Faerie Wars

Thirty

A plump, middle-aged woman in servant's uniform ushered Henry away. 'She'll be all right, poor thing -there's doctors to look after her. But such a shock…' She pursed her lips briefly, eyes glazing with grief, then turned her attention back to Henry. 'Now, young sir, I haven't seen you before so I don't know your name.'

'It's Henry,' Henry said dully. He was shocked himself by what had happened. It was the first time he'd seen a dead body and the damage to the face was like something out of a horror movie. Except in a horror movie you didn't get the smell.

'Oh, like the Duke of Burgundy,' the woman said. She managed a small, conspiratorial smile. 'Only I don't suppose you're with the Nightside, are you?'

'No,' Henry said quickly, although he hadn't the least idea what she was talking about.

'I'm Goodwife Umber,' the woman said. 'You'll be staying at the palace, Master Henry?'

Things had suddenly got a lot more complicated than he'd bargained for. He took a deep breath and said, 'I suppose so.'

'I'll show you to a guest room. I'm glad you're staying. She'll need her friends around her at a time like this.'

The guest room was sumptuous, miles better than his room at home, although there didn't seem to be a bed.

'Sorry if it isn't what you're used to,' Goodwife Umber said anxiously. She looked Henry up and down. 'You'll be from country parts then?'

Henry nodded. He thought it best not to get into where he was really from.

'Well, you'll find fresh clothes in the wardrobe a bit more suited to the palace – just scrabble round until you get your size and if you have any problems call me. Underwear in the drawers.' She gave him a motherly grin and closed the door behind her as she left.

Henry quickly discovered the reason there was no bed in his room was that it wasn't a room but a suite. There was a bedroom off the main room and a bathroom off that with a sunken bath in the middle of the floor that was a miniature (but a large miniature) of the one where he'd seen Blue. There were earthenware jars around the edge and on investigation he found them full of scented oils. He went back to the bedroom and discovered the wardrobe Goodwife Umber had mentioned. It was, as promised, packed with clothing in a range of sizes. He picked out a green jerkin and some breeches that fitted well enough and found some soft green shoes to go with them. When he examined himself in the wardrobe mirror he had the creepy feeling he looked a bit like Pyrgus, even though the outfit was nothing like the clothes Pyrgus wore. Maybe it just meant he would fit in here, which was no bad thing.

He pushed open another door in the bedroom, vaguely imagining it might be a second built-in wardrobe, and discovered it was a little windowless study, which lighted itself mysteriously when the door opened. There was a desk and a chair and walls lined with books. It occurred to him he might learn a lot about Pyrgus's world from those books if he took the time. But he would probably learn a lot more if he explored the palace.

Henry went back to the main living room, opened the door into the corridor and looked out.

'Ah, there you are,' said Goodwife Umber, making Henry jump out of his skin. She seemed to have been standing in the corridor waiting for him. 'You'll be wanting something to eat now, I'll be bound. If you follow me, I'll get you something in the kitchens.' She looked at him approvingly as he emerged. 'Green suits you.'

'Thank you,' Henry said. The palace kitchens would be as good a place to start as any. Besides, against all odds, he was feeling peckish.

The heat of the kitchens, generated by two huge cooking ranges, met him like a wall. As he stepped inside, he had the feeling of walking into a period movie, something from Dickens or even earlier. Everything had an old-fashioned look, from the scrubbed pine tables to the haunches of meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling. He imagined the place would be a hive of activity at mealtimes. Even now there were twenty or thirty people lounging about chatting and drinking cups of something while they waited for the rush to start.

Goodwife Umber led him over to a fat woman in a cook's uniform cutting vegetables into an enormous pot. 'This is Head Cook Lattice Brown,' she whispered.

'You be nice to her or else she'll poison you.' She grinned to show she was joking, then said loudly, 'Any chance of something to eat for a starving boy, Lattice? Friend of Princess Blue.'

Lattice set down the knife and wiped her hands on a cloth. Every move was made with great deliberation. She looked at Henry from underneath her eyebrows. 'Friend of Princess Blue, is it? And does this friend have a name?'

Henry opened his mouth to answer, but Goodwife Umber beat him to it. 'He's called Henry, Lattice. Named for the Duke of Burgundy, but loyal Lighter not a Nighter, eh?'

'Duke of Burgundy's not called Henry,' Lattice said.

Goodwife Umber frowned. 'Yes he is. Henry Lucina.'

'No he isn't. It's Hamearis. You're not called Hamearis, are you?' The question was directed at Henry.

Henry shook his head. 'No, Ma'am – Henry.'

Lattice Brown grinned delightedly. 'Hear that, Goodie Lanta? Ma'am! What a nice polite young man. You just leave him here with me and I'll see he's well fed. Expect there might be a couple of kitchen maids'll want to keep him company as well, handsome lad like that.' She winked at Henry, who blushed.

