Chapter I: An Unfortunate Beginning
Iron-Tail Fratley knocked on the door.
It was made from solid oak, and belonged to the officers' quarters of Alexandria Castle's barracks. A ginger tabby cat sat washing itself just outside the door, casting the occasional glance at Fratley as it tried to figure out what to do with him. Basic predatory instinct told it to pounce, while common sense argued that you didn't pounce on a six-footer carrying a sharpened halberd, mouse or otherwise.
Fratley stood and waited. The metallic ring of steel upon steel echoed from the training grounds to his right, while the yard to his left was alive with the sounds of conversation and industrious activity. Members of Alexandria's all-female armed forces came and went carrying plans and construction materials. The wars had ended two years previously, but parts of the city still needed rebuilding, and there wasn't much else for the armed forces to do during peacetime except keep brushing up on their combat skills, just in case. Fratley stood aside as a pair of soldiers went past carrying four large planks of wood between them, and then produced a rolled-up piece of paper from his trouser pocket. He unrolled it, and read it for the second time that morning. It read:
BEAUTIFUL POTION, STRANGE POTION and UNUSUAL POTION urgently requested by the Regency. 500,000G reward upon deliverance.
Fratley grinned to himself, rolled the piece of paper back up, and put it back in his pocket.
He knocked on the door again, and this time someone opened it. General Beatrix Rose, supreme commander of Alexandria's armed forces and personal bodyguard to Queen Garnet Til Alexandros XVII, stood framed in the doorway clad uncharacteristically in a frilly pink apron and wielding, in place of a sword, a feather duster.
"Oh, it's you, Fratty," she said, in a tone of voice that indicated that his visit had come at a particularly inconvenient time, and stood reluctantly aside to let him in. "I suppose you'd better come in," she went on, as Fratley stepped past her into the combined kitchen and dining area, "but wipe your paws and don't go touching anything if you can help it. I've been cleaning all morning, and I don't want your filthy, dirty paws ruining all my hard work."
"Spring cleaning, eh?" said Fratley, glancing around the room. Every available surface had been polished, and the floor was spotless. An array of silverware on display in a large cabinet on one side of the room positively gleamed, and a set of crystal wine glasses standing on top of the cabinet shone so brightly it made his eyes hurt to look at them.
"Yes," said Beatrix, swapping her feather duster for a damp cloth that had been left on the table and standing on tiptoe to wipe down a neatly embroidered sampler bearing the motto "EAT COLD STEEL PIGDOG". "Her Majesty offered to get the servants in to do it, but I said we'd manage by ourselves. I mean, servants… soldiers don't have servants, for gods' sake. Soldiers look after themselves."
Fratley nodded. Beatrix often said that if you hadn't got your pride, you hadn't got anything.
"The Knights of Pluto haven't been much help, of course," Beatrix went on. "Said they'd rather be out in the fresh air, helping with the reconstruction. Not that I blame them, and anyway, they'd only get in the way. Sit down, why don't you? I'll be with you in a minute."
Fratley did so, and grinned slyly. The Knights of Pluto were a small male regiment within the Alexandrian armed forces dedicated to the service of the god Pluto and specialising accordingly in the art of necromancy. The officers' quarters housed them as well as the higher-ranking members of the armed forces' main contingent, and there was, for reasons hitherto unknown, a swinging door between the rooms traditionally occupied by the General of the Alexandrian Armed Forces and the Captain of the Knights of Pluto. The door, or rather the nightly comings and goings through it of the current occupants of the rooms it conjoined, was the subject of rife gossip amongst Alexandrian soldiers and Knights of Pluto alike, so much so that Fratley couldn't have helped but overhear the basic gist of some of the rumours during his wait in the yard outside.
"How's Captain Steiner keeping these days, by the way?" he said, trying and failing to keep from smirking.
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" said Beatrix, not so much as batting an eyelid. She dropped the cloth into an overflowing laundry basket, and then produced two delicate china teacups decorated with small red roses, complete with matching saucers, from a cupboard. "Can I get you some tea?"
"Don't mind if I do," said Fratley, and then, as the animal wandered in from outside and tried to bite his leg, "I see you've got a cat."
"Oh, yes, Madelene," said Beatrix, taking a couple of teabags from a jar on the kitchen counter and dropping them into a china teapot decorated with the same red rose pattern as the cups and saucers, and emblazoned on both sides with the royal coat of arms. "She's not mine, really, she just sort of turned up one day. Some of the other ladies seem to like her, but I've never been much of an animal lover myself, saving your presence, of course."
There was a pause in which she filled a kettle with water, placed it on top of the stove and lit the gas underneath it, and then:
"So why exactly are you here?" she said, taking the kettle off the boil and pouring its scalding contents into the teapot before replacing the empty kettle on the stove. "Not that it's not nice to see you, of course, but I've never known you turn up for a visit just because you felt like it."
"This," said Fratley, and produced the notice from his trouser pocket. He unrolled it and cleared his throat. "Attention citizens of Lindblum –"
"You came here from Lindblum?" said Beatrix, pouring out two cups of tea and removing the teabags from the teapot, tossing them into a bin next to the counter. She passed Fratley his tea, sat down opposite him and sipped her own tea demurely.
"Yes. Now listen. Attention citizens of Lindblum! Beautiful Potion, Strange Potion and Unusual Potion urgently requested by the Regency –"
"Unusual Potion? Requested by the Regency?" said Beatrix, peering curiously at the mouse over the rim of her teacup. "Is this what I think it is?"
"Probably. Beautiful Potion, Strange Potion and Unusual Potion urgently requested by the Regency. 500,000G reward upon deliverance."
Beatrix sighed wearily, and put her tea down.
"This is what I think it is, isn't it?" she said flatly, reaching across the table for the notice in Fratley's paws and scanning it unenthusiastically. "What's she turned him into this time?"
"A cockroach," said Fratley. "He says he's afraid to leave the conference room in case someone treads on him by mistake."
Beatrix rolled the notice up and passed it across the table to Fratley, who slipped it back into his pocket.
"And you're asking me to help you look for these things, is that it?" she said. "You're asking me to abandon my duties to this fair kingdom and accompany you on some damn fool quest for some evil-smelling stuff in bottles so we can cure a lecherous old man who's been turned into a cockroach by his understandably angry wife after a string of sordid affairs with married noblewomen. Again. Aren't you?"
"Uh," said Fratley. It did sound slightly inconsiderate, when she put it like that… "Yes?"
Beatrix considered this for a moment, and then got up.
"Okay," she said, noting with inner satisfaction the expression on Fratley's face. "But I'm going to have to go and get something to eat first, if it's all the same with you. I've been cleaning this wretched place all morning, and I haven't had breakfast…"
And the rest, as they say, is history.