Although she would have died rather than admit it, Madame Cardui felt old. There was so much to do and, for the first time in her life, she had started to doubt her ability to do it. She was back in her office at the Palace with a full support staff now – a written order from Blue had sorted out that silly misunderstanding about her imprisonment – but even so she felt her grip on things slipping and slipping and slipping.
Part of it was the plague. There were constant reports of its spread now, and not just the panic that followed the outbreak of any major illness. These were genuine cases, striking indiscriminately at young and old. Two of her staff were plotting its spread using maps from the Situation Room beneath the Palace and the grip the disease now had throughout the Empire was worrying. Or to face facts, frightening. It was crossing borders too, as plagues did, into neighbouring countries. Which meant it was only a matter of time before those borders began to close, with a devastating affect on trade.
Worse still, there were more and more deaths being reported. Most worrying of all, many of them were now occurring among the young, who in theory should have had a large reserve of their future to draw upon. The plague seemed to be growing more virulent. Or possibly – and this was something she dreaded to contemplate – it meant that no one, young or old, had very much future left. It was possible the entire Realm was facing a disaster of unparalleled magnitude.
Dear Gods, she wished Alan were still here. He would have known what to do. If there was anything still left to do…
It felt as though her Intelligence network were crumbling too. Perhaps an exaggeration, but it really did not seem to be functioning as efficiently as it once had. She appeared to have lost Chalkhill, for example. A dreadful man and quite possibly a double agent, but even as a double agent he could be useful. Clearly there was something going on with the Brotherhood, and her instinct told her there might even be a connection with the plague. Was it possible the imbeciles were experimenting with germ warfare. She found the idea hard to accept, but Lord Hairstreak was using the Brotherhood as a power base now and she would put nothing past him.
When the knock came to her door, she assumed it was a secretary and murmured, ‘Come in’, then looked up to find Nymph standing over her. ‘My deeah, what a pleasant surprise. I thought you were still in the Analogue World with Pyrgus. How is the poor -?’ She caught Nymph’s expression and stopped. ‘What’s wrong?’
Nymph said, ‘Pyrgus has caught an Analogue disease.’