Jasper Fforde - The Eye of Zoltar

‘Now then,’ said the King, eager to get down to business as he had, apparently, an execution to witness at midday, and didn’t want them to start without him, ‘since you and the rest of those irritatingly disobedient enchanters have the odd notion that magic should be for the good of many, I am having to come to terms with the fact that my relationship with sorcerers cannot be as one-sided as I might wish. Wife? Translate.’

‘He means,’ said Queen Mimosa, ‘that he knows he can’t boss you around.’

‘Exactly,’ said the King, ‘but there is a matter of extreme delicacy that we need to speak about.’

He turned to where his daughter the Princess was waiting for her homework to be done for her.

‘Peaches, would you come over here, please?’

‘What, now?’ she asked, rolling her eyes.

‘If it’s not too much trouble, sweetness.’

The Princess walked over in a sultry manner. I was the same age as her, but we could not have had more different upbringings. While I spent my first twelve years eating gruel and sharing a dormitory with sixty other girls, Princess Shazine had been indulged in every possible way. She wore clothes cut from the very finest cloth, bathed in rainwater imported at huge expense from Bali, and had her food prepared by Michelin-starred chefs. In short, her every whim satisfied in the most expensive way possible. But while extremely obnoxious she was undeniably very pretty with glossy raven-black hair, fine features and large, inquisitive eyes. Although I’d never met her, she was very familiar. She could barely catch a cold or be seen with an inappropriate prince without it becoming front-page news.

‘Yes?’ said the Princess in a pouty kind of voice, arms folded.

‘This is Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Shazine Blossom Hadridd Snodd,’ announced the King, ‘heiress to the Kingdom of Snodd.’

The Princess looked me up and down as though I were something considerably less important than garbage, but made quite certain she did not make eye contact.

‘I hope this interruption to my valuable time has a purpose.’

‘Pay attention, Princess,’ said the Queen in the sort of voice that makes you take notice, ‘This young lady is Jennifer Strange. The Last Dragonslayer.’

‘Like totally big yawn,’ replied the Princess, looking around her in a bored fashion. ‘Magic is so last week.’

‘She is also manager of Kazam Mystical Arts Management and a young lady of considerable daring, moral worth and resourcefulness. Everything, in fact, you are not.’

The Princess looked shocked, not believing what she had heard.

‘ What? ’

‘You heard me,’ replied the Queen. ‘Soft living has rendered you spoilt and obnoxious beyond measure – a state of affairs for which I admit I am partly responsible.’

‘Nonsense, Mother!’ said the Princess haughtily, ‘everyone loves me because I am so beautiful and charming and witty. You there.’

She pointed to one of the King’s servants whose job it was to clean up after the royal poodles, who were numerous, unruly and not at all house-trained.

‘Yes, My Lady?’ said the servant, who was a young girl no older than myself. She was pale, had plain mousy hair and was dressed in the neat, starched dress of the lowest-ranked house servant. She also looked tired, worn and old before her time. But she somehow held herself upright, with the last vestiges of human dignity.

‘Do you love your Princess, girl?’

‘Begging your pardon yes I do, My Lady,’ she said with a small curtsy, ‘and am surely grateful for the career opportunities your family’s benevolence has brung to me.’

‘Well said,’ said the Princess happily. ‘There will be an extra shiny penny in your retirement fund; it will await you on your seventy-fifth birthday.’

‘Her Ladyship is most generous,’ replied the girl and, knowing when an audience has ended, went back to cleaning up after the royal poodles.

‘You see?’ said the Princess.

‘A character reference from a Royal Dog Mess Removal Operative Third Class is hardly compelling, Princess. Our minds are made up. If Miss Strange agrees, you shall take counsel from her, and try to improve yourself.’

The Princess’s mouth dropped open and she gaped inelegantly like a fish for some moments.

‘Take counsel from an orphan ?’ said the Princess in an incredulous tone.

I could have taken offence, I suppose, but I didn’t. You kind of get used to it. In fact, truth to tell I was getting a bit bored, and was instead wondering whether Once Magnificent Boo was safe in the Cambrian Empire, and if my Volkswagen had ended up in a tree or something.

‘You may shake hands with Miss Strange,’ continued the Queen, ‘and then we will discuss your education. Is this acceptable with you, Miss Strange?’

‘Only too happy to help,’ I said, not believing for one second that the Princess would agree to such a thing.

‘Good,’ said Queen Mimosa. ‘Shake her hand and say “good afternoon”, Princess.’

‘I’d rather not,’ retorted the Princess, looking me in the eye for the first time. ‘I might catch something.’

‘It won’t be humility,’ I replied, staring at her evenly, and figuring that this was probably what they thought the Princess needed. If my head was off my shoulders in under ten minutes, I was wrong. The Princess went almost purple with rage.

‘I have been impertinenced ,’ she said finally. ‘I insist that this orphan be executed!’

‘I’m not sure “impertinenced” is a word,’ I said.

‘It is if I say it is,’ said the Princess, ‘and Daddy, you did say for my sixteenth birthday I could order someone executed. Well, I choose her.’

She pointed a finger at me. The King looked at Queen Mimosa.

‘I did sort of promise her she could do that, my dear. What sort of lesson is it if I don’t keep my word?’

‘What sort of lesson is it to a child that she can have someone executed?’ retorted the Queen, and glared at him. Not an ordinary glare, but one of those fiery, hard stares that leave your neck hot, cause you to fluff your words and make you prickly inside your clothes.

‘You’re right, my dear,’ replied the King in a small voice.

Updating his style of medieval violent monarchy to Queen Mimosa’s benevolent dictatorship was a bitter pill to swallow, but the King, to his credit, was at least trying.

‘I will not be talked to like this—’ began the Princess, but the Queen cut her short.

‘—You will shake Miss Strange’s hand, my daughter,’ she said, ‘or you will regret it.’

‘Come, come, my dear,’ said the King, attempting to defuse the situation, ‘she is only a child.’

‘A child who is vain, spoilt and unworthy to rule,’ said the Queen. ‘We will not leave this kingdom in safe hands if the Princess is allowed to continue her ways. So,’ concluded the Queen, ‘are you prepared to greet Miss Strange, Princess?’

The Princess looked at her parents in turn.

‘I would sooner eat dog’s vomit than—’

‘ENOUGH!’ yelled the Queen in a voice so loud that everyone jumped.

‘Leave us,’ she said to the people in the room, and the royal retinue, well used to being able to make themselves scarce at a moment’s notice, all made for the door.

‘Not you,’ she said to the royal poodle cleaner-upper who had been quizzed earlier.

‘My dear …’ began the King when the servants had left, but his entreaties fell upon deaf ears. The Queen’s fury was up, and instead of holding his ground he cowered in front of her.

And that was when I felt a buzzing in the air. It was subtle, like a bee in fog at forty paces, but it meant only one thing – a spell was cooking. And if that was so, it could only be from the ex-sorcerer, Queen Mimosa.