The Comeback of the King Read online

  Hey, I’m not the one who was stupid enough to fall off his bike.

  The main road was ahead. Ted heard a single, plaintive whoop from a police car siren, like a signal saying ‘where are you?’ He stepped up his pace to go and meet it.

  “So, what is the King, and how do we stop him?”

  My, what an interesting use of the word ‘we’.

  “Hey? Look, you’ve got involved–”

  I broke the King’s hold on you in the first place because I had no intention of letting him command you against my interests. I intervened with that jerk on the bus because I felt sorry for the girlfriend. I stopped you killing yourself just now for reasons that should be obvious. But quite frankly, whether the King comes and goes or lives or dies is of no concern to me at all. So you – I – okay, maybe between us we woke him up. Not my problem.

  Ted had reached the main road. The police car was cruising slowly a little further down, with the driver peering into the entrances that she passed. He waved.

  “Then I’d better make it your problem, hadn’t I?”

  Chapter 18

  The chanting started while Barry lurked by the pillars of the Guildhall. It must have started very quietly and spread throughout the crowd because he realised he had been hearing it for a while without noticing. It was just the kind of thing you got at a football match – a mindless synchronised drone that you could tune out. ‘You’ll never walk alone’ or ‘Swing low’ …

  This wasn’t singing. No tune, just four words repeated over and over. Mmm, mmm, mmm mmm. Mmm, mmm, mmm mmm …

  Then he stopped caring because he actually saw the people who mattered.

  “Heather? Heather!”

  He had been waiting by the Guildhall because he had guessed they would come up Catherine Street and he wasn’t wrong. He would have liked to go further out, meet them further away from the market place where it all seemed to be happening, but he had reckoned that by sod’s law he would miss them.

  Any hope that a good, efficient police barrier would turn them away had been swiftly dashed when he saw that the cops at the crossroads with Queen Street, one of the entrances into the market place, were quite clearly standing back and letting people pass. Maybe they were working up towards a baton charge. For the time being, they were outnumbered and knew it. They reminded Barry of a barely quiescent volcano, something that could blow at any time.

  “Hi, Barry.” Robert grinned up at him, though he didn’t let go of his mother’s hand and they kept up their steady walk towards the market place. The chant was turning into a wave of sound that pulsed rhythmically out from the centre of the crowd, and it was becoming clearer. Mmm, mmm, uh King. Mmm, mmm, uh King.

  “Hey, Robs–” Barry had to trot alongside them. She seemed to be avoiding his eye, staring straight ahead. Maybe it was because she was walking so fast and had to see where she was going. “Heather, love, you have to get out of here. We all have to.”

  Her face was flushed and strained, and though she managed to flash him a smile it was distinctly fraught.

  “Don’t be silly, love.”

  “Heather, the police will–”

  “No! You don’t understand. Barry, I’m–” She glanced down at Robert, who was staring with wide-eyed innocence at the police lines, and leaned closer to Barry so she could lower her voice, still without breaking step. “I’m terrified, Barry, there’s something in the air that’s like poison, but the King wants us and we have to go! We don’t get a choice!”

  “Look, Heather, I’ve seen student marches and things, I know it can turn very nasty very quickly, just as soon as the police feel up to a baton charge, and–”

  “I know that!” Heather screamed as loudly as she could without actually raising her voice above a whisper and letting Robert hear. “But we can’t!”

  “We hail the King,” Robert added, in a tone that was conversational but with a familiar rhythm.

  “We hail the King,” Heather agreed, still in that horrified whisper, and Barry realised it was synchronised with the chant.

  Now that he had an interpretation, he could understand it. A simple litany of praise from the simultaneous mouths of however many thousand there were in the square. We hail the King! We hail the King!

  Barry began to look around with a fresh eye. He hadn’t paid much attention to the faces of the crowd. Now he could see what he was seeing in Heather. Some people were laughing and chatting like it was a big outing; but over there was a couple, about his age, marching bravely onwards with a fixed smile plastered on their faces as if they were determined to enjoy the day. Over there was a man quite obviously weeping to himself, but not out loud, and still walking into the centre of the market place, and mouthing the chant along with everyone else. Over there …

  “We’re going to see the King!” Robert announced, and added, “We hail the King,” as a kind of punctuation. But Barry saw the shadow of doubt lurking at the back of his stepson’s eyes, clouding the ready trust with which Robert usually looked out at the world. “Are you coming too?”

  “The King is actually here?” Barry asked. “In this square? Right here, right now?”

  Robert nodded with a big smile; Heather gave half a nod of her own. Barry made his decision. Sarah was in safe keeping, Ted was God knew where; this was the nucleus of the family and where he could do the most good.

  He reached out to take Robert’s other hand.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world and I certainly want to meet this King–”

  Suddenly hands like steel closed round his arms from behind and pinned his wrists together. A voice whispered in his ear.

  “Then it’s your lucky day, mate, innit?”

  *

  The chant of praise was like the ripples on a pond in reverse. It washed inwards, from the edge of the crowd to the centre where the emotion and power of the crowd fed into the King and Queen. The King could feel it swell his being. His skin felt taut, as if something new were poised to burst out from within.

