Theatre of the Gods (57 page)

‘Well, this is it, I suppose,’ said some.

‘Yes, I very well suppose it is,’ others replied.

Fritzacopple closed her eyes, took a series of deep breaths, focused her mind on what would almost certainly be her death-mission. No
matter. She had been trained to see her own death as an incidental event. There was a higher mission at stake, although it was no longer the mission she’d been sent on. This mission was to prove herself again to the people she now adored.

A minute passed in silent meditation.

She opened her eyes and they were steel. The door to her cell was no challenge, it took her seconds to finesse the lock. The sound of the door brought footsteps from the outer room. The spy swung herself up into the ceiling of the corridor, and when the two papal guards entered they walked right beneath her, and when the heels of her new boots touched the sides of their heads they dropped like dummies.

Dummies.

When she left her cell block she met four more guards with knives and clubs. She closed the first man’s jaw with a deft uppercut just as he was about to challenge her, the second with a kick to the chin, the third with an elbow to the temple. It felt good to test her arms and legs after months of pretending to be a fragile former dancer. The fourth guard turned and ran. No more pretending to be afraid of ghosts and bears. She felt good. The spy picked up a truncheon from the courtyard dust, weighed it in her fine pale hand, took aim, and dropped the fleeing man from a dozen paces. Then she brushed the dust from the legs of her skintight riding pants and set off for the Emperor’s residence.

*

‘She’s not here! Where is she if she’s not here?!’

‘Well, obviously I have no idea, old man. Perhaps she went for a stroll.’

Our friends had arrived at the top of the mountain to find that the chamber where Lenore was being kept was empty. There was a leather armchair beside a table stacked with books. Beside the
armchair was a pair of slippers. Directly opposite was a wooden chair. This chair was ringed by strange symbols drawn in chalk on the stone floor. Fabrigas the elder knelt to examine the symbols. He knew them well.

Fabrigas Two, the younger, inspected the slippers. ‘It is odd,’ he said, ‘that after several million years of human civilisation, slippers are still the only garment you can put on without using your hands.’ Kimmy shrugged.

‘There’s only one explanation for all this,’ the old man said, standing quickly. ‘The Pope has somehow stolen her and taken her above.’

‘How do you come to such a conclusion?’ said Fabrigas the younger. Fabrigas the elder pointed to a line scrawled among the chalk symbols: ‘Have taken the Devil Gurl prisoner. U R a bumface. Pope.’

‘OK then. We need a rescue plan. We must get to the launch bays so we can steal a ship and go into space. We should probably hurry.’ They had used Cyclops! to block the entrance to the cave complex, but now they heard the sound of the Pope’s men attempting to haul it aside.

‘This is where I have to leave you,’ said Kimmy.

‘What? Don’t be foolish, you’ll be killed!’ said Fabrigas Number One, the elder.

‘I’ll be fine. I need to find my prince.’

‘The prince? That little snotface?’

‘Oh, he’s not so bad when you get to know him. And it really is hard to find a good man. In any universe. You two look after each other. Here, Dr Dray said to give you this,’ and she handed the old man a star-shaped object. It was silvery, rough-backed, with a salty sea smell, and it immediately moulded itself into the old-beard’s great palm. ‘He said he found it in his lab this morning.’

‘This is getting ridiculous,’ said Fabrigas. He peeled it off his palm and slipped it into his cloak.

‘All the best,’ said the girl.

All the best. As if she was signing off a friendly note.

‘She seems a rather unique person,’ said Fabrigas One as he watched her walk off down the tunnels and into the darkness.

*

As it turns out, Lenore had indeed gone for a stroll. She was wandering the streets of Diemendääs, the once peaceful streets now torn open in wide, smoking gashes. She seemed oblivious to the destruction, but the man walking behind her, the man who had brought all this destruction, was not. The Pope bobbed and winced as his own bombs fell from above and towers crumbled all around them. The Pope had made up his mind the night before that he would wait for the Well Dressed Man to leave his mountain cave, then seize the prisoner, no questions. He didn’t know exactly what had put the thought inside his mind, or how he’d got free of the Well Dressed Man’s enslavement.

