Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero (42 page)

    The cardinal was at his desk, conversing with four curates and a secretary from the Privy Council. They seemed to be discussing a point of law, which, if carried over, would allow the Crown to seize Salisbury’s lands as a penalty for his treason. Salisbury was doomed to meet with the axeman on Wednesday, and Woolly was deciding the fate of his heirs and dependants.

    When he saw Triumff enter, Woolly dismissed the clerics, and ushered his guest to a seat.

    Sir Rupert sat slowly, as carefully as his mending injuries would allow. Only a small bandage on his right hand gave away his hurt, but Woolly knew that a great deal more bandage wrapped his back, arms and thighs. The impact of Jaspers’s body had exploded the Cantriptic orbs, and Triumff had been peppered by crystal shards before the force of the phlogestonic blast had lifted him sheer to the end of the chamber.

    “I didn’t expect you here so soon. Should you not be resting?”

    Triumff shook his head.

    “I have the Queen’s own physician at my chamber door every quarter-hour,” he said, “two of the Guild elders treating me to post-Goetic shock therapy, Agnew concocting every remedy in his damned family herbal, and Doll fussing around me as if I was a newborn babe.”

    Woolly smiled.

    “You deserve no less, Sir Rupert,” he said. “You have done the Unity a great service in the last days, at no small risk to yourself.”

    “This hour has had many heroes, your worship: Gull, de Quincey, the old dam from Suffolk, the Italian fellow”

    Woolly got to his feet, and smoothed his velvet gown.

    “Indeed,” he said, “and each will be rewarded and celebrated as is his or her due. Lord Gull is to be decorated and made a gift of lands. De Quincey is to be given a stipend and a promotion. Mother Grundy and Giuseppe Giuseppo, both of whom came to our aid unbidden, are to be rewarded with whatever they desire.”

    “But for them,” said Triumff with heartfelt relief, “the Cantrip explosion would have levelled London. Only their Arte contained it and focused it up out of harm’s way.”

    “So it would seem,” Woolly said, frowning. “I would dearly love to know how they did that, but it would be churlish and unseemly to interview those who have selflessly aided us.” Woolly reached into his desk drawer and produced two sealed envelopes and a small felt pouch.

    “Other matters I can attend to now,” he said, handing one of the envelopes to Triumff. “Please convey this to your man, Agnew. It is a letter of gratitude and commendation signed by Her Majesty. There is also a bank draft for twenty guineas that he may lavish on himself and your noble savage.”

    Triumff chuckled and took the envelope. Woolly handed him the second. “It is said, a third man assisted in their part of the affair, a man who perhaps was once of the Service. I will not press you concerning him, for I believe he lives in a clandestine manner. If you ever happen across him, give him this: twenty guineas, and an invitation to approach me once more. The Unity has need of honest, well-trained men in these days.”

    Woolly slid the pouch across the table. “For your lady, Mistress Taresheet, an item of jewellery from the Queen’s jewelbox, which Her Majesty hopes will convey both her appreciation of the performance, and her gratitude for Mistress Taresheet’s swift and successful action.”

    “You don’t need to pay us all off, your worship. We did what we did because it mattered.”

    “And I do the same. Now your reward, Rupert. There will be the usual payments, decorations but your true reward will be the one you most seek. I will discourage utterly the Court’s ambitions on your discovery, Australia. I will ensure that it is left alone, for the reasons you gave.”

    Rupert looked the cardinal in the eye. There was little need for further speech.

    “One last thing you must do for me, however,” Woolly added. Triumff frowned, warily.

    “To facilitate a swift resumption of public morale, we need a hero, one the people can rally around and be proud of. A PR exercise, really. We need to put a face on this. Of all the heroes in this piece, you are the most suitable candidate, and having been a hero once or twice before, I know you can pull it off.”

    “That means I’ll have to be well behaved for a while, doesn’t it?” asked Triumff.

    Woolly nodded, and said, “Until they’re tired of making up songs about you and wearing your likeness on their doublet fronts.”

    He paused, and waited for Triumff’s reply.

    Outside, the sun blazed down across the Richmond Green and the silver river beyond. High up, invisible, a lark was singing. London shone. Even in the Rouncey Mare, there was a brief moment of clearheadedness.

    I, your humble servant Wllm Beaver, met Sir Rupert as he walked back through the Privy Gardens to the stables. He was in a good humour. I rose from the bench where I had been sitting scribbling, and fell into step with him. The air was full of the scent of lavender, and someone in the Palace kitchens was whistling a country air.

    “William,” he said.

    “Sir Rupert.”

    “Doing as I suggested?”

    “I am assembling all the facts. Once done, I will compose a fluid piece of heroic prose that will, I trust, do justice to this this”

    He stopped and turned to me.

    “Dog’s dinner?” he suggested.

    Inspiration had temporarily left me.

    “Don’t get lost for words now, Beaver,” he said. “You’ve barely started.”

    “Sorry,” I said. “And one little thing. A question I have,” I added.

    He signalled that I should ask it.

    “The Cat, the creature that your servant Agnew brought to the Powerdrome.”

    “It perished in the blast.”

    “That I know, poor thing.” I paused. “My question is what was it?”