  Above the ground it hung in the air like a fine mist that drenched the shrine in front of him. Below the ground it was a mesh of energy, carried by the Queen’s subjects through pipes and ducts and channels in the soil itself. Put the two together and there was a sphere of his power that enclosed the city, centred on the memorial.

  It was, as he had noted before, hallowed ground: a place sacred to the memories of those who had already sacrificed their lives. The small core of police prisoners had been swelled by more foreigners – ones who had come into the market place out of curiosity or to follow their loved ones or had just been here by chance. They had been bound together with police handcuffs or torn-up clothes: whatever could be scavenged from the crowd. There were not many in comparison to the crowd – maybe twenty, thirty, sullen and awaiting his will – but it was enough. The power had built to a peak and if he left it any longer it would simply burst, draining away into nothing and the opportunity would have passed. It had to be now.

  He grinned sidelong at the Queen and she stepped forward. They clasped their hands, raised them above their heads …

  A latecomer was being forced through the crowd: a middle-aged man, shouting and protesting loudly, frog-marched by two of Leather Jacket’s men and followed by a woman and boy, both still singing the King’s praise through their tears. The King simply indicated with a nod of his head that the man should be put with the rest. They let him go and gave him a shove towards the shrine. Astonishingly, the man didn’t take the hint and advanced on the royal couple.

  “Are you the King? Are you? I’ve got so many bones to pick with you–”

  The King and Queen simply stood while Leather Jacket lunged forward. One arm around his neck and a kick to the back of his knees brought the man down with a cry of pain and a scream from the woman following him.

  “His Majesty does not like to–”

  “Barry! Please, let him–”

  The King held his hand up. “Enough!” He looked into the eyes
of the woman and saw how she loved the man, and even though the mind of a foreigner was opaque he could see how the man loved the woman and the boy in return. Perfect. “It will soon be over,” he assured the woman quietly. More loudly: “Put him with the others.”

  The man’s leg could barely hold his weight after the kick and he had to be half-dragged to the memorial shrine. The King nodded at the Queen and again they stepped forward with their hands raised.

  The market place fell suddenly quiet, every voice stilled in a moment as the power fell on them, and the silence seemed to roar more loudly than the crowd just moments before.

  From the memorial came a single plink, as if someone had dropped a pebble. It was followed immediately by another and then another, the snapping sounds blending into the crackle of crumbling masonry. The cluster of prisoners shouted in surprise and alarm as the paving splintered and snapped beneath their feet. The stones flew apart as a grove of trees writhed up into the air. Leaves rustled as they burst out of their shoots; branches lashed back and forth as the trees grew to a height and maturity that should have taken years to accomplish.

  There was an awed silence in the market place, which slowly broke down into ripples of amazement and wonder that spread out among the ranks of royal subjects, before cohering into a renewed chant of praise.

  “A perfect sacrificial grove, husband,” the Queen approved. The King laughed and clapped his hands with glee. The trees, brand new, freshly and freely given for the occasion by spirits of the land, mingled with the grove of old, the hallowed war memorial, to make a place that thrummed with power.

  He snapped his fingers together and the trees burst into flame.

  Immediately the prisoners were yelling and struggling to get free, but they had been tied well. The first group, the police officers, had been handcuffed to the metal railing of the memorial and they strained frantically against their bonds. Those who had been bound with bits of clothing did slightly better. A small knot of men and women, tied together, managed to stumble out of the grove more by luck than design. Immediately Leather Jacket’s men were on them, shoving them back into the flames.

  There were screams from the crowd, too, but none of them could break free of the King’s will now. The power he had generated within the market place held them in thrall. The woman of the last prisoner to be gathered, and her boy, stared pleadingly through floods of tears at the King but they could not move and still they chanted their praise. He nodded back at them with a pleased smile. They loved the King. They loved the prisoner who was to be sacrificed. The sacrifice of one love for another would cause immeasurable sorrow and gladness, an emotional paradox which would swell the psychic surge that came when the man died and fuel the mighty reserve of power that drenched the air.

  Raw heat washed against the King’s face. The grove was a column of flame and smoke, thick and billowing on this damp day. That was what would kill the prisoners, much more than the flames. Already he could see them weakening, sense their dwindling life forces. They had all slumped to the ground, where the air was cleanest, but it would not last. Some were still moving, straining against their ties, and others already lay still.

  A cold blast of wind blew through the square and snuffed the flames out.

  “What?”

  The King’s bellow of rage echoed across a suddenly silent market place. He snapped his fingers to start the fire again, and then once more, but he already knew it was a wasted effort. The power had drained into the earth.

  “Begin the chant again!” he ordered. A swelling murmur already filled the air, royal subjects more ready to talk about the disappearing fire than obey his command. “Begin it!”

  The weeping woman hadn’t moved to rescue her man: Leather Jacket’s men still stood guard over the memorial. No one was moving. Good: he retained that power at least.

