‘I’d have done that,’ Mella said.
‘Yes, I know you would. You’re me. And I’m you. Sort of. That’s the other thing he never thought of. I was always nice to him and he always thought I was just a silly clone who’d do what she was told when he needed her to. He never thought I’d identify with you once I knew about you. He never thought I’d be horrified at what he planned to do to you. But I was, because it was like he was going to do it to me.’
Frowning, Mella asked, ‘What did he plan to do?’
Frowning, Mella II said, ‘This is all so complicated. Listen, I said you had to trust me. Do you trust me?’
Without the slightest hesitation, Mella nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I don’t know why, but I do.’
‘I know why. It’s because you’re sort of me and I’m sort of you. It’s almost like being the same person in two bodies. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?’
‘Yes, who?’ Mella agreed. She found herself agreeing with a lot of things Mella II said. If she only understood what was going on, she might enjoy being the same person in two bodies.
Mella II said, ‘I’ve always spent a lot of time wandering in Lord Hairstreak’s grounds and reading books in his library. There are berries that counteract the effect of lethe. More or less. I read about them in a book on herbs. There were some growing on a tree in his garden so I was curious.’
‘I don’t suppose you brought any with you?’
Mella II shook her head. ‘No, but I saw some growing in the forest. We could go back…’
There was something she wasn’t telling. Mella knew it at once. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
Mella II looked pained. ‘Actually, the book doesn’t recommend the berries as a lethe cure – the usual thing is to inject elementals into your bloodstream and let them dig the crystals out of your brain with little spades. People used to use these berries, but nobody does any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘The dosage is a bit tricky. If you take too few berries, it doesn’t work. But if you take too many, they poison you.’
‘You get sick?’
‘You get dead.’
After a moment, Mella said, ‘These berries – do you think you can find them again?’
They walked together back into the forest and it was really, really nice having a sister. Mella thought of Mella as her sister: clone seemed cold and impersonal, and twin, for all they were twins and absolutely identical, was somehow wrong as well. Having Mella beside her was like finding a long-lost sister, finding someone who would always be on your side. It was… comforting. Even the forest seemed less threatening.
‘There,’ said Mella II. She pointed.
They were growing on a bush rather than a tree, bright yellow, with a speckle of red. ‘Are those them?’ Mella asked.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a bush, not a tree.’
‘I know. I must have forgotten.’
‘But you remember the right dosage.’
‘I think so.’
‘What is it?’
‘Five berries,’ Mella II said. She hesitated. ‘Or was it four?’
‘I’m not taking them if you don’t remember.’
‘I do. Honestly, I remember. I think it was five. Unless that was the overdose that poisons you and you die in agony… No, it’s not the overdose. Five is definitely the right dose. For an average bodyweight.’
‘What’s an average bodyweight?’ Mella asked desperately.
‘I don’t know.’ Mella II plucked five berries off the bush. ‘I tell you what – I’ll take these to test them. If they work for me they’ll work for you.’
‘How can you test them?’ Mella asked. ‘You’ve still got your memory. Either they won’t work at all or they’ll kill you: that’s no test. Besides, there aren’t many more berries on the bush. We can’t afford to waste them.’
‘So you’re prepared to risk it?’
‘What risk?’ Mella demanded. ‘You said you remembered.’
‘Yes, I do. It’s five berries. I’m nearly sure.’ She handed five across and Mella swallowed them.
‘Nothing’s happening,’ Mella said after a moment.
‘It takes a bit,’ Mella II told her. ‘You have to digest the berries for the active ingredient to get into your bloodstream. That’s what makes them so dangerous. Once there’s an overdose in your bloodstream, there’s no way of stopping it. You can puke up the berries but they’ll still kill you.’
‘How long does it take?’
‘What, for you to digest them? Five minutes? Ten? I don’t know. It didn’t tell you in the book. Do you want to sit down? You look a bit… funny.’
After five minutes, Mella suddenly glanced at Mella II with an expression of trepidation. She licked dry lips, convulsed, then gasped. ‘Something’s happening,’ she said.
Forty-Two
‘I’m not sure I like this,’ Blue said.
‘We’ve run out of alternatives,’ Henry told her firmly. He was helping Pyrgus into his invisibility suit, an extraordinarily difficult business since neither of them could see where the arms were. In a moment, Pyrgus would be helping Henry into his, which would be even more difficult since both Pyrgus and Henry’s suits would be invisible.
They were standing, all three of them, in the Situation Room, a modified cavern deep in the bedrock beneath the Purple Palace. Banks of crystal spy globes surrounded the huge Operations Table where segments of the Realm landscape were available – in three dimensions – once someone voiced the proper sonic trigger. Just now, the visible segment was a stretch of the Haleklind border. Vast herds of manticores were massing on the Haleklind plains. A faerie army faced them on the other side. So far, no one had made a move to cross the vital boundary, but young women moved briskly between the globes and the table, constantly rearranging the display, so that the position might change at any moment.
Although the Situation Room was a bustle of activity, with uniformed operatives scurrying in all directions, there was a rectangle of empty space to the right of the table avoided even by the most hurried. This was, Henry knew, the space occupied by his SWAT team, hideously efficient, finely honed, muscular commandos who’d had no difficulty at all climbing into their suits and now stood (presumably to attention) waiting for their leaders to get a move on.
‘The manticores aren’t in any particular formation,’ Blue said, staring at the table.
‘No, but they’re there,’ Pyrgus said with much more obvious impatience than Henry would ever have dared. ‘They’re ready. And if we wait for the wizards to make a move, it will be too late.’
‘What worries me,’ Blue said, ‘is that this operation might spark off the very war we’re trying to avoid. We haven’t come anywhere near exhausting the diplomatic alternatives yet.’
What worried Henry was Blue’s guilt. She’d carried it since the Civil War, shortly after she became Queen, blamed herself for the deaths of thousands of brave soldiers. Because of the guilt, she had a horror of war that was almost pathological. It clouded her judgment in ways a Queen could not afford and sometimes made her swing to extremes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Pyrgus beat him to it. ‘If we wait, we may lose our best chance of rescuing Mella. Maybe our only chance.’
Henry weighed in on his side. ‘We know where she is and we know she’s still safe. We know we can reach her and we have the element of surprise. All of that could change.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Blue said. She didn’t sound convinced. She turned to General Vanelke, the only surviving member of the trio who had run the Empire’s military operations at the time of the Civil War. ‘What do we know about Kremlin Karcist?’
Vanelke tore his eyes away from the viewglobes. ‘Its defences, Ma’am?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s the former Tsarist palace, so it has all the securities you’d expect against direct attack. Old magic, not particularly sophisticated, but very reliable. They can be breached, of course, if we bring enough firepower to bear, but we’re not planning a frontal attack at this stage, so they’re not entirely relevant.’