For one who was destined to rule a kingdom as advanced and influential as Midanger, Nigel Galbassi’s entry to this world was more the stuff of horror stories than of fairy tales. His mother, the Comtesse Fiona du Marais, died whilst giving birth to Nigel. Her death was not a direct result of giving birth, at least not in the accepted cause and effect kind of way.

Full and detailed investigations were carried out by loyal advisers, counsellors and ministers during the minutes that followed her demise. Their enquiries concluded that as complications of childbirth don’t normally include catastrophic damage in the frontal portion of the middle neck due to application of a sharp instrument, then person or persons unknown must finally have done something incisive. And the case was closed. On the death certificate the royal surgeon recorded her cause of death as mors bene merita.

Not to be outdone. Sorry, I meant to say distraught by his queen’s unplanned departure from his realm, King Ofeio, Nigel’s father, gathered his counsellors around him and, between well-rehearsed and surprisingly convincing sobs, asked them what should be done. Their advice to him was simply to remain calm and wield his influence. Trusting his advisers with his life (though not with his wife, for reasons that were possibly reinforced by recent events), he did just that. Sadly, after the briefest of time, he succumbed to a particularly virulent form of swine influence – HN something or other. His courtiers felt this to be wholly justified on the grounds that they had always believed their ruler to be a total swine.

And so, at the ripe old age of twenty-five days, the Prince Nigel, son of Ofeio, and heir apparent to the throne of the Kingdom of Midanger, became an orphan, a ward of the state and de facto ruler of his land, albeit through the person of his regent, his late father’s younger brother, the Prince Obom.

Obom was as much like his late brother Ofeio as a clear, starlit night sky is like a pile of fetid horse droppings. Where Ofeio was greedy, Obom was generous. Where Ofeio was cruel, Obom was kind. Where Ofeio was … well, I could go on for ever with comparisons of attributes between brothers, but suffice to say the wrong one was born first.

And so it was that, over the years that followed, the kingdom of Midanger was ruled with fairness, compassion, honesty, and justice, and was transformed from an insignificant backwater of a country to one of the wealthiest, most loved, emulated, and visited states in the known world. Kings and princes from far and near sought the counsel of Prince Regent Obom to gain financial and strategic advice and to settle disputes.

During this time, the untidy business of raising Nigel was left to a small group of courtiers led by the ever-absent Sir Henry Fitzhenry, Keeper of the Royal Purse, who felt that his and his underlings’ duties keeping the royal purse were of far greater import than the humdrum daily grind of merely raising the next king, if you can believe such a thing. In the absence of his guiding hand, the day-to-day business of teaching, training and grooming the young monarch-to-be was left to Gertrude, Henry’s first and only child from his first and only wife, the wife who left him to seek her fortune, or at least some fun, as soon as the child was of age.

Gertrude displayed a lax attitude to her duties in relation to raising the heir apparent. As soon as he was able to express a desire, an opinion, or even a reaction, she started each day by asking the growing boy what he would like to do, what he would like to learn that day. Invariably, at first, he answered that question the way every toddler answers every question: NO. So that’s what they did. As he progressed, and believe me, progress was painfully slow, his answer developed from no into nothing. Of course, that decided the day’s activities. As a result, Nigel was, for most of his childhood, raised by television and tablet. He watched the television, his governess took the tablets. It would be unwise and certainly not informative to ask what was in the tablets she took, but it is likely that they were in some way responsible for the fact that the first words ever uttered by her prospective ruler were, “Oh, wow!”

Throughout his childhood and adolescence, there was nothing Bandobrass Galbassi wanted less than to be a leader. He had no yearning for power or authority, he did not seek responsibility or duty, he never hankered after fame or notoriety. Like his father before him, he could tolerate the trappings of privilege and the obscene levels of luxury and wealth that were a necessary adjunct to his station in life but, again like his father, wanted nothing of the concomitant responsibilities and duties.

The problem facing him was that, as the only progeny, the sole issue of Nigel IV and his queen, Melissa, joint rulers of the Kingdom of Midanger and its dominions and possessions, he was the reluctant heir to exactly those things that he never sought and indeed strove to avoid.

