Herbie Brennan - Ruler of the Realm

‘But if he’s caught, they’ll know the Imperial Espionage Service is interested,’ Pyrgus said quickly. ‘They’ll get it out of him. Remember my uncle is involved, even if we don’t know how. But if they catch me…’ He hesitated, but had to say it: ‘I can just pretend I’ve come to see Gela.’

‘Gela is the trollop of a daughter?’ Madame Cardui asked sweetly.

‘She’s not a -’ Pyrgus flared.

But Mr Fogarty cut across him again. ‘He’s got a point, Cynthia. It’s perfect cover. We can’t afford to make mistakes. Blue’s been kidnapped and we’re teetering on the brink of civil war. Volatile situation. The last thing we need is to make it any worse. Only bit that really worries me is time. We’re caught in a Countdown. Even as Acting Emperor I can’t order the Generals to stand down – only Blue can do that. So we need results fast.’

‘I could go straight away,’ Pyrgus said. ‘Now, if you like.’

‘Yes,’ Fogarty nodded, ‘it would have to be now.’

‘Take Kitterick,’ Madame Cardui said. ‘He’s an excellent bodyguard. Just in case…’

‘Yes,’ Fogarty said. ‘Take Kitterick. You can pass him off as your servant.’

‘Yes, OK,’ Pyrgus said. He headed for the door, then stopped. ‘Madame Cardui…’ He licked his lips. ‘The business about me seeing Gela…?’

Madame Cardui looked at him. ‘Yes?’

‘You won’t mention it to Nymph, will you?’ Pyrgus said.

As the door closed, Fogarty said, ‘Will you come to my room, Cynthia?’

‘Of course, darling,’ Madame Cardui said fondly. ‘Have you taken over the Imperial Suite?’

Fogarty smiled faintly. ‘No, the robes are as far as it goes. But I decided it was best for me to sleep in the palace until the emergency’s over.’

‘The robes suit you,’ Madame Cardui said. Her smile was wide and warm. ‘Emperor Alan has a nice ring to it.’

Fogarty sniffed. ‘The robes make me look like a prat. But they get people to do what they’re told.’

The room he’d commandeered was spartan, the sort of chamber usually reserved for unimportant visitors. But at least it was warm. Fogarty pulled the robes over his head and stretched out on the bed. He patted the counterpane beside him.

Madame Cardui crossed the room slowly and he watched her all the way. Weird where he’d ended up: actually living in another dimension of reality – the sort of thing they used to speculate about when he worked in quantum physics. But no more weird than meeting this marvellous woman. At his age.

She lay down beside him and reached across to take his hand. For once the gesture didn’t hurt. The rejuvenation treatments had cleared his arthritis completely from all five of the fingers and were already making inroads into the other hand. Some of his liver spots seemed to be fading as well and just that morning when he was combing his few remaining wisps of greying hair, he thought he noticed new growth. Give the wizards long enough and he’d end up looking like Robert Redford.

‘You seem pensive,’ Cynthia remarked.

‘I was thinking of war,’ Fogarty said.

‘What were you thinking of war?’

‘The way it seems inevitable,’ Fogarty said, gazing at the ceiling. ‘When I was at school, I had a teacher who told us we should never look on history as a period of peace peppered by outbreaks of war, but rather as a period of war peppered by outbreaks of peace. I think he had something there.’ He rolled on his side so he could look at her. ‘My father was in 14-18.’

‘What’s 14-18?’ she asked.

‘First World War,’ Fogarty said. ‘First war in my world that was fought by every country on the planet – at least every one that counted. We lost eight million soldiers in that one. Slaughtered as many more civilians. They called it the “War to End Wars”. It ended my father all right – he caught a bullet at the Somme. But it didn’t end war. We did it all over again twenty-one years later. I was in that one.’

‘You told me,’ Madame Cardui said, gently stroking his hand.

Fogarty said thoughtfully, ‘Maybe I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d known I was going to survive. I was afraid all of the time, and exhausted most of the time and in pain a lot of the time after I was wounded. Do you know, it still plays up in wet weather? We destroyed whole cities in that one, whole countries really.’

‘We have a spell like that,’ Madame Cardui said quietly. ‘Nobody’s ever dared use it.’

‘The thing is,’ Fogarty told her, ‘that wasn’t the war to end wars either. Five years after it finished, we had another war in Asia, a place called Korea. After Korea was finished, we started another close by in Vietnam. Lasted twenty years. After that we had the Afghan War, the Arab-Israeli War, the Iran-Iraq War, two Gulf Wars, the Falklands War, the Angola War and God knows how many other civil wars they hardly bothered telling us about. You can see what my old history teacher meant, can’t you?’

‘It hasn’t been quite that bad in the Realm,’ Madame Cardui said. ‘But close.’

‘What gets to me,’ Fogarty said, ‘is that when things start to move towards war, nobody seems to be able to stop it. Once you mobilise your soldiers, you always seem to send them to war no matter what.’

‘Is that what you think will happen here?’ Madame Cardui asked.

‘We’ve mobilised our soldiers,’ Fogarty said. ‘Blue pushed that button when she ordered a Countdown.’

‘The Faeries of the Night are mobilising too,’ Madame Cardui said.

‘You have intelligence? That’s definite?’

‘Yes.’

‘When were you going to tell me?’

‘Tonight, when we were alone. I didn’t want to mention it in front of Pyrgus.’

‘Too much pressure on him?’

‘Something like that.’

Fogarty rolled on to his back again. ‘I want you to do something for me, Cynthia…’

‘Anything, darling.’

‘I want you to contact Queen Cleopatra of the Forest Faerie and persuade her to fight on our side.’

‘You really think it will come to that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Fogarty, ‘it will come to that.’

‘Shall I order an ouklo to transport us, sir?’ asked Kitterick.

‘No way!’ Pyrgus said. ‘I want a personal flyer.’

Hairstreak opened the wine and sniffed the cork. ‘Nearly fifty years old. Now it’s the exact colour of blood.’ He looked across at his guest and raised an eyebrow.

‘Thank you, Blackie,’ Hamearis said. ‘I usually prefer ale, but I’ll make an exception.’

The man was an oaf in many ways, but useful. He commanded massive respect among the Faeries of the Night and it was time to get him back on board. Hairstreak poured a generous goblet and pushed it across the table. He was less generous with his own portion. All negotiations required a clear head if you were sensible, and this, whether Hamearis knew it or not, was a negotiation.

The wine was superb. Hairstreak savoured it a sip at a time. Hamearis drank his down and pushed the goblet back for more.

‘You and I have been through a lot together, Burgundy,’ Hairstreak said as he poured. ‘Enough to weather little disagreements, eh?’ He forced himself to make it bluff and hearty, old soldiers talking of old times.

‘No disagreements now, Blackie,’ Hamearis said. ‘Not since that little cow threw our offer back in our faces.’ He watched Hairstreak’s expression closely. ‘If she threw it back in our faces.’

Hairstreak elected to ignore the implication. ‘An historic opportunity for reconciliation,’ he said smoothly. ‘So tragic it has passed us by.’