Lional.”
“That’s a lie! ” the other Gerald spat. “Lional was a murderer. He killed the wizards whose potentias he took. I’m not killing anyone.” And then he smiled. “Well. Not anyone in Ottosland. I won’t vouch for those pustules from the UMN. If they breach our sovereign airspace then all bets are off. And I’m not stealing anything, either. I’m borrowing it. In a good cause. I’m not the villain here, Professor. Now shut up. You’re wasting my time.” He gave the wheeled trolley a shove. “Here. Get my machine on that, Mr. Markham. We’ll have to transport it the ordinary way, in case more thaumaturgics upset its calibrations. Quickly! We’ve got a lot of people waiting for us at the parade ground and I don’t want to disappoint them. Thanks to certain troublemakers I’m already running late.”
Monk nodded. “Yes, sir. Ah-Ger-sorry, Professor? Would you mind giving me a hand?”
“Good idea,” said the other Gerald. “I mean, I’d help but I’m not exactly dressed for manual labor.”
Oh, blimey. Puffing and grunting with the effort, he helped Monk manhandle the etheretic amplifier onto the trolley. Touching the gizmo, he could feel its enormous thaumaturgic potential thrumming beneath his hands like a rumbling volcano waiting to erupt.
“All right,” said the other Gerald. “That’s it. Let’s go. Except-” He looked at poor caged Reg, silent and miserable. “Bring the bird, Professor. She really shouldn’t be deprived of seeing my moment of triumph. And with any luck she’ll choke to death trying to apologize.” He smiled. “I’ll just unhex the cage for you.”
Gerald held his breath, his stomach churning. If his counterpart noticed it had already been unhexed and re-hexed But no. Either their thaumic signatures were close enough to fool him or the other Gerald was just too keyed up with angry excitement, because he didn’t notice a thing.
Praise the pigs.
“Thank you,” he said, and gently took the other Reg out again.
“No, don’t untie her beak yet,” said his counterpart. “She’ll only start nagging. Untie it when it’s time for her to apologize. Until then, Professor, we’ll bask in the silence.”
“Right,” he said, and stroked the tip of Reg’s wing. Surreptitiously, so his counterpart wouldn’t see.
The other Gerald glared at Monk. “Well? Why are you standing there like a lump of dried cowpat? Push the damn trolley! We’ve got to go!”
Monk flinched. “Sorry. Sorry. Um-push it where?”
“Oh, for the love of Saint Snodgrass,” the other Gerald snapped. “Follow me. Both of you. And you’d better bloody well keep up.”
He swept out of the laboratory, crimson boot-heels banging the floor. Gerald, not daring to look at the bathroom, dropped another kiss on Reg’s third-rate understudy’s head, exchanged a grim glance with Monk, and followed him out… making sure to leave the lab door open behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A covered, open-backed lorry took them to the ceremonial parade ground. The other Gerald traveled with them, not wanting to let his precious thaumic machine out of his sight. Gerald swallowed frustration. Inconvenient didn’t begin to describe it-now there was no hope of discussing his crazy idea for an evil-twin nobbling incant with Monk. So he consoled himself with holding the other Reg and silently promising her that whatever else happened, when this was over she’d be free to fly away.
As the lorry passed through the gates into the ceremonial parade ground, Monk looked up and saw Lional’s transfixed dragon.
“Bloody hell!”
The other Gerald stared at him. “What is wrong with you? Anyone’d think you’d never seen it before-let alone helped me get it up there!”
“What?” said Monk faintly. “I mean, sorry. No. It’s just-it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I–I forgot what an impression it makes.”
The other Gerald glowered. “One more uninvited word out of you, Monk, and I’ll give that bloody dragon a jockey, I swear.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way.
“So,” said the other Gerald, as the lorry finally ground to a halt. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to stand with me on the dais, both of you, with my machine. You’re going to monitor its status while I begin phase one of my plan. If I don’t like the way either of you so much as blinks — the bird dies. Melissande dies. And if it comes to that, Monk, your sister dies too.” He smiled. “She’s not the only pretty blonde witch in the world.”
“You mean-” Monk had to moisten his lips and try again. “Melissande’s here?”
“No. She’s at home,” said the other Gerald, straightening his lapels. “But believe me, old chum. It makes no difference. I can kill her with a thought from a hundred miles away.”
Gasping, Monk dropped to the lorry floor, eyes wide, chest heaving.
“You see? Just like that.” A wide smile. “Saint Snodgrass’s bunions. I love a good shadbolt.”
Gerald set the other Reg on his shoulder then risked touching his counterpart on the arm. “Don’t be a fool, Gerald. You need him.”
“For the machine, yes,” his counterpart snapped. “But for precious little else, believe me! So if he wants to go on living he’ll watch his bloody step!”
Released, breathing harshly, Monk shakily sat up.
“Now come along,” said the other Gerald, leading the way out of the lorry. “I want this over and done with before Viceroy Gonegal and his pathetic armed airships get here.”
There was indeed a dais. It had been assembled in the middle of the ceremonial parade ground. Crowded onto it were the elected government and appointed senior civil servants of Ottosland, every last one of them still shadbolted to the hilt. He could see Lord Attaby, but not Monk’s Uncle Ralph. The rest of the walled enclosure was crammed full of unshadbolted witches and wizards, their potentias stirring thickly in the agitated ether. Bibbie was there too, at the very front of the dais, resplendent in swathes of vibrant pink silk, pouting because she’d been left alone for so long.
All the smoky half-domes had been removed, revealing the obscene and terrifying exhibits this world’s Gerald had so assiduously collected.
“Monk,” Gerald said under his breath, as they guided the etheretic wave enhancer on its trolley down the lorry’s portable ramp. His friend was walking backwards, bracing it, keeping it straight. “Monk, listen. When you turn around you’re going to see some things. Whatever you do, mate, don’t react.”
Puzzled, Monk blinked at him. “Yeah? All right. Whatever you say.”
But then they hit the bottom of the ramp and the trolley rolled over the flagstones and Monk had to wrestle it a bit-and he turned.
There was Sir Alec, still dying, dressed in flames. There was Lional, ripped and slashed and pinned to the ground. There was the witch whose name he didn’t know, wrapped in a blanket made of her own flayed skin. And wait-there was a new one-he hadn’t seen that one the last time. It was-it was Monk staggered. “Oh my God. That’s Uncle Ralph.”
“Oh, yes,” said the other Gerald, turning. “Stubborn old coot. Y’know, even with a shadbolt he kept on answering back. I didn’t want to lose him, I really didn’t. A First Grade Markham wizard isn’t something you throw away lightly. But-he was setting a bad example. He didn’t give me a choice.”
Uncle Ralph was front and center, directly in line with the dais. Probably the other Gerald had ordered him set there just so Sir Ralph’s former colleagues were reminded to hold their busy tongues. Compared to some of the others here he’d been granted an easy death: a swift impalement on a long, thin, sharpened stake.
“Monk, don’t,” said Gerald, and grabbed his friend’s arm. “Remember Melissande. And Reg. And Bibbie.”
Dazed, Monk shook him free. “Yeah. Yeah. Right.”
Still clinging to his shoulder, the other Reg was making angry noises in her throat. He patted the nearest bit of her that he could reach. “I know, Reg,” he muttered. “But we can’t help him now.”
