You'd have thought he'd dropped a nuke. Everybody froze in place. Eyes widened. Jaws dropped. The character in the purple jerkin recovered first. 'I am Apatura Iris, the Purple Emperor,' he said. 'What do you know of my son?'
So they'd come for him. Pyrgus always said they would – or at least that they'd try. Not that it had stopped him sorting out his own problems: sort of son you wanted, that. Fogarty said, 'You're too late – he's gone back.'
The Purple Emperor exchanged glances with the thin man Fogarty had assaulted. 'Gone back?'
Fogarty nodded. 'Yes.' He looked from one to the other. There were five men in his kitchen and he was fairly sure there were more outside. 'What?' he asked the Purple Emperor. 'What's wrong?'
Apatura glanced at the disassembled shotgun on the table. 'Is that a weapon?' he asked.
Fogarty nodded. 'Yes.'
'Your weapon?'
'Yes.'
'Can you put it together again?'
Fogarty looked at him cautiously. 'I can.' He moved to the table and sat down without taking his eyes off the Purple Emperor. His hands reached out for the parts and began to reassemble them.
'This is Gatekeeper Tithonus,' the Emperor said, nodding towards the slim man.
'I'm sorry about that,' Fogarty muttered, glancing at the arm.
'It's just a fracture,' Tithonus told him drily.
Fogarty said, 'I'm Alan Fogarty.'
'I fear we have somewhat forced ourselves on your hospitality, Mr Fogarty,' Apatura said. His voice was polite, but his face was like a rock. 'However, I should be grateful if we could speak about my son. Please tell me how you know of him and what has happened.'
Fogarty had met the type once or twice before. You didn't mess with them unless you absolutely had to. Pyrgus would be the same in a year or two and you could see where he got it from – even now he was a tough kid. Fortunately Fogarty had no quarrel with the Emperor. Quite the reverse: he liked Pyrgus and it was clear from everything Pyrgus had said that Pyrgus liked his dad. There were problems between them, of course, but that was just the age thing. Wasn't a kid anywhere didn't have problems with his father at that age. Something wrong if he didn't.
Fogarty said, 'Not my business, but if I were you I'd tighten up my security. I think somebody tried to do your boy a mischief.'
Apatura looked at him impassively. 'I came to much the same conclusion, Mr Fogarty. From the beginning, please.'
Fogarty took a deep breath and told him everything.
They were all watching him intently when he came to the part about sending Pyrgus back.
'How did you propose to do so?' asked the Purple Emperor.
Fogarty, who disliked being interrupted, said, 'Portal.'
One of the Emperor's party, a man named Peacock with an ornate crown of the Purple Emperor embroidered on his jacket, said just as shortly, 'Portal was down.'
'Not your portal,' Fogarty said. 'Mine.'
He could sense the sudden excitement. The Purple Emperor leaned forward. 'You have a natural portal somewhere near here, Mr Fogarty?'
Fogarty shook his head. 'I made one.'
There was absolute, stunned silence. Fogarty looked from face to face. 'You got a problem with that?' he asked.
The one called Tithonus, who'd generally kept quiet, probably because his arm was hurting, said, 'Do I understand that you made a portal from scratch, rather than modifying an existing one?'
'Yes,' said Fogarty, irritated by something in his tone, 'that's what you understand.'
'How can – ' The Emperor intercepted a warning glance from Tithonus and changed tack. 'You must be a man of exceptional talents, Mr Fogarty.'
A little mollified, but only a little, Fogarty muttered, 'Used to make things in my job.' Detonators, lock picks, alarm system jammers, but they didn't need to know that.
'Even so,' Tithonus said smoothly, 'I was not aware this world was familiar with portal technology.'
'Pyrgus told me the basics.'
'So you worked it out from first principles?' asked Tithonus.
'No big deal,' Fogarty said. 'Half the battle's knowing it can be done – saves you looking in the wrong direction.'
Tm sure it does,' Tithonus said.
The man Peacock was leaning forward and, if Fogarty was reading him right, it was as much as he could do to stop himself shaking with excitement. 'Can I see it?' he asked.
'Mr Peacock is our Chief Portal Engineer,' Tithonus said. 'He is interested in the technical aspect.'
