“The Throne Room is locked,” Jenna said coolly. “I do not use it.”
For the first time the Bringer of the Book regarded Jenna with something like approval. “Of course you do not use it, Princess. That is exactly how it should be. You have had no need for it until today. But today, the occasion of your fourteenth birthday, is the day of your first official engagement. Traditionally this takes place in the Throne Room—as you know.” The Bringer of the Book smiled at Jenna as though they were in on the same joke—a joke that no one else was clever enough to understand. Jenna had known girls like that at school and she hadn’t liked them. She felt the same way about the Bringer of the Book.
Jenna was about to retort that she didn’t care what the occasion was, she wasn’t going to unlock the Throne Room for anyone and anyway, she didn’t have the key, when Silas appeared. Jenna felt in need of his support.
“Dad,” she said, forgetting her Princess manners in her distress at being asked to unlock the Throne Room. “Dad, we don’t have the key to the Throne Room, do we?”
Silas surprised her. From his pocket he took a heavy, red-jeweled key and presented it to her with a small bow.
“Don’t be silly, Dad.” Jenna laughed, deliberately not taking the key. “You don’t have to bow.”
Silas looked serious. “Maybe I should now that you’re fourteen,” he said.
“Dad?” Jenna began to feel concerned. What was happening? It sounded as though something was about to change, and she didn’t want it to.
Silas looked uncomfortable. “Marcia told me last week about, er . . . her.” He waved his hand at the increasingly affronted Bringer of the Book. “She gave me the key. She said that from your fourteenth birthday forward it is possible at any time that The Time May Be Right.”
“Right for what?” Jenna demanded crossly. She hated it when people arranged things without telling her and then expected her to go along with it. It took her right back to her tenth birthday, when she was suddenly taken away from her family. And, as ever, Marcia was involved.
Silas was conciliatory. “You know for what, love,” he said. “For you to be crowned Queen. You are old enough now. It doesn’t mean you are going to be, just that it is possible. And that is why this lady—”
The Bringer of the Book glared at Silas.
Silas coughed. “Ahem, I mean this very, er . . . important, very official lady has come today. She is the hereditary Bringer of the Book. And traditionally you receive it in the Throne Room.” Silas caught Jenna’s gaze. She looked upset. “It’s uh . . . symbolic, you see. Of, um, of what you will be one day.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?” demanded Jenna. “Or Mum?”
Silas looked upset. “I didn’t want to spoil your birthday for you or Mum. I know how you feel about the Throne Room. I’m sorry, I suppose I should have said.”
Jenna sighed. “Oh, it’s all right, Dad. I’ll do it—as long as you come and help me with the key. Okay?” She gave Silas a meaningful glare.
“Ah. Okay. Right. I’ll come with you.”
The Bringer of the Book objected. “This is a private ceremony. It is not suitable for a member of the public to attend,” she said.
“He’s not a member of the public,” snapped Jenna. “He’s my dad.”
“He is not your father.”
Jenna exploded. “No, he’s not. Of course he isn’t. It’s my birthday and you wouldn’t expect my father to be here, would you?” Jenna took Silas’s arm. “This is my dad. He’s here. And he’s coming with me.” With that, Jenna and Silas slowly and sedately climbed the sweeping stairs up to the first floor. The Bringer of the Book had no alternative but to follow.
They arrived outside the huge double doors that led into the Throne Room, which occupied the very center of the Palace. The doors were covered in ancient gold leaf, worn so thin that the squares of gold showed the red beneath. Jenna thought they looked beautiful—but she had no intention of opening them. “Okay, Dad?” she said.
Silas nodded. He put the key in the lock, and Jenna thought she saw a small flash of Magyk—at least, she hoped she did. Silas turned the key. It went halfway around and stuck.
“It’s Jammed,” he said. “You try it, Jenna.”
To Jenna’s relief, the key was indeed stuck fast. “It is,” she agreed. “It’s Jammed.”
The Bringer of the Book wore a distinctly suspicious expression.
“Would you like to try?” Jenna asked, offering her the key.
