His Royal Whiskers Read online

  “Let’s get to work!” said the monsieur, stepping inside the tallychamber. He clicked his fingers and Ugor came in carrying a dainty table with an oval mirror, and a red velvet seat. “Put it by the window, please, Warmaster. It’s dim in here, but we will have to make do. Take a seat, take a seat.”

  Pieter was ushered into the chair. Monsieur Snippy swiveled him around to face the mirror and Pieter saw his own startled reflection staring back at him. To his surprise, he was smiling. Suddenly he realized why. Death at the hands of Monsieur Snippy would be nowhere near as gruesome as the Guillotiger or Uncorkula, nor as lengthy as the Spoonatic. As executions go, this would be quite a pleasant one.

  (He could not have been more wrong. In fact, no genius had ever thought something so spectacularly incorrect.)

  “Don’t worry, Pieter,” Monsieur Snippy said. “I’ve done this a thousand times, you’re in very safe hands.”

  Before he knew what was happening, the monsieur had pulled a hidden lever, and leather straps buckled themselves tight around Pieter’s arms and legs. He was utterly trapped. Then, pulling open the drawers of his table, Monsieur Snippy took out various wigs, powders, lipsticks, mascara, and glitter pouches.

  And while his victim sat helplessly, the executioner set to work.

  He rouged Pieter’s cheeks, plumped his lips, plucked his eyebrows, fitted him with pink sunglasses, glued on a false mustache, added clip-on chandelier earrings, stuck a crystal beauty spot on his cheek, added liner to his eyelids and nostrils, defined his cheekbones, gave him a prosthetic chin that looked like a tiny bottom, hung tiny rainbow-colored bells on his eyelashes, added two fake sapphire tears to the corners of his eyes, whitened his teeth, and dabbed glitter on his forehead. All the while, he shouted out enthusiastic phrases like:

  “Let’s get you from drab to fab!”

  “Executions are ten percent beheading, ninety percent showbiz!”

  “If you’re going to die for crime, might as well look divine!”

  “But I didn’t do it!” Pieter protested.

  “Close those lips!” Monsieur Snippy scolded. “Oh, look, see? You’ve smudged it. I’ll have to reapply the gloss.”

  Pieter tried to ignore the dreadful transformation of his face. He tried to think only of a way to solve the Czar’s murder, but it was almost impossible. Whenever he closed his eyes, he could only see his horrible, ghastly, gaudy face. At last Monsieur Snippy moved away from the chair.

  “Voilà,” he said solemnly. “What do you think?”

  Pieter stared at himself. He looked like a Fabergé egg. Painted by a five-year-old child. With a glitter obsession.

  “It’s lovely,” said Pieter weakly. “Please will you execute me now?”

  “Do not be so impatient!” said Monsieur Snippy. “There is still your hair! The face is the picture, but a picture is nothing without a good frame.”

  From another drawer, the executioner brought out a wig, square like a hedgerow, only cotton-candy pink. He put it on Pieter’s head. Then he fetched his diamond pruning shears and started to snip. Locks and curls fell steadily onto the floor of the chamber as Monsieur Snippy worked. A hairstyle began to emerge: the shape of a palm tree, with a long leaning trunk of hair, and dangly fronds sprouting from the top. Monsieur Snippy tied the fronds into a dozen plaited pigtails, then with rainbow ribbons he hung bells and baubles and candy canes.

  “When your head flies off into the crowd,” he explained, “these little presents scatter into the audience.” He clapped his hands together. “I love Yuletide!”

  Then he dressed Pieter in a huge frilly yellow dress, with stilettos so tall they were more like stilts.

  “Look at you!” he said.

  Pieter looked. In the mirror, a pantomime dame who was the victim of an explosion at a makeup shop looked back at him.

  “Now for the main event!” said Monsieur Snippy, clapping his hands together. “Chop, chop, Pieter! The crowds are waiting!”

  Ugor and Lord Xin barged into the tallychamber, took one look at Pieter, and immediately burst into hysterics. They pointed at his dress, his wig, his face with all its ridiculous makeup . . . Pieter closed his eyes and tried to shut the laughter out, but it was impossible.

