The Purple Emperor Read online

  As he expected, guards emerged to meet him once he approached the entrance gate to the garden surround. It was a guard’s duty to be suspicious at any time, but especially after dark. Their Captain recognised him, of course, but treated him no differently from any other visitor.

  ‘Your business, sir?’

  ‘To meet with the Purple Emperor Elect.’

  ‘To what end, sir?’

  ‘I carry a message for him from Lord Hairstreak.’

  ‘In written form or verbal?’

  ‘Verbal.’

  ‘May I convey this message for you?’

  Hamearis said, ‘It is for the ears of Prince Pyrgus alone.’

  The Captain shrugged, as if this was no more than he’d expected. ‘Are you armed, Your Grace?’

  Hamearis gestured towards his captive axe. ‘As you see.’

  The Captain leaned over to inspect the seal, then took a small device from his pocket and added a second seal of his own. ‘Please remove your belt and walk through the archway to the left side of the main gateway, sir.’

  Removing his belt meant removing his weapon. ‘I am the Duke of Burgundy,’ he said formally and firmly. ‘I may not be deprived of my axe without due cause.’

  ‘You’ll get it back once you’re inside,’ the Captain said mildly.

  Glowering, Hamearis wondered what was going on, but this was not an occasion to make trouble. He unbuckled his belt, complete with the sealed axe, and handed it across.

  ‘Are you carrying any other weapons, Your Grace?’

  ‘No,’ Hamearis lied.

  ‘Through the archway, sir.’

  Hamearis strode through the archway. A howling alarm sounded at once. In seconds he was surrounded by soldiers, their swords drawn. Hamearis raised his hands and backed off, smiling. His instinct told him what had happened, and if he was right it was truly remarkable. He knew of absolutely no magic that would produce such a result.

  The Captain approached him again. ‘Perhaps Your Grace has forgotten a weapon … ?’ he said politely.

  It was exactly as he’d suspected: some sorcerous coating on the archway had detected his dagger. He unfastened the hidden buckle and handed the dagger across.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the Captain said. ‘This will be returned to you when you leave. Your servant now, please.’

  The hooded man walked through the arch without triggering the alarm. Hamearis smiled slightly to himself, then walked towards the palace. He suspected the enchanted archway had been created by young Malvae’s new Gatekeeper, the Analogue World wizard Fogarty. If so, the man had proven his worth with a single invention. Weapon-detecting magic was an incredible development, something of inestimable value. Perhaps it was something he would not mention to his old friend Hairstreak. Hamearis might see if he could keep the new technology for himself when the Faeries of the Night took over the Purple Palace.

  And see if Wizard Fogarty might be persuaded to work for House Lucina.

  Twenty

  Fogarty held his right hand out in front of him, palm downwards, and noted it was trembling. What a pain that was! Even when his arthritic fingers were playing hell he’d always prided himself that he could hold it steady as a rock. It was ridiculous to start shaking at his age when it wasn’t even his age that had caused the shake.

  He didn’t know what had caused the shake.

  Except he did know what had caused the shake. It was just that what had caused the shake was impossible at his age.

  He hadn’t felt this confused since he was an adolescent.

  Which was how he felt generally—like an adolescent. He wanted to hum a little tune and go out and pick flowers and all that sort of damn-fool nonsense. A thought struck him. Maybe it was the start of senile dementia. They used to call that ‘second childhood’. You ended up drooling like a baby and wetting yourself, but maybe you went through an adolescent phase first. At eighty-seven, he was certainly old enough for senile dementia.

  He wondered if the healing wizards might have a cure.

  The trouble was he didn’t want a cure. Apart from the shaking hand, he felt wonderful. He felt excited and strong and confident and full of energy. He felt like going to a concert and ripping up the seats. He’d never heard dementia made you feel like this. Nobody ever told him senility made you want to see Led Zeppelin.

  It couldn’t be senile dementia.

  But if it wasn’t senile dementia, it had to be … Fogarty shook his head. It couldn’t be that either!

