Herbie Brennan - The Purple Emperor

There was no one in her bedroom except her cleaning maid. She turned to leave, swearing vengeance on Comma for wasting her time, when a tickling in her mind caused her to pause. Blue's eyes flickered round the room and a tingle of fear crawled down her spine. There was something wrong. For a moment she had no idea what, except it felt like something was out of place.

She mentally checked the furnishings. Nothing seemed to have been moved. She looked across at her dressing table. Everything was neatly in its place. Except for the jewel case that held her psychotronic spider which she'd slipped into a drawer, as she always did before the maid came in to clean – Princess Royal or not, psychotronic spiders were illegal, and fearfully dangerous. They could carry your mind so far from your body that you never got it back again.

So nothing different about the dressing table. Blue let her gaze travel around the walls, checking the pictures, lingering on the portrait of her father, feeling the well-spring of sorrow as she looked into the painted eyes. But nothing had been moved. Nothing had changed at all.

And yet something was out of place…

Suddenly she had it. The antique chair that sat beside her bed had disappeared. Blue stared for a moment, then said quietly to the maid, 'I'd like you to finish off some other time, Anna.'

'Yes, Your Royal Highness.' The girl dropped a curtsey and hurried out.

Blue moved cautiously towards her dressing table. There was a dagger in one of the drawers. Not that she was likely to need it. There were always guards close by in these troubled times. But close or not, they would take time to reach her and it was always as well to take responsibility for your own protection.

'You can show yourself now,' she said aloud.

There was a shimmering beyond the bed and Blue's chair reappeared. An extraordinary woman was sitting in it.

'Madame Cynthia!' Blue exclaimed.

'My deeah, you must forgive the invisibility – so ill-mannered of me. But I felt it best not to show myself while the servant remained.'

'Yes, of course,' Blue nodded. Cynthia Cardui, the Realm's famous Painted Lady, was a major contact in Blue's private espionage network, but it was astonishing to see her here in the palace. Madame Cynthia was elderly now, long retired from the stage, and seldom ventured far from her Cheapside apartments. 'Are you alone?'

'I fear so. Kitterick is visiting his relatives, otherwise I might have entrusted him with the mission. He's back tomorrow, but I decided I must undertake it myself. The matter is urgent.'

'Urgent?' Blue echoed. She felt an uncomfortable chill.

'My deeah,' said Madame Cardui, 'you must steel yourself. There is a plot afoot.'

Blue walked across and sat on the edge of the bed. She trusted Madame Cardui more than almost anyone else in the world. The old woman was snobbish and eccentric, but her contacts were legendary and her loyalty absolute. If she said something was going on, Blue was prepared to believe it.

'A brutal conspiracy, my deeah,' Madame Cardui went on. 'One would imagine with Lord Hairstreak routed, Brimstone in hiding and that dreadful creature Chalkhill behind bars, one would have nothing to worry about.' She sighed theatrically. 'Alas, no. I have received information of a plan to kill a member of the royal household.'

The unease Blue had felt since she saw Madame Cardui flowered into chill fear. But she held her voice steady. 'Which member?' she asked.

A look of distress crossed the Painted Lady's face. 'That's the problem, I'm afraid – we don't know.'

It was bone gruel again.

Brimstone stared into the cracked bowl and felt his lips dry out. The liquid had the consistency of dishwater, a thin, greyish fluid curdled with lumps of corpse-white gristle that smelled worse than the open sewer outside his window. He looked up at the toothless old crone and scowled.

'It's good for you,' Widow Mormo cackled. 'Keeps your strength up – my late husband swore by it.' She set a dirty spoon beside the bowl and a wedge of rough brown bread beside the spoon. A cockroach scuttled across the rickety table and Brimstone squashed it with his thumb.

'Your late husband probably died from it,' he muttered sourly.

'No need to be like that,' Widow Mormo said sharply. 'I'm a poor woman and I does the best I can on the pittance you pay me.'

Brimstone was paying her a groat a day, which was indeed a pittance, but meals were extra and bone gruel gave him diarrhoea. He'd planned to lay low in these miserable lodgings for at least six months, but now he was wondering if he could survive another six days. Even the threat of a demon prince paled beside Widow Mormo's bone gruel.

The old sow muttered something he didn't catch. 'What?' Brimstone demanded crossly. 'What?' Without a spell to reinforce it, his hearing was going. But the spell he needed was one of the ones he'd been forced to leave behind and he didn't dare go out and buy another. A magical supply shop was the first place Beleth would think of looking for him. Probably had every one in the city staked out by now. A demon prince had huge resources.

The trouble was, it wouldn't end with loss of hearing. Brimstone was ninety-eight years old. Without magical reinforcement, his body would soon start to fall apart. Even with it, he knew he looked his age.

'I said there might be a way to make things a bit more comfortable for you,' Widow Mormo repeated slyly. 'Better food as well.'

'I'm not paying any more,' Brimstone told her promptly. These might be cheap lodgings, but most of his cash fortune had been stolen and all of his assets were beyond his reach. He had a substantial amount of gold about his person, but he'd no idea how long it might have to last. Demons had long memories. He might have to stay in hiding for years.

To his intense discomfort, the old bag pulled up a chair and sat beside him. He wrinkled his nose. She seemed to be wearing some hideous perfume, but she still smelled mainly of pee.

Brimstone shifted his own chair backwards. 'Widow Mormo -' he began.

'Maura,' said the old bag. 'Call me Maura.' She lowered her eyes. 'And I shall call you Silas.'

'You'll call me nothing of the sort,' Brimstone snapped. Lower classes never knew their place when you were short of cash.

'What I was thinking of, Silas,' said Widow Mormo, not at all put out, 'was a little… arrangement.'

'What sort of arrangement?' he asked suspiciously. Anything that got him better food without paying more had to be worth listening to. But she'd want something in return, of course – people always did. Probably his help with an illegal spell. He'd told her nothing, but he knew he had the scent of sulphur about him and she was as shrewd as she was hideous. Chances were she'd put him down for a sorcerer the minute he'd walked through the door. It'd be an illegal spell all right. But how bad could that be? He'd dealt with demons all his life and his last contract with Beleth had called for human sacrifice. Nothing the crone came up with was likely to be in the same league.

'I'm a widow woman, Silas,' she said softly. 'Have been since my Stanley died.'

'What's that got to do with me?' Brimstone snapped.

'Thought we might get married,' Widow Mormo told him coyly.

Brimstone stared at the old bat in astonishment. Even in her younger days she must have been the ugliest woman in the country. Now, without teeth, warty, wrinkled, rheumy, balding, smelly, dirty, badly-dressed and flatulent, she'd have been more appealing as a corpse.

'You want me to marry you?' he said.

'Get you out of here,' Widow Mormo sniffed. 'I got a place of my own in the woods – log cabin with mod cons, a full cabinet of spells and a nice comfortable double bed. Keep my money underneath the mattress.