  Now he understood the terrifying truth about Monsieur Snippy. It wasn’t just a simple case of subtracting the head from the shoulders. Before Pieter was executed, he would be made to die from shame.

  I give up! thought Pieter’s brain. Kill me now! I can’t stand it!

  “Keep thinking about the murder!” he told it. “Find the culprit!”

  “What are you saying, Tallymaster? Rehearsing last words?” Lord Xin dabbed a tear from his eye.

  “You know that I’m innocent!” Pieter said, tottering forward on his high heels.

  The Heirmaster shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not. You’re still a traitor. If you hadn’t been a hostage, I would have chopped your head off months ago.”

  “Alexander will save me,” Pieter answered.

  “Alexander not even recognize you,” Ugor said, grinning. “That why we hired Monsieur Snippy.”

  Panic took hold of Pieter. He knew then that he was doomed. His brain had failed him, Alexander would ignore him . . . Only Teresa could save him now.

  He tried to struggle, but Ugor and Lord Xin held him firmly by the elbows and marched him down the stairs. The maids, bringing back struggling nets of poor blackbirds to bake in a pie for Alexander’s Yuletide supper, all turned to laugh at him. Ugor barged them aside, and carried Pieter through the Hall of Faces, where Alexander sat curled up at the far end.

  “Alexander!” he yelled. “It’s me, P—”

  Ugor’s scarred and smelly hand clamped over his mouth. Alexander did not even look up as Pieter was carried across the hall (even the eyes of the portraits seemed to sparkle with mirth) and shoved out into the courtyard.

  “Behold!” Lord Xin cried. “The traitorous Tallymaster, the murderer of our beloved czar: Pieter Abadabacus!”

  Sunlight blinded him, but Pieter heard the huge sucking sound of a thousand people all gasping at once. Squinting through the glare, he found himself standing on an execution platform built from timber. The enormous crowd of Petrossia folk stood before him. Row upon row of heads, like an endless field of winter turnips. Pieter had never seen so many people all with the same frozen expression of shock.

  Then there was a deafening roar as they all split their sides laughing.

  “HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

  To Pieter, each hoot, tee-hee, and titter hurt worse than anything he had ever known. Monsieur Snippy, without laying a finger on Pieter, was torturing him in the most excruciating way. His insides were twisting and squirming, while his whole body burned with shame. And all the while, the crowd laughed and laughed and laughed. Hot tears streamed down their faces and froze solid on their cheeks. This was better than a Yuletide play.

  Pieter fell to his knees, unable to take any more. Monsieur Snippy gave a cold smile and clicked his fingers. At once Ugor came forward and hoisted Pieter up.

  “I had hoped to make you die of shame,” said Monsieur Snippy in his ear. “Alas, I will have to execute you in the normal way.” The executioner took a step backwards and fetched his diamond shears.

  “Any last words?” Lord Xin asked.

  The noise of the crowd ebbed to snickers and chuckles, as everyone waited to see what Pieter might say.

  One of the amazing things about geniuses is that their brains never stop working. Even then, moments from death, Pieter was still searching for an answer to the Czar’s murder, trying out different combinations of the facts. He had arranged them in a million different ways, but somehow they would just not fit into a solution.

  The broken glass.

  The sleeping kitten.

  The locked room.

  The cloud of specks.

  Now he was out of time. Ugor and Lord Xin stepped backwards. Monsieur Snippy donned a raincoat and a little umbrella hat to stop
the blood from staining his outfit. He clacked his diamond shears together and advanced. . . .

  And then suddenly: click. The various clues slotted into place like cogs in a machine, and Pieter whirred to life.

  “WAIT!” he screamed. “I’VE GOT IT! I’VE GOT THE ANSWER!”

  The crowd burst out laughing again, but this time Pieter didn’t care.

  He had the solution!

  He had the answer!

  He knew who had murdered the Czar!

  Unfortunately, at that moment Monsieur Snippy’s diamond shears clipped together. Pieter felt a sharp pinching sensation in his neck—and his head flew off his shoulders in a fountain of blood.22

  Up into the air it went, the head spinning, all the gifts and baubles on his ridiculous wig flying off and scattering into the crowd of Petrossia folk, who all yelled things like:

  “Wow!”