  “We hail the King, we hail the King–”

  It was never more than a half-hearted mumble and even though it spread around the square, in one direction it fell dead completely. The King glanced up towards the market place’s north side. There was a disturbance in the crowd where people were moving to one side or another as if to let an invisible force through. It was moving towards the King and Queen and, try as he might, the King could sense nothing about it. Here in the heart of his kingdom, a small bubble of non-kingdom was coming towards him.

  “Prepare to defend your King,” the Queen snapped at the guards, when the King made no move to say anything. Leather Jacket and his men immediately moved to make a barrier between the royal couple and the on-coming portent of doom.

  Blue pulses of light flashed through the crowd and heralded the emergence of a police car, the cause of the disturbance. The crowd backed away as if an invisible force pressed on them, and the front doors opened.

  On one side the King’s former Hunter stepped out, though he immediately knew that somehow he had lost her. She leaned against the top of her door and looked him in the eye.

  “Someone to see you, Your Majesty.”

  Sweating and pale-faced and jaw clamped to stop it trembling, Ted Gorse climbed out of the other door.

  Chapter 19

  The Knowledge fizzed and popped inside Ted’s head, and he made a mental note to feel uneasy about that, when he had the time. He remembered the thief’s awe (“I can see EVERYTHING!”) as the original Knowledge took hold in his mind, and he had no desire to follow that madman down the same track.

  But for the time being it was good because it was useful.

  The easy bit was freeing the prisoners. Ted and the Knowledge swept a glance over them. Some were restrained with steel handcuffs, some were tied up with more improvised restraints like torn clothing. The cuffs: he could see the bonds within the metal, the forces that held the atoms together, and it was a simple thing to reduce them to the strength of damp cardboard so that they could just be torn off. Once the people in cuffs were free, they could untie the others. Meanwhile Ted set up a difference in the air pressure around the memorial so that a strong breeze blew up and carried extra oxygen into the prisoners’ lungs. Ted had had experience of smoke inhalation and he wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy.

  Then he set his eyes on the King and Queen and walked forward.

  The Knowledge continued to nudge the crowd aside – a slight imbalance in their inner ears, making them feel they were on a slight slope and needed to take a step backwards to compensate, barely realising. Then Ted became aware that in all the background noise, there were people saying his name.

  “Ted? Ted? What are you–”

  “Hi, Ted!”

  Ted winced. Did his mum and Robs have to be in the front row?

  “Not now, Mum,” he muttered, and then he did a double take as he came up to the memorial. Was that Barry, slowly picking himself up?

  “Break the boy’s neck!” That last bit came from the Queen, not the King, full of malice and authority.

  Back to the point … the Knowledge reminded him. He looked round and stopped dead in his tracks. A man built like a pile of bricks wrapped in a leather jacket strode purposefully towards him in obedience to the Queen.

  “Fuck! He’s massive!” he wailed.

  Time to test the theory, isn’t it?

  The man’s face was stamped with a smirk which slowly turned to a frown as Ted held his ground. His ape mind must have registered something was wrong if a weedy ten-and-a-half stone teenager was standing up to him, though he didn’t know what and apparently it wasn’t going to stop him. He reached out for Ted and Ted had no doubt he would do exactly as the Queen had ordered, probably after causing a lot of unnecessary pain first.

  The Knowledge could already have stopped the man in many ways. It could have turned the ground beneath his feet to ice; it could have pinched the blood vessels feeding his brain shut. But all those would have been short-term solutions and Ted had to know that he was right.

  His name is Gordon.

  “You’re Gordon!” Ted gasped.

&n
bsp; In the background the King bellowed, a sound of rage and pain like something had been torn from him. The man stopped dead in his tracks, dazed and blinking as if Ted had just thrown a load of cold water in his face and then hit him over the head with the empty bucket.

  “What did you do?” the King screamed.

  “I defined him.” Ted couldn’t help it. He grinned.

  All of Salisbury, all of the kingdom, was the operating system, fed by the power within the land. The King was as much a part of it as anyone else. The land was the kernel and the King was the first utility to be installed. It had control over all the other files – all the people who belonged to the kingdom. But by defining those files with functions, with identities, Ted took them from out of the King’s control.

  Ted had done more than just affirm Gordon’s name. The Knowledge had lifted out of the man’s mind everything that had made his character; every influence from his genes and his upbringing and the life he had lived until now. Ted had combined that all into the object that he labelled Gordon, and used it to define the man who stood in front of him – once just the King’s royal subject, now an individual in his own right.

  “What did you do?” Gordon gasped, echoing his former master.

  “Long story.” Ted could barely speak for the beam that was taking up his entire mouth. If the kingdom was the operating system then the Knowledge was TEDLISH, and not many software developers got that kind of validation. “But you don’t have to work for the King anymore.”

  “Oh. Right.” Gordon frowned into the distance, and shook his head to clear it again, and then looked down at Ted. His mouth slowly twisted in a grin of his own. “Only,” he said, “I like working for the King.”

  The blow came so hard it didn’t even hurt, at first. Ted was only vaguely aware that something had happened: a jolt like a million volts, like an intercity train, like a small nuclear explosion in the guts. He was lying on the damp, cold stone. His lungs were paralysed. And then it started to hurt. He tried to draw in some breath in a silent scream.