  He walked from the master bedroom of his Gatekeeper’s lodge into the bathroom, where there was a full-length mirror. His reflection didn’t look like him at all. It looked like his grandfather. The odd thing was he didn’t feel old. He’d never felt old, not even when the arthritis burned in his hands and he discovered he couldn’t run any more without his chest paining and his lungs heaving. But he’d never felt this young either. Most of the time he thought of himself, inside, as somewhere around thirty-five—maybe forty on a bad day. That was a long way from feeling seventeen, which was the way he felt just now.

  The weird thing was the way it had happened. One minute he was worrying about Pyrgus, listening to Blue, trying to figure what might be going on. The next, there was a claw gripping his guts, his heart was pounding and his brain had turned to mush. All because Madame Cardui walked in.

  He’d heard about Madame Cardui, of course—she was one of Blue’s agents—but nothing had prepared him for the reality. She was the most exotic creature he’d ever seen—tall for a woman, nearly as tall as he was, in fact. She dressed in shudderingly flamboyant gear—a matching gown and headdress in bright, ever changing colours with jewelled floaters on her feet that held her an inch or more above the floor and made her even taller.

  They called her the Painted Lady, he seemed to recall, and he could see why. She was heavily, almost theatrically, made-up: had she once been on stage? He thought he’d heard that about her too. She was accompanied by an orange dwarf, who carried a fat, translucent Persian cat asleep in a gilded cage. But for all the trappings, the most striking thing about her was her eyes—dark, liquid and penetrating.

  Those eyes transfixed him like javelins as Blue made the introductions. Madame Cardui reached out a slim hand writhing with serpent rings, smiled to show fine scarlet teeth, gripped his hand firmly and said, ‘It is such a pleasure to meet you, Gatekeeper Fogarty. Deeah Princess Blue has told me much about you. May I present my servant Kitterick?’ She nodded benignly towards the orange dwarf.

  Fogarty, thunderstruck, said nothing. And continued to say nothing as she repeated the story she’d told Blue about the threat of assassination facing someone in the royal household. In fact, the only thing he did say before she swept out of the room at the end of the audience was, ‘Madame Cardui, what is your given name?’

  She had fixed him again with those wonderful eyes and said in that wonderful voice, ‘Cynthia, Gatekeeper Fogarty. My given name is Cynthia.’

  Then she was gone and Fogarty stood trembling in her wake. Thank God he’d hidden that from Blue and Pyrgus.

  It was ludicrous to have that sort of reaction to a woman at his age. It was ludicrous to have that sort of reaction to a woman at any age. He didn’t recall having had it before. Not when he was a kid mooning over some pimply first love he couldn’t even remember now. He didn’t have it when he met Miriam, the woman he married in his twenties. Admittedly Miriam had been a bit of a moo, but still ...

  The question was what was he going to do about it?

  He knew what he’d have done about it when he was really the age he felt right now. He’d have climbed on the hog and rode out after her like the Lone Bloody Ranger. He’d have grabbed her and kissed her till her ears dropped off. And if she was seeing someone else he’d have beaten him to a pulp.

  Wouldn’t do now, of course. He was Gatekeeper now, the most respectable, responsible job he’d ever held. Couldn’t just take off chasing skirt. More to the point, he was eighty-seven and his d
ays of beating rivals to a pulp were long gone. Unless, of course, he used a cricket bat. Idly he wondered if she had anything going with the dwarf.

  He was coming out of the bathroom when somebody started hammering on his front door. Fogarty froze. Nobody was supposed to get anywhere near his home without triggering the security system. There were guards as well—Pyrgus had insisted on that—but even if somebody managed to slip past them, the devices he’d set up would have alerted him long ago. But somebody had got past his guards and his security and was at his door now, in the middle of the night.

  Fogarty walked to the bank of viewscreens he’d installed in his living quarters. The remote periphery looked clear, except for his cloaked guards who showed up as reassuring green shapes. The middle ground was clear as well—a few foxes and rabbits (or what passed for foxes and rabbits in the Realm) but nothing to worry about—so it wasn’t any sort of mass attack.

