'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.
'Oy!' shouted Reg on the other side of the bathroom door. 'Even / felt that! Gerald, what the devil are you doing in there?'
Entranced, he floated in the cooling bathwater and smiled at his bright blue miracle.
On the other hand I think I could get used to being a genius.
'Nothing,' he called back. 'You're imagining things.' Reg retreated in a cloud of muffled curses.
With a snap of his fingers he released the coalesced energy back into the atmosphere, then climbed out of the enormous tub to dry and dress. Reg was waiting for him in the bedroom.
'Nice threads,' she said from the bedhead, staring at his re-made suit. 'And good timing.' She nodded at a slightly torn piece of parchment with a broken wax seal, discarded on the bedspread.'That just got shoved under the front doors. His Nibs has invited you to dinner.'
He snatched up the parchment. 'Reg! How many times do I have to say it? Don't go reading my mail!'
As usual the complaint was water off a duck's back. 'You're to report to his private dining room at seven o'clock sharp,' she said.'Not me. Just you.' She sniffed. 'I think my feelings are hurt. Gerald — '
He gave her a look. 'No. We'll talk when I'm ready to talk and not a minute sooner.'
'That might not be soon enough,' she retorted. 'Gerald, you're not treating this with the seriousness it deserves. What's happened to you, well, it's just not normal. And it's certainly not something you should be playing with like a shiny new toy. I want you to tell me again what happened at Stuttley's. Now that you're sober you might remember something that — '
He tossed the parchment back on the bed. 'No. Reg, I'm fine. I have never felt better. And this is one gift horse I won't be looking in the mouth. I'm going to be the best royal court wizard King Lional has ever seen, and when a decent interval has passed I'm going home to get retested and officially regraded. And afer that — ' He released a long slow sigh of satisfaction. 'After that, Reg: the world will be my oyster.'
She glowered. 'Haven't you heard? Oysters give you food poisoning!' He threw a pillow at her. 'Butterflies are actually very loving, you know, Professor Dunwoody,' said His Royal Highness Prince Rupert, confidingly 'Loving and gentle.' There were smears of butterfly dust all over his patched mustard yellow velvet dinner jacket, and in his eyes the gleam of the fanatic. His long thin nose was disfigured by a neat strip of plaster.
'Really?' said Gerald, trying not to stare at it. 'I didn't know that.'
