'Everyone wants to know who I was working for. They've asked a lot of questions about Duke Walid.'

'I'm not surprised. He's very high on the list of possible successors.'

'I'd advise him not to take the job, if I were you,' said the Doctor. 'You don't have to be crazy to work here... She suppressed the security systems while we were talking. I expect they came back on automatically after she died, which is when the guards realized what was going on.'

'Did they attempt resuscitation?'

He used a fire extinguisher to shatter the thick plastic of the globe. The Empress had been pounding uselessly on it from the globe. The Empress had been pounding uselessly on it from the inside, jerking and thrashing in her supporting fluid. The signals inside, jerking and thrashing in her supporting fluid. The signals travelling into her withered body were turning into chaotic travelling into her withered body were turning into chaotic pulses. She hung in tubes and wires, half strangled, her flesh pulses. She hung in tubes and wires, half strangled, her flesh coming apart at the seams. When he broke the gla.s.s she was coming apart at the seams. When he broke the gla.s.s she was pushed out in a rush of green fluid, her limbs ripping on the pushed out in a rush of green fluid, her limbs ripping on the plastic. plastic.

'No.'

'G.o.ddess knows how many of them would have done it themselves, given the know-how,' said Genevieve. 'Come to think of it, why didn't she just kill herself?'

172.

'A very good question,' said the Doctor. 'Perhaps she couldn't.

Perhaps she couldn't work out how. Perhaps she couldn't bring herself to do it. I don't know. I do know she couldn't bring herself to order someone else to kill her. It had to be given. Like a gift.' He took off his hat and turned it around in his hands, looking as though there were a lot more to say. 'I haven't told any of the others this, you know.'

'Why are you telling me?'

'Why are you asking me?'

'Perhaps I want to help you,' said Genevieve.

'You'll lose your bet,' said the Doctor.

'Perhaps I'm just curious. I met another Doctor recently, another the the Doctor. I wondered if there was some relationship.' Doctor. I wondered if there was some relationship.'

'Where was this?'

'Earth.'

'I'm so spread out.' said the Doctor, cryptically. 'Even that far.

I wonder...'

'I suppose it was an omen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.'

He wasn't listening. 'I wonder what she expected to happen.

What she meant to happen to me.'

'Ever have the feeling that you're missing something?' asked Genevieve.

'Have you ever woken up,' said the Doctor, 'and looked out of the window at the world, and thought, today anything could happen, today I could be anyone, today everything is possible?'

'You are are him,' said Genevieve. him,' said Genevieve.

'At the moment,' said the Doctor, 'I'm just one of me.' He put his hat back on. 'She's not finished with me yet.'

I love you. Come dance with me. Let's make history.

The Imperial Supreme Court was like a cross between Parliament and an amphitheatre. Concentric circles of high-backed black seats, solemn (but comfortable), arranged around an oval s.p.a.ce at the bottom. Seats for Supreme Judges and Cybertranscribers looked down on the lowest point in the courtroom, a brightly lit square.

173.

The Doctor was marched into the courtroom, in heavy chains he suspected had been recreated from records of the Middle Ages. He couldn't quite march with his legs shackled, but he did manage a cheeky, casual amble, looking around the courtroom.

Despite the dimness, he made out Duke Walid, recognizing his face from the homework he'd done aboard the Hopper, sitting in front of news reports with a tub of b.u.t.terscotch swirl. The Duke had dark hair, a moustache, and one blue and one brown eye.

Very high up the list of successors indeed, as Genevieve had said.

There she was, sitting beside him.

Europe's Duke Armand would be there somewhere as well, and every member of the Imperial Council, eager to be part of this historic (though tragic, of course) occasion. According to Genevieve, they weren't even broadcasting it. Everything was being kept hushed up until they'd got a verdict and a sentence.

After that the media would have open slather.

The Doctor looked up into the fierce white beam. It was supposed to hide their faces from him, he supposed, so that he could see only outlines.

A voice boomed out from somewhere in front of him.

'Doctor. On this day, the fourth of June 2982, you are hereby charged with the malicious, deliberate and wilful murder of Helen the First, Divine Empress Gloriana, Ruler of the High Court, Lord of the Inner and Outer Worlds, High Admiral of the Galactic Fleets, Lord General of the Six Armies and Defender of the Earth. What plea do you wish to enter?'

The Doctor glanced up at the Absolute Imperial Bailiff.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Could you repeat that? I was miles away.' A pleasing scattering of gasps and angry mutterings. The Doctor decided to push it. 'I was just admiring the architecture it's so wonderfully intimidating.'

'Doctor,' said the Bailiff, 'you've been accused of the worst crime this court has seen in its lengthy history.' Scattered cries of 'hear, hear'. 'How do you plead?'

'I refuse to plead,' said the Doctor. 'I don't recognize this court.'

'This is the highest court in the Empire,' someone called out.

'How can you fail to recognize it?'

174.

'I've never seen any of you before in my life,' said the Doctor.

'It might help if I didn't have that wretched light in my eyes.' He looked up to the beam's source. 'Shut that off!' he yelled.

After a moment, and the light obediently snapped off. More mutterings from the court. Remarkable the effect a bit of shouting could have on people. 'That's much better,' he said. 'Now I can see you all properly. I'd like to thank you for coming here tonight. I '

'Doctor!' thundered the Bailiff. 'You must enter a plea!' He was an absolutely enormous man, wearing Adjudicators' robes and bearing a huge ceremonial sword, signing with sharp gestures of his great hands.

