The Purple Emperor

CHAPTER NINETY SEVEN

'Don't lie to me!' Blue screamed. 'I've been up all night and I've talked to that beastly Chalkhill and I can't take any more!'

Pyrgus looked a little better. His arm was bandaged and there were more bandages wrapping his chest and stomach underneath his shirt, but his colour was good except for the dark rings around his eyes. Maybe he hadn't had much sleep either.

'Blue, I -' Pyrgus said. 'Listen, it was all very confused. I don't think any of us will ever find out what really -'

'Comma has been making up stories about you,' Blue said. 'I don't believe him, but I don't believe you either. I just want to know the truth!'

'What's Comma been saying?' Pyrgus asked sharply.

'That you cut – that you cut off -' She just couldn't finish. Suddenly she was so tired she could scarcely stand up.

Pyrgus turned away from her. 'Do you believe that?'

'No, of course I don't. But I talked to Chalkhill and he lied to me – I know he lied to me. What I don't know is why!'

Pyrgus said very softly, 'He lied to you because I told him I'd arrange his freedom if he did.'

'You told him that? Why would you want to arrange his freedom?'

Pyrgus sighed. 'It was bribe him or kill him, and I couldn't do any more killing.'

Blue was looking at him open-mouthed. 'I don't understand you, Pyrgus. I don't understand any of this.'

Pyrgus said, 'It wasn't Hairstreak who resurrected Father. It was me.'

Blue stared at her brother in stunned disbelief. They had retired to the garden chamber where their father had once tended his orchids and the room was heavy with their scent. Spell reinforcement made it one of the most private places in the Purple Palace. 'You did what?' she gasped.

Pyrgus looked physically ill. 'I was afraid to become Emperor,' he said.

'Afraid?

'You know how useless I am at that sort of thing -politics and negotiations and diplomacy. I'd even be useless trying to run the Army. The Realm would fall apart with me as Purple Emperor. Worse, it would fall to the Nighters. There would be wars and chaos and -'

Blue said incredulously, 'So you resurrected Our father?'

Pyrgus nodded miserably. 'I didn't know what else to do.'

'Have you any idea how illegal that is? How dreadful that is? How

… how… forbidden that is?'

Pyrgus nodded again. He was seated hunched over on a bench and looked as if he might be sick on the floor.

'How could you?' Blue asked. 'How could you?' A thought occurred to her and she added, 'How did you?'

'Went to a necromancer,' Pyrgus muttered.

'A Nighter?' It had to be a Nighter! No Faerie of the Light would touch the dark magic involved in raising the dead.

'Yes.'

'Have you no sense?' Blue demanded. Pyrgus looked almost suicidal and in any other circumstance that would have made her want to comfort him, but there was a feeling of panic in her now that ran away with her tongue. 'Didn't you know a necromancer could control anyone he raised? That's what went wrong. It was bound to go wrong. You had to know it would go wrong!'

Pyrgus shook his head helplessly.

Her anger had carried her this far, but now the enormity of what Pyrgus had done was really beginning to dawn on her. She'd never made a profound study of magic, but she knew enough to realise that necromancy – sorceries involving the dead – was something ten times worse than the techniques of demonology that Faeries of the Night employed so often.

'You'd better tell me everything,' she said.

Pyrgus took a deep breath and told her.