As he was, of course, to the obeisance, the life of luxury and the vast, near-incalculable riches that he, unsurprisingly, found somewhat less burdensome.

As if that weren’t enough, the poor lad spent much of his childhood and adolescence embarrassed by and therefore despising his given name: Bandobrass – formally, he was properly addressed as ‘the prince Bandobrass, son of Nigel, and heir apparent to the throne of the Kingdom of Midanger’. He wanted people to call him Brandon. Brandon, he reasoned, was a good name, a noble name, a name with gravitas and with regal connections. Tenuous connections to be sure, but (to his mind, at least) real enough, nonetheless.

For the record and to his great chagrin, nobody had ever called him Brandon.

His family and their retinue, camp followers and hangers-on, as well as all the nouveau-riche, the hat-tippers, the cap-doffers, as well as the wannabes and social climbers addressed him by his given name, Bandobrass or, worse still, its more formal version as referenced above. Everyone else, particularly the peasantry and the dreaded popular press, favoured its most common abbreviations: Bandy or Brassy, both of which made him so angry that he often wished he had the weight, the strength and the courage to give the person who called him it a jolly good punch on the nose. And, of course, for that person not to retaliate. Or even complain.

Fortunately for him, or perhaps not, he had never been required to attend school along with the riffraff or common people, as they preferred to be known. In keeping with royal tradition, Bandobrass was privately educated in the schoolroom of the royal residence by selected tutors; educators who were intellectually and professionally streets ahead of the mere teachers charged with imparting knowledge and training to the spawn of lesser men. One result of that was, of course, that he was not at all socialised; he had never spent time doing normal childhood things with other children.

His instructors operated under contractual constraints that prohibited them from giving anything but the most glowing report on those things that matter to most people: reading age, vocabulary, language skills, mathematics, and artistic ability to name but a few. Additionally, they were tied down by NDAs, the length and complexity of which set new standards for the Grand Assembly and the king’s counsellors. For his part, Bandobrass successfully argued against his undertaking of any form of examination, test or competitive enterprise that might establish firmly where he stood academically.

He believed and was not discouraged from believing that his upbringing had placed him in a position of greater knowledge, of superior understanding and of … well, being better by a country mile than anyone else of his age. Or any other age, for that matter.

He was, of course, wrong. Dreadfully, totally, unbelievably wrong.

He was, in fact, neither better nor brighter than his father, King Nigel IV; the monarch suspected by most of his subjects of being the love child of the holder of the Upper-Class Twit of the Year Lifetime Achievement award and the uneducated daughter of the local village idiot. Nigel was, however, more convinced of his genius than was his son of his. And, as has been observed elsewhere, there are few things more dangerous than an idiot who believes himself a genius. Particularly so if that deluded soul is in a position of authority.

Happily, Queen Melissa, Bandobrass’ mother, was not cast in the same mould. As well as being irresistibly and disarmingly beautiful, she was in equal measure exceptionally bright and almost lethally ruthless. In fact, forget the ‘almost’. She was ruthless; recklessly and tenaciously ruthless like a Honey Badger, a Komodo Dragon, a meerkat protecting her young, or a particularly single-minded and indefatigable Jack Russell Terrier.

Although none of her husband’s subjects ever suspected it, Melissa was more than an enabler; she was the true power behind the throne – and those who even considered the slightest hint of entertaining that possibility would never, even under pain of pain, admit to their suspicion. It was she who made the great decisions of state that drove the kingdom; she who ordered and controlled the royal purse-strings; she who, at her whim, commanded and deployed the palace guard and the military. And she did all this whilst convincing her husband that he was the man in charge, the ruler at whose word armies marched, and the wheels of industry and commerce turned..

That was her true genius.

If asked how she managed to exercise such total control whilst convincing her husband that it was his, not her hand on the tiller, her stock reply was, “I am woman, it’s what we do.”

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Here’s where you have your say. What do you think – worth developing?

