15 - The Scarlet Empress

DOCTOR WHO

The Scarlet Empress

An Eighth Doctor Ebook

By Paul Magrs

Contents

Chapter 1 . . . . . .Does Travel Make You Happy, Ms Jones?

Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . I Was A Charmer

Chapter 3 . . . . .She Was Never Without Her Enchantments

Chapter 4 . . . . . . .After All I've Survived

Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Down, Boys

Chapter 6 . . . . . . Another Day, Another Lovely Adventure

Chapter 7 . . . . .Nobody Thinks Nothing

Chapter 8 . . . . . . . . . Any Vigilante's Life

Chapter 9 . . . . . . . . All About Equilibrium

Chapter 10 . Standing Around Virtually Naked

Chapter 11 . . . . . I'm Entirely Credulous

Chapter 12 . . . . . . . . . .Queen of Misrule

Chapter 13 . . . . .Pulling Out Her Hearts

Chapter 14 . . . . . . . . . . Hating Monsters

Chapter 15 . . . . . .Hands of the Duchess

Chapter 16 . . . .I've Been Possessed by the Best of Them

Chapter 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Telling Tales

Chapter 18 . . . . . . . .Will You Come Back For Me?

Chapter 19 . . . They're All Wierd Places

Chapter 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Out of Body

Chapter 21 . . . .Something Like a Genie

Chapter 22 . . . . . I've Had My Moments

Chapter 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Going Down

Chapter 24 .The Walrus and the Turtle

Chapter 25 . . . . . . . . . . .On The Kristeva

Chapter 26 . . .In The Belly of the Beast

Chapter 27 . . The Bearded Lady's Tale

Chapter 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . .Welcome Back

Chapter 29 . . . . . . . . . .With the Empress

Chapter 30 . . . . . . . . . Something for Iris

Chapter 31 . . . . . . . . . . . .Stealing Honey

Chapter 32 . . . . . . . . . . . . .A Month Later

Chapter 33 . . . . . . . . .Inside the Machine

Afterword - Better than the Telly

This book is for Jeremy Hoad, with love.

And it's with thanks to:Joy Foster, Louise Foster, Charles Foster, Mark Magrs, Nicola Cregan, Michael Fox,

Jon Rolph, Antonia Rolph, Steve Jackson, Laura Wood, Lynne Heritage, Paul Arvidson, Alicia Stubbersfield,

Siri Hansen, Meg Davis,

Reuben Lane, Amanda Reynolds, Richard Klein, Paul Cornell, Lucie Scott, Vic Sage, Julia Bell, Kenneth J

MacGowan.and Jeremy.

I might have missed out various companions who have seen me through other regenerations, so thanks to

them too.

Welcome to Hyspero, everyone. Love, Paul.

Chapter One

Does Travel Make You Happy, Ms Jones?

All day she had tried to ask him a question. Did he ever really listen, though? Sam tried to play it cool, to

make it seem as if she didn't really mind. She wandered along behind him, taking in all the sights and the

rich, heady smells of the city. It was the only way to carry on with him, she had learned. Wait until he came

back from whichever vague, abstracted realm he inhabited when he wasn't in a talking mood, and absorb the

atmosphere of the place in the meantime. Often this meant looking out for possible danger. He looked so

guileless when he was out and about, as if nothing bad could possibly happen to him. Which was ridiculous,

of course, given his past record. In some ways Sam thought of herself as his protector. She was his only link

with the world of common sense. He was so blithe. He never seemed to learn.

