The Accidental Sorcerer Read online

  She frowned. 'I don't know.'

  The finger wagged, admonishing. 'I think you do.'

  'No, I really don't.'

  He sighed. 'You're supposed to curtsey. I am the king, though sometimes I think the fact escapes you.'

  She looked around the otherwise deserted chamber. 'Lional, we're the only ones in here.'

  'Nevertheless…'

  'Oh, please! I'm wearing trousers!'

  His glance was disapproving. 'Put on a dress, then. You should wear a dress anyway. One with lace. And flounces. It's more princessly.'

  'You know perfectly well I don't wear dresses,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'They make me look like a badly sewn-up sack of wheat. Lional, have you really dismissed the Council?'

  He turned away from the window and returned to his throne on its crimson-carpeted dais. Tavistock leapt into his lap with a grunt, turned around twice and settled on his knees. Claws like tiny scimitars paddled green silk, pulling threads. Lional tickled under the cat's chin. 'You don't approve?'

  No, she didn't, but wasn't stupid enough to say so. 'I don't understand. I know Lord Billingsley and his cronies are tedious, but they—'

  'Refuse to accept reality. The old regime is dead and buried, just like Father. I am king now. I make the decisions. Not them.'

  'Lional…' She stepped closer. 'Be fair. They're old men, set in their ways, and you've been king for less than a year. I'm sure you'll get used to them once—'

  'It's not for me to get used to them!' snapped Lional. 'Like all my subjects they exist to serve, Melissande. And if they won't I have no use for them.'

  'But Lional, you need a Council,' she said. 'This kingdom's like a duck on a mill pond, you know. There's you sitting serenely on the surface and underneath there are all these other people working like demented grasshoppers to keep things moving. Believe me, I do understand if you don't want those councillors, but traditionally it's an hereditary position. Billingsley and the rest of them all have sons, they'll assume—'

  'Assumptions,' said Lional, dangerously, 'are unwise. I have suspended Council activity for now. Billingsley, his cronies and their encroaching sons are forbidden the palace until further notice. I need time to think without them bleating in my ear, wanting this, demanding that, all under the mistaken impression that I'm here to give them things. Besides, they were costing an absolute fortune to feed and house here at court. It's about time they fed themselves and all their hangers-on, too. Last time I looked this was my palace, not a hotel.'

  She shook her head. 'Gosh, Lional. They're not going to like that.'

  He smiled, his ring-laden fingers now buried in Tavistock's extravagant fur. 'Behold me not heartbroken at the prospect.'

  It was true, the cost of keeping councillors, courtiers and their servants around the place was ruinous. But even so… 'All right, you've stood down the Council for a while. So what will you do in the meantime? Somebody has to keep the wheels of government turning.'

  Another smile. 'In the meantime, Melly, I have you.'

  She nearly swallowed her tongue. 'Me? Lional, are you ma—' No, no, no. Don't say it. Dungeons were rumoured to be uncomfortable places. '— making a mistake?'

  'Are kings capable of making mistakes?' her beautiful brother mused. 'No, I don't believe they are. Melissande, my darling little sister, you cannot refuse me. The kingdom needs you.'

  'It needs a council more. Look, Lional, I appreciate your thinking of me but you need to think again. I'm not cut out for—'

  'Oh, but you are. Intellectually you are as a giant to my former councillors' antish, ancient little minds,' said Lional blithely. 'And you're terribly organised. It used to irritate me, you know, the way you sat your dolls alphabetically by name along your toy shelf, but I see now I misjudged you. You're a born pettifogging administrator, Melly. And as New Ottosland's inaugural prime minister you'll—'

  'Prime minister? You want to make me prime minister?' She knew her voice was squeaking but she couldn't help it. 'Lional, you can't! It's against tradition! And I'm a girl!'

  Lional's lips pursed. 'Are you sure? I thought girls wore dresses.'

  'Oh, ha ha,' she said, feeling desperate. 'Lional, seriously, you can't make me prime minister.'

  'I'm the king, Melly,' snapped Lional. 'I can do whatever I want. And what I want is to drag us into the modern era and onto the international stage, kicking and screaming if necessary.'