The Devil Girl walked a few paces ahead. She was his prisoner, he had been ordered to bring her to justice, and no one would talk him out of it. Not this time anyway. ‘Walk somewhat faster, if you please,’ said his prisoner. ‘We have not much time.’ Above, a rocket punched through a snow machine, and it came spinning down, sending out streams of white like a Catherine wheel before it smashed into the side of the mountain.

When he’d gone to the Well Dressed Man’s mountain chamber the Pope had found it empty. Empty except for the child in her tiny cell. Her cell wasn’t even a cage: just some markings on the floor – markings to keep devils in, he knew. He’d wandered, bemused, around the chamber, the table stacked with leather-bound books. ‘Pah!’ he’d said. He’d taken up a large volume on modern philosophy and leafed through it, perplexed. Then he’d lifted a heavy fountain pen from the stand on the antique table, and after the phrase ‘Language is the mother of all thought’, he’d written, ‘… and you smell.’ Then he’d scuffed away a few of the symbols on the floor with his shoe. His sleeping prisoner had opened her eyes suddenly, smiled a terrible
smile, and said, ‘Hello there. I see you got my mind-message.’

A few minutes later the bombardment from space had started. The Pope had a simple standing order in place: ‘If they give us any trouble, bomb them to hell.’ His standing order did not take into account his spontaneously and secretly travelling to the city. Battle Command had no idea the Holy Father had gone down to the surface, so had no hesitation in commencing the bombardment when they got word that an iron giant was creating havoc. ‘Little girl,’ the Pope said, ‘I think it is very dangerous for us to be down here.’ His own men, picking themselves up bloody from the rubble, or locked in the claws of giant insects, looked with disbelieving eyes as the pair passed by and vanished into the smoke.

‘What mean you, sir? This is all just a minor fuss, for sure, no?’

‘A minor fuss?’ The Pope looked up just in time to see one of his bombs slam into a temple, sending a gargoyle head spinning down the avenue, gouging a canyon in the paved street before skidding to a stop; its ancient eyes locked with theirs.

‘I would like to leave now very much!’

‘We will leave soon,’ said the girl. ‘You will have your trial. We just have to make one stop first.’

*

The Black Widow had not expected this. She was behaving like a fool. A damned fool. But she felt she had no choice. She’d willed her limbs to take her on to the docking bays to meet the explorer, but instead she found herself scrambling up the vines that clung to the side of the Emperor’s residence, dropping lightly onto the patio. The bright explosions from the city lit her from behind.

‘Hello, Heronmus.’

‘Maria. I knew you’d come.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then.’

‘Indeed.’

In fiction, the dialogue is very dramatic. It flows wonderfully and is full of ardour, as if the poets themselves were whispering in the ears of the participants. But in real life, words spoken are stilted, awkward. The Emperor stood on the balcony, in his morning suit.

‘Why are you not helping your people? They are dying.’

‘I can do nothing to help them. I’m powerless. The insect legions have risen up of their own accord. I do not sanction their revolt.’

‘Well, I only have a few moments. I just wanted to stop by to tell you that I hate you.’

‘You hate me?’

They had to shout above the sound of the bombardment.

‘Yes. I hate you with a burning passion. You are arrogant, aloof. I hate that you betrayed us. I hate that you betrayed your city. I hate that you act as if you have all the problems in the world when in fact you have everything a man could wish for. Don’t speak!’ The Emperor closed his mouth. Behind them the aerial battle was filling the sky with white-hot fire, but neither had eyes for it. ‘I hate everything that’s possible to hate about you. Most of all I hate the way you make me forget myself. You make me forget who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing. And I hate that. I guess that’s everything.’

‘Well then.’

‘Well then indeed.’ She realised she’d been clutching a handful of vine leaves this whole time, clutching them so hard that their juice ran between her fingers. She released them over the edge of the balcony and watched them flutter away like moths. A doomed fighter streaked by, leaving a coil of smoke. She heard the Emperor move closer behind her, but not too close. He stood a few feet away. ‘I really hate you,’ she said.

‘I know,’ replied the Emperor. ‘I hate you too.’

FORBIDDEN ZONE

‘Someone’s coming,’ said the Black Widow.

