The Purple Emperor

'At once, Mr Brimstone.'

'And a place to carry out the working. Say tomorrow, or the day after.'

'An abandoned church, Mr Brimstone, with its graveyard intact? I noticed one for sale in the property section. A short taxi ride from the city.'

'Admirable,' said Brimstone.

Ho waved the card and smiled. 'All on American Express, Mr Brimstone?'

It never ceased to astonish him how people in the Analogue World imagined a ridiculous little bit of plastic had the same value as gold. Brimstone smiled. 'All on American Express, Mr Ho,' he confirmed.

CHAPTER SEVENTY FIVE

'I want to show you something, Jasper,' Hairstreak said. He was beaming smugly – one of his least pleasant expressions.

'Yes, of course, Your Lordship,' Chalkhill said, trying desperately to look interested.

Hairstreak stood. 'Come with us, Cossus,' he invited.

The Gatekeeper bowed his head slightly and the three of them left the chamber. Chalkhill's nerves were getting to him badly, but at least they were leaving that ghastly golem behind.

Hairstreak took them down several winding sets of stairs and Chalkhill's nervousness increased as he realised where they were going. This was clearly the dungeon area of the mansion – cells surrounding a central torture chamber in the classical great-house design. You could never tell with Hairstreak. He could be all smiles one minute and the next you were on the rack with a red-hot poker cooling in your -

Hairstreak took a key from a hook on the wall, opened a cell door, then stood back. Chalkhill approached more nervously still. The cell was small, dark and windowless and there was a smell coming out of it as if something had died in there. Was this how it would end? It was his own fault, of course. He never should have listened to that stupid worm.

Chalkhill swallowed. 'Your Lordship -' he began. Then stopped. There was already somebody in the cell, a crumpled figure squatting by one wall. It was, Chalkhill realised, the source of the smell.

'Recognise anyone?' asked Hairstreak cheerfully.

Chalkhill had no idea what he meant, then realised he was talking about the figure in the cell. Chalkhill risked peering a little more closely. It was obviously some elderly derelict, a criminal perhaps, or more likely somebody who had crossed Hairstreak at some point and now faced a daily routine of torture, starvation and sleep deprivation. But who it was Chalkhill could not say. He suspected that didn't matter: Hairstreak was probably just showing what happened to anyone who irritated him – a little psychological pressure before the accusation of treachery. Why, oh why, had he listened to the worm?

'No?' asked Hairstreak. 'Hold your head up!'

For a moment Chalkhill thought Hairstreak was talking to him, then the wretched creature in the cell straightened slowly. Chalkhill caught his breath with an audible gasp. He was looking into the pain-soaked eyes of Apatura Iris, the late lamented Purple Emperor.

'Recognise him now?' Hairstreak asked.

Chalkhill nodded wordlessly.

'That's the reason you're here, Jasper. Strange are the ways of fate.'

Chalkhill glanced at Cossus, who stared back at him expressionlessly. He looked down at the floor. He didn't want to look at the Purple Emperor again, who was a truly horrific sight, and he was afraid to look at Hairstreak.

'You understand what's happened here?' Hairstreak said.

Chalkhill shook his head without looking up.

'This is a resurrection!' Hairstreak snapped. 'Any fool can see the signs of a resurrection.'

'Well, yes,' Chalkhill mumbled. Imean, I assumed it was a resurrection…' The trouble with Hairstreak was you never knew what he was talking about until it was too late. By that stage you were either in deep trouble or dead. Chalkhill just managed to suppress a desperate little whine.

'That's the problem, isn't it?' Hairstreak said. 'One look and you know.' He pulled a short wand from the inside pocket of his jacket and used it to poke the figure in the cell. The Purple Emperor cringed away from him. 'You see? We're claiming Apatura never died at all. We're saying he went into a coma, but that he's woken up now and he's fit to make decisions on the future of the Realm. We've got away with it so far because we've kept him hidden most of the time, only gave a few people a glimpse of him, but do you think our story will stand up when he has to make a public appearance?'

What did Hairstreak want him to say? The wrong word here could mean jail or death or torture or… Chalkhill looked desperately at Cossus again, who was still no help. His gaze was drawn to Hairstreak like a songbird fascinated by a snake.

'Yes,' he said. 'And… no.' He waited, stomach tight and bowels loose.

'No, of course not,' Hairstreak said impatiently.

'He'd be spotted as a resurrection in a trice. And since resurrection is illegal, any proclamation he might make would be illegal too. Let me tell you, Jasper, we of the Night may have made some gains in the last few days, but we shall not hold them unless we do something about this problem.'

'What problem?' Chalkhill asked.

'It would be in your interests to listen more carefully,' Hairstreak said sourly. He stared gloomily at the huddled shape of the Emperor. 'You know there's only one thing that will fix this, of course.'

'I do?'

'A wyrm, you idiot! Specifically a mature wyrm transfer!'

Chalkhill wondered what a mature wyrm transfer was, but thought it safer not to ask. Instead he gave a vacant smile of encouragement to Hairstreak and nodded vigorously.

'Of course,' he said. 'Of course.'

Hairstreak sighed. 'Really, Jasper, if you didn't occasionally prove of some minuscule value, I'd have fed you to the sliths by now.'

'It's just -' Chalkhill hesitated. 'It's just… well, I don't quite see how I… ah… actually might, well, fit in, Your Lordship.'

To his astonishment, Hairstreak smiled. 'It's not so much you fitting in, Jasper, it's more your wyrm fitting in. Fitting into the Emperor, that is. I've brought you here so we can transplant Cyril, your experienced wan-garamas.'\

CHAPTER SEVENTY SIX

'We can't go north,' Nymph said. 'Don't you remember Ziczac said there was a forcefield?'

'North's blocked, Blue,' Comma said helpfully. If he was worried about their situation, it didn't show.

'Humour me,' Blue grunted shortly. She led them back along the corridor and they passed without difficulty beyond the point where Ziczac was stopped. Blue turned to face the others. 'The forcefield was just a device to send us south, so someone would trigger the spiked pit. Once the trap was triggered, the forcefield switched off automatically. It's standard game protocol. If you don't know about it, you assume you can't get north, jump the open trap and head south – where there are even more dangerous traps waiting.'

'So north will be easier?'

'Not much,' Blue admitted, 'but according to the rules of the game we're supposed to have some chance of surviving this way. South we'd have had no chance at all.'

'How do we know your Lord Hairstreak kept to the rules when he designed the maze?' Nymph asked.

Blue glared. 'We don't. But do you have a better way to play it?'

If this kept going they'd come to blows soon, Pyrgus thought. He moved to defuse the tension by stepping forward with a smile he didn't feel. 'Look,' he said, 'we're all in this together. We've lost a good man because we didn't know right away what was happening. But we know we're in an obsidian maze now and that gives us a chance. The other thing is that we're a team. These mazes are designed for just one victim. If we pull together and stick together, we can beat this thing.' He looked directly at the two forest soldiers with Nymph and realised he didn't even know their names. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I don't know what to call you.'