Herbie Brennan - Ruler of the Realm

Still, no complaints. Kitterick was proving worth his weight in gold. The pass allowed Pyrgus to come and go as he pleased, which meant he could go outside and take a really close look at the glasshouse. He’d worry about getting into it when he reached it.

Pyrgus strode out the front door, waving his pass at the portraits of Ogyris ancestors on the hallway walls.

He found the glasshouse easily enough. It was now fully dark outside and the building was illuminated as it had been on his first visit. He remembered Gela’s comment that her father relied on magical protections rather than draw attention by posting guards, but even so he was cautious. He waited minutes, listening, before he approached too closely.

Nothing had changed. The crystal flowers were still inside, planted in neat rows. He peered through the glass (taking great care not to touch it), unable to believe they were living plants. But they still seemed beyond the skill of an artist. Every bloom was absolutely perfect, every crystal leaf and stem was a marvel in its own right. Each flower glowed softly underneath the growglobes. Starlight reflected in their depths.

He was wasting time. Poetic musings wouldn’t get Blue back. He needed to know more about these flowers, and Gela said they were spell-protected.

Pyrgus stood trying to remember exactly what she said, and at the same time trying to figure out what spells he would use to protect something really precious. Since money was no object with Merchant Ogyris, you could be sure they’d be heavy-duty magic. And since the flowers were very special the chances were the protections would involve lethal force.

It would have to start with the glass. He was fairly sure that’s what Gela had told him as well. Keep away from the glass, she’d said, or words to that effect. She thought the glass was dangerous. Pyrgus thought the glass was dangerous.

An idea struck him and he began to circle the glasshouse, carefully examining the ground. Sure enough, when you looked closely, the grass hid the remains of insects in huge numbers and he came across the bodies of several dead birds with burn marks on their feathers. That made a lot of sense if his theory was right. Anything that flew into the glass was incinerated.

Which meant it had some sort of high-energy coating.

Pyrgus felt a sudden chill. You could short-circuit a high-energy coating with a Halek knife.

It was hideously dangerous, of course. Halek knives sometimes shattered when you used them, sending their energies back up your arm to stop your heart. (The reason they were more often used to threaten than to kill.) But a soldier once told him that if you used a Halek on an object with a spell charge, the chances of its shattering rose as high as one in three. Only lunatics used Haleks on an object with a spell charge.

But that sort of thinking wouldn’t get Blue back and stop a civil war.

Pyrgus drew his Halek knife. The fine-wrought blue crystal blade reflected back the light from the glasshouse. Would it shatter, if he used it on the glass? One chance in three, the soldier said.

Pyrgus hesitated. What if he used it and it only broke through a single pane? That could easily happen if each one was coated individually. Some panes were large enough for him to squeeze through, but many of them weren’t. He’d have to pick his target carefully – he certainly wasn’t going to risk using his Halek blade more than once.

He circled the building again, paying close attention to its structure this time. Then he circled it again and stopped in front of the entrance door. It was constructed of one large pane and several smaller. He could squeeze through the large pane provided it shattered entirely. But the thing was, if only part of it broke he might still be able to reach through and open the door from the inside. It was very unlikely that Merchant Ogyris would have ordered interior coatings. The point was to keep people out, not threaten anybody who happened to be working inside.

Pyrgus licked his lips and tapped the blade absently against the palm of his left hand. Did he have the courage to do this? He could feel the tingle of the trapped forces as they writhed beneath the surface. One chance in three that he was seconds away from death.

He thought of Blue and stabbed the glass.

The result was astounding. Magical energies surged from the blade, but the blade itself did not break. (It didn’t break! Yes! Thank you, Powers of Light!) The pane cracked loudly, then fell in a tinkling heap at his feet. But before he could move, cracks were spidering across every surface of the building. Pane after pane shattered, sending shards tumbling. The snapping sounds grew louder. The cracks spread further and further. Huge plates of glass fell forward to smash into the growing heap of fragments on the ground. Whole panes fell out intact, then broke as they hit. In seconds, Pyrgus was surrounded by a tempest of broken glass. The noise was mind-numbing.

‘Whoops,’ Pyrgus murmured.

He was standing beside the naked skeleton of a glasshouse. Not one single pane survived intact. There was no way the noise could have gone unnoticed. He had minutes at best to do what was needed. After that, the guards were here for sure.

Pyrgus sheathed his blade and stepped through the empty doorway, his shoes crunching on the broken glass. The growglobes had survived, strung high above from the framework of the building. There was broken glass inside but the crystal flowers seemed miraculously intact.

He glanced around guiltily. It was a total mess. He was in so much trouble now. With Merchant Ogyris. With Gela. Probably with half the Realm. The destruction was unreal!

But no time to worry about that. Close up he could see Gela was right – the flowers were living things. Their stems were planted in rich earth with a new-fangled thread system providing nourishment and moisture. Some of them even had small shoots sprouting at the base.

He still had no idea what they were and precious little time to find out.

He’d already risked so much now that any other risk seemed small. He reached out, snapped the stem of the nearest flower and dropped it into his pocket. He’d never find the secret of the flowers here. His only hope was to carry some away and investigate them later, hopefully with some help from people who knew more about all this than he did.

He was reaching for another crystal bloom when the guards fell on him like a tree.

Pyrgus fought like a fury. But guards were racing in from all directions until he was surrounded by a milling mass of close on a hundred. Even if he’d used the Halek blade again he’d never have broken out. In moments he was on the ground, wrestled down by the weight of bodies.

‘Hold him, boys!’ a coarse voice ordered.

Two of the boys grabbed his arms. Two more helped to drag him to his feet. Pyrgus stopped struggling. He was ringed by men now, every one of them a lot more heavily armed than he was.

‘Shall I search him, sir?’ someone asked. ‘He may be carrying a weapon.’

‘I’m carrying a pass from Madame Ogyris,’ Pyrgus said.

‘Pass, is it?’ asked the officer. He looked pointedly at the massive wreckage of the glasshouse.

‘Let me show you,’ Pyrgus offered. There was no chance the pass would make a difference, but if he played for time he might think of something more sensible.

He felt one of the soldiers loosen the grip on his arm and jerked it free. The man didn’t bother to grab it back: Pyrgus wasn’t going anywhere.

‘I have it here,’ Pyrgus said. It occurred to him it might change things if he told them who he was. They could decide to kill him on the spot, of course, but he was still a Prince of the Realm, so they might think of handing him back to the palace authorities. Or they might decide to bounce on their noses all the way to Haleklind. But whatever. He had to do something.