  She folded her arms. 'Not to mention foaming at the mouth. Lional—'

  Ignoring her, he traced the edge of Tavistock's ear with a fingertip. His perfectly sculptured lips were curved in a dreaming smile. 'I have such plans for this kingdom. A splendid vision.'

  'Then you need to get your eyes checked, because if you're really seeing me as prime minister then—'

  The smile vanished. 'Silence!'

  She flinched and shut her mouth. Scowling, Lional shoved Tavistock off his lap, heedless of the cat's indignant yowling, and leapt lightly down from the dais.

  'Save your breath, sister dear, for I'll entertain no further debate,' he said, pacing. 'You are henceforth Her Royal Highness Princess Melissande, Prime Minister of New Ottosland. Feel free to choose an office of your own, provided it's not too large, and decorate it however you like except expensively, because in case you hadn't noticed Father left us virtually bankrupt, the old coot. And after that make sure the kingdom continues to run like clockwork. That's all I ask.'

  Dazed, she sat heavily on the edge of the dais. 'That's all':'

  'Well, it is a very small kingdom, Mel. I can't imagine it'll be that hard.'

  She felt like tearing her hair out. 'And I suppose in my spare time you'd like me to whip you up a plate of meringues?'

  'I don't like meringues,' said Lional, and leaned against the wall. 'I'd not say no to half a dozen eclairs, though. With extra chocolate and cream.'

  She nearly threw Tavistock at him. ‘Lional…!'

  Joining her on the dais, he slung his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. 'Oh, come on, Melly. It's not like you won't have help. I'm sure I saw dozens of minions loitering about the place somewhere. It's about time they earned their keep. You'll love it. Giving orders from dawn till dusk. Bullying entire government departments into shape. You'll think you've died and gone to heaven.'

  She let herself slump against him. 'Only if I can come back and haunt you. Lional…'

  Another rallying squeeze. 'You can do this, Mel. I know you can. I meant what I said about having a vision. We could be a great country, you know. Influential. Powerful. A major player on the world stage.'

  'I know you think that,' she said carefully, after a moment. 'And it's a nice idea, Lional, really, but please be serious for a moment. You said it yourself: the treasury's practically empty. What's more, we're hogtied and shackled by outdated traditions that'll get us laughed right off the world stage. Face it. We're a backwater colonial collection of rustics living in the middle of a bloody great desert and nobody cares what we do, or think, or say. Even the old mother country's almost forgotten we exist!' She pulled a face. 'If you really want me to be your prime minister then fine. I'll be your prime minister. But as for the rest…'

  Lional dropped a kiss on the top of her head and stood. 'You let me worry about the rest, Mel. I'll make it happen, you'll see. And a lot sooner than you think. Tradition?' He snapped his fingers. 'That for tradition! Right now, though, we need to concern ourselves with an important new development.'

  Groaning, Melissande got up and shoved her hands into her trousers' capacious pockets. 'I'm almost afraid to ask.'

  Lional grinned. 'The Kallarapi are coming.'

  She looked out of the nearest window, alarmed. 'Now?'

  Tavistock had curled up on the throne with his tail wrapped round his nose. Lional pushed him off and sat again, right leg slung negligently over its padded arm. The cat jumped back up to his lap, disgruntled.

  'Not quite. According to the message I received this morning they should be here in a
day or two.'

  'Which Kallarapi, do you know?'

  'The holy man and the useless younger brother,' he said, examining his manicured fingernails.

  'And are they coming with or without accessories?'

  Lional's eyebrows lifted. 'I beg your pardon?'

  She folded her arms again, glaring. 'Are they bringing their army?'

  He snorted. 'Oh, come along now, Mel. We don't owe them that much. Strictly speaking we don't owe them anything at all.'

  'That's not how they see it.'

  'I don't particularly care how they see it,' he said, admiring the way his ruby rings caught the sunlight.

  She gave him a look. 'I know. I expect that's why they're coming.'

  Typically, he ignored the look and the comment. 'As my prime minister, Melissande, it'll be your job to entertain them while they're here. Naturally it won't do for me to see them. An audience with me will give them entirely the wrong idea. You'll show them the sights of a civilised society. Remind them of our blood ties to the oldest nation in the world. And after that you can show them the relevant records proving that when it comes to trade tariffs we're the ones who've been robbed, not them. In short, I expect you to make our culturally challenged neighbours lift their ridiculous camel-train embargo. It's not helping our financial position at all!