Minutes later he was sitting at one of the pine tables spooning stew from a bowl, with a thick wedge of crusty bread on a plate beside it – 'for dipping,' Cook Lattice said. To his relief, no kitchen maids had joined him and, after a few curious stares, the rest of the staff quickly settled back to what they had been doing, which was mainly gossiping. Henry kept his head down and listened. Predictably, the main topic was the Emperor's murder.

'Head completely gone – '

'What, all of it?'

'So Bert told me and he's a guard. Just the stump of a neck left, but no blood. Gatekeeper reckons it was a slicer beam – only thing that cauterises as it cuts.'

'Not what I heard at all. Head wasn't cut off, just sort of bashed in. Some sort of new Nighter weapon.'

'Aye, it'll be the Nighters all right, ruddy trouble the whole bunch of them.'

'Wasn't Nighters. You know it wasn't Nighters.'

'Who's running the realm, that's what I want to know. Emperor gone, Crown Prince missing…'

'Could be the end of House Iris.' This was from a gloomy old boy staring into a pottery goblet. Two women and Cook Lattice rounded on him.

'Want to watch your mouth, Luigi.'

'It's House Iris pays your wages. Ours too.'

'There's Prince Comma – '

'Little weasel!'

'Mind your manners, girl.' This from Lattice. 'Even if he is a little weasel, he's still the Emperor's son.'

'Aye, and if you had a mother like that – '

'Shhh!' Cook Lattice looked around as if worried about being overheard.

'Why should I shush? Everybody knows the truth. No wonder poor little Comma is the way he is – blood will out, I always say.'

A woman Henry gathered was called Nell said, 'They can't make him Emperor anyway – he's too young.'

'Prince Pyrgus will turn up,' said Lattice confidently.

'But if he don't, it'll be Comma. The Gatekeeper will be his regent until he's of age. That's the way they do it. But Pyrgus will turn up, mark my words.'

'What's happened to Prince Pyrgus?' Henry asked. He'd been a bit worried about attracting any more attention to himself, but if he was to find anything out he had to ask questions.

'Nobody knows,' Lattice said. 'Sent him off through one of those silly portals and he never came back. Or if he did come back, they don't know where he's got to. Never held with them myself. Wouldn't find me trotting off to some weird world full of idiots and giants and dandruff. People there have six fingers and bright blue skin, did you know that?'

'No,' Henry said.

'Larry told me,' Cook Lattice said, without explaining who Larry was.

Nell said, 'The one who killed the Emperor didn't have blue skin.' Her face took on a smug expression. 'My Tom told me that and he was there.'

'He was there, why didn't he stop him doing it?' Luigi asked sourly.

'Well, he wasn't there when it happened,' Nell said. 'No guards at all there when it happened. But Tom was the first in afterwards. One of the first anyway. Said the old man looked just like you or me. Five fingers, ordinary skin, no dandruff. Bald, though.'

Henry felt a sudden tightness in his chest. 'You mean it was somebody from – ' what on earth had Pyrgus called it? ' – from the Analogue World who killed the Emperor?'

'Didn't you know? Old boy called Mist, Misty something like that. Emperor went to the other world to find Prince Pyrgus and brought back this old boy with him for some reason. Cook Lattice's right – nothing good ever came out of the other world. Be safer with demons, you ask me.'

'It wasn't Mist, it was Fog; well, Fogary actually,' Luigi said. 'Had some wicked weapon with him. You wonder what they were thinking of, letting him bring it through.'

'Far too trusting, the Emperor. Far too soft-hearted.'

'Won't be trusting anybody now, God rest him.'

'God rest him!' everybody chorused, then fell silent.

After a moment, Henry said tightly, 'Fogary or Fogarty?'

'That's right,' said Luigi. 'Fogarty. The one who killed the Emperor. His name was Fogarty. They're holding him in the palace dungeons.'

'Where are these dungeons exactly?' Henry asked innocently.

The last time Henry had felt this scared was when Mr Fogarty had sent him off to rob his school. Except now was even worse. His heart was pounding so badly it sounded like a military drum. His legs felt weak and he couldn't seem to take deep enough breaths. He forced himself to walk down the steep steps to the palace dungeons.

It was a surprise when he reached the bottom. He'd been expecting something old-fashioned, like the kitchens – dark, stone-lined cells with fettered prisoners and moisture running down the walls. But the reality was something else. The stairs ended in a bright reception area that even had a pale blue carpet. He could see some cell doors off the corridor beyond, one of which lay open. The empty cell had bunk beds, a desk and chairs, much like the modern prisons he'd seen in police series on TV.

A burly guard got up from a desk and moved over to the counter to greet him. 'Something I can do for you?' he asked.

