Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [75]
‘Believe me,’ said Fitz, ‘I’ve had first-hand experience of them.’ He looked meaningfully at the Doctor. ‘ We have.’
‘Not exactly housetrained pets,’ added Calamee. ‘These things kill people.’
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‘It’s safe enough,’ snapped Sensimi defensively. ‘It won’t attack just anyone!
It’s trained to –’
She broke off suddenly as everyone looked at her.
‘It’s trained to what?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Erm, it’s trained to. . . be good. Housetrained.’
Calamee took a step towards the princess, and looked gratified when Sensimi took a pace back, almost stumbling over the step behind her. ‘As I seem to recall saying to someone else not so long ago – you can’t kid a kidder. What’s going on, Sensimi?’
‘ Princess Sensimi,’ she said, trying to rescue some dignity.
‘All right, Princess Sensimi: what’s going on? I take it that this little pet of yours is a rather well-kept secret? Or is everyone in your family in on it?’
There was a sudden flare of panic in Sensimi’s eyes, and Fitz realised that Calamee had hit a sore point.
‘OK, let’s do a deal,’ Calamee said. ‘You tell us what you’ve got this thing here for, and we’ll promise not to land you in it with Mummy and Daddy.’
‘Don’t you dare threaten me. I could have you. . . ’
‘What?’ goaded Calamee. ‘Locked up, like you did with the Doctor? Beaten within an inch of my life?’
‘Calamee,’ interjected the Doctor. ‘I really think we should be telling everyone about –’
‘Shut up,’ she rounded on him. ‘If that thing harms a hair on Nessus’s head, it’ll be her fault.’
‘As I’ve already pointed out,’ began the Doctor, ‘oh. . . hang on. . . ’
His voice tailed off as he caught sight of something inside the night beast’s cage. Calamee threw an ‘I’m-not-finished-with-you-yet-madam’ look at Sensimi and moved around to see what it was that he’d spotted. Lying half under the creature were some pale, grubby items of clothing. For a moment, Fitz wondered if the Little Princess had been feeding the creature on whole people, but then he saw the look on Calamee’s face.
‘That’s one of Javill’s ceremonial shirts,’ she said. ‘I’m sure of it. Look –
there’s the Imperial emblem on the sleeve.’
‘So it is,’ said the Doctor, tipping his head on one side to get a better look.
‘And, unless I’m very much behind in young people’s fashions, isn’t that an underskirt over there?’
Calamee gave a grunt. ‘It looks like your precious Imperial Family has more secrets than the rest of the world could have imagined, especially if Javill’s taken to wearing women’s underwear.’
‘That’s not Javill’s,’ spat Sensimi contemptuously, folding her arms in a sullen and rather pointless gesture of defiance. ‘That’s –’
She stopped sharply and Calamee gave a broad grin.
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‘That mouth of yours’ll get you into so much trouble one day,’ she said smugly. ‘So whose is it?’
Sensimi didn’t answer.
‘Let me hazard a guess that it might be your mother’s,’ the Doctor ventured.
‘And unless you’ve been playing dressing up with it, the only thing I can think of is that you’ve been training it to associate certain smells with food.’ He stared at Sensimi, his eye sockets black pools in his pale face. ‘Training it to kill by scent?’ He waved his arms generously. ‘Or at least if not kill, then a serious bit of growling and scaring and stomping around.’ He looked at Sensimi expectantly. She, in turn, looked to Fitz, as if expecting him to rescue her. But Fitz said nothing – he was beginning to find her as tiresome as everyone else seemed to be doing. For a second, Fitz felt a pang of sympathy for the Little Princess, but when he realised that the Doctor was probably right and that she had been training the creature to attack her own mother and brother, that twinge evaporated instantly.
‘No,’ Sensimi said lamely, hugging her arms as if they might hold off the combined venom of everyone’s stares. ‘It’s not like that.’ She looked around, her eyes pleading. ‘They were. . . they were going to kill my father. They were! Honestly! Fitz!’ Sensimi’s desperate eyes locked on to him. ‘You believe me, don’t you? They were planning to kill