Jasper Fforde - The Song of the Quarkbeast

As soon as they had descended from the carriage, a deafening alarum sounded from thirty buglers all dressed traditionally as badgers, and the royal family walked slowly up to where we stood, waving at the citizenry while one of their footmen tossed coin vouchers into the crowd. They used to throw coins until the King discovered that his ungrateful subjects were spending the cash in non-Snodd-owned shops. The ‘Alms Vouchers’ are redeemable only in Snoddco’s, the well-known and wholly substandard superstore.

‘Ah!’ said the King. ‘Lord Tenbury and our Court Mystician. Good to see you both. I trust we are to see some sport this morning, hmm? Brave of you to turn up, Miss Strange.’

Since we had been spoken to, protocol dictated we could now stand. I couldn’t help noticing that Queen Mimosa was looking around for something. I took a deep breath.

‘I would be failing in my duty,’ I said nervously, ‘if I did not lodge a formal complaint over the fairness of this contest.’

‘Your displeasure is noted, Miss Strange,’ said the King. ‘We will glance at your complaint some time next year. Shall we proceed?’

‘Not yet,’ said the Queen, staring at me. ‘Are you Jennifer Strange?’

‘A foundling , my dear,’ said the King in an unsubtle aside, ‘unsuitable for a queen’s conversation.’

‘Shut up, Frank. Miss Strange, where is the Kazam team?’

There was a deathly hush.

‘Let us take our seats, my dear,’ said the King, ‘I feel the—’

‘Your team, Miss Strange?’

‘In prison, Your Majesty,’ I said, curtsying, ‘awaiting a hearing on Monday.’

‘I see.’

Queen Mimosa glared at the King, who seemed to shrink under her withering look.

‘Are you meaning to tell me that you have imprisoned the entire Kazam team in order to guarantee a victory?’

‘Not at all,’ said the King, ‘it was entirely coincidental. They were all brigands and villains and scallywags and lawbreakers. Is that not so, Court Mystician?’

‘Up to a point, Majesty, yes, I think we are agreed on that.’

‘One of their number attacked the castle last night,’ added Lord Tenbury, ‘and caused considerable damage to the palace.’

‘Poppycock,’ said Queen Mimosa. ‘I saw the whole thing. A single unarmed carpet rescued someone from the High North Tower. Any damage was done by your own gunners.’

‘And they will be roundly punished, along with the sorcerers we have in custody. I think I have shown considerable restraint – I could have put them all to death, but instead I showed mercy – like you tell me to, pumpkin.’

‘The charges are quite serious, my Queen,’ said Tenbury, but Queen Mimosa raised a finger and he stopped. I noticed, too, that all the courtiers and hangers-on had taken a pace backwards and were finding something else to do. Queen Mimosa moved closer to her husband and lowered her voice.

‘Listen here, you inbred, pompous little twit,’ she said. ‘I didn’t arrange with Mother Zenobia to have the bridge rebuilt in aid of the Troll War Widows’ Fund to have you hijack it for your own money-grabbing agenda. Release the Kazam sorcerers immediately, or I will make life so unpleasant that you will wish to have been born a foundling.’

‘We will discuss this later, my dear.’

‘We are discussing it now,’ she said with a look of thunder that would have impressed Lady Mawgon, ‘and do you doubt for even one second that I would not do as I say?’

The King took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks. He looked around at the ten thousand or so subjects who were eagerly awaiting the start of the contest. It looked to me as though the King knew only too well that Queen Mimosa could make his life very unpleasant indeed.

‘Lord Tenbury,’ said the King, ‘I think we owe it to the citizenry of Snodd to put on a good show. They have come to see a magical contest, and they shall. Release the wizards. I command it.’

Blix and Tenbury looked shocked at the turn of events, and exchanged desperate glances. There was a very good reason why they had nobbled Kazam. iMagic were rubbish and did not have a hope of winning. In a panic, Lord Tenbury did the first thing he could think of – he started patting his pockets in an absent-minded way.

‘If you are going to claim you’ve lost the keys to the city jail, Lord Chief Adviser,’ snarled the King in a low voice while smiling and waving to the crowd, ‘I will put your head on a spike and have dogs gnaw at your corpse.’

‘Here they are,’ said Lord Tenbury, suddenly finding the keys. ‘I will see to your instructions this moment.’

‘Happy now, pumpkin?’ said the King to Queen Mimosa.

‘I love it when you do the right thing, bunny-wunny,’ she said, tweaking his royal ear affectionately.

Queen Mimosa took her leave with the bickering Spoilt Royal Children while the King hung back for a moment.

‘If Kazam win,’ he said to both Blix and Tenbury, ‘I will have you both stuffed with sawdust while still alive and then use you for bayonet practice. Do you understand?’

He didn’t wait for a reply, and turned to me with such a hateful glare that I took an involuntary step backwards. But he made no comment, and turned to join his family, who were all present to view the contest – even his Useless Brother, the royal hanger-on cousins and his odd-looking mother, the Duck-faced Dowager Duchess of Dinmore.

The King stepped up to the royal microphone and gave a long rambling speech that made reference to how proud he was that the hard toil of a blindly trustful citizenry kept him and his family in the lap of luxury while war widows begged on the street, and how he thanked providence that he had been blessed to rule over a nation whose inexplicable tolerance towards corrupt despots was second to none.

The speech was well received and some citizens were even moved to tears. Once done, he ordered that the contest begin.

‘We’ll still thrash you,’ said Blix to me, ‘and if you’re worried about your darling boyfriend, he’s quite safe for the moment.’

My heart suddenly fell. Perkins had been rumbled.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘No? Here.’

And he passed me the left-handed conch that we’d given Perkins.

‘If any harm comes to him,’ I said between gritted teeth, ‘I will hold you personally responsible.’

‘Oh, oh, I’m so frightened,’ replied Blix sarcastically. ‘Now piss off. Haven’t you got some wizards to spring from jail?’

‘I’ll be back with help,’ I said. ‘You’ll be thrashed. And just for the record, he’s not my boyfriend.’

Blix laughed and had his first two stones fitted even before Lord Tenbury’s car arrived to take us to fetch Moobin and the others.

‘So which two do you want released?’ asked Lord Tenbury as soon as we had arrived outside the city jail, a large stone building to the north of the city which was known ironically as the ‘Hereford Hilton’, much to the annoyance of the real Hereford Hilton, which coincidentally was only two doors down, something that worked to the advantage of the prisoners when pizza deliveries were misdirected.

‘I was under the impression His Majesty specifically requested all were to be released,’ I pointed out.

‘Then you understand little of the role of Lord Chief Adviser. My duty is to serve my King the best way I can and interpret his orders as I see fit. Two sorcerers. Choose now.’

I could see it was the best deal I was going to get, and every second spent arguing was a second wasted.

‘The Wizard Moobin,’ I said without hesitation, ‘and . . . Patrick of Ludlow.’

Lord Tenbury relayed the orders to the jailer, told us we could make our way back to the bridge and was gone. After waiting half an hour, in which I had serious doubts that Tenbury would keep his word, the pair of them emerged blinking into the daylight. They had their lead finger-cuffs removed and within a few seconds we were in a taxi heading back towards the bridge.