  'That would be the point of it, Lional,' she said, and heaved a sigh. 'The thing is… I know you're convinced we're in the right but I wish you'd reconsider. Our trading treaty with the Kallarapi has been in place for nearly four centuries and there's never been any dispute over who owes what to whom until now.'

  'Meaning what, pray?' demanded Lional. 'That somehow I'm to blame for their rapacious greed? Why? Because I'm newly come to the throne? Must I remind you, Melissande, that the Kallarapi have also recently acquired a new ruler? And that all this trouble just happens to coincide with Zazoor's ascension to the throne, or the stuffed camel-hump, or whatever it is he sits on?'

  She pressed her fingertips to her temples. 'I know. And that's the problem, isn't it? You and Zazoor have hated one another from your first day at boarding school. Now, instead of behaving like sober, responsible potentates, you're treating this disagreement like just one more of your playground scuffles! And it's not! People's livelihoods are at stake here, Lional. Our very kingdom is at stake! Don't you understand? Now when you punch Zazoor everybody gets a nosebleed!'

  Tavistock yowled, lashing his tail. Lional patted his head. 'My sentiments exactly, Tav. Have a care, Melissande. There are ways and ways one may talk to a king. Some of them lead to unfortunate consequences.'

  'Like being fired, you mean?' she retorted. 'Oh, please. You'd be doing me a favour. All I'm saying, Lional, is that like it or not they've got the advantage over us. The terms of the treaty are specific and binding and there's nothing we can do to change them!'

  Lional's immaculate fingernails drummed the arm of his throne. 'I suppose you have a point,' he admitted at last, grudgingly.

  'Yes. I have a point. I have lots of points, but not as many as the Kallarapi army. They've got thousands, each one at the end of a sword!' Feeling pressured, Melissande shoved her hairpins back in her bun again. 'I'll take a good long look at the tariff books myself, Lional, and I'll talk to the Kallarapi delegation when it gets here. But you have to be prepared to give some ground. Forget it's Zazoor you're dealing with. Remember you have a responsibility to your subjects. That's all I ask.'

  Lional smiled, revealing his perfect white teeth. 'There. Didn't I say you'd make a splendid prime minister?' Scooping Tavistock into his arms, he stood. 'Very well. I'll do as you suggest—this time. But be warned, Mel. There's giving ground and then there's surrender… and I'll see this verdant oasis of ours a charred and stinking ruin before I surrender it to anybody… least of all Zazoor.'

  Melissande felt her heart sink. He meant it. When it came to Sultan Zazoor, Lional wasn't entirely rational. He never had been, even as a child. What a shame the old sultan's heir had fallen into quicksand, leaving his second son to rule. She could foresee nothing but tantrums and fisticuffs for the next five decades or so.

  It was a depressing vista.

  'All right, Lional,' she said, and dredged up a smile. 'I'll consider myself duly warned. Now is there anything else? Only it seems I've suddenly got a lot of reading to do.'

  'In fact there is,' said Lional. 'I'm in need of a new court wizard.'

  She stared. 'Another one? Why? What happened to Bondaningo?'

  'Wizard Greenfeather resigned in a huff late last night and returned home via the portal just before dawn,' said Lional, shrugging. 'I did my best to dissuade him but he was a most recalcitrant fellow. Refused point-blank to reconsider. I don't mind telling you, Mel: my feelings are hurt.'

  'I don't believe it,' she said. 'He didn't even say goodbye. And I liked Bondaningo. Much more than any of the others. He wasn't as ancient as most of them and didn't talk to me as though I were six. Why did he resign?'

  Lional waved a hand. 'I don't recall and it doesn't matter. He's gone. Find me another one, will you? Same specifications as before.'

  She shoved her fists in her pockets. 'I've already found you five, Lional. At the rate you're going every wizard in the world is going to have "Former advisor to the King of New Ottosland" on his credentials.' Then, as Lional's face collapsed into displeasure, she added, 'All right, all right I'll find you another one!'

  'And quickly. It's very important.'

