by K. E. Mills
“You’re dismissed, Juby,” said Lord Attaby coldly. “Get back to your post. And not a word about this to anyone who wasn’t present at the time, is that clear?”
Juby nodded so hard and fast his neck almost snapped. “My lord,” he squeaked, and fled.
“I think, Lord Attaby,” Rupert said in the same mild voice Lional used just before somebody was made very sorry for something, “that you need to explain what’s going on.”
His expression horribly grim, Lord Attaby folded his hands neatly on the table. “I can’t do that, Your Majesty.”
“Oh, I think you can,” said Rupert. Never in his whole life had he sounded so dangerous. “And I think you will. This business touches upon my kingdom and its welfare. Therefore you will tell me—”
“He can’t,” said Sir Alec, the deceptive greengrocer. “Because he doesn’t know. None of us knows precisely what has happened in your kingdom, Your Majesty. Only that it’s catastrophic.”
“Yes, but what does that mean exactly?” Melissande demanded. “Are you saying that between them Gerald and Lional have—have—that somehow they’ve managed to destroy the whole place?”
“That’s—unlikely,” said Sir Alec. “But something has definitely occurred, something—”
“If you say catastrophic one more time,” she said crossly, “I will give you such a smack.”
He blinked at her, once. “Something we are currently unable to quantify,” he said at last, “beyond the fact that the event is unprecedented.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means Gerald’s in even more trouble than he was when we left,” said Monk, furious. “I’m a blithering idiot. I never should have let him—”
“Please, Mr. Markham,” said Rupert, “let’s not. I’m sure once the dust has settled there’ll be plenty of blame to go around. Now. This unprecedented thaumaturgical event. It seems obvious to me that either Gerald or my unfortunate brother Lional is behind it. If it’s Gerald then I venture we have cause for optimism. But if it’s Lional—”
Melissande flinched. Found herself wishing quite desperately that she could take hold of Monk Markham’s hand. “Please don’t say that, Rupes. I don’t think I could bear it if—” She couldn’t even bring herself to say the words out loud. “Sir Alec, can’t you tell who’s behind what’s happened?”
Sir Alec shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rupert, very clipped. “But I find that hard to believe. It’s my understanding Ottosland’s Department of Thaumaturgy prides itself on being the most comprehensive establishment of its kind in the world. And yet there you sit claiming you can’t tell who has triggered this unprecedented thaumaturgic event?”
As the three men at the table exchanged inscrutable looks, Monk cleared his throat. “Actually, Your Highness, it’s true. We can’t. Our international monitoring stations aren’t calibrated that way. Not for individual thaumic signatures. Sorry.”
Rupert stared at Monk, and Monk stared at Rupert. Then Rupes nodded, apparently satisfied.
Struck again by how different her brother was, Melissande touched Monk’s sleeve. “Can’t you work out what’s happened? I mean, you were able to find Bondaningo’s thaumic signature in the hex Lional put on my doors and… well… Gerald’s your best friend. If anyone can work out if he’s the one behind this thaumaturgical event, surely it’s you.”
Painful shadows shifted in Monk’s eyes. “Melissande—Your Highness—I would if I could, believe me. But it doesn’t work like that. I don’t think anyone’s been able to read a thaumaturgic event long-distance. At least not this kind of long-distance.”
“True,” said Sir Alec, suspiciously mild. “But to my knowledge, Mr. Markham, nobody has ever invented a portable portal before, either. So perhaps Her Highness’s suggestion isn’t—”
“Now you wait a moment, Alec,” said Monk’s uncle. “That’s my reprobate of a nephew you’re enticing into yet more unsanctioned, unpalatable and patently unsafe thaumaturgic shenanigans and I don’t appreciate you meddling in my family’s—”
“Thank you, Sir Ralph,” Lord Attaby snapped. “Your sentiments are understandable but irrelevant. This is a crisis and in a crisis it’s a case of all hands on deck. Mr. Markham—”
Monk jumped, then yelped as Reg dug all her claws through his coat to stop herself from falling off his shoulder. “My lord?”
