'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.
'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.