  'Yes, quickly, I promise. But for the love of Saint Snodgrass, please don't fire or offend him until I've finished dealing with the Kallarapi!'

  Lional smiled. It was like watching the sun break free of lowering storm clouds. 'For you, sister dear, whom I love as life itself? Of course. Anything for you.'

  She'd never been able to resist Lional's smile, not even after he'd decapitated one of her dolls or torn the ears off her favourite stuffed donkey. 'Thank you. Now can I go?'

  'You are excused, Prime Minister,' Lional said grandly, still smiling, and waggled his fingers. 'Ta ta!'

  Marching out of the audience chamber, head whirling with dread premonitions of lurking obstacles yet to be discovered, Melissande throttled a shriek of frustration.

  Prime minister? Prime minister? Whatever had she done to deserve this? And what had possessed her to accept the appointment? She'd only had the job five minutes and already she had a migraine.

  If only she'd said yes to finishing school…

  But it was too late now and regrets were pointless. She was Princess Melissande, Prime Minister of New Ottosland, and the Kallarapi were coming.

  Time to get to work.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For two endless days Gerald lurked in his cramped bedsit, trying to work out what exactly had happened at Stuttley's. Trying to recreate that incredible sensation of transformation, of incandescent power welling up and thundering through him. All he did was give himself an incipient hernia. He couldn't even trust his Third Grade incants to work reliably. His power trickled, it sputtered, it sulked and wouldn't play.

  Depressed, defeated, he gave up trying to recreate the miracle and instead fretted about Reg's continued absence. He'd gone from worry to anger and back again so many times he was permanently dizzy. She'd never stayed away this long before. Something must have happened. She was lying in a ditch somewhere, injured and delirious. Dying. Or she'd been captured by a travelling circus and imprisoned in a cage, forced to do tricks for food.

  Or she just got sick of your ineptitude and flew off to greener pastures.

  Whatever the reason, the result was the same. Reg was gone, he had no way of finding her, and he was turning into a crazy person staying cooped up in his tiny room. He needed to get out. Needed fresh air. A change of scenery.

  And after that he needed to look his current predicament square in the face, accept it, and start the disheartening business of finding yet another job. Somewhere that had never even heard of Stuttley's Staff Factory.

  If
there was such a place.

  Oh lord, he thought, sitting on the edge of his horrible bed with his head in his hands. What I need is a drink. Two drinks. Lots and lots of drinks, and sod the dwindling bank balance . . .

  He went down to the club's public gallery. One glance through the doors and he nearly ran back upstairs. At the far end of the genteely shabby room, gathered around the sooty fireplace toasting crumpets and scoffing pastries, sat the appalling Errol Haythwaite and his equally appalling friends.

  Thanks to the good fortune of being born into the stratosphere of wizarding society, the ineffably smug little group had risen swiftly to the top of the profession, leaving their less-favoured colleagues behind like so much skim milk. Like cream, they were smooth and lumpless and rich.

  Like cream, he reminded himself, they cause bloat, spots and apoplexy.

  Excruciatingly aware that to this group he wasn't so much the skim milk as the nasty bits at the bottom of the bottle once the skim milk had been fed to the cat, Gerald sidled further into the gallery, hoping to be overlooked. But just as he took his first step towards the solace of alcohol a hearty cry nailed his feet to the floor.

  'I say, look who's finally crawled out of hiding! Dunnywood!'

  Damn. Haythwaite was never going to tire of that stupid play on words. Whose bright idea was it anyway to nickname any outside toilet a dunny? And why wasn't toilet humour beneath Errol, along with servants, Third Grade wizards and anybody who couldn't trace his family tree back to the packet the seed came in?

  If only he could ignore the man… but that, sadly, was out of the question. Third Grade wizards did not snub First Graders in public, with witnesses. Not if they ever wanted to work as a wizard again.

  He turned, grittily polite. 'Good evening, Errol. What a surprise to find you here. And it's Dunwoody!

  Errol Haythwaite, tall, thin and elegantly saturnine, waved a negligent hand. 'Of course it is,' he drawled nasally. 'I say, come and join us why don't you, old bean?'

  'Thanks, Errol, but—'

  'No, really,' said Haythwaite. Even from a distance it was clear the smile on his lips wasn't touching his eyes. 'I insist.'