“Can you do it?” said Lord Attaby, leaning across the polished oak conference table toward him. “Are you able to ascertain which wizard is behind this unprecedented thaumaturgic event?”
“Um,” said Monk, his voice strangled. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“How, Monk?” said his uncle, incredulous. “You’ve no reference points, no thaumic signature on record for comparisons, no—”
“Oh dear,” said Lord Attaby, all his teeth on show in a deeply unamused smile. “And would that be guilt plastered across your face, Mr. Markham?” He looked at Sir Ralph. “I think there’s something your enterprising nephew has neglected to tell us, Sir Ralph.”
Sir Ralph covered his face with one hand. “When this is over, I am going to kill him.”
“Certainly that would be one way of solving the problem,” Lord Attaby agreed. “But if we could for the moment stay focused on our more immediate concerns?” Sitting back, he laced his fingers across his middle. “Come now, Mr. Markham. Those of a religious persuasion tell us confession is good for the soul. If I were you I’d start confessing, for I suspect your soul needs all the help it can get.”
Melissande tightened her fingers on Monk’s arm. “Please? You might be New Ottosland’s only hope. And whatever trouble you get into afterwards, Rupert and I will help you out of it. My promise as a princess and a prime minister and an almost-queen.”
With a groan, his face milky pale, Monk nodded. Then he looked at his three superiors, grimly entrenched behind the oak conference table. “I covered up for Gerald when he transmogged King Lional’s cat into a lion.”
“I’m sorry?” said Lord Attaby, after a moment. His ferocious smile had vanished behind a frown. “Did I hear you aright? You falsified official Department records?”
“No!” said Monk, alarmed. “No, of course not, Lord Attaby. I just—I turned off the monitoring alarm before anyone else heard it and reset the etheretic calibrators. The information should still be there. All I did was… gloss over it.”
“All you did,” his appalled uncle moaned. “Nephew, I swear—”
“So what you’re saying,” said Sir Alec, before Monk’s uncle made good on his murderous threat, “is that we have a captured sample of Mr. Dunwoody’s enhanced thaumic signature?”
Monk nodded. “Provided nobody’s accidentally purged the records, yes.”
“And you’re confident you can use this sample to establish the cause of our monitoring meltdown?”
“Confident, sir?” Monk swallowed. “Well, I don’t know about confident but I’ll give it my best shot.”
Lord Attaby pushed his heavy oak chair back from the table and stood. “Then I suggest we waste no more time on recriminations and expostulations and instead get on down to Priority Monitoring. Your Majesty, I’ll have you and your—er—your prime minister escorted to a more comfortable chamber where you can—”
Melissande gave him a look worthy of Lional. “Oh no, you won’t. This is our kingdom you’re talking about, my lord. We’re coming down to Priority Monitoring with you. Aren’t we, Rupert?”
“Why yes, Melissande,” Rupert drawled. “I rather think we are.”
For the briefest moment she thought Lord Attaby might argue the point—but then he gave up. Smart man. “Very well,” he sighed. “Upon the understanding, Your Majesty, that you will be under the strictest code of confidentiality. Whatever you see or hear cannot be discussed with anyone not currently in this chamber. And frankly, after today, I’d rather it were never discussed again. Do I have your word on that?”
“Yo
u do, Lord Attaby,” said Rupert, with the most regal nod. “Mine and my sister’s.”
Lord Attaby heaved another sigh. “Fine. Mr. Markham, find somewhere to put that ridiculous bird, will you? This is the Ottosland Department of Thaumaturgy, not a zoological garden. And if you can’t procure a cage you can stuff it in a cupboard!”
“I beg your bloody pardon?” said Reg, tail feathers rattling. “Stuff yourself in a cupboard, you silly old goat!”
A paralyzed silence. And then Monk plucked Reg off his shoulder and held her up to his face, nose-to-beak. “You had to do it, didn’t you?” he said, sounding desperate. “You had to mouth off and make everything worse. You couldn’t just—just sit in a cage for an hour until I worked out how to help Gerald, could you?”