Towards the middle of the following afternoon, Gary’s eyes slowly opened, literally and figuratively. He was aware that he now understood everything. He was aware that his mind was so in tune with the aims and purposes of the post-corporeals that they were, effectively, his aims, his purposes. And yet he was, in his essence, still Gary Clarke, whatever that was. He looked up at Isobel with the merest hint of a smile and said, barely audibly, “Call Hayden in. I’m ready to answer his questions.”

“What questions?” Isobel asked, gently stroking Gary’s brow, “I haven’t heard him ask anything.”

“He hasn’t. Not out loud, anyway, but he has been turning things over in his mind these past days, and I want to put him at ease.”

Her hand withdrew abruptly from Gary’s forehead. “Are you saying that you know what Hayden was thinking whilst you were out?” she asked incredulously.

“I am. I know what you were thinking about, too,” he offered a wry smile, “You’re okay, Isobel, the money is already in your account. Check the app.”

Isobel picked up her phone and activated her bank app. Her face lit up with surprise and delight. “That’s nearly double what I was paid last time,” she said, excitedly.

“I thought you deserved a bonus. You’ve been doing a superlative job of looking after me. Take it as my way of saying thank you.”

“You mean you can— “

“If you’re going to ask me if I can hack into the bank system and change transfers, the answer is no, I can’t. I am powerless to do anything that goes against a strict code of legality and morality. What I can do, though, is affect – guide, if you will – people’s thinking.”

“So, you… you made the contracts manager decide to give me extra?”

“I wouldn’t put it in those words, precisely.”

“How would you put it?”

“Well, yeah. Like that, I suppose.”

“Wow. Just wow!”

The silence that followed was broken by the unmistakable sound of a wheelchair entering the room.

“Did you call me?” Hayden asked cheerfully, coming to a halt beside Gary’s bed.

“I was about to, but … no,” Isobel replied.

“I did,” said Gary, “I am ready to answer the questions that have been bothering you for the past few days. But before I do, tell me what you found when you looked at my shoulder.”

“Nothing. Well, a shoulder, obviously, but nothing else. Is the tattoo still there?”

“No, it isn’t,” he said before going on to explain in detail his situation and purpose. He left nothing out, made no embellishments, and went as far as he could into the intentions of the post-corporeals. Finally, he said, “Now you both know as much as I do. But this knowledge cannot, must not, under any circumstances, leave this room – and I think you appreciate why.”

Isobel and Hayden nodded and promised never to breathe a word of what they had learned to any living person.

“You didn’t actually need to promise,” Gary said with a slight chuckle, “I have granted you access to this information only whilst you are in this room. The moment you leave, you will forget the details, but you will know that your questions have been answered, fully and comprehensively, and that there is nothing about which you need to be concerned.”

Hayden looked at Isobel with furrowed brow, “Can he do that?” he asked her.

“Apparently,” she replied. She stood, bent over Gary, planted a brief kiss on his forehead, and said, “My work is done. I’ll be off now. Thanks for the bonus, Gary. Ready, Hayden?”

Hayden looked quizzically towards Gary.

“Go,” Gary said, “you’ve done a sterling job, too. Let me know if you need a reference; I’ll be more than happy to give you one. That goes for you, too, Isobel. You’ve both been terrific.”

Isobel grabbed the handles of Hayden’s chair, looked down with raised eyebrows at its occupant and tipped her head questioningly towards the door.

He nodded.

Isobel pushed him out of the room, out of the house and out of Gary’s life.

Alone now, as Gary pondered his new reality, he accepted that this was the last he would ever see of either of them. Or any of the twenty thousand that started this journey. He was on his own, there was just him.

Finally, he knew and understood what his role was. He knew and he understood what immense, almost godlike powers had been entrusted to him and to him alone. He knew and he understood that he and he alone was master and controller of this world; his world; and that his possibilities and his ability to mould events, circumstances and even time itself were almost without limit.

He did not yet, however, have a clear idea of what he should be doing next.

But he sensed with total assurance that, when the time was right, the path laid out for him would reveal itself, clearly and in great detail, and that he would have the will and the ability to follow wherever it led him – for good or for ill.

One question remained. One question to which he and only he could provide the definitive answer: Gary Clarke – god or devil? Humanity’s champion or the herald of its ultimate doom? Torch-bearer or grim reaper?

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