Henry uttered a silent prayer and drew a breath that still wasn't deep enough. 'Do you have a prisoner here called Fogarty?'

'What if we have?'

I will not be intimidated, Henry thought. The man wasn't really suspicious – it was just his manner. You had to be a bit peculiar if you were a prison guard. For Henry, the trick was to appear confident. 'A prisoner from the Analogue World? The man accu – the man who killed His Majesty the Emperor?'

The guard looked him up and down, but the confident tone seemed to be working. 'Matter of fact we do. You a relative or something?' Henry's heart skipped a beat before the guard suddenly guffawed. 'Relative, eh? Come to see your dear old grandad, what?'

Henry smiled back weakly. 'No, but I have come to speak to the prisoner.' This was the tricky bit. 'Orders of Princess Holly Blue.'

'Got a chitty?' asked the guard.

Henry stared at him. 'No,' he said eventually. A woolly brown rug thrown carelessly to one end of the counter moved suddenly, making him jump.

'Can't let you near a prisoner without a chitty,' the guard said. 'Not if you come from the Emperor himself, God rest him.'

Henry decided to try for sympathy. 'Look, I'm new round here. Nobody told me I'd need a chitty. Can't you make an exception?'

'More than my job's worth,' the guard said reasonably. 'Why don't you just go back and get one from the Princess?'

Good question. He could see the woolly rug out of the corner of his eye and it seemed to be creeping along the counter towards him. 'Thing is,' he said to the guard, 'Princess Blue is indisposed at the moment – the shock. She saw her father and… well, you can understand. So she can't really be disturbed. You can check that if you like.' He swung his head suddenly to look directly at the rug and it stopped moving. Two beady brown eyes peered up at him out of the shaggy surface.

The guard looked at him, chewing his lower lip. 'Not supposed to let you in without a chitty,' he said uncertainly.

'Yes, I understand that,' Henry said. 'But perhaps there's a form I could sign taking responsibility, then later I could bring you the chitty when Princess Blue is feeling a little better. It really is rather urgent.' The rug thing with the brown eyes slid off the counter and on to the floor. Henry found himself glancing towards it uneasily as it edged towards him. The guard paid it no attention at all.

'Maybe if you could tell me what it's all about…?' the guard said thoughtfully. 'I mean, I'd like to help the Princess, but at the same time -' He pursed his lips and shrugged.

At least he'd been expecting this. 'The Princess wishes to find the reason why this man murdered her father. In case there are further plots.'

'Bit young to be questioning a prisoner about stuff like that, aren't you?'

He'd been expecting that one too. 'The Princess thought he might be less on his guard with somebody my age.' He waited, having learned it was always a bad thing to say too much when you were chancing your arm. The woolly-rug creature – it had to be some sort of animal -had reached his feet now and was sniffing round his ankles.

The guard leaned over the counter and looked down at the rug. 'What do you think?' he asked.

Tack of lies,' the endolg said. 'Kid wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the backside.'

Henry struggled furiously, but the guards were well used to dealing with difficult prisoners and kept clear of his flailing feet. They half dragged, half carried him along the corridor, then held him firm while one unlocked a cell door at the end.

'Don't know why you're making such a fuss,' one said. 'You wanted to see the old coot who murdered our Emperor. Now you're getting the chance.'

They threw him bodily into the cell and slammed the door. Henry picked himself up and hurled himself forward, but the key turned before he could reach it. 'Save your strength,' a familiar voice advised.

Henry swung round. Mr Fogarty was sitting on the top bunk, feet dangling. 'Scrotes know how to make a lock. I've been trying to pick that one since they threw me in here.' He slid down off the bed. 'Didn't expect to see you, Henry.' He sniffed and looked him up and down. 'Specially dressed up like a leprechaun.'

'Mr Fogarty, what happened? What's – '

Fogarty placed his finger to his lips. 'Nice weather for the time of year,' he said. He went over to the bunks and pulled a pad and pencil from underneath the mattress. He wrote something and passed the pad to Henry.

This place may be bugged, it said. Best write down anything important. We can eat the paper afterwards. Meanwhile make small talk.

Henry groaned inwardly, but took the pencil. He thought for a moment, then wrote: What happened to Pyrgus?

'What have they locked you up for?' Fogarty asked loudly. He took the pencil and wrote, Little scrat used my portal before I tested it.

'Some sort of rug testified against me,' Henry said. He took the pad back and got to the heart of the matter: Why did you kill the Emperor?

Not sure I did really.

'Not sure?' Henry exploded. 'You're in here for murder and you're not sure you did it -?'

'Quiet!' Fogarty hissed. He looked around in alarm and thrust the pad back at Henry.

'I'm not writing it down,' said Henry furiously. 'This is too important. I need to know what's going on. You can't do it with notes.' By the sound of things it would be touch and go whether you could do it with a full-length novel.