  His eyes flickered to the screens that showed his front porch. A tall, hooded figure was reaching out a gloved hand to knock again. There was no obvious sign of weaponry (although the cloak could have hidden anything) but at least the figure was alone. All the same, not even a lone visitor should have passed the guards unnoticed. And nobody, but nobody, should have beaten his security devices. The expected assassination attempt? Blue thought the target must be Pyrgus, but word was the victim would be someone in the royal household. That could still be Pyrgus, but it could also be Blue herself or any one of a dozen senior servants and advisors, including himself.

  Would an assassin knock on your front door?

  Fogarty’s eyes narrowed as he tried to think it through. Everybody knew assassins didn’t just come calling at your door: they snuck in the back or through your window or down your chimney. Or they used a transformation spell to disguise their appearance, make them look like a friend or somebody harmless. The clown outside didn’t look like a friend, he looked like an assassin. The hood hid the face, the cloak hid the weapons. But why would an assassin want to look like an assassin and walk right up to your front door? Unless he was an extremely cunning assassin who knew that nobody would believe somebody who looked like an assassin and came knocking at your door could possibly really be an assassin. Except that —

  Fogarty gave up the attempt and took a cricket bat from the cupboard beside the front door. He’d have preferred his old shotgun, but since he’d used it to kill the Purple Emperor, he thought it was undiplomatic to keep carrying it. What was he going to do—keep explaining he’d been possessed by a demon at the time? Besides, a cricket bat didn’t often kill people if you knew what you were doing; and you could use it to break their fingers during the interrogation afterwards. The interrogation afterwards was important. You could find out who sent them and if there was anybody else after you. He hefted the bat and opened the door.

  ‘Good evening, Alan,’ said Madame Cardui. ‘I thought at our age it might be best to dispense with the preliminaries.’ She glanced at the bat as she swept past him. ‘Oh, good—shall we be playing games?’

  Blue awoke sleepily to find someone was shaking her. Blearily she focused beyond the lamp he was carrying. ‘Pyrgus, what are you doing?’

  ‘Hairstreak’s sent the Duke of Burgundy to see me,’ Pyrgus hissed urgently. ‘I need you to tell me what to do.’

  Twenty-One

  Henry had an utterly, totally brilliant idea, one so obvious he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. Since he couldn’t find where Aisling had hidden his portal control, he could at least go and see if Mr Fogarty had another one! It was night now and his mother would have gone ballistic if she’d thought he was visiting Mr Fogarty’s home after dark. But his mother could no more remember who he was than could his sister, so there didn’t seem a lot to stop him.

  He pulled on a mac since it had started to rain and caught the last bus out. If he didn’t find another control, he could always stay the night and catch the first bus home tomorrow. For all his problems with them, lethe cones had their advantages. And he still had four left.

  By the time he was walking down Mr Fogarty’s road, a lot of his confidence had evaporated. The trouble was, all he could think about was Blue and how she had to be wondering why he wasn’t with her now she needed him. With his luck, there would be no second control and it would be months before he got to the Faerie Realm.

  His luck turned out to be exactly as he has expected. He searched Mr Fogarty’s house from top to bottom without finding so much as a hint of a portal control. He was wondering if he should bang his head against a wall when he had his second utterly, totally, wonderfully brilliant idea within three hours.

  He went straight to the desk in the bedroom and rooted till he found Mr Fogarty’s notebook.

  The notebook was fascinating. There were technical sketches for all sorts of devices—including something called a Wishing Machine—all labelled in Mr Fogarty’s small, neat hand. Many of them were clearly unfinished, some were jottings for machine parts and circuit boards, and quite a few made no sense to Henry whatsoever, although he tried to put that little discovery out of his head as soon as it occurred to him. If he couldn’t make sense of the plans he was looking for, he was in real trouble. And if he couldn’t find the plans at all, he was in bigger trouble still.

