Herbie Brennan - Ruler of the Realm

He doesn’t know Pyrgus, Blue thought. But she was too concerned to let herself be bullied. ‘Security system?’ she snapped. ‘Your security system may have killed them!’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ Hairstreak shook his head shortly. ‘They’re merely in a coma. The system uses a derivative of Trinian toxin.’ He looked down at Kitterick with distaste. ‘Ironically.’

‘Trinian toxin is lethal,’ Blue gasped, suddenly frightened again.

‘A derivative, I said,’ Hairstreak shouted, no longer even attempting politeness. ‘The worst it does is send them asleep for a while.’

‘He’s telling the truth,’ Flapwazzle murmured from the level of her belly.

Even after the endolg’s reassurance, Blue felt murderous. ‘They’re injured!’ she shouted at Hairstreak.

‘Pelidne, fetch the staff physician,’ Hairstreak ordered over his shoulder. To Blue he said hotly, ‘That damn dwarf broke four of my trackers, if we’re starting to apportion blame.’

Blue didn’t know what a tracker was, but assumed it must be a part of the security system. Hairstreak had a real cheek bringing that up. Like blaming somebody for making your sword bloody after you stuck it in him. All the same, now her initial panic was dying down, she could see he had a point. What was Pyrgus doing here? And where had Henry come from? Chances were they’d some romantic idea about rescuing her. Now, as usual, she was going to have to rescue them.

A fat, balding little man with a mandrake embroidered on his tunic came bustling from the bowels of the house. He looked like someone wakened from a nap.

‘Fix them,’ Hairstreak said shortly, nodding towards the bodies on the floor. ‘Report to me when you’ve finished.’ Without further preamble, he gripped Blue’s arm again. ‘Come with me, Niece – you have some explaining to – yipes!’ He jerked his hand away as Flapwazzle bit him.

‘Touching the royal person is forbidden,’ Flapwazzle said from his position wrapped around the royal stomach.

Pelidne moved towards them and the way he moved was frightening in its speed and grace. But Hairstreak waved him away.

‘The creature is quite right – I forgot myself.’ He glared soberly at Blue. ‘Nonetheless, Your Majesty, it is clear we need to talk, if Your Majesty will condescend to accompany me…?’

‘Of course, Uncle,’ Blue said lightly. Despite his new-found manners, she knew she had no option.

He led her back to the room they’d occupied before and closed the door carefully. Then he turned towards her. ‘Well?’

It was exactly the tone her father had used when she’d irritated him, usually accompanied by the words ‘young lady’. Now it was her uncle who was angry and, while she was furious herself, she knew very well her situation was delicate. Pyrgus, Henry and Kitterick had no right to trespass on the Hairstreak Estate, let alone go creeping around in the bushes, looking for God knew what. (She had no doubt that what Hairstreak had told her was true – it was exactly the sort of thing Pyrgus would do… and drag poor Henry along with him.)

Blue didn’t think for a moment they were up to anything sinister, and all three had paid heavily for their silliness – their wounds looked horrible – but none of that changed the fact they were basically in the wrong… or that Realm politics had hit a critical time. Would this stop the treaty? Probably not, but it would certainly give Hairstreak an advantage in the negotiations she’d much rather he didn’t have. What she needed now was damage limitation.

‘They were not here by my order, Uncle,’ she said bluntly.

‘Whose order were they here on?’ Hairstreak asked coldly.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘Queen’s telling the truth,’ said Flapwazzle, in the process of sliding back down to the floor.

‘Then you would have no objection to my questioning them?’

Blue took a deep breath. She had no intention of turning anybody over to Lord Hairstreak for questioning: his methods were notorious. But there was no doubt the three idiots needed to be questioned.

She said firmly, ‘Let them go. I’ll question them myself.’

Hairstreak shook his head. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is not acceptable.’

The argument began in earnest then. They’d resolved nothing when the door opened silently.

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?’