The Bringer of the Book snatched the key, pushed it into the lock and gave it a fearsome twist. Jenna could see she meant business and hoped that Silas’s spell held out. It did. Reluctantly, after a lot of vigorous twisting and poking at the lock, the Bringer of the Book returned the key.
“Very well,” she sighed. “The ReTiring Room will do just as well.”
Jenna refrained from asking why she hadn’t said that in the first place. She figured she knew the answer already. The Bringer of the Book wanted to bask in the reflected glory of the Throne Room. Jenna had met many people like her in Queen Etheldredda’s Palace, which was where she had begun to learn how to deal with them.
The ReTiring Room was intended as a personal space for the Queen to put on her ceremonial robes and to retreat to from the Throne Room if she needed. It was dusty and dark, but Jenna liked it and often used it as a quiet place to work. With the Bringer of the Book trailing behind her, Jenna led the way into the ReTiring Room. Silas excused himself and left; this time Jenna did not object.
The ReTiring Room was long and narrow, with one tall window at the end that looked out over Wizard Way. A shabby curtain on the right side of the room covered a door that led to the Throne Room, which was impassable due to a large plank Jenna had hammered across it. The room was extremely chilly, but a fire was laid ready in the small grate. Jenna took the tinderbox from the chimneypiece and struck a yellow flame into the dry moss at the base of the fire. She used the flame to light the candles as well, and soon the room glowed with a yellow light and looked much warmer than it actually was.
The Bringer of the Book fussily settled herself at a small desk below the window. From an array of mismatched but comfortable chairs Jenna took the chair she liked to curl up and read in—a battered red and gold one with a pile of cushions and a wonky leg—and pushed it toward the fire.
It was a long and tedious three hours but at the end of it, as she stood at the Palace door, watching the Bringer of the Book sail off down the Palace Drive, her ribbons fluttering in the cold wind that was blowing in off the river, Jenna held in her hand a small red book entitled The Queen Rules.
Jenna went straight back up to the ReTiring Room. She closed the door with a feeling of relief to have the place to herself once more, then pulled her chair even closer to the fire and looked at the little red leather book. It was so delicate. The pale red leather was soft to the touch, well worn and rubbed—she realized with a shiver of goose bumps—by the fingers of her mother, her grandmother and her many great-grandmothers before her. The pages, edged with gold leaf, were made of delicate paper so transparent that they were printed only on one side. The spelling was bizarre and the type was tiny and full of swirls and curlicues, which was why it had taken so long for the Bringer of the Book to read—and explain—the entire contents to Jenna. But now that she was at last alone with her book, Jenna turned to the page that she wanted to reread the most:
Protocol: Wizard Tower
(N.B. Substitute P-I-W for Queen if appropriate)
After her three-hour tutorial, Jenna now knew that “P-I-W” meant Princess-in-Waiting. There were two sections that particularly interested Jenna.
SECTION I: THE RIGHT TO KNOW
The P-I-W has a Right To Know all facts pertaining to the security and wellbeing of the Castle and the Palace. The ExtraOrdinary Wizard (or, in absentia, the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice) is required to answer all the P-I-W’s questions truthfully, fully and without delay.
Jenna smiled. She
liked the sound of that, but she was willing to bet Marcia didn’t. She read the second section even more carefully.
SECTION II: PALACE SECURITY
It is for the P-I-W to deem if a matter relates to Palace Security. If she deems it to be so, she may Call upon the ExtraOrdinary Wizard or the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice to assist at Any Time. This Call will be given priority over all other matters at the Wizard Tower. So Be It.
Huh, thought Jenna. Sep had obviously not read this.
She reread the second passage, smiling at the hand-drawn, heavy red lines below the words “P-I-W,” “Any Time” and “all.” It seemed that she was not the only Princess-in-Waiting to have this kind of trouble. She particularly liked what was written at the foot of the page in a different but equally determined hand: “Wizards are replaceable. The Queen is not.”
Jenna uncurled herself from her chair like a cat. She got up, dampened the fire and closed the door on the ReTiring Room, leaving it to settle into its stillness once more. She would go straight to the Wizard Tower and do a bit of deeming. Right now.
