‘Quite right,’ said Mella II. ‘But Lord Hairstreak’s idea was for them to develop a magical army. He wanted them to breed manticores.’
‘Manticores?’
‘They’re great mythic beasts, half lion, half scorpion, half -’
‘Yes, I know what manticores are. But you can’t breed magical beasts. You have to make them one at a time. Everybody knows that.’
‘And apparently everybody is wrong,’ Mella II told her emphatically. ‘The plains of Haleklind are swarming with manticores now and that’s Lord Hairstreak’s secret army.’
After a long moment Mella said, ‘So the Haleklinders attack the Realm with manticores and kill Mummy and Daddy…’
‘… then Lord Hairstreak steps in and negotiates a truce, hero of the hour, applause, applause, and you become Queen, only you’re dead so it’s really me, and Lord Hairstreak runs the Realm through me because, of course, I’m his sweet little creation so I’ll do what I’m told and then, when I’m old enough, he marries me and -’
Mella almost choked. ‘He does what? ’
‘Marries me,’ Mella II repeated. ‘He can do that quite legally because I’m supposed to be you, remember, and he’s not a blood relative, so he marries you and becomes King. He’s wanted that for years and years.’
‘I think I need to sit down for a minute,’ Mella said. She propped her back against a thick tree trunk and sank down to the mossy forest floor. ‘What a pervy pervert! ’
Mella II sat down beside her. ‘He hired an assassin to get you, but you ran away and that spoiled his plans.’
Mella held her head. Between the flood of memories and the fresh information, she felt as if it might explode at any minute. ‘But then I played into his hands by ending up in Haleklind.’
‘Yes, you did,’ Mella II confirmed. ‘The original idea was for us to be swapped at his Keep, but when the Table told him they had you in their Kremlin, that was even better. He packed me into his ouklo at once. I was supposed to wait until he’d confirmed it really was you, then he was going to kill you and make the switch. Or make the switch and kill you, I forget which. I was trying to figure out a way to save you when you made the escape yourself – I should have known you’d manage perfectly welclass="underline" you’re very resourceful, just like me.’
‘Why is Aunt Aisling helping him?’ Mella frowned. Nothing Aunt Aisling did was making much sense.
Mella II glanced at her in surprise. ‘I didn’t know she was. What can she do in the Analogue World?’
‘She’s not in the Analogue World: she came here with me and now she’s helping him for some reason.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Mella II repeated.
Mella pushed the mystery from her mind – there were obviously far more important things to think about. She pushed herself abruptly to her feet. ‘We have to get back to the Palace and warn everybody what’s going on.’
‘I was going to say that,’ Mella II told her. ‘The only thing -’
‘What? What’s the only thing?’
‘The only thing is how we’re going to do it. We’re lost in a forest somewhere in Haleklind, probably being chased, and even if we find our way out we won’t know how to get to the Realm, and even if we find out how to get to the Realm I know there are all sorts of guards and security spells at the border because Hairstreak once told me. So how do we do it?’
‘Perhaps I can help you with that,’ said a weird, growly voice behind them.
Forty-Four
‘How did this happen?’ Lord Hairstreak demanded. Normally he would have strangled the messenger: one had to have some compensation for bad news. But it was Aisling who brought him word of Mella’s escape, so he strangled his emotions instead and put up with the frustration. And to be fair, now he thought about it, the news wasn’t all that bad. Because Mella, it seemed, had foolishly run into the forest, which was infested with the fiercest manticores as part of Kremlin Karcist security, so her chances of survival were slim. It would be only be a matter of time before one of the beasts found her and carried her off to feed its young. And even if she somehow avoided the forest manticores, there was no way of avoiding the herd on the plains beyond. The perfect way of getting rid of her. The manticores would leave no bone unchewed, no trace of her at all. Such an unfortunate accident. He couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t thought of it before. With Mella out of the way, the substitution of her clone became child’s play.
Except that he was looking into an empty ouklo. There was no sign of the Mella clone.
‘I don’t know,’ Aisling said.
If he was brutally honest with himself, she sounded as if she didn’t really care. But he could hardly expect her to grasp the devious intricacies of his plan, or its overriding importance, come to that. After all, they’d only just met and he’d scarcely had time to tell her more than the bare bones of what he was doing. ‘What exactly happened?’
Aisling’s face had taken on a bored, petulant expression. She examined her fingernails and spoke without looking at him. ‘The girl got into the carriage then ran out the other door.’ She looked up at him. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘No, of course not,’ Hairstreak muttered. Actually, she was right. He should never have given her responsibility for Mella at this early stage of their relationship. Not that it would probably have been much different if he’d escorted the girl himself. Who’d have thought that Mella with her memory wiped would run away? Why on earth should she? Her actions were quite unpredictable and he would not have predicted them. But that was water under the bridge. He had to be careful now. Ysabeau and the other Table members could appear at any moment. None of them knew all the details of his plan and he wished to keep it that way. In particular, he preferred to keep the existence of the clone secret. ‘Was there anyone else in the carriage at the time?’
‘I don’t know,’ Aisling said.
Hairstreak considered his position. Mella might have run away – although for the life of him he couldn’t think why – but the Mella clone never would: she’d always been a model of obedience. She’d probably just got bored waiting and wandered off. Which meant she was in the grounds somewhere, possibly even in the house. But he needed to find her before anyone else did. It was important she didn’t go on public display before he was sure the original Mella was dead. He looked around him.
‘Where are my guards?’ he demanded.
‘I sent them off after the girl when she escaped,’ Aisling said. ‘They followed her into the forest.’ She hesitated. ‘So did the other girl.’
‘What other girl?’
‘I saw another girl creep out of the bushes and follow them in. I don’t know where she came from.’
It was the Mella clone. It had to be – there simply wasn’t any other girl about. Now the two Mellas were in the forest. This was turning into a nightmare. What if he lost the clone? What if she was savaged by a manticore? He’d trained her perfectly for the job she had to do, but that training had taken time. He couldn’t possibly start over with another one.
‘Lord Hairstreak -’
Hairstreak groaned. This was all he needed. Ysabeau was headed down the path towards them with other members of the Table of Seven straggling behind her.
‘Is everything all right, Lord Hairstreak?’
Hairstreak came to a decision. ‘Companion Ysabeau,’ he said firmly, ‘how do you control the forest manticores?’
Ysabeau looked at him blankly. ‘Control?’ she frowned. ‘Manticores?’
‘The forest manticores,’ Hairstreak snapped impatiently. ‘They’re part of your security system. There must be some way you control them to allow free passage through the forest when you need it.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Ysabeau exclaimed. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. You mean, as when our technicians need entry to the forest to check the system overall. We use a manticore repellent.’