    “A casualty of greed, a victim of the violation of old Magick. A little time ago, Hockrake tried to rekindle the old power of Stonehenge,” said Triumff.

    “So I’ve heard.”

    “He failed. Magick leaked and twisted things. Things changed their forms. The Union had to clean up the mess.”

    I waited. I knew he was holding back on something. He was looking absently at the hazy spring sky, toying with the tassels on his gloves.

    “Hockrake needed help in his crazed scheme. He faked official papers and persuaded a Churchman to conduct the misguided rite in the belief that it was by order of the Church Office.”

    He paused for a moment, and then looked at me sharply.

    “I warn you, Beaver,” he said, “you may not want to know this.”

    I said nothing.

    “The Churchman was caught in the blast,” he continued, after what felt like a very long pause. “His body was transformed by the hideous spill of power. In his unnatural new state, he sought revenge on those who had damned him so.”

    “And?” I asked.

    “His name was Jaspers.”

    I swallowed once. “Jaspers? But then, who?”

    Triumff smiled his roguish smile, and winked.

    “Or what? If we’re lucky,” he said, “we’ll never know the answer to that, and if we’re really truly lucky, flame and sword will keep it in the grave.”

    He saluted me, and strode away down the gravel path. As he disappeared from view behind the stable arch, I could hear that he was humming a song about the Guinea Coast.

    That was the last time I saw him.

    Until the next.

VIVAT REGINA.
FINIS.

Dan Abnett is a bestselling writer of combat SF, and comics, foreign and domestic. He has an English degree from Oxford University, and has spent twenty years honing his several crafts. His work on T
orchwood
and
Doctor Who
projects have been particularly well-received, and his novels for Black Library, including the epic
Gaunt’s Ghosts
series, are more than a little popular. He has adopted yet another voice to write original fiction for Angry Robot, and is currently working on the military science fiction epic,
Embedded.

When he’s not writing, or attending comic and gamesrelated conventions, he can be found in the kitchen, cooking for his family, or in the ballroom, dancing with his wife. He lives and works in Kent, amongst a large, extended family, and his website is at www.danabnett.com

Upon the Inception of
Triumff : Her 
Majesty’s Hero

Sir Rupert Triumff, along with his friends, colleagues and, even, enemies, has been an acquaintance of mine for a surprisingly long time. In fact, I cannot say with any degree of accuracy when I first met him, or under what precise circumstances. I think the chances are, it was right at the end of the 1980s, or the very start of the 1990s, when I was first finding gainful employment as a writer and editor in London. An idea flashed upon me, and I was taken with it.

    It’s the essence of
Triumff
that’s been with me ever since. The actual material of his adventures, though, has metamorphosed and altered over the years.

    There is something about his basic milieu that particularly appeals to me as a writer and a creator. As soon as I’d thought of it, I was captivated by its possibilities, and knew that, one way or another, it would be the foundation of a piece of work.

    It’s possible that I started writing an early draft of what would become the Triumff novel in the late 80s, and that I then adapted part of that text into several episodes’ worth of full script for a comic book version that never saw print (although I got as far as collaborating with Simon Coleby, a comic book artist with whom I have worked, with great pleasure, regularly throughout my career). Simon and I certainly tried to get
Triumff
off the ground as a comic project, and he did some character sketches based on my scripts, although neither the scripts nor the sketches remain.

    It’s equally possible that I first envisioned
Triumff
as a comic, and that I only started to develop it as a novel, adapting the comic scripts I had already written, once I realised that no one wanted to buy an alternate history, magical fantasy, swashbuckling, Elizabethan adventure comic in 1989.

    The point is,
Triumff
has been lurking in my brain for a long time, trying to find a way out.

    Why has it persisted so? Well, as I have already said, the idea and the setting simply combine so many things that I find particularly appealing (hardly a surprise, seeing as I came up with it), but that doesn’t really explain the perseverance of its appeal. I can only conclude that it’s one or more of the following reasons:

1.
It was an idea that I had at a very particular, formative point in my creative life, and therefore has left an indelible mark.

2.
Sir Rupert Triumff is a persistent individual, and he was never going to let me get away that easily.

3.
It was simply a good idea that needed to be written, sooner or later.

    Whatever the reason, I’m glad it stuck around, and I’m delighted to have this opportunity to finally let it see the light of day. Taking all those old pages of notes, unfinished drafts, scraps and notebooks and half-remembered scenes, and turning them into a coherent novel has felt both like a catharsis and an exorcism, and I feel I’ve really owed it to the old bugger. I hope you, constant reader, have enjoyed the result of my labour as much as I enjoyed the labouring.

    The trouble is, of course, that I’ve let him out now. I’m not entirely sure that he’s ever going to go away again.

Dan Abnett Maidstone, September, 2009

A ROOM OF THINE OWN

from
The Greater City of London Gazette& Advertizer
, issue of 10th January, 2010

This week
, the chambers of the celebrated journalist and
biographer, Wllm Beaver Esq.

As you can see, gentle reader, I abide in a loft apartment on Fleet Street. The area suits me just fine given that I am, of course, a person of the press. I am just a few flights up from the street level, and I do enjoy the wonderful, evocative and apparently constant aroma of subcontinental cuisine.