“Oh, please!” Reg retorted. “As if Gerald’s getting out of this pickle without my help! This pickle you landed him in, sunshine, when you showed him madam’s stupid Position Vacant advertisement without waiting to consult me on whether—”
“Oh for the love of Saint Snodgrass, would the pair of you shut up?” Melissande shouted, and fetched Monk a resounding clout on the back of his head. “What’s wrong with you? Carping and bickering while Gerald’s in trouble!”
“Hey!” said Monk, turning on her. “D’you mind? That hurt!”
“Really?” she retorted. “I find that hard to believe, seeing as how your head’s a solid block of wood!”
Reg rattled her tail even harder than before. “Ha! You tell him, ducky!”
“Shut up, Reg, or I’ll clout you too,” she said, glaring. “Monk’s right, ducky. You should’ve kept your beak shut. I was just about to tell Lord Attaby that you had to come with us because you’re a beloved childhood pet but now—”
“Now,” said Lord Attaby, his expression forbidding, “I can see we have yet another crisis to contain. I take it this isn’t a mere trained talking bird?”
“Far from it,” said Sir Alec. His voice and face were impassive but there was a definite gleam in his chilly gray eyes. “In fact, my lord, upon a closer examination, I think you’ll find this isn’t a bird at all.”
Lord Attaby stared at him. “Not a bird? What are you talking about man, it’s got feathers. And a beak.”
“True,” said Sir Alec. “But appearances can be deceiving—can’t they, Your Majesty?”
With a puffing effort Reg wrenched herself free of Monk’s grip and flapped onto the oak conference table. Head tipped to one side, she gazed gimlet-eyed at him.
“Speaking from experience, are we, sunshine?”
“Something like that,” said Sir Alec, dry as a desert. “And when this current crisis is resolved I’m sure it will be most edifying to compare notes. But in the meantime—” He turned. “My lord, the bird might well prove useful to our cause. I suggest it accompanies us down to Priority Monitoring.”
Lord Attaby’s jaw dropped. “You suggest—” And then he shook his head. “Very well, Sir Alec. There’s no time for a lengthy debate—and Saint Snodgrass knows your instincts have proven sound in the past. But you can stand surety for its trustworthiness.”
Melissande held out her arm. “Come on, Reg. Let’s go.”
So Reg hopped onto her arm and from there to her shoulder and they all trooped down into the bowels of the Department of Thaumaturgy building, a stiff-backed Lord Attaby leading the way. The Priority Monitoring station was a small, windowless cubbyhole buried beneath floors and floors of less-secret government divisions. Almost every square foot was crammed full of cluttered desks and rickety chairs and extraordinary machines sprouting gauges and thaumostats and wiggly, jiggly thaumatographs. Some of them had indeed melted to goo.
“Everybody out,” Lord Attaby ordered, sweeping his goggle-eyed minions with a glare guaranteed to petrify wood. “In fact, go home. You’re relieved of duty until tomorrow. And not a word about any of this, do I make myself clear? Consider yourselves bound by the Official Secrets Act.”
A chorus of obedient Yes, sirs, and then the four astonished wizards, including Juby, departed before their superior could change his mind about the early mark.
“Right then,” said Lord Attaby, once they were alone. “Get on with it, Mr. Markham.”
As Monk stripped off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and Lord Attaby withdrew to quietly confer with Sir Alec and Sir Ralph, Melissande let Rupert tug her sideways for their own private conference.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly, smoothing a lock of hair behind her ear.
“No, of course I’m not,” she said, feeling snappish. Refusing to be charmed by his sweet, caring gesture. “Rupert, what’s going on? What’s happened to you?”
Rupert looked at Reg. “Do you mind?”
“Huh,” Reg said, sniffing. “All these public displays of affection. Not what I’d call royal, ducky.”
“Nobody asked you, Reg,” she said, and twitched her shoulder. “Get off. I want to hug my brother.”
“I don’t know,” Reg grumbled, and hopped onto the back of the nearest empty chair. “No decorum. That’s your problem, ducky. You’ve got no bloody decorum.”
Folded hard to Rupert’s skinny chest, surprised by the sudden wiry strength in his arms, she rested her cheek against his velvet coat and sighed.
“You knew all along there was something the matter with Lional, didn’t you?”