'All right,' said Fogarty. 'But keep your voice down. If we sit side by side on the bed, we can whisper.' He sat and motioned Henry to the space beside him.

Henry groaned aloud this time, but sat down obediently. Anything was better than passing notes. 'Did you kill the Emperor?' he asked bluntly but quietly.

'No,' said Fogarty in a whisper.

'You didn't shoot him with your shotgun?'

'No.'

'Who did then?'

'A demon,' Fogarty said.

Henry felt like strangling him. The last thing he needed right now was to have to listen to the old boy's batty beliefs. 'Mr Fogarty,' he said patiently, 'there are no such things as – '

But Fogarty cut in with an urgent whisper. 'Listen, Henry, I know you think I'm off the wall, but you'd better get it into that thick head of yours that there are more things in the big wide world than they tell you at school. Didn't believe in fairies, did you, until you caught one in a jamjar? Didn't believe you could open up a hole in space and step into a whole different universe, did you? So where do you think you are now -Blackpool? Know what I was before I took to robbing banks?'

Henry looked at him blankly. After a moment he shook his head. 'No.'

'Particle physicist,' said Fogarty. 'And a damn good one. Think that makes me stupid?'

Henry shook his head again, more urgently this time. 'No, but – '

'Know why I stopped being a particle physicist?'

'No, but – '

'Because they paid me seven grand a year. Seven grand! Even in those days that was peanuts. Could make more selling soapflakes and you don't need a degree for that, let alone a doctorate.'

Henry stared at him in astonishment. 'You're a doctor of physics?' he asked incredulously.

But Fogarty was in full swing. 'So I did what any sensible man would do and took up bank robbery. But I never forgot my physics. There are lots of alternative realities – even that old fool Einstein knew it. And one of them's the reality people used to call Hell. Place is full of demons and their UFOs. Pyrgus is stuck there now, poor little sprog.'

Henry had been about to say something else, but now he said, 'Pyrgus is in Hell?'

'Keep your voice down,' Fogarty hissed. 'Yes, Pyrgus is in Hell.'

'How do you know? How could you know that?'

'Got it from the demon,' Fogarty said.

This was crazier and crazier. Yet there was something about Mr Fogarty's absolute certainty that was getting to Henry. All he could do was echo, 'Demon?'

'Listen,' said Fogarty in a whisper. 'Just button your lip, open your mind and listen] Demons, UFO aliens, all the same thing. Old days they called them demons, now they're aliens, but they're still up to their old tricks. Don't know how he got there, but I do know Pyrgus is in the alien world. Right now. You want to be old-fashioned about it, he's in Hell. I know because there's a demon in the palace. Didn't know that, did you? Neither does anybody else.'

'How do you know?' Henry asked suspiciously.

'Because it took me over. Demons are good at taking over people,' Fogarty said. 'They've been doing it for years. Read the UFO reports. You're diddling about minding your own business when your car stops, the flying saucer lands and a little scrat with a big head has grabbed you by the ear. Next thing you know you're so confused you don't know where you are. That's the way demons do it. Look them in the eye and you're finished. They shove your brain to one side and take control of your body. A good one can tell you what to think.'

'What happened?' Henry asked, drawn in despite his better judgment.

Fogarty said sourly, 'I wasn't expecting it, you see. Came through the wall and next thing was I was looking it straight in the eye. Battle of wills after that. It walked me all the way to the Emperor's quarters. There was no security at all for some reason. All the time it was inside my head, telling me I had to kill the Emperor. No problem there – I had my shotgun. But I was fighting back, of course. Only by the time I walked in on Tithonus and the Emperor, he was winning. I tried to throw him out of my head but I just couldn't do it.'

'You mean he's still in there?' Henry asked, aghast.

'Don't be stupid,' Fogarty told him shortly. 'After that I sort of blanked out for a bit. That's when I discovered Pyrgus was in Hell.'

'I don't understand this,' Henry said.

'It's two-way traffic when a demon takes you over. He gets into your mind, but if you make the effort you can get into his. Up to a point. I got hold of some of his memories. Pyrgus was taken to the head demon, character called Beleth. Don't know what happened after that.'

'OK,' Henry said cautiously. 'So what happened to you after that?' He still wasn't sure he believed the demon story, but he found he didn't not believe it either. Fogarty had hit home with the remark about the fairy in the jamjar. Maybe there were such things as demons. Maybe they did drive flying saucers.

'When I came to, I found I'd shot the Emperor. Close range. Took half his head off. Demon disappeared then. His job was done – he'd made me do it, made my body do it anyway. Then left me to carry the can. That's why I'm in here now.'

'Don't worry,' Henry said. 'When I tell Princess Blue what happened she'll get you out of here.' He hoped to heaven it was true.

'Better make it quick,' said Fogarty. 'They're due to hang me in the morning.'