Ruler of the Realm

Thirty-seven

Pyrgus opened his eyes to find a balding little man leaning over him. He shut them again. His head felt as if somebody had sandpapered the surface of his brain. But that was nothing to his stomach. It had turned into a churning, curdled sea that threatened to spew out of his mouth in an endless flood. (He wondered briefly if the little man would manage to get out of the way.) There was a pain in his side worse than anything he’d ever known, so deep and penetrating that he half thought somebody had left a knife in there.

He groaned. His mind moved like molasses and his body refused to move at all. The worst of it was, he had no idea what had happened. It occurred to him it might be best if he simply lay there and died quietly.

From somewhere he heard the familiar snap and fizz of a spell cone.

‘What…?’ Pyrgus whispered with enormous effort. An acrid scent flooded his nostrils and made him cough, which made his head ache worse than ever. It reminded him of the time he’d been poisoned. They’d told him afterwards that if Blue hadn’t given him the antidote when she did, his skull would have exploded. It felt much like that now. He wished Blue were here to give him the antidote again.

Then, quite suddenly, he started feeling better.

Pyrgus opened his eyes again. The little bald man was still there. ‘That should help,’ he said briskly. ‘Now let me have a look at that side.’

Although his mind was clearer and his stomach had stopped churning, Pyrgus found he was helpless to resist as the little man pulled back his jacket and prodded at the wound in his side. The pain flared briefly, then died back to a dull ache.

‘Looks worse than it is,’ the little man muttered, half to himself. ‘You’ve lost a bit of blood, but I expect you’ll live. The worst of it will be the bruising. That’s going to hurt like Hael for a while. What happened to you, anyway?’

It was a very good question and Pyrgus wasn’t sure he knew how to answer it. One minute he’d been sneaking through the bushes at Hairstreak’s mansion, the next he was here, feeling like a bear’s intestines and probably looking even worse. What bridged the gap, he had no idea.

Henry and Kitterick!

He pushed himself painfully into a sitting position. ‘My friends -?’ he gasped.

‘Your friends are in better shape than you are,’ the little man said. ‘The other boy has some bruising to his shoulder and a small cut on his head, but that’s about all. He even seems to have been quite resistant to the poison – first one of you to wake up. The Trinian has a broken arm, but that’s already started to knit – you know how it is with Trinians. You were the only one I was really worried about.’

Pyrgus looked around. ‘Where are they?’ He noticed his voice was getting stronger and his body felt a lot less weak. He thought he’d try standing up and, to his surprise, managed it without too much difficulty.

The little balding man – he had the insignia of the Physician’s Guild on his jacket – watched him with interest. When Pyrgus was on his feet (panting a little and leaning against one wall) he said, ‘They’re cleaning up in the washroom.’ He nodded towards a door. ‘You’d better do the same – you’re about to go visiting.’

They were in a smallish hallway furnished with barbarian antiques. ‘Visiting?’ Pyrgus echoed. ‘Where?’

‘Lord Hairstreak wants to see you,’ the doctor said.

In the washroom, Pyrgus found Kitterick cleaning the blood off Henry’s head with a towel. Neither of them looked too much the worse for wear.

‘We’re being taken to Hairstreak,’ Pyrgus said without preamble. ‘We’d better get our stories straight.’

Kitterick stepped back to admire his handiwork and threw the towel aside. He smiled briefly at Henry then said to Pyrgus, ‘I suggest, sir, we had an urgent personal message for Her Majesty.’

‘Nice one, Kitterick,’ Pyrgus said admiringly. ‘Why were we skulking in the bushes?’

‘Skulking, sir? Hardly. We were making our way along the driveway as legitimate representatives of Her Majesty and the Purple Palace when we were set upon by mechanical devices governed by a faulty security system.’

Pyrgus frowned. ‘Weren’t we found in the bushes?’

‘Indeed, sir, in all probability we were. At exactly the spot where we were driven by the mechanical devices.’

‘You think he’ll buy that?’ Henry asked. He had a strange expression on his face.

‘Of course not, sir, but he will be hard put to prove otherwise.’

‘And it throws the blame on his stupid security system,’ Pyrgus said, smiling suddenly.

Kitterick smiled back smugly. ‘An added bonus.’

‘Brilliant!’ Pyrgus exclaimed. ‘You happy with that, Henry?’

Henry shrugged and turned away as if their story was no concern of his.

‘OK,’ Pyrgus said briskly. ‘Let’s go see my dear uncle.’ He pushed through the washroom door and stopped. The little doctor had been joined by a man Pyrgus had never seen before. He was young and tall and thin and blond.

His skin was very pale.