The voice was coming from a balloon-shaped drone. Three gun nozzles emerged from the metallic shape, covering every corner of the room. 'If you continue to obstruct these proceedings, a charge of contempt will be added to your record.'

'Regicide and and contempt of court? I'll never get a job with a record like that.' contempt of court? I'll never get a job with a record like that.'

Someone in the audience called, 'I think we can move on to the sentence.'

'I demand a retrial!' shouted the Doctor.

'You haven't had a trial,' said the Bailiff.

'Exactly my point!' said the Doctor.

'But you admitted killing the Empress,' someone called out.

'Any more of that and I'll have this court cleared!' retorted the Doctor.

'You confessed!'

'Hearsay.'

'I was there!'

The Doctor said, 'It was under duress.' He was quite amazed that the two armoured guards who'd brought him in hadn't thumped him yet. He glanced up at the bulky chap to his right.

For a moment he thought he saw a movement under the skin beneath the man's chin. He squinted up at him until the guard shifted uncomfortably, as though the Doctor's stare might shift some of the blame on to him.

'Duress had nothing to do with it,' insisted the Bailiff.

175.

'Of course it did,' said the Doctor. His eye was caught by a flash of metal in the audience gone in an instant. He felt a p.r.i.c.kle down his spine. What was going on here? 'Intergalactic regulation four eight one, paragraph one, subsection forty-five, paragraph nine. "A person surrounded by armed guards pointing guns at him or her and shouting a lot shall be considered to be under duress."'

'There's no such regulation!'

'All right then,' said the Doctor. 'I demand a trial by combat.'

'What?' said the Bailiff.

'Anyone care to step outside?' said the Doctor, looking around.

Here and there he caught flashes of movement, like something crawling around the edge of his field of vision. Any moment now. 'I'm proficient in hand-to-hand combat, blades, custard pies and the Bohemian teaspoon.'

'That is enough!' boomed the Bailiff. The whole court fell silent, even the Doctor. 'The charge has been read. In the face of a prior confession and overwhelming evidence, the regulations allow me to bypa.s.s the plea. Doctor, by the power of the Imperial Court, I sentence you to '

The monsters arrived.

It was the Duke Adeleke who died first. He was suddenly covered in spikes, long, curved structures like overgrown fingernails, bursting out through his skin. He stood up and roared.

No one screamed. No one even moved. Everyone turned to look at the Duke, as though he'd said something rude.

'Oh,' said Genevieve, her voice clear in the silent courtroom.

's.h.i.t!'

The man sitting next to her, a minor official, burst into flames.

He stood up on his seat, the fire running over his entire body, and clawed at her, trying to get past her.

A Marquess howled and twisted into a fat, half-snake shape, sliding along the top of the desks. A guard burst out of his armour, growing fur and hundreds of eyes, and started climbing up the seats.

The courtroom was suddenly full of them, humans distorting into attack creatures. The guards were overwhelmed. As the 176 Doctor was struggling out of his chains, he saw a young Adjudicator being crushed by the Marquess as he tried to defend the Council, her heavy body twined around his as she squeezed.

His face disappeared in her coils.

The chains dropped to the floor. That had taken almost fifteen seconds.

Councillors were running for the exits, screaming. One woman ran straight into a monster with eight arms. It ripped her in half and threw her aside; she was in its way.

Duke Walid had clambered to the very back of the tiers of seats, and was shooting at the monsters as they climbed up after him. The Doctor saw the pattern of the fight it was the Duke they were after. Everyone else was just collateral damage.

The Bailiff landed on him.

The Doctor tried to squeeze out from under the ma.s.sive Adjudicator, but the Bailiff grabbed his arms, forcing him flat against the floor. The man and his armour weighed a ton, squashing him. He could hardly get a breath.

He turned as best he could to look at the Bailiff. Why bother with the prisoner, when the whole courtroom was full of monsters? Devotion to duty was one thing, but The man's eyes had turned into mouths. His face stretched as they widened, becoming maws, filled with shark teeth, row upon row of needles pointing into his skull.

The Doctor struggled uselessly as the mouths dipped towards him. 'Listen!' he shouted. 'You don't need to do this! Break free!'

Someone shot the Bailiff, right through the eye. Mouth.

The Doctor clawed his way out from beneath the heavy corpse.

The Bailiff's drone hovered down to scan him, its three guns still smoking. They were projectile weapons, very no-nonsense. If its scan took in internal detail and decided he had also mutated into a hostile alien, he'd be next.

The drone took off, its guns spinning to spit hot lead at the monsters.

The Doctor leapt up, stumbled over the corpse of a stenographer, and ran towards the pyramid of monsters clawing 177 their way up towards Walid. He was barely holding them back, pumping shot after shot into the group, perhaps a dozen of them.

He almost collided with Genevieve, clambering down the seats.

She elbowed the werewolf in the stomach, hard, ran to the Bailiff, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up his ceremonial sword in both hands.

She aimed a ma.s.sive blow at the backs of the monsters nearest her, severing the spine of the werewolf, almost toppling over with the force of her own swing. The monsters turned in surprise.

The Doctor ran up the seats to one side, just out of the monsters' reach. He heard Genevieve roaring as she wielded the weapon. It was far too heavy for her, but she knew what she was doing.

What she was doing was distracting them so her boss could get away.

The Doctor wished his pockets had not been emptied quite so thoroughly. A handful of ball bearings or a firecracker would be very useful right now.

The snake Marquess had wriggled to the top of the pile of attackers, protected from Genevieve's sword and Walid's pistol by the bodies. She shot out from beneath them, grabbing the Duke's ankles.