This was a city crammed with wonders. Steeples and minarets crowded the brilliant skies; onion and turnip

domes, bronze and verdigris towers pricked and glinted and, when she stared up at their massiveness, Sam

was overwhelmed by a kind of vertiginous awe. Something she wasn't used to. Sam, who took everything in

her stride, who'd already spent a few years now knocking about the backwaters and unbeaten tracks of

various worlds. Here though, in Hyspero, the capital city of the world Hyspero, Sam felt herself a mite close

to becoming overwhelmed by the profusion, the teeming smorgasbord of alien life. Not alien, she reminded

herself. Nothing is alien, as the Doctor occasionally told her, to a citizen of the universe. So she tried hard to

feel at home in the bustling confusion of sharklike bipeds, dancing girls, turbaned and scimatar'd warriors,

Draconian princes in their jewelled robes of state, ambling tortoises, monkeys and yacanas, Spiridons in

purple furs and Martians in armour. Hyspero was a world where people came for adventure, romance, local

colour, the Doctor had explained earlier that morning. It was a place where you could still believe in sorcery

and where swords were still legal. And the shopping, he added, was fantastic. More exotic clutter for the

TARDIS console room, she thought. The Ship that Sam had made her home already looked like a

collaborative attempt at a Gothic folly by Aubrey Beardsley and Jules Verne. Or so the Doctor had proudly

declared one afternoon, gazing around at his Ship, just after Sam had suggested that a really convincing

space-and-time travelling machine ought to have an interior that was completely white and luminous, and

looked a little more futuristic. That afternoon - yesterday - and not for the first time, she had hurt the Doctor's

feelings. He had put on that stung look, and had gone to watch his butterflies in the next room. Luckily he

never held a grudge for long. She didn't think he had the attention span for real grievances.Whereas, she

reflected, I do.

He smiled at her and led the way through the endless byways and throughways of the marketplace. Here it

was even busier. Hawkers shouted out their wares and competed with each other for the attention of the

milling visitors. Sam knew their patter must have been in a thousand different languages, but by now she was

quite used to understanding practically everything, immediately, by virtue of the TARDIS's telepathic circuits.

She was almost blase about being able to eavesdrop on anyone. The only downside to the instantaneous

translation effect was, of course, not being able to learn an alien language if she wanted to. Not when

everything came out in her own tongue: English, south London, late twentieth, almost twenty-first, century.

So much for immersing herself in the exotic and bizarre. The way these market traders were yelling out, she

might as well have been shopping down the Portobello Road. Except it was hot. The sweat was streaming

down her. She could feel it drying on her T-shirt and ripped shorts. The sand of the city's rough pavements

was inside her boots already and, she imagined, burning blisters with every step she took.

How contented the Doctor looked. He was an expert in simply pottering about, easing his way into crowded

shop doorways, picking things up, sampling stuff, haggling away with burly, viridian-fleshed lizard women.

Carpets and monkeys and coffee pots and mirrors - he was interested in everything. This was how he had

made his way through life, Sam thought - picking up little bits here and there. Perusing and wandering. A

browser. He filled his pockets with pomegranates and figs, he folded sprays of jasmine and other, more

exotic herbs into his shopping bags, and inspected the ripest of cheeses. He thought long and hard about

(and eventually decided against) buying a gaudy parakeet that was trained to answer back in the

filthiest curses. He managed to ignore the even viler curses of the trader who thought he had made an easy

sale to a gullible offworlder. The Doctor simply wandered away, off to the next stall. Sam watched him

produce from one of his capacious pockets a bag of glittering coins and she knew it would be the relevant

currency for this time period. He walked with the insouciance of the extremely rich, and yet, in a sense, he

had nothing. No real home, no proper role. Nothing to anchor him to life. This was one of the things Sam

wanted to ask him about. All he had was his rackety, miraculous, ridiculous Ship and his various fragmented

friendships with beings scattered throughout the centuries. But what did he have that was really his?

Sometimes she felt sorry for him, almost. He would never fit in anywhere and she was sure, somehow, that

underneath his bluster and otherworldly finesse, the Doctor really minded, even resented, his alienation.

Sam realised that he had set about buying presents, accumulating a pile of packages and wrapped souvenirs

and making out that he was far too busy to listen to her.

