around for underwear, but there was none. Since it was the gipsy gear or nothing, he pulled on the britches, feeling most peculiar about the underwear, then the blouse. As he was reaching for the socks, he had a sudden surge of confidence.

  It was a peculiar feeling for Henry, but it was very definite. The clothes were nothing like he usually wore—too brightly coloured and a bit girly—but somehow he felt really good in them. (He pulled on the right sock.) Macho and heroic. Well, s
ort of … (He pulled on the left sock.) He liked the way the material moved when he moved. Somehow he thought it made him look good. Well, better than the old BABE MAGNET anyway, although he fancied he might really be a bit of a babe magnet in this gear.

  The boots were the strangest part of the whole outfit. They were dark brown, just short of knee-length, but made entirely of the same silk as his blouse and britches. Even the sole was no more than a few extra layers of silk to give a cushioning effect. They wouldn’t last five minutes on stony ground, but he’d worry about that later. For the moment, they moulded to his feet and legs as comfortably as slippers.

  He was still feeling good as he walked from the bathroom.

  The women were waiting for him. With his newfound confidence, Henry smiled and said, ‘I don’t know your names, but I’d like to thank you.’

  ‘My name is Peach Blossom,’ the nearest woman said. She smiled back at Henry, without making any attempt to introduce the others. ‘Thank us for what?’

  They were putting food on a little table. Some of it looked unfamiliar, but all of it smelled delicious. ‘I don’t know—the bath.’ And the food, he thought, except that they hadn’t actually offered it to him yet. He remembered his manners and added belatedly, ‘My name’s Henry.’

  ‘We know who you are.’

  Henry didn’t know what to say to that. What he did say eventually was, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Silk Mistresses,’ Peach Blossom said. ‘We’re Sisters of the Silk Guild.’

  He was eating something called ordle which had a smoky flavour and was absolutely delicious. Without thinking, he said, ‘Will you get in trouble for this?’

  ‘Why should we get in trouble?’ Peach Blossom asked quickly.

  Uh-oh. He was sorry he’d said it now. There was no reason for them to know he’d just broken out of the palace dungeons or any of that. If he’d kept his mouth shut, he could have pretended he was just a casual visitor who’d got lost and strayed into somewhere he shouldn’t. Maybe he could still convince them that was all he was. Except when he’d told her his name she’d said, We know who you are. How did she know who he was? But if she did know who he was, did she know it wasn’t all that long since he’d been thrown into the dungeons?