There was a directness about Peacock Fogarty liked. He opened the table drawer and took out a small brushed-aluminium cube.
'What's this?' Peacock asked when he handed it across.
'Portal,' Fogarty said.
Peacock stared at the cube, turning it over in his hand. Eventually he looked up at Fogarty. 'This isn't a portal.'
Fogarty grinned. 'Sure it is. Press the red button. Only take it outside – can break things if you use it inside.'
Peacock looked at his Emperor, who nodded briefly. In a moment they were all outside in the back garden. Fogarty noted he'd been right – there had to be maybe another dozen men lurking in the shadows, most of them with a military look about them. The Emperor was clearly prepared for trouble. Fogarty liked that in a man.
'Where…?' Peacock asked.
Fogarty shrugged. 'Anywhere here. Just so long as it's out of the house.'
Peacock pressed the red button. There was a ripping sound as reality tore apart. Through the gap they could see a carpeted corridor lit by crystal chandeliers. After a moment of stunned silence, Apatura whispered, That's the palace!'
'Thought it might be,' Fogarty remarked proudly. 'I was trying to home in on your own portal – that's in some sort of chapel, Pyrgus told me. Thought the palace might be close enough for jazz.'
'This isn't like our portals at all,' Peacock said, with something like awe in his voice.
Fogarty fought to keep his stern expression. 'Might have made a few improvements,' he said casually.
'What happens if I press the green button?' Peacock asked.
'Closes the thing down.'
Peacock pressed the green button. The portal disappeared without a sound. 'Where's the power source? You can't have packed it in this cube.'
Fogarty found himself grinning and didn't care. Peacock was a fellow engineer. 'Cube's just a control. Actual portal draws power from the planet.'
'Volcanic?' Peacock asked.
'Not round here.'
'Ours are volcanic.' Peacock ignored – or didn't even notice -warning glances from Tithonus and his Emperor. 'Ours are all volcanic.'
'Planetary resonance,' Fogarty told him. 'We had a man called Tesla worked it once. Dead now. Pumped electricity – Pyrgus says you call it trapped lightning. I used a psychotronic trigger.'
'Psychotronic trigger – wow!' Peacock exclaimed. 'We tinkered with the idea of planetary resonance, but I'd never have thought of using a psychotronic trigger.'
'Won't work without it, no matter how much electricity is pumped.'
'I know,' Peacock said. He looked delighted and amazed, both at the same time.
'Perhaps you could continue this conversation at another time,' Apatura suggested drily. He waved aside Peacock's hasty apologies and said to Fogarty, 'You tell me you used this portal to send Pyrgus home?'
'Ah,' said Fogarty uncomfortably. 'Not exactly…'
'Not… exactly'}' Tithonus asked.
'Impatient lad, your son,' Fogarty told the Purple Emperor, who nodded sourly. 'He used the portal himself the night I finished it. Took off while I was asleep the night before last. Left me a note. I was a bit worried when I found he'd gone. I hadn't made the final adjustments or tested it or anything. But when I tried the thing myself, it was working fine.'
'You tried it yourself?'
'Oh, yes. Wouldn't rest easy until I was sure Pyrgus was OK.'
'And what happened when you tried it yourself?' the Emperor asked cautiously.
&nbs
p; 'What you saw,' Fogarty said. 'I stepped through into your palace. I recognised it from what Pyrgus told me.'
'There were no reports of your visit,' Tithonus said.
'Wasn't exactly a visit. Stepped through, looked around, then stepped back again. Got things to do here. I was just glad your boy got home.'
'That's the problem, Mr Fogarty,' the Purple Emperor told him soberly. 'My boy didn't get home.'
Twenty
The mirror showed a slim boy with close-cropped hair and open features. His clothes were homespun and entirely drab: a muddy green jacket inexpertly repaired and itchy brown breeches tucked into cracking, down-at-heel, leather boots. He might have been a factory worker or a badly paid apprentice. Holly Blue examined her reflection with some satisfaction. Real disguise was always better than some erratic illusion spell that could be probed by counter-magic or fail completely when you least expected.