All Sam wanted to ask him was this:'In the end, do you think all your travels nave ever made you actually

happy?' She had woken up this morning with the question in her head. It was one of those questions that

would go round and round inside her mind until she asked it and got a decent answer. Sometimes she could

be quite persistent, which, she thought, infuriated her companion. But that was what he was there for. Yet

you had to be careful with his moods, sometimes. She had seen him flare up unexpectedly on a number of

occasions. That was when she realised that this affable, somewhat bemused front he had wasn't the whole

story. There were such depths to him, Sam knew. And these were what fascinated her and kept her travelling

- however erratically - with him. She knew that, in the end, at some level, her Doctor had all of the answers. If

she stayed with him long enough, he would tell her the lot. He could be a laugh, too, when he wanted to be,

and he was a wizard in the kitchen, and these things also made it all worthwhile.

Today he seemed happy enough, and in the end she was content to troop around the souks with him,

listening to him gossip and barter in that way he had, assuming that every stranger he met was going to be a

lifelong friend. Sam was beyond the stage of being embarrassed by his forwardness with new people. She

hung back and let him try to charm his way wherever he wanted to go. One of those shark people was glaring

at him with dull Mack eyes, champing its many rows of serrated

teeth as he made small talk at a confectioner's with some kind of crystalline being, and Sam urged him on,

out of the shark's space. Often she found herself watching his back like this. He was supposed to be an

expert in some kind of Venusian kung fu, or had been at some point, but from what she had seen, he hadn't

the heart to be a real fighter. If someone was giving the Doctor evil looks, it was easiest just to get him out of

the way.

He protested that he had been trying to buy jelly babies.'And now I'll have to do without.' He sounded almost

petulant.

Sam tutted. She thought this jelly baby thing was just an affectation. It wasn't as if he actually ate them

himself. He liked to offer them to people when he first met them. It put people - especially hostile ones - off

their stroke. It never worked, as far as she could tell. 'That shark thing was giving you the evil eye,' she told

him.

'They always look like that! They can't help it! Poor things.' It was too hot today to argue or to pursue a point.

It was far too hot this late in the afternoon to be tearing about the streets of the city still. She wanted to sit

somewhere cool and catch up with herself. Her head was spinning, too, from drinking the strongest coffee

she had ever tasted. And they'd told her it was decaffeinated. About an hour ago the Doctor had sat them at

an outside table of a cafe and downed his own glass in one skilful gulp. He had flinched but was otherwise

unharmed. Sam had a fierce headache coming on. As they passed into yet another street, she saw that

shoppers and tourists were taking siestas where they sat under brightly striped awnings, and in the

deliciousty cool recesses of shady cafes.

How could he stand gadding about in that thick velvet coat - his waistcoat and cravat both still fastened and

neatly tied and stuck with a diamond pin? He must be sweltering. She had never known him yet dress down

for a trip abroad. Next to his habitual late-Victorian foppishness she felt almost shabby. Her candy-striped

shorts and Throwing Muses T-shirt had attracted a few stares this afternoon. Look at the Doctor. Elegant and

unruffled. He'd seemed almost upset when she asked him why he was wearing all those clothes.

'It's just me, isn't it?' he said. 'Do you really expect me to wear a T-shirt? Come on! I was never meant to look

casual. I can't do it. Casual isn't in my nature. Frenetic or languorous, yes. But nothing in between. And

certainly not beachwear.' More affectation, she thought.

At one particular stall the Doctor hunted through multicoloured ropes of satin and silk, thinking, perhaps, of a

waistcoat in turquoise. Hysperon merchants were well known for the silks they brought back from their

travels. The way Sam had a go about how he was dressed up made him start to think about it. She thought

he overdressed. She probably thought he looked ridiculous. But it had been a long time since he had cared at

all about what he wore. His last two bodies had had awful dress sense. Every time he saw a photo of either of

them he gave an involuntary flinch. What had he been thinking of? He seemed to remember that a couple of

his earlier serves rather enjoyed swanning about the place, forever in Edwardian evening dress, like them, he

relished the idea of anachronism, of standing out in a crowd like a sartorial pun. He had caught a glimpse of

himself today, several times, in flyblown mirrors, and he realised who it was he reminded himself of, with

those flowing locks, that jaunty stride, the starched wing collars: I've made myself into Percy Bysshe

Shelley, he thought, not unhappily. Swishing about in the Orient and making up rhymes. Or maybe I'm just

Keats.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into bis ken; Or like stout Cortex, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific - and all bis men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -

For a few moments the screen is black. Lines run across it horizontally, fuzzy and white. There is a thunk

and a whirring as the soundtrack comes on. The screen lightens, bursts into colour.