On her way out, Jenna bumped into Sarah who, with the help of Billy Pot and the cook, had begun to put up bunting in the entrance hall.
“Has Dolly gone?” asked Sarah.
“Who?”
“Dolly Bingle. She works in the fish shop down by the New Quay. I knew I’d seen her before. Funny how different she looks with a bit of gold flummery and her hair out of a fish net.”
“The Bringer of the Book was Dolly Bingle?” Jenna was stunned.
“Yes, it was. And Dolly knows perfectly well who I am. I shall expect some cheap haddock when I next go there,” said Sarah with a wicked grin.
Chapter 8
Chemistry
On the way down the Palace drive Jenna remembered her walk with Septimus the previous evening. The memory still upset her but now, with The Queen Rules safely in her pocket, it annoyed her too. Septimus had treated her as though she was no more than an irritating child. And here she was chasing after him again, about to give him the opportunity to behave in exactly the same way. Why did she need his opinion on what was going on in the Palace attic? He wasn’t the only one who knew stuff—there was someone much nearer who would actually be glad to help.
A few minutes later Jenna was standing outside Larry’s Dead Languages Translation Service. She took a deep breath and readied herself to step inside. Jenna didn’t like Larry and Larry clearly didn’t like her. However, she did not take this personally because, so far as she could tell, Larry didn’t like anyone. Which made it very odd, she thought, that Beetle had not only taken a job as Larry’s transcription scribe but, now that his mother had moved down to the Port, was living there too.
Bracing herself for the caustic remarks that always accompanied her entrance, Jenna put her shoulder to the shop door and shoved (the door was notoriously stiff—Larry liked people to really want to get into his shop). The door flew open with unusual ease, Jenna hurtled across the shop and crashed into a pile of manuscripts on which a tall, expensive-looking vase was precariously balanced.
Accompanied by the sound of Larry’s throaty chuckle coming from the upstairs gallery, Beetle performed an impressive flying catch and saved the vase just before it crashed to the floor.
He helped Jenna to her feet. “Hey, are you all right?” he asked.
Winded, Jenna nodded.
Beetle took Jenna’s arm and led her through the shop to the library at the back, saying loudly, “I have your translations ready, Princess Jenna. Perhaps you’d like to take a look?”
As they disappeared out of Larry’s earshot, Beetle said, “I’m really, really sorry about the door. I didn’t have time to warn you. Larry oiled it yesterday afternoon and set up the vase on top of the manuscripts. Since then he’s sat upstairs in the gallery waiting for people to do exactly what you did just now. He’s charged three people for breaking the vase—and they’ve paid.”
“Three?”
“Yep. He sticks it back together after each time.”
Bemused, Jenna shook her head. “Beetle, I really don’t know why you want to work here—let alone live here. Especially as Marcia offered you a place at the Wizard Tower.”
Beetle shrugged. “I love the old manuscripts and their weird languages. And I’m learning all kinds of stuff; you’d be amazed at what people bring in. Besides, I’m not Magykal. The Wizard Tower would drive me nuts.”
Jenna nodded. The Wizard Tower would drive her nuts too. But so would working for Larry.
As if he’d read her mind, Beetle said, “You know, after working for Jillie Djinn, Larry’s not so bad. And I like living on Wizard Way. It’s fun. Fancy a FizzFroot?”
Jenna smiled. “You got one in chocolate?”
Beetle looked crestfallen. “Sorry, no. They only come in fruit flavors.”
Jenna took her much-loved Chocolate Charm from her pocket. “We could try them with this,” she said.
“Okay,” said Beetle a little doubtfully. “Larry!” he called out. “I’m going for my break.”
Jenna heard a gruff, “Ten minutes and no more,” from the gallery and followed Beetle to a small, incredibly filthy kitchen right at the back of the shop.
“Happy Birthday,” said Beetle. He looked embarrassed. “I . . . I’ve got something for you but it’s not wrapped up yet. I wasn’t expecting to see you until this evening.”