She was worried about her skin. Many boys her age were spotty, and apprentices spottier than most, but there wasn't a lot she could do about that. Besides, she'd used the disguise before and nobody seemed to notice. Although those missions hadn't been as dangerous as this one. She thought about it, then compromised by rubbing in a light stain to give a weather-beaten look. It helped a little.
Blue checked her armaments. They were pitifully scant. The trouble was everything had to be in character. No factory worker or apprentice could afford magical weapons, or even a simple sword. Most of them just carried a defensive cosh, if they carried anything at all. She settled for a small dagger and a screamer built into a copper coin. The dagger was just about acceptable – it looked a lot cheaper than it was – and if the screamer was discovered, she could always say she stole it. As an afterthought, she dropped a pickspell in her pocket. It looked much like a banana if you didn't examine it too closely.
She took a last glance in the mirror, then walked to her bookshelves and tapped a slim volume of Crudman's Essays. A section of the shelving slid back on silent runners. As Blue stepped into the hidden passageway beyond, glowglobes illuminated gently and the shelving slid back into place. In less than half an hour, she was mingling with the teeming crowds of Northgate.
The first playhouse had opened in Northgate five hundred years earlier and the district had been an entertainment centre ever since. Except now the entertainment offered was a bit more varied than theatre trips. Sparkle-spell signs advertised whirl booths, saturation dens, chaos-horn cafes, simbala music parlours, reality suites and -new to Blue – something called the Organic Fizz Experience. The pavements were crowded, as they always were at this time of night, and street entertainers worked hard to extract a few coins from the throng. Blue passed jugglers and acrobats, a tiny troupe of strolling players and an odd-looking individual who appeared to be eating his way through a live dragon. It was an illusion, of course, but a good one.
An elderly trull emerged from a doorway. 'Like to try a little chaos horn with me, young sir?'
Blue waved her away, grinning. At least her disguise was passing muster.
On a routine trip, she might have taken her time in the main thoroughfare, enjoying the excitement and the sights. But this was no routine trip. Her father might think he could find Pyrgus in the Analogue World, but she wasn't so sure. For days now, a snatch of conversation had been replaying in her mind:
'I thought that dreadful Hairstreak must have killed you! It was nearly three days before I could get any word of you at all!'.'
And Pyrgus said, 'Hairstreak never got near me. It was someone else who nearly killed me.'
They'd been in the chapel, just before Pyrgus stepped through the portal and disappeared. It was someone else who nearly killed me. He'd tried to pass it off as a joke, but she knew her brother very well. That wasn't a joke – it was a slip of the tongue. There was something Pyrgus didn't want her to know about… or anybody else for that matter. He always dreaded making a fuss. But there was somebody who'd nearly killed him. Not Hairstreak either, someone else. And minutes later someone tried to kill him again, someone injected poison into his veins and sabotaged the House Iris portal. Was that a coincidence? Holly Blue thought not.
She pushed past a chorus line of synchronised sword swallowers and entered Garrick Lane. This had been the site of the very first playhouse. The building was long gone now, but the lane itself was still the beating heart of Northgate's theatre district. She passed the garish facades of the Moon and the Globe and the Garrick itself before she reached the narrow, unassuming stairway next door to the old sorcery supply shop. A guardian illusion stopped her on the first landing.
'Who dares seek audience with the Painted Lady?' it asked portentously.
Blue smiled to herself. A typical guardian illusion was set to say something like Please state your name and business, but that would never do for Madame Cardui. She believed in creating an impression before you even met her. The illusion itself was custom made. Where most people were content to buy a standard doorman, this thing was an eight-foot-tall djinn complete with black beard, baggy pants and turban. Its eyes glowed like burning coals.
'Little Boy Blue,' said Blue quietly and the creature dissolved in a cloud of theatrical green smoke. She walked up another flight and knocked politely on a partly curtained door.
'Come in, my deeah, come in!' commanded a shrill voice.
Madame Cardui's salon was extraordinary by any standard. Lush, rich washes of colour writhed over every wall, occasionally dissolving into brief, mind-numbing vistas full of manticores and unicorns. The furnishings seemed to consist almost entirely of lavish silk and velvet cushions, interspersed with the occasional low table offering water-pipes of purple opium and shallow crystal bowls of Turkish delight. A heady smell of incense hung thickly in the air, its scent continually changing yet somehow retaining a constant undertone of jasmine. Sensual simbala music wailed and purred on the outer edge of audibility but managed, as simbala music always did, to insinuate itself inside your body and your brain.