This is somebody's hand-held video camera. Searing blue skies. Impossibly blue skies, wheeling above us.

Whoever holds the camera has terrible aim. The picture steadies, tries to focus. We see distant, blurry

mountains, jagging the horizon. Miles of remote dunes swim in and out of our sight. This is a yawning dust

bowl, open before us on the screen. The sand is the exact colour of dried blood. A salt lake winks in the glare

of the sun. Cut to:

The Doctor. His grey eyes shielded by his hand, squinting into the camera. He carries his green velvet coat

bunched under one arm. His shirtsleeves are rolled, his wavy dark hair hangs down over his face.

'Iris. I'm not going to tell you again.'

He turns abruptly away from us.

'I'm tired and I've nothing to say to you. So switch your camera off. I've had it up to here with you and your -'

Cut to:

The same desert scene, just as colourfully bleak, some time later. Sam is sitting happily on a rust-coloured

rock. She is in the same Throwing Muses T-shirt and shorts. She wears shades, and the sunlight on her

short blonde hair is blinding.

'OK, OK, ask me. I've never seen myself on telly. What? Oh, introduce myself. I'm Sam Jones and this is me

in the middle of bloody nowhere. We're all on Hyspero, having the time of our lives. This is meant to be some

kind of quest and it's all down to the mad old woman who's holding the camera. That's you, Iris. OK, so here

we are, making home movies in the hottest place I think I've ever been. What? Oh, I'm from Earth. London. I

left in, let's see, 1997. Don't know what year it is now. Do you always interview your travelling companions?

Yeah? I should get a camera. Some of the things I've seen recently. Here, give me a go. I'll film you.'

***

Later that afternoon they found they had wandered past the main tourist traps, and into the shadier, seamier

side of town. The racial mix was less broad here. Most of the faces they saw were native Hysperon: the long,

solemn visages, the beige flesh tones, the air of lugubriousness in the bearing of the city dwellers. 'They live

under something of a regime, you see,' said the Doctor. "They're kept in line by a rather ruthless militaristic

soldiery who are pledged to protect -'

As he said this they were passing the doorway of a butcher's shop. The air was thick with heavy, rank and

bloody aromas that congregated in the street like djinn. All the shops down this stretch seemed to be

butchers. The Doctor didn't seem to have noticed the stench. Sam hated it. She looked down and saw that

the gutters were running with blood: the deep magenta of Cabernet Sauvignon, soaking into the dirty sand.

She could feel herself start to gag. She turned to the Doctor and caught a flash of something running by at

knee level. A small black lamb, shooting past out of the doorway of the shop nearest them. It was a ragged,

pathetic-looking thing that darted through the Doctor's legs, making him stumble. He gave Sam an inadvertent

shove and, as she tried to avoid treading on the escaping beast, she took a headlong fall on to the

hard-packed ground. She swore.

'Sam!' chided the Doctor. He had dropped all of his shopping. Around her lay pieces of burst fruit, tissue

paper, and bits of a pottery owl he had bought for someone. He bent to help her up, a stupid smirk on his

face.

The lamb stood in the bloody gutter. It stared at them, squealed a very unsheeplike squeal and bounded off

into the alleyway, soon losing itself in the crowd.

"That was a lucky escape for someone,' smiled the Doctor.

'Good thing, too,' Sam retorted.

Now seemed an appropriate time as any to ask her question. 'Doctor, are you -' She was swiftly interrupted

by the butcher himself, who darted full pelt from the rank confines of his shop. He was swathed head to foot

in black netting, from which dangled pink gobbets of mangled flesh. He bellowed incomprehensibly and

waggled a duty-looking scimitar at them, holding it close up to his misshapen plum-coloured nose and

brandishing it in a way that was likely to do more damage to himself than those he was accusing.