  And, “A candy cane!”

  And, “This is the best Yuletide ever!”

  Pieter’s head thumped on the wooden platform. His body keeled over. No one was laughing now. A few old babushkas, who felt sorry for the poor boy genius, whispered prayers for his soul. Amna, still feverishly writing letters up in the aviary, let out a scream and began to wail.

  Mostly, though, the crowd was silent. They stood there, aching a little. Perhaps it was from the laughter. Perhaps the cold. Perhaps the sadness.

  Monsieur Snippy stepped forward, wiped his blood-splattered shears on a hanky, and tossed it to the crowd.

  “Voilà,” he said. “Happy Yuletide. Pieter is dead.”

  * * *

  21. You may be wondering how you execute someone with a rusty dessert spoon. Very slowly, is the answer. That’s why the Spoonatic was so terrifying.

  22. Ugor, standing too close, was thoroughly splattered. Ever since that Yuletide, Father Frost outfits have tended to be red, rather than blue.

  (A NOTE ON GRUESOMENESS)

  Because this story is a true fairy tale, it gets rather grim at times. There’s already been a murder. Now our hero’s head has been sliced off. And later on, things will get even more grisly.

  But don’t worry. Pieter hasn’t actually died—because this is a fairy tale.

  And there is a happy ending of sorts—because it is also true.

  3

  Pieter Minus His Head

  After Monsieur Snippy’s announcement, there was a moment of stillness, followed by a blood-curdling shriek.

  Lord Xin had drawn his knife. Shaking, he pointed it down at Pieter’s severed head. The rest of the crowd gasped as they saw why.

  The head had opened its eyes. And then suddenly, it spoke.

  “Ooh,” Pieter said woozily. “What happened? Where was I? Oh yes!” He grinned. “Listen, everyone! I’ve solved it! I know who murdered the Czar!”

  CLUNK. Monsieur Snippy fainted and fell off the platform. Nobody noticed. Everyone was staring in utter horror as the undead head of Pieter Abadabacus talked on and on, without stopping.

  “It’s simple really. On that day when Alexander first became a kitten, he brought something with him down from the kitchen shelf. Or rather,” said Pieter, feeling the words build up in him, like steam, “or rather, he brought lots of little things with him. Little, black, jumping, blood-sucking things. Understand?”

  The crowd in the courtyard said nothing. They were frozen to the spot with terror.

  “Of course you understand!” Pieter went on. “You all know what I’m talking about! And when Alexander drank the Gargantua, it went into his blood, and when they drank his blood, it went into them too . . . It didn’t just make him bigger and bigger, it increased the size of his fleas!”

  Pieter grinned triumphantly. Everything suddenly fell into place. It hadn’t even been a murder at all! The giant fleas had only done what came naturally to them: bitten skin in search of blood. Alexander, who had swimming pools of the stuff, could manage without a few gallons (even if the fleas did keep him rather thin and hungry—no wonder he was always ravenous). The Czar, however, was doomed.

  Pieter’s shout had startled them into jumping away, out through the stained-glass door, breaking the glass. And the Slinjas had never seen anyone because the murderers had been miniscule that day when Alexander had lapped up his first saucer of milk. It was only through the winter, as they sipped again and again on Alexander’s alchemical blood, that they had grown steadily bigger: from full stops, to small spots, to large black blobs.

  “The greatest conqueror of all time,” said Pieter in wonder. “Killed by fleas.”  23

  Although, Pieter thought, this was only partly true. It was the Czar’s ambition, after all, that had led to his death. It had been his obsession to change his son. His ambition. His greed. His insatiable desire to conquer had, in the end, conquered him.

  “So you see?” Pieter said at last. “I didn’t murder the Czar! If anything, he murdered himself! You can’t execute me when I’m innocent! Where’s Monsieur Snippy? Tell him to halt the execution at once! You can’t kill me, I . . .” Pieter trailed off. “Wait a second. Why can’t I feel my body?”

  Noticing it lying several feet away from him, Pieter screamed.

  So did Ugor.

  So did everyone else.

