Instead of returning to her office and tackling more prime ministerial problems, Melissande decided she needed a moment's respite from care. She headed for Rupert's butterfly house. A few precious moments discussing nothing more important than insects was exactly what she needed right now.
The gods decide all outcomes? Well plwoey on the gods! If that was the case then it was about time the gods pulled out their collective finger and got this ridiculous tariff situation sorted immediately.
'Because I've had enough, all right?' she demanded as she trounced down the staircase leading to the palace's south saloon vestibule. 'Are you listening? Did you hear me? I-have-had-enoMg/z!'
A startled footman tripped over his mop and bucket. 'Your Highness?'
She helped him to his feet. 'Sorry, Norbert. I wasn't talking to you.'
Mystified, Norbert dabbed soap suds off his elbow.'Very well, Your Highness.'
'Carry on, then,' she said grandly, and pointed to a grimy patch beside the nearest wilting pot plant. 'You missed a bit.'
Rupert was in the meticulously tended garden attached to his butterfly house, snipping the heads off dead flowers. When he saw her his face lit up. 'Melly!'
She joined him, kissed his grubby cheek then surveyed the flowerbeds. 'Hey, Rupes. What are you doing?'
'Oh, you know, chores. A butterfly keepers work is never done,' he said, his smile fading a little. 'It's so sad. All the Floribunda Magnificos have died off, you see? So I have to prune them. My poor butterflies won't know what to do with themselves. The Magnificos are their favourite supper — almost thirty percent sugar in the nectar, with chambers nearly twice as big as any other flower.'
She considered the headless bushes. 'And that's good, is it?'
'Oh, Melly, that's marvellous', he said earnestly, waving his pruning shears for emphasis. She took a prudent step back. 'Bigger chambers mean their little proboscises don't have to work so hard!'
She had no idea what he was talking about. 'How wonderful. I'm so pleased for them.'
'Yes,' he sighed. 'They do love their Magnificos. Oh well. They'll just have to make do with the sweet sillies and cuttings from the honeypot tree.'
'You really love your butterflies, Rupert, don't you?' she said, and brushed her fingers over his arm.
He blushed. 'I know, I know. A grown man in transports over insects; it seems ridiculous. But they're as important to me as Boris is to you and Tavistock is to Lional.'
Tavistock. She had a blinding flash of memory: Lional's cat, changing. The look on her brother's face. The look on Gerald Dunwoody s face, too. Terrified and exhilarated and shocked beyond the telling. And what that might mean she was too afraid to wonder…
'What?' said Rupert, anxiously. 'Melly, what's happened? Tavistock's all right, isn't he? Don't tell me he's got himself run over by a carriage! Lional will skin the driver alive, he dotes on that cat!'
'No. No, Tavistock's not dead.' She pulled a face. 'But he's not a cat any more, either.'
'Not a cat?' said Rupert, bewildered. 'Melly, what are you talking about?'
There was a charmingly hand-carved wooden bench a few feet to the left. She sat on it and shoved the hairpins back in her bun. 'The new wizard's here.'
Rupert looked disappointed. 'Oh, no! And I'd promised myself I'd be there to meet him! What's he like? Is he nice? Nicer than Grumbaugh? Although that's not much of a challenge, eh?'
'He seems very nice,' she said, cautiously. 'Lional likes him, at any rate.'
'Yes, well, Lional's liked all of them to start with, hasn't he?' Rupert pointed out. 'And then he's either fired them or frightened them away. Why should this new one be any different?' 'Well, for a start, he turned Tavistock into a lion.' Rupert dropped his pruning shears. 'He did what?
She slumped against the back of the bench.'And far from being angry, Lional was pleased. I'll tell you, Rupert, it's making me very nervous.'
He sank onto the bench beside her. 'I'm not surprised! I mean, I am, but not about you feeling nervous. If I was standing that close to a lion I'd be terrified, even if it was only Tavistock in disguise. And Lional isn't angry?'
She shook her head. 'No. He's even meeting with the Kallarapi tomorrow'
'Well, that's good, isn't it?' Rupert said encouragingly. 'That's what you've been after him to do ever since they got here! Shouldn't you be happy?'
'You're right,' she said, and patted his knee. 'I should.' 'But you're not.'
'I'm not unhappy,' she said, frowning. 'I'm just… I don't know' She stood.'I've got a fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach, Rupes.'
'I know that feeling,' he said, and grinned. 'Butterflies!' 'Oh, you' she said, and mussed his hair.'Is that all you can think about?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Sorry'
'That's all right. To be honest, Rupes, I find it rather restful.'
'Oh, so do I,' he said cheerfully. 'Which is lucky, because we both know I'm not clever enough to be prime minister, or a king. Why, I shudder to think where we'd be if I'd been born first instead of Lional.'
He was right. It didn't bear thinking about. But it hurt her, sometimes, to know that Rupert knew exactly how short-changed he'd been when it came to intellect.
She turned back towards the palace. 'I'd better be off. I'm only out here to avoid the mountain of paperwork waiting for me in my office.' 'Ouch,' said Rupert, standing.
'Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that!' she said, and impulsively hugged him.'I just meant — '
'I know what you meant, Mel,' he said, hugging her back. 'Go on. You're keeping me from my very important chores. And don't worry about the new-wizard. If Lional stays true to form he'll have the poor man packing his bags within the month. And then perhaps he'll finally give up this nonsense of having a royal court wizard.'
'Perhaps,' she said. 'But I wouldn't bet on it if I were you!'
She left Rupert to his pruning and trudged back to her office, where Boris was draped helpfully across her desk. He yowled as she entered the room.
'I know,' she said, depositing him on the chair. 'I agree completely. Tavistock as a lion is taking one-upmanship far too far. But I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about it, at least for now. So just you go back to sleep and let me get on with my paperwork!' Gerald didn't really need a bath. It was just the only place he could think in peace. Think, and experiment.
He'd snuck his back-up staff into the bathroom with him, bundled into a change of clothes. Soaking in warm, bubble-frothed water, he began to explore the new limits of his power. Simple incants at first, that a good Third Grader could master if he were on top of his game, like turning the towels from white to green and back again; chequer-boarding the white wall tiles orange and puce, then a less eye-searing black and gold.
He rather liked the effect, so he left them that way.
After that he had another look at the advanced incants Reg had pummelled into him, that he'd never been able to perform. The incants he'd reached for back in Ottosland, holed up in his shoebox of a bedsit, and been unable to access.
/ must still have been recovering from what happened at Stuttley's. I needed more time jor my body to adjust. Or finish changing. Or whatever the hell it is that's going on with me… Even though the water was warm, he shivered.
Talk about butterflies… have I turned into a chrysallised grub? When this is over am I going to hatch into someone — something — completely different?
He didn't want to think about that. The idea was far too disconcerting. Perhaps being a genius is over-rated.
Heart banging hard he put aside the spare cherrywood staff and reached for his newmade power. Incanting without a staff was supposed to make the etheretic energies ten times harder to control but he barely noticed the difference. Holding his breath, he constructed bogwights out of thin, steamy air. Unravelled his dull and serviceable brown suit into the shorn marsh fleece it was made from, then reconstituted it into finest grade superior mountain fleece and redyed it, creating for himself a rich purple suit his father would be proud to own. For good measure he changed his plain white cotton shirt to pearlescent silk. Finally he coalesced all the random etheretic energies in the atmosphere into a single glowing ball of raw thaumic energy and let it hover like a burning blue sun beneath the bathroom's high ceiling.