'He's furious,' the Doctor murmured, and quickly helped Sam to her feet. She checked on her sunburned,

lobster-pink knees and found they were gashed and bleeding.

The butcher gabbled at them, spittle flying out of his mouth and catching on his thick black beard. For some

reason Sam couldn't understand a word he was saying. Either he was insensibly angry, or the TARDIS was

refusing to translate. Sam didn't mind either way.

'He says we've taken his whole livelihood.' The Doctor surmised hurriedly, in that excitable way he sometimes

had. He gripped Sam's scuffed elbow. "That straggly little beast was apparently worth a thousand dirnas.

Either we reimburse him, or risk the consequences.'

Sam gulped.'I've got no money.'

'And I've spent every penny I had.' His parcels lay scattered up the pavement. 'I always do.' Some of his

things had already been whisked away by passers-by. Even the smashed pieces of the ceramic owl.

The butcher was still shrieking and waving his scimitar, but now he was crying for the Scarlet Guard.

'Is the Scarlet Guard the military force you said everyone was so scared of?' Sam asked.

"That's the one,' the Doctor nodded.'Terrible lot.'

Sam backed off into the crowd, dragging the Doctor by the sleeve of his green frock coat. She looked for a

clear street to run into. Suddenly every route looked impassable. A whole host of curious, hostile faces were

shoving in to see. Then she saw a particular, uncrowded alley.

'Not up there,' the Doctor said, pushing through. 'Over half the streets in this city fetch up in dead ends. That's

one of them. Come on, this way.' And then he was off.

They pelted through the stifling, fragrant, chaotic hugger-mugger of the souks. And behind them they could

hear the wailing of some kind of horn. "That'll be the Scarlet Guard; said Sam.

'All this for a sheep!' gasped the Doctor.

'Do you do this on purpose?' Sam asked. 'Every time I try to ask something personal?'

They shot down a clear, bright, stone corridor, sand rasping on heated stone. It was the height of the

afternoon in the city of Hyspero and too close to go dashing about. He looked at her and tossed his hair out

of his eyes.

'Were you asking me something?'

'I was only asking about your journeys,' huffed Sam. 'Are you really happy in the end, always moving about?'

'Down here!' he called, turning to a dark side-alley, where they had to tiptoe madly through dank pools and

across the strewn bodies of beggars who seemed to have given up the ghost.

'I dislike analysis and deconstruction and psychology and psychoanalysis, you see,' the Doctor said/all that

stuff. It's just prying. That's why you don't hear me spilling out my confessions all over the place.'

'And what confessions they'd be!' Sam laughed.

'Indeed,' smiled the Doctor grimly, and stopped running. 'Maybe we can pause for breath; They couldn't hear

anyone shouting after them. The blare of the horns had died away.'Do you know, sometimes - while we're on

the subject of happiness - I don't think I'm ever happier than I am when I'm running away from someone.'

'Masochist.'

'Oh, don't say that! I'll start worrying about myself. That's what I mean about analysis. Sometimes I think

you're better off not knowing too much.' He leaned against a filthy wall and took a deep lungful of the fetid air.

Sam shrugged.

'Honestly, Sam, it isn't so long since I was a terrible old duffer who wouldn't tell you what was going on, would

shout at you as soon as look at you, would expect you to be quiet and do what I said, and be there to untie

me in cellars and scream out when you saw danger heading our way...'

'Here comes danger,' she said, as, round the corner of the empty street came the butcher and two city

guards, in their flowing scarlet robes. Sam had a glimpse of their crimson finery, and also the bobbing pates

of their bald heads. The guards' skin appeared to be entirely blue.

'Tattoos,' said the Doctor. "The Scarlet Guard are tattooed over every inch of their bodies. Each one different.

Come on, run!'

Off they went again.

