The Great Troll War

We paused in the elevator lobby outside the ballroom, where Prince Omar Ben Nasil was working on his flying carpet,13 a threadbare specimen that smelled of unwashed spaniels and would have been rejected outright by almost any charity shop you could mention. The carpet was hovering about two feet off the ground, and Nasil was dressed in overalls and lying on a wheeled skate, the way a mechanic might do working under a car. He seemed to be delicately patching the centuries-old carpet, and the inspection light underneath shone through to reveal quite plainly its age and woefully threadbare condition.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

‘Not good, Jenny,’ he said, wheeling himself out from under the carpet to talk to us, ‘the Angel’s Feathers entwined in the warp gives it the ability to float, but it’s magic that controls it, so with the HENRY still operative, we’re not going anywhere.’

‘Well, do your best,’ I said, and he nodded, grinned, then wheeled himself back under the carpet and carried on whistling to himself. We were about to walk into the ballroom when I heard someone call my name.

‘Oh, Miss Strange?’

It was Tabathini, the really tall princess, who was so ridiculously thin that if she were painted pink and taught to walk backwards, she would be indistinguishable from a flamingo.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s about Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Shazine Blossom Hadridd Snodd.’

‘Yes?’

‘She’s not the Crown Princess.’

‘I thought we’d established that’s exactly who she was.’

‘No – no, I mean she’s not just the Crown Princess. She’s technically … the queen of all the UnUnited Kingdoms. Or, as we should say now: the United Kingdoms.’

‘What?’ I said, as the whole point of the Kingdoms was that they had never been united, not once, not ever, not even the tiniest bit.

‘It’s Rule 35b,’ she said, showing me an underlined section in her pocket edition of The Rulebook of Rules about Ruling for Rulers. The awkwardly titled tome was the technical manual that covered all aspects of ruling in the UnUnited Kingdoms, whether they be an insane tyrannical despot or a touchy-feely communal-led socialist collective. I peered closer.

‘Chapter 9, Paragraph 7, Subsection D, Rule 35b,’ said Princess Tabathini, running her finger along the line of fine text. ‘If the Albion Archipelago is invaded by a hostile force, the most senior monarch/ruler still at liberty is to assume command of all the Kingdoms until such time as that ruler relinquishes leadership and/or invading forces are defeated.’

Tiger and I looked at one another.

‘Wow,’ said Tiger, ‘she’s now the supreme leader of all the Kingdoms. That’s a lot of people to be responsible for.’

‘Do we tell her?’ asked Princess Tabathini. ‘I mean, power like that can go to a person’s head, and the next thing we know she’ll be wanting a toilet of pure gold and have an honour guard dressed in peacock feathers and bacon.’

‘Does that happen?’ asked Tiger.

‘More than you think,’ said Tabathini, rolling her eyes.

‘I’ll speak to her,’ I said, ‘but keep this under your hat, eh?’

Princess Tabathini walked off and Tiger and I looked at one another again. The Princess didn’t seem like the sort of person who would suddenly want a gold toilet, but you never knew with princesses.

As soon as we’d entered the ballroom for the meeting and been given our name badges, Monty Vanguard walked over. After escaping Zambini Towers, he’d been in the first wave of displaced citizens to get to Cornwall. As ranking sorcerer he’d directed the filling of the Button Trench, then set up a command post in the Queens Hotel, ostensibly because he had stayed there for a couple of nights in the eighties and really liked it.

‘Hello, Monty,’ I said, ‘how’s the Button Trench holding up?’

‘Secure for the moment,’ he said, ‘although quite what’s stopping them having a human contingent under threat of eat-death remove the buttons to allow them to cross is a little confusing.’

‘Or simply a large tree felled to bridge the gap,’ said Tiger, ‘or a coach.’

‘I agree,’ said Monty. ‘They’re waiting for something.’

‘Shandar was behind all this,’ I replied, ‘and I think it’s something bigger than reluctance over giving refunds.14 How are the observers doing?’

‘Up and running,’ he said. The first task after the Button Trench was completed had been to create a chain of observers who could report in with news of Troll movements to the Human Defence Control room situated in the hotel’s Reading Room.

‘We’ve got at least twelve observers in each Kingdom. They’re also part of an attempt to set up splinter resistance groups who will be ready to move when we have a centralised plan to retake the islands. Since the HENRY has wiped out all wizidrical forms of communication – shoe, conch or hubcap15 – we’re having to rely on antiquated telephone networks with two-way homing snails as a back-up.’