“I’m afraid I did, yes, Melly,” said Rupert, his voice aching with regret. “Since I was a boy. Sorry. It wasn’t safe to tell you.”
There was so much she could have said. But what was the point? It wouldn’t change a single thing that had happened.
“Oh, Mel,” Rupert sighed. “I knew he was bad, and probably mad, but I never dreamed about the wizards.”
She tightened her embrace. “Oh, Rupes. None of this is your fault. And it’s not mine, either. This is Lional’s doing, all of it.”
“Mel…”
She could feel the tears crowding thickly in her throat. “I know,” she said, choking. “He has to be stopped. And if he won’t surrender willingly—”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Of course they could hope—but hope wasn’t exactly a fearsome weapon, was it? “What d’you suppose has happened back home?” she whispered. “D’you think it’s possible Gerald’s managed to—to kill him?”
Rupert shook his head. “I don’t know. Is Gerald the kind of chap who could bring himself to kill?”
Shamelessly eavesdropping, Reg snorted. “Blimey bloody Charlie. You won’t last five minutes as king with that kind of noddy thinking, Butterfly Boy. Every man jack in the world has got at least one murder in him. Justified or not, in cold blood or in hot. And after what your charming brother did to my Gerald—”
Melissande pulled out of her brother’s arms. Felt herself shudder, remembering what Gerald had told them in the cave. Seeing Rupert’s confusion, she patted his cheek.
“I’ll explain later, Rupes.”
Over at one of the terribly complicated thaumaturgical monitoring stations that hadn’t melted to goo, Monk sat back with a relieved sigh. “All right. The information’s still here.” He held up a small crystal. “I’ve copied it.”
“Very well,” said Lord Attaby, tight-lipped and tense. “What now?”
“Now, sir?” Monk wiped a shirt-sleeve across his sweaty face. “Now I figure out what the hell is going on in New Ottosland. I hope.”
CHAPTER FIVE
They were all staring at him: Melissande, Reg, New Ottosland’s unlikely-looking next king, Uncle Ralph, Lord Attaby—and Sir Alec.
Of them all, Sir Alec’s stare was the worst.
Sir Alec was one of those wizards often whispered about in dark corridors. Lots of rumor, very little fact. Once or twice Uncle Ralph, after partaking of his brother’s fine post-prandial brandy, had dropped mildly inebriated hints about the man’s secret, shadowy doings. Alluded to feats of thaumaturgical espionage and derring-do that could never be discussed in the cold li
ght of day.
“There are some things, Monk my boy, you’ll be happier not knowing,” Uncle Ralph liked to say, waving a fat, confiding cigar for emphasis. “Truth be told, I wish I didn’t know ’em. Truth be told, between you and me, I don’t know how Alec sleeps at night.”
Because he was a Markham on his father’s side and a Thackeray on his mother’s he’d long ago lost count of how many pies his family’s fingers dabbled in, one way or another, but the upshot was that he knew a little something about the seamy underbelly of wizarding. He didn’t need details to guess the kind of nastiness his uncle hinted at. Especially if he let himself meet Sir Alec’s measured, steady gaze.
Which he didn’t. The man’s guarded gray eyes were far too disconcerting. Especially now, watching him prepare for a little thaumaturgical sleight-of-hand which—in theory—shouldn’t be possible.
But that’s what I do, isn’t it? I turn theory into fact. Even when—especially when—I’m not supposed to.
And to think his family had found it amusing when he was a child.
Feeling the wintry weight of Sir Alec’s regard, he tucked the small crystal containing an imprint of Gerald’s unauthorized Level Twelve transmog into his pocket and looked up.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
Sir Alec’s light brown eyebrows lifted. “I doubt it.”
Yeah? Well, Sir Alec, how’s this for size? “You’re thinking—the government’s thinking—that Gerald’s some kind of loose cannon. That he’s a menace. A danger to society—or even the world.” He scowled. “But you’re wrong. Gerald Dunwoody’s the most harmless wizard I ever knew. And the most decent.”
“In my experience,” said Sir Alec, not arguing, just observational, “decent, harmless wizards don’t turn lizards into dragons at the behest of insanely despotic tyrants.”