'They don't take kindly to thieves here,' said the Doctor.

'I didn't even steal that sheep! I didn't want a sheep!'

"This whole world has a literature that celebrates the daring deeds of thieves and assassins,' said the

Doctor.'But only the ones who don't get caught.'

Experts at being chased, the Doctor and Sam eventually managed to shake off the guards and the butcher.

They hid in the murky doorway of a shop that dealt in old books and scrolls.'Have we escaped?' Sam gasped.

The Doctor nodded. 'If we get split up, you remember where the TARDIS is, don't you?'

She gave him a withering look.'How long have I been knocking about with you?'

He mumbled an apology and picked a faded and cracked volume from a table in the doorway.'And does travel

make you happy, Ms Jones?'

'I wondered if places and faces started to look the same in the end. You've been round the block a few times.'

'If I ever get bored; he said, 'I'll let you know.'

They stood in the stifling heat, looking at each other. The air smelled of ancient, sun-bleached paper. The

Doctor thought about telling his companion where vellum came from. How they skinned calves ripped fresh

from the uterus. How it took fourteen to make a single, precious volume. How this small shop must crowd

with the unquiet souls of unborn cows. Sam would sympathise. Then he saw that she was in no mood to be

lectured on interesting topics. He sighed. She so rarely was these days.

'You never answer anything, do you?'

'To be honest, I think I've forgotten half the things I've got myself into.' He was examining the book in his

hands. Its binding was the colour of dried blood. He sniffed it and got a whiff of sand and dust.'It's an

adventure story,' he said, frowning. "This shop seems very good value.

This is very cheap.' Then he remembered he had no money. He smacked his forehead with his palm.

Then Sam realised that in all his exertions he hadn't even worked up

a sweat.'And all my presents! Lost in the street.' Sam knew he would never have got round to delivering them.

She felt a twinge for him, at the way he couldn't hang on to anything. And yet he was such a hoarder. She

asked,'What's the book?'

Just lately he was going through a phase of buying books wherever they went, and carrying them back to the

TARDIS, piling them up on every available surface in the already cluttered console room. And yet it was

months since she had seen him sit down and actually read anything. He just collected them, and enjoyed

arranging them on tables and chairs. Maybe he read them when she wasn't around. She had to admit, she

wasn't the easiest person to read with. Sam always grew restless, and wanted to be chatting or going out

somewhere. She wanted to ask him if, in the future, anyone developed some kind of syringe with which you

could inject information, books, knowledge. Maybe not.

'It's just called Aja'ib . It's a book of strange marvels.' He picked a chapter at random and read. 'In which our

hapless hero travels to the lost city under the sea, seduces the sea witch, kills the king, and unleashes the

power of the giant white bird that controls the passing of time.'

Sam snorted. "That's ridiculous.'

He looked perplexed.'I wish I'd saved some money.'

'Steal it.'

'Sam,I can't!'

She looked around. No sign of the shopkeeper. The small shop appeared to be completely empty. Its

secluded interior sent a shiver through her. Anything could be lurking inside. She seized the battered volume

from his grasp and tucked it into her haversack. 'Be a devil. Call it a present.'

As they moved briskly away, up the street, the Doctor looked scandalised. Now they really were thieves. He

wondered if the city guards were circulating their descriptions already. He had heard some terrible things

about the Scarlet troopers. His last few sojourns here had been surprisingly unhectic and he hadn't run up

against the tattooed men. Maybe it was time to move on.

Night fell gently over the city of Hyspero, and the Doctor led the way to a vantage point high on the city walls.

Mortar crumbled under their feet. The ancient bricks rattled as they climbed and the steps seemed less than

safe. In the quiet the Doctor found himself more at ease again. This was an extremely old city, on an ancient

world. As always in places of great age, he felt himself mentally basking in the place - soaking up its

antiquity.

From here they could watch the pink light dwindle and fade over the ramshackle towers and palaces, holy

places and shanty towns. The city's pointlessly intricate streets grew darker and they seemed to become

empty and still. It was almost as if a curfew was in effect. The streets became great canyons. Nothing stirred.