But most extraordinary of all was Madame Cardui herself. The Painted Lady reclined in a black lace peignoir on a pile of cushions, attended by her orange dwarf and translucent Persian cat. Miniature mechanicals chattered busily on the table beside her, manufacturing exotic bonbons and sachets of strange powders. She was slim as a reed, except for her bust which retained the vast enhancements of her theatre days. The skin beneath the heavy make-up was veined and networked with fine wrinkles, but her eyes were dark and bright and liquid as they'd ever been.
She smiled to show her scarlet teeth. 'Boy Blue,' she greeted Blue warmly, 'what a delight to see you again so soon.' She patted a place beside her. 'Here. You must sit here, by me.' Her dwarf scuttled to arrange the cushions as Blue sat.
'Are we alone, madame?' asked Blue casually.
The Painted Lady drew a deep breath through her nose, as if sampling the heavy incense smell. 'Alone, but perhaps not yet entirely private,' she said grandly. She waved a languid hand. 'See to it, Kitterick.'
The orange dwarf grinned broadly as he hurried to a table near the door. He took a small brown cone from a cedar casket and held it to a nearby glowglobe until the tip began to smoulder, then set it down on a shallow metal incense dish. As he scurried back to his mistress, the cone erupted like a firework, scattering an ornate silence spell across the room.
'There!' the Painted Lady said, and sighed. She pushed herself into a sitting position and stretched. 'Well, Highness,' she said briskly, 'this will be about the Crown Prince, I suspect.'
Blue nodded. 'Yes, Madame Cynthia.'
T thought he was back safely.'
'He was,' Blue said. 'My father decided to translate him to the Analogue World.'
Madame Cardui pursed her lips. 'Probably the safest place until things settle.'
'Unfortunately,' said Blue, 'someone sabotaged the portal.'
'Ah,' said Madame Cardui. She looked at Blue thoughtfully. 'An attempt on his life, do we suspect, or simply someone making mischief?'
'We're not talking of Hairstreak?'
'No, someone else.'
'And you believe it may have been the same person who arranged to sabotage the portal?'
'I think it's possible,' Blue said.
'Do we know who it was tried to kill him while he was on his little adventure in the outside world?'
'I don't,' Blue said soberly. 'I was hoping you might.'
'I see,' said the Painted Lady.
The translucent cat climbed on to Blue's knee, curled up and went to sleep. She stroked it absently. Underneath the fur, she could just make out its swiftly beating heart, the shadow of its twined intestines and the outline of a half-digested mouse. 'You managed to track him down for me,' Blue said. 'At that time I wasn't interested in where he'd been. Now I am. Do you know?'
Madame Cardui pushed herself painfully to her feet.
'Have you realised even you must grow old one day?' Before Blue could reply, she waved a hand grandly and went on, 'No, of course not, my deeah. Why should you dwell on such things? You are scarcely a woman yet, for all your birthright and intelligence. Why think of winter when you have only just begun to enjoy the spring?' She sighed. 'Shall I tell you the worst thing about growing old – worse even than the pains and aches and loss of looks? Your memory wizens. Oh, the unimportant parts remain. You can still remember vividly some stupid boy you kissed when you were five. But you forget what you did last week. Such a bore. I believe I may be able to help you, but I shall have to check.'
The orange dwarf took her elbow solicitously as she walked to a section of the wall that transformed itself into a chaotic hypnopattern at her approach. 'Be still,' she murmured and the wall settled down at the sound of her voice. She placed the flat of one palm on the surface and a deep cavity appeared. From it she extracted a deck of playing cards. 'My marvellous deck,' she said. 'Did I ever tell you I was once a conjurer's assistant? The Great Mephisto. Such a handsome man and so skilled with his hands. But he never had a pack like this.' She riffled through it until she found the Jack of Hearts. 'Hold still, Kitterick,' she said and pushed the card into Kitterick's head.
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