The coach picked up speed as it drew away from the scene of destruction.
‘That went well,’ Brimstone remarked.
Chalkhill said nothing. All he could think of was that he hadn’t managed to stop payment on his bank draft.
Forty-Three
‘Where are we going?’ Blue asked as the flyer soared above the treetops.
‘I don’t know,’ Pyrgus said. He was seated at the controls, wrestling with the unfamiliar instrumentation rather than using spell-driven voice commands like any sensible pilot. She wondered why he always liked to do things the hard way.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ Blue demanded. ‘You’re supposed to be flying this thing.’
Pyrgus sighed, ‘I mean I don’t know where we’re going ultimately. I don’t know where we’re going to try to find Henry.’ He risked a glance away from the instrument panel so he could glare at her briefly, ‘I told you that.’
‘I know you told me that, but you’ve been telling lots of lies lately. How am I supposed to spot the rare occasion when you’re moved to tell the truth?’
The flyer started to lose height and Pyrgus returned hurriedly to his controls. ‘Well, I really don’t know where Henry is,’ he muttered sourly.
He wanted to be left alone because there was something he still wasn’t telling her – Blue recognised the signs from childhood. ‘If we’re not going to find Henry,’ she said firmly, ‘where are we going? Or did you just decide to take a little pleasure jaunt in the middle of the night?’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ Pyrgus told her firmly, it’s not ladylike and it’s not regal and it doesn’t suit you.’
‘Just answer the question, Pyrgus.’
Pyrgus lowered his head. ‘Going to mut mam dwee,’ he muttered.
‘What?’
Pyrgus punched a console button fiercely. ‘Going to meet Madame Cardui,’ he said. ‘She knows where Henry is.’
‘Madame Cardui’s in jail.’ Blue frowned. ‘At least she’s under house arrest in the Palace. By my orders.’
‘She’s escaped,’ Pyrgus said.
Blue stared at the back of his head. ‘How do you know?’
‘She told me that’s what she was going to do. I expect she’s done it by now.’
‘She told me she wasn’t!’ Blue exclaimed, openmouthed. ‘She promised me she wouldn’t even try to escape.’
‘She lied,’ said Pyrgus shortly. He threw a switch that put the flyer on autopilot and turned to look at her. ‘Blue, you mustn’t be cross. Not with her, not with me, not with any of us. We’re all trying to do the right thing, because if we get this wrong, the Realm’s at stake. And so are some of us personally, come to that. If we’re in the wrong future, Madame Cardui catches time fever and dies. So do Comma and Nymph. I’ve already got it and I don’t recover.’ His voiced dropped. ‘You get it too. Blue.’
‘Mr Fogarty saw all this?’
‘In bits and pieces, yes. But it all comes from us getting into the wrong future. All of it.’
‘I get the fever and die?’ Blue said.
Pyrgus shook his head. ‘Mr Fogarty didn’t see that. Didn’t see your actual death. But you turn into an old woman, all weak and feeble and crabby with arthritis and you’re trying to rule a Realm where everybody’s dying and it spreads to animals and it just gets worse and worse.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘Blue, we couldn’t let that happen – we just couldn’t. Maybe we were wrong not to tell you everything, but Mr Fogarty just didn’t see where you came in, so we thought it better not to take the risk.’
After a long moment, Blue said, ‘I understand.’ Her eyes flared briefly, ‘I think you were all wrong what you did, but I understand.’ She came across and put a hand on Pyrgus’s shoulder. ‘All right, now where are we meeting Madame Cardui?’
Pyrgus hesitated for just the barest second, then said, ‘Myphisto Manor.’
‘Oh dear,’ Blue said.
Forty-Four
At the height of his popularity, Madame Cardui’s late husband, the Great Myphisto, accumulated enough gold to build himself a country retreat in the most fashionable sector of Wild moor Broads, tantalisingly close to the Nikure Barrens. True to his nature, he used no spells in its construction, yet the place was not at all what it seemed.
On the face of things, it appeared to be a small, charming manor house set in wooded grounds beside a running stream. But the woods were a stage set, a combination of cunningly painted forest backdrop fronted by stands of artificial trees. The brook, for all its babble, contained not a single drop of wrater. It was a mechanical contrivance constructed from shreds of metallic paper.
Nor did the whimsy stop there. Myphisto’s visitors reported that the imposing entrance door was painted on a blank wall. Should you look through any of the picture windows, you would see rooms that did not, in fact, exist. The ghost that haunted the manor’s long gallery was created by a calculating placement of sheet glass and mirrors. Certain guest chairs in the banquet hall wailed horribly when sat upon. There was a revolving staircase that led the unwary to a different floor each time it was used. There was a great bird, a masterpiece of papier mache, that swooped down from the rafters on hidden wires. The music room had a clockwork orchestra. There was a booth in the hallway containing the top half of a turbaned automaton that played chess.
From the air, the gardens were cunningly laid out to represent the grinning face of a circus clown, with clumps of dahlias as its eyes. ‘Are you going to land in the grounds?’ Blue asked a little anxiously.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ asked Pyrgus. ‘We’re going to have a hard enough time just walking through them.’
He brought the flyer down (with surprising skill) to one side of a lane way flanking the estate. They followed the wall until they reached the entrance gates.
‘Careful,’ Blue warned.
‘I’ll have to try it,’ Pyrgus told her. ‘His tricks cycle through a random sequence. Sometimes what you see is what you get.’ He pushed the gates, which sprang open at once.
‘Well, go on,’ Blue urged.
Pyrgus stepped through the gates and vanished. The gates themselves slammed shut. Blue waited. After a while, Pyrgus approached on the laneway, looking perplexed. ‘What happened?’ Blue asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Pyrgus frowned, ‘I think I was grabbed by mechanical arms and there may have been a trapdoor of some sort. It all happened very fast. How did it look to you?’
‘Like an invisibility spell, but without the shimmer.’
‘Well,’ said Pyrgus with no great enthusiasm, ‘the good news is I came out through a door in the wall we can use to get back in. I examined it carefully and it doesn’t seem to be gimmicked.’
He was right about the door, but when they entered the grounds they couldn’t find the house. At first they wandered through an artificial forest with paths that changed and changed again each time they retraced their steps. Then, when they solved the maze eventually, they emerged into an open space where the perspectives were all wrong. They could see the house all right, but it kept receding as they walked towards it. It took them almost fifteen minutes to realise they were actually walking towards a series of reflections. Even then, they might have wandered confused for another hour had not a uniformed butler emerged from the undergrowth and offered to show them the way.
‘Do you think I should tip him?’ Pyrgus asked Blue quietly.
Blue gave him a withering look. ‘Don’t be silly – he’s a machine. The Great Myphisto had dozens of them made.’