  * * *

  23. No one knows what happened to the Czar’s killers for certain, but many years later on the island of Avalon there lived a group of fleas who were, by all accounts, really enormous. This fleamily (like a family, only smaller and jumpier) lived in an old top hat, and it is extremely likely they were the descendants of the tiny assassins who escaped the Royal Palace that day. Born before their parents’ alchemy-infused blood had worn off, this fleamily became the first of a brand-new species: the biggest and rarest fleas the world.

  What’s more, the fleamily could speak, and hopped about on two legs. Drinking a mix of Gargantua and Catastrophica potions, along with the Czar’s blood, had also had a most surprising side effect: it had made the fleas more human too.

  For more information, read the story of Hercuflor, visit the shop called Happy Ever Afters, and ask for Mr. Stickler.

  4

  Death Goes on Holiday

  After the crowd stampeded in panic from the palace—

  After Ugor revived Monsieur Snippy—

  After the executioner fainted a second time—

  After Pieter’s body sat up, neck still spurting blood, and tried to wander off before falling from the stage—

  After Lord Xin called a priest, who tried with no success to convince Pieter’s soul to leave his body—

  After Monsieur Snippy was taken away to the Gloom Room for performing an incompetent beheading—

  After the courtyard was cordoned off until Pieter finally decided to hop off to Heaven or Hell or Limbo or Wherever—

  After a whole day passed—

  After his head and body were still alive—

  After rumors about Pieter swept through the kingdom—

  (I heard he’s a zombie—)

  (No, obviously a vampyr necromancer—)

  (No, clearly an undead Lich King—)

  After all this happened . . .

  Yet more strange occurrences befell the land of Petrossia. At Yuletide supper in the Winter Palace, five hundred blackbirds all burst from the pie that Empurrer Alexander was about to gobble up, even though the chefs had cooked it in their ovens until the pastry was golden brown.

  Empurrer Alexander didn’t mind, though, and leaped about the Hall of Faces, swallowing up all the poor panicked creatures as they fluttered around the rafters. But afterward, he lay on the ground on his side, hissing and groaning, whilst inside his belly there could be heard the frightened chirruping of a whole flock of birds that were somehow still alive in his stomach even after being eaten.

  The Royal Vet was called, but before he could get there, Alexander let out a strangled meow, and with a rasping farting sound, all five hundred blackbirds flew from his bottom in a huge black cloud, and vanished out the unm
ended stained-glass doors.

  When Alexander finally got tenderly to his feet, he found he had accidentally been lying on the butler. The poor man was squashed flat as a pancake, yet when the others came to scrape him off the carpet, he opened his eyes and began to talk to them. Unable to be a butler anymore, he was folded up and posted in an envelope to the Slinjas, to see what they could make of him.

  As Bloom began to thaw the frozen roads and warm the icy winds, reports began to reach the palace of yet more peculiar occurrences happening all over the country.

  A drowned sailor from Port Xanderberg, whose ship had been sunk off the coast by the pirate Dreadbeard, suddenly walked out of the beach surf one morn, after stumbling blindly across the sea bed for three days.

  A rich duchess paid a small fortune in gold to get one of the last eggs not yet gobbled by Alexander, yet when it was boiled and she broke the shell with her silver spoon, out hatched a fluffy yellow chick that ran across her dining table, crying cheep-cheep-cheep.

  It wasn’t just Pieter—not a man or beast in the whole kingdom could die. They just kept lingering on, when they ought to be passing away.

  This was the final straw for the Czar’s armies. Not only did they have a ruler who wasn’t interested in conquering, but now they were in a country where no one could be killed: their favorite hobby was completely ruined.

  The barbarians mutinied, and set up their own kingdom of Barbaria to the west.24 The Mongols made Lord Xin their Khan Prince, and went on the rampage to the east.

  The Slinja bodyguards turned sideways and slipped away through cracks in the walls. Freed from his oath, Sir Klaus flew away on the back of a blackbird. Only Warmaster Ugor—most loyal of the War Council—remained at the Winter Palace.

  By the time the first blossoms appeared, the Czar’s mighty empire had gone with the wind and frost. All that was left of his once-vast kingdom was his Winter Palace, the River Ossia, and the dark hills and forests around it.