Jenna looked embarrassed too. “Oh. Gosh. That’s not why I came. I wasn’t expecting anything.”
“Oh. And, um, sorry about the mess,” Beetle said, suddenly seeing the kitchen through Jenna’s eyes. “Larry gets really angry if I clear it up. He says mold is good for you.”
“Slime too?” asked Jenna, looking at a bag of carrots that were pooling across the floor.
Beetle felt mortified. “Let’s go to Wizard Sandwiches,” he said. “I’m owed some time.”
Some ten minutes later—after Jenna had witnessed a new and impressive Beetle telling Larry he was taking his lunch hour now and it was actually going to be one whole hour—they were sitting at a small window table in Wizard Sandwiches’ newly opened upstairs café. They made a striking couple. Beetle wore his blue and gold admiral’s jacket and his thick black hair was, for once, behaving just the way he wanted it to. Jenna’s gold circlet shone softly in the light of the small candle that stood in a pool of wax on their table. She sat with her red, fur-lined cloak still pulled around her, slowly warming up after the chill of the outside, while she gazed around the exuberantly painted room with its steamed-up windows. Jenna noticed with relief that no one was staring at her (the members of the Wizard Sandwiches Cooperative did not believe in hierarchical systems and acted accordingly). She felt like an everyday person—a grown-up everyday person going out to lunch. Even better than that, she had her happy and excited birthday feeling back.
“What would you like?” asked Beetle. He offered Jenna the menu, which was covered with Wizard Sandwiches in-jokes and colorful drawings of sandwiches but offered no clue as to what the sandwiches might contain.
Jenna picked a tall, triangular stack of small sandwiches called “Edifice.” Beetle chose a large cube-shaped sandwich called “Chemistry.” He took the menu and went up to the counter to order (Wizard Sandwiches did not believe in the servitude of waitstaff. This also kept the wage bills down.) Beetle returned carrying two WizzFizz specials, which were as near to a FizzFroot as it was possible to get. He set a pink and green drink in front of Jenna with a flourish.
“Minty strawberry,” he said. “It’s new.”
“Thank you,” Jenna said, feeling suddenly shy. Being out with Beetle like this felt different from being with Beetle in the everyday way she had become used to. It seemed that Beetle felt the same, as for some minutes they both looked intently out the window, although there was little to see apart from a wintry Wizard Way and a couple of people scurrying along with boxes of candles in preparation for the Longest Night illuminations.
Eventually Jen
na spoke. “Actually, I wanted to ask you something,” she said.
“Did you?” Beetle felt pleased.
“Yes. I asked Sep last night and he won’t do anything.”
Beetle felt rather less pleased. Jenna did not notice. She carried on, “Sep’s weird at the moment, don’t you think? I’ve asked him a few times now and he’s always made excuses.”
Beetle now felt distinctly un-pleased. He was tired of being second best to Septimus. It was, in fact, one of the reasons why he had refused Marcia’s offer of a place at the Wizard Tower.
“Edifice! Chemistry!” A shout came from the counter.
Beetle got up to collect the sandwiches, leaving Jenna with a vague feeling that she had said something wrong. He returned with a teetering stack of triangles and a huge cube.
“Wow,” said Jenna. “Thank you.” She tentatively took the top triangle off the pile and bit into it. It was a delicious mixture of chopped smoked fish and cucumber with Wizard Sandwiches’ famous sandwich sauce.
Beetle regarded his large cube with dismay. It was one solid lump of bread made from half a loaf. In it were drilled nine holes filled with different colored jams and sauces, and from the center hole a wisp of smoke was rising. Beetle knew at once he had made a mistake; he just knew that when he tried to eat it, the colored gloop would run down his face and drip on the table and he would look like a kid. Why hadn’t he chosen something simple?
Beetle began sawing at his cube. The multicolored gloop ran across his plate and swirled into a thick rainbow puddle. Beetle began to turn pink. His sandwich was an utter disaster.
“So . . . um, what is it you wanted Sep to do?” he asked, trying to deflect attention from the accident on his plate.