Herbie Brennan - The Purple Emperor

'No -' Pyrgus screamed. He moved to grab Gnoma's arm.

The anvil shattered into fragments under the impact of the blow. Gnoma tossed the hammer to one side and reached down casually into the debris. He held up the bone, still in one piece, unharmed. 'The luz is indestructible,' he said.

Pyrgus stepped forward to examine the bone. It was not so much as scratched.

'It is the bone used by God Himself to resurrect a man on Judgement Day,' Gnoma whispered.

Pyrgus closed his eyes.

'It is the bone I shall use,' Gnoma said, 'to resurrect your father.'

Pyrgus heard the distant footsteps and felt very much afraid.

For lack of a chair, he was perched on an old wicker trunk in a room jam-packed with dusty theatrical equipment. Life-sized puppets slumped from their strings like grinning corpses. There were several cabinets displaying crudely-painted flames. Decorative masks watched him blankly from the walls. The room was at street level. Gnoma said it was dangerous to meet the dead underground.

The footsteps reached the stairway and stopped briefly. For just the barest second he felt a flicker of relief, then there was the creak of wood as someone -something? – started to ascend.

What was approaching on the stair?

Gnoma's lodgings were deceptive. As well as the basement living room and the deeper subterranean laboratory, the ground floor of the house was a warren of corridors and chambers, most suspiciously locked. This theatrical storeroom smelt of grime and shimmered behind a watery curtain of tears that would not leave Pyrgus's eyes.

What had he done?

There was less than two weeks to go before the Coronation and after that there could be no going back. Nobody knew how that felt. Not Henry, not Mr Fogarty, not even Blue. Everyone expected him to do his duty. Everyone assumed he would want to be the Emperor. No one knew the fear.

Although that fear felt like nothing set against the terror he felt now.

What had he done?

He couldn't become Emperor. He had no talent for it, none at all. They all thought just because he was his father's son it meant he was equipped to follow in his father's footsteps. But Pyrgus and his father had fought about everything. Everything.

The trouble was he hated politics. He hated the lies and the deceit, the double-dealing and corruption. Yet he knew it was impossible to survive in high office without them. Even his father, an honourable man, had been forced into questionable acts from time to time.

But his father had at least been ruthless enough to undertake them. Pyrgus knew he never would. He would try to hold firm to his principles and ruin the Realm in the process. How could he follow in his father's footsteps?

His father's footsteps were coming closer.

It was peculiar. He believed Gnoma could raise the dead – that's why he was here, that's why he'd subjected his father's body to… to

… But at the same time he didn't believe, not really. Dead was dead. There was no turning back. Once the stasis spell was removed, his father's body would quickly turn to dust. There was no way to escape, no incantation that could…

Yet he believed in Gnoma. And something was approaching.

The footsteps had reached the top of the stairway and were now on the corridor outside. Perhaps it was Gnoma himself, come to admit failure. The man would be full of excuses, full of reasons why he should keep his fee.

Why was he moving so slowly? The tread was like a leaden procession. One step… one step… one step… Not halting or feeble or stumbling or ill, but miserably, terrifyingly slow.

Slow or not, the footsteps were close now. He could imagine the figure in the corridor and in his mind's eye he knew it was not Gnoma.

What had he done?

A dark shape loomed in the doorway. Apatura Iris stepped into the room.

Apatura, once Head of House Iris, former Purple Emperor of the Realm of Faerie and Lord Protector of the Church of Light, father of Pyrgus Malvae, had been a striking man, not handsome exactly – his features were too coarse for that – but with charisma and appeal. He had carried himself with nobility and grace.

Now he was a monster. His spine was twisted from the removal of the luz. No wonder he walked slowly -he could scarcely hold himself upright and his body seemed wracked by preternatural pain. But the real monstrosity was his face. The wax used by the morticians to reconstruct his features had fallen away once life returned, leaving almost all his head a raw and bloody open wound. One eye remained intact, glittering darkly from the mass of torn flesh. The regal nose was no longer there. The mouth was little more than a gash.

'Father,' Pyrgus whispered. But this creature was no longer his father. It was an animated shell, driven by dark powers.

It moved towards him and suddenly he imagined he could smell the stench of rotting flesh. It reached out a hand, the fingers curled like claws.

What had he done? What had he done?

'Kill me,' Apatura Iris said.

'Why didn't you?' Blue demanded. 'If Daddy was so awful, why didn't you kill him there and then?'

'I couldn't,' Pyrgus told her simply.

'But -'

Pyrgus seemed to gather strength from somewhere. 'Look, Blue, he may have been awful, but he was still Daddy. How could I kill him? I'd only just had him resurrected. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know Gnoma would go to Hairstreak or how bad things would get. I thought I could take him home and have him healed – you know, have his face healed and anything else that was wrong – and it would be like it was before. He could be Emperor and it would be like it was before.'

'But you didn't take him home.'

'Gnoma said the process wasn't complete – the resurrection process. He said it would be dangerous to release… ' Pyrgus took a long, shuddering breath, '… Daddy before everything stabilised. So I left him with Gnoma.'

'And Gnoma took him to Hairstreak.'

Pyrgus nodded miserably. 'Yes.'

After a while Blue said, 'I wonder how they made him look like his old self.'

Pyrgus shrugged. 'Illusion spells. I think there was some healing too. But it wasn't holding. That's why Hairstreak arranged the operation. They were going to transplant a wangaramas.'

Blue stared at him with dawning realisation. The wyrm would have allowed her father's body to function far more effectively, would have created the illusion of health and life, would have allowed Hairstreak to maintain the fiction that the Purple Emperor had never died. 'Chalkhill was carrying the wyrm?'

'Yes.'

'It was Chalkhill who told you what Lord Hairstreak planned to do?'

'Yes.'

'So you cut off Daddy's head.'

'Yes. Yes, yes, yes!'

'What are we going to do?' Blue asked.

Pyrgus looked at her. 'Nothing. It's done now. I should never have brought him back – I know that now. It was horrible for Daddy and a disaster for the Realm. But I've put it right now. Daddy's dead, properly dead. Hairstreak can't bring him back again. Nobody can.' He suddenly moved across to take her hands. 'Blue, I have it all worked out,' he said earnestly. 'We'll use Hairstreak's story against him. He's put it about that Daddy never died, just went into a coma then revived. We'll say Daddy never fully recovered, that he hung on for a little then died from his original injuries. Hairstreak won't dare to contradict us – he can't without admitting his involvement. I'll go ahead with the Coronation. When I'm Purple Emperor, I'll tear up the stupid pact Hairstreak made Daddy sign.'

Blue shook her head. 'You can't. The treaty is binding on Daddy's heir as well as himself. Hairstreak was taking no chances – you're mentioned in the wording by name.'

Pyrgus waved her objection aside. 'I'll think of something. I'll put things back the way they were. Outside of you and I, nobody need know anything illegal happened.'