Then, gradually, lamps were lit, threading the city in a vague, glimmering coherence. The city of Hyspero was

coming to life again, with the various businesses of the night.

The Doctor and Sam sat high on the city walls, their backs against rock still warm from the sun. They feasted

on figs and peaches and pomegranates that had managed to survive intact in his pockets. They watched the

people of the night in all their finery begin to traipse the pavements, carrying with them paper globes with

candles inside. It was as if some great festival was taking place.Weird music issued from every shrouded

doorway. Beings of every sort danced in the roadways, but not in the concerted and carefree jamboree of a

Mardi Gras. Each of the night people seemed to be dancing to their own erratic tune, and up to their own

affair. It was a strange sight that the Doctor and Sam took in that night. An air of surreptitious glee had

overtaken the streets. Other offworlders were out and about, too, they noticed, evidently partaking of the

streets' heady air of vice. Hyspero was famed in this sector as the place for finding absolutely anything you

might desire, hi some quadrants they called it the world that invented desire. When the Doctor told Sam this

she was quite surprised at him. He always seemed so wholesome to her. She laughed and he blushed.

They were quiet together for a while, simply savouring the evening. The Doctor flipped idly through the book

Sam had stolen for him. Sam found herself itching to be back down in the city, and seeing what the locals

got up to. The burgeoning excitement on the wafting, spice-laden night breezes was infectious.

"This is all about a terrible rogue,' he said tutting.'He calls up the devil in this story! Gives everyone the

runaround. Then he draws evil monsters from the sea. They have the heads of fish and the bodies of men. He

enlists monsters and rogues and djinn to destroy his hated, perfect brother. Who always -' the Doctor smiled

- 'manages to escape scot-free.'

Sam managed a polite smile. She wasn't interested in adventure stories just now. She remembered the time,

a couple of weeks ago, when they'd been hanging around between stopping-off points for hours. The Doctor

had sat on the high-backed chair with his feet on the console, idly flipping through Marvel comics. It turned

out he was a bigX-Men fan. Sam had grown infuriated with him, stifled by the dusty air aboard the ship. Just

lately it had seemed as if he didn't want to get involved in anything more perilous than stories. She ate the

last of the fruit, sucked the juice off her fingers and looked across at him.

The Doctor was completely absorbed in his ancient text. He kept saying,'Listen to this bit!' and reading aloud.

Not for the first time Sam suspected the Doctor had a sly liking for the out-and-out villains of this world. 'Now

he's sold his good brother to his worst enemy! Iron automata possessed by evil spirits!'

As it grew darker still Sam tried to draw him out of the book.'Did you say this whole planet was desert, apart

from this city?'

Absently he shook his head. 'Geographically, the whole place is a bit of a dog's dinner. Take a look.' He

threw her what seemed to be an old hanky. It was a map of the entire world, drawn on a scrap of faded cloth.

It was a very vague map. She pocketed it.

'I might climb down and have a look about,' she said. She stood up, silently defying him to stop her. There

wasn't a word from him. She kicked at his boot. Nothing. She made a decision. She'd explore the other side

of the city wall, the other side of the one they had climbed up.

'Hm?'

'I'm going to stretch my legs.'

'Good idea.' He turned the page.'Don't do anything I wouldn't.'

She rolled her eyes and shinned down the crumbling wall, arriving below in one more dark alleyway. Well, she

thought, dusting herself down, and wincing at yet more nasty abrasions: excitement here I come. Give me

vice, give me scandal. Give me the world that invented desire.

The streets here were dark and quiet. Maybe the fun had already been and gone. Sam set off at a run down

the alleyway. She was determined.

If something was going on tonight in Hyspero, she was going to be part of it.

***

The Doctor drew up his knees and carried on reading, squinting at the page by moonlight.Where was he? Oh

yes, back with the iron automata. They could belch fire, it appeared, and fry their opponents on the spot. And

15 - The Scarlet Empress

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