‘I hear nothing,’ said the Emperor, but a second later he heard the footsteps in the corridor outside his suite. The Black Widow wound her long hair back up behind her head in a single deft twist and checked herself once in the mirror. ‘Tell me where the box with the Forbidden Zone is kept.’

‘It’s in a security complex beside the Museum of Doomsday Devices, but I urge you not to go. The place is filled with deadly traps.’ They heard the footsteps stop outside. The Emperor went to the door, put his hand to the latch and said, ‘It’s him. You’ll need to hide,’ but when he turned round she was gone.

*

The Black Widow made short work of the guards outside the complex, disabled the sentinel automatons by blowing fountain water into their workings through a bamboo reed, charmed the warning-crickets and prevented them from crying out by imitating their mating call, scaled the outer walls, cracked the exploding locks on the upper levels, scattered fine dust to reveal the sonic beams whose breaking would send a signal to the guardhouse, slowed her heartbeat so that its rhythm wouldn’t register on the sensitive seismographs placed within, went in silently by crawling along on her belly like a snake,
then dropped as gently as a butterfly into the main enclosure – all as she’d been taught to do in her first year of spy school.

In the centre of the room was a plinth upon which sat a black box, roughly the dimensions of a jewellery box, only slightly larger, and a slightly different shape, and of course without any visible joins or hinges, and in fact, on reflection, not much like a jewellery box at all. Also, it contained not jewels, but a universe.

Inside, somewhere, was their captain, possibly dead, possibly cuddling a bear for warmth, but almost certainly sulking.

There would be a final trap, of course. But what? Poison darts that made her sing for the guards? A snare of some kind? She lifted the box and found a note underneath:

Dearest plums,

I couldn’t let you steal our Forbidden Zone. You are breathing a nerve toxin which will kill you within an hour. The antidote is held at the royal surgery. This building is surrounded by a small army. If you surrender to them they’ll escort you to the antidote.

All the best!

Dray

The Black Widow said a word under her breath.

*

‘I am very disappointed,’ said the visitor. ‘Very.’ Before adding, ‘Very.’ And then, ‘Disappointed.’ This visitor had spent the last few days locked in a battle of minds and was not in a good mood.

‘I know you are,’ said the Emperor, ‘but things were beyond my control. You have no –’

‘Enough,’ said the well-dressed stranger, whose eyelids flickered and whose lip was a thin blue chalk mark on a green wall. ‘Where
is my captain? I want him.’

‘He is in a box held in a high-security annexe near the Museum of Doomsday Devices. It wasn’t my fault. There was nothing I could do.’

‘Of course, of course.’ She steepled her fingers over her lips and crossed her legs, leaned back in the Emperor’s big leather chair. It was terrifyingly uncanny to the Emperor the way this small girl had adopted the mannerisms, even the speech patterns, of her well-dressed interrogator. It was a pleasant morning and the breeze moved the curtains in the Emperor’s study. ‘I perhaps spoke harshly. Is it not terribly vexing to manage a city? Probably. So many
jaunty
problems.’ The words wiggled from her mouth like bright snakes. ‘I’ve only been here for a short time and already I’m finding it … stressful.’

‘I suppose it is,’ said the Emperor. It seemed like he knew it for the first time.

The stranger, in her elegantly trimmed hunting coat and boots, had learned much from the man she had met in the past few days, much about how to control the many feelings of the animal mind, much about how to control her own animal feelings, much about power, passion, revenge.

‘So much stress. So many problems, so many difficult questions. And your lovely wife’s … conditions. It would weigh upon a man. All the things that
jump
out at you on a daily basis. A man who’s reached your
heights
must be afraid of
falling.
’

‘Yes. It’s a long way to fall from the top.’

‘Yes. But when you fall it’s over. No pressures. No disasters. No armies upon your gate. You can rest. This is the way, yes. Kings go marching up up up, they fall down down down, again and again and again.’

The Emperor looked towards the open window, the gently huffing curtains, the sky, the towers crumbling in the distance, the explosions ripping through the morning air. So warm, so pretty, so inviting.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

And then he was gone.

‘I said you would pay,’ said Lenore to the waving curtains, the vacant chair behind the desk, to the empty air. She went to the door and found the Pope waiting like a loyal dog in the hallway.