  About a third of the way through the notebook, Henry found the plans he was looking for.

  The drawing wasn’t labelled ‘portal control’. It was headed ‘psychotronic reality disruptor’ with the ‘disruptor’ crossed out and replaced by the word ‘realignment’. It was the psychotronic bit that caught Henry’s attention. He remembered Mr Fogarty mentioning something about his portals using a psychotronic trigger and pumped electricity. There was nothing about pumped electricity on this page, but the psychotronic bit looked promising.

  So did the sketch. The exterior of the box was a lot like the portal control Henry used the first time he translated to the Realm. The drawing of the interior made no sense at all. There was provision for a battery, one of those expensive, long-life little efforts that powered digital watches, but beyond that Henry couldn’t follow it at all. He stared for a long time, then decided he didn’t have to follow it. All he had to do was make it. It was like a television set. You didn’t have to know how it worked, you just had to know how to switch it on. If he followed Mr Fogarty’s plans exactly, then the portal should open when he pressed the button.

  The problem was Henry had never made an electronic device before. He’d learned a bit about circuit diagrams and components at school, then promptly forgotten most of it and switched class before they got to putting things together. But he had built working model cardboard sculptures—how much more difficult could electronic stuff be?

  It turned out not to be difficult at all, but it took more time than Henry had expected. What made it easy was Mr Fogarty’s habit of making little doodle sketches of every necessary component. The doodles crawled all over his notes so that even when Henry didn’t understand terms like gate transformer, he had a picture of what he was looking for.

  A lot of the parts he needed were stored in the kitchen drawer, while others were out in Mr Fogarty’s shed. Henry felt a twinge of guilt as he collected some of them—they were items he’d stolen from his school for Mr Fogarty when they had been trying to build a portal to get Pyrgus back to the Realm: they’d have to go back again before school opened after the summer break.

  It was only when he started to put the pieces together than he discovered there was a component missing.

  Henry went on a major search after that, but without result. What he was looking for was labelled ‘biofilter’ in the notebook: a small, flat disc apparently made by fusing two layers of metal to make a sandwich with a third, then attaching a tiny looped aerial. There was nothing like it in the kitchen drawer, nothing like it in the shed. Henry went on another search of the whole house again before deciding that whatever a biofilter was, Mr Fogarty didn’t have one. He leafed through the notebook to see if t
here were any instructions for making one, but there weren’t. What to do now?

  Henry pored over the design diagram trying to figure what the bio thing actually did. As far as he could see it did nothing—it didn’t even seem to be attached to anything. But then again, a lot of the device was like that. There was even a circuit that wasn’t a real circuit, but a drawing of a circuit. Mr Fogarty had labelled that one ‘psychotronic pathways’ and added a note saying, ‘Insert right way up in relation to transistor 8’. Henry decided to leave the bio disc thing out altogether. He wasn’t at all sure this was wise, but he didn’t see what else he could do.

  He started to put the device together using an electric soldering iron he found at the back of the kitchen drawer. It was slow, absorbing work, very much like model-making, and it was dark outside before he realised he was very hungry. He left the half-finished device (which didn’t look half as neat as the things Mr Fogarty made, but what the hell—it was his first attempt) and went in search of something to eat. The fridge was empty as usual, except for the familiar pint of curdled milk, but he found a Birds Eye shepherd’s pie in the chest freezer in the laundry room. Cook from frozen in the microwave, Captain Birds Eye told him cheerfully by means of a cartoon bubble.

  Mr Fogarty’s microwave was pristine. Somebody had given it to him and he had never used it because of something he called ‘radiation leakage’. Henry removed the outer packaging, bunged the shepherd’s pie inside and set the timer for seven minutes. Then he took a tin of baked beans from the cupboard (Mr Fogarty always had plenty of baked beans) and heated them in a saucepan on the gas stove. By the time the microwave pinged, the beans were bubbling merrily. He plogged the lot down on a willow-pattern plate and ate his meal with gusto.