Anne Boleyn: I wonder why you invented the Violet Sunflower, then.
Judicial Felicitas: Cats do like power.
Anne Boleyn: Queens are rather fond of it, too. Especially queens who once found themselves on the wrong end of a sword. If it wasn’t for the Violet Sunflower, I would never have been rescued.
Judicial Felicitas: Are you saying you don’t have the Violet Sunflower?
Anne Boleyn: I wish I did. If anyone in this courtroom was in possession of it, they probably could use it quite broadly. Is this trial being broadcast?
Judicial Felicitas: Every cat in Mewtopia is watching the trial from their homes. Unless they have any important sunbeams to nap in.
Anne Boleyn: I seem to recall that the Violet Sunflower doesn’t have to be in the immediate proximity to be applied. Anyone holding the Violet Sunflower right now would be able to broadcast their commands to your whole city. Your whole world, perhaps? Isn’t that clever.
Judicial Felicitas: The Violet Sunflower is an extremely powerful and sacred artefact, and should not be in the hands of criminals or humans.
Anne Boleyn: Someone holding that device could make you all forget about the trial altogether.
Judicial Felicitas: I hardly think…
Anne Boleyn: You’d forget about the trial, forget about all the prisoners brought here from the twenty-fourth century. Why, you might even forget about Nero, Banksia and Aesop stealing it in the first place. You might forget that the Jade Pineapple and the other High Artefacts were ever invented, let alone lost.
Judicial Felicitas: That would be a highly irregular use of such a device.
Anne Boleyn: Well, we wouldn’t want to break any rules.
Judicial Felicitas: Where is the Violet Sunflower?
Anne Boleyn: I do hope it’s in safe hands.
Forty-Eight
Thirtieth Century Catastrophe trial of the century
Memory was a peculiar thing.
Ruthven did not remember losing Aesop. He remembered the shock and the pain, and knowing she was gone, but he could never be certain exactly what had happened.
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at the footage when he first buried himself in the Media Archive… and by the time he felt ready, there was no footage to be found. Records said that Ruthven and Aesop had been on a routine hop to investigate what kind of mushroom had been used for the Emperor Claudius’ final meal.1
By then, 54 CE had become an Event thanks to an Anachronaut attack, so there was no way to investigate.
Of course, Ruthven could not investigate in person. He no longer had a cat.
What he did remember about that day was reporting to Melusine, who informed him with brutal efficiency that Aesop was dead, that he should probably have a psych evaluation, and that he now had a job in Media Archives. After that, Ruthven found his way to the Museum of Lost Things, collapsed in a corner with his legs stretched out in front of him, and waited for the misery to stop.
It did not. An hour or so later, Oxford found him and sat quietly at his side, keeping him company on the worst day of his life.
If Ruthven had not already known that Oxford was his favourite human, that would have done it for him.
Today was a day of revelations. Ruthven and Cressida were released from their pastel cell and transported by a floating perspex dome branded with the phrase Mewtopia Justice Division to the site of a trial.
They still did not know whether they were the ones on trial, but they did learn on their journey what kind of city might be created in a cat-dominated future utopia.
It was more whimsical than Ruthven had expected.
The city looked like a complex obstacle course designed for superheroes with a short attention span. Buildings were tall and curved, with outer platforms and jutting roof gardens so that the native cats of this century — large, powerful creatures of a size he associated with sheep, cows and even horses — could leap, climb and doze in the sunshine to their hearts’ content.
The trial took place in an enormous outdoors stadium, with tiered seats and screens everywhere, like the Colosseum rebuilt in glass and steel.
“Welcome to the Theatre of Justice,” chirruped their pod as its doors slid open, tipping them both on to a high tier of seating, separated by glass walls from other, equally high and precarious platforms.
Their platform was already occupied by an elderly male Anachronaut who introduced himself as Claudius Caesar, and promptly ignored them for the entire trial. He did not appear to recognise Ruthven, and this would be an awkward time to interview him about the fate of Aesop.
Two sleek purple cats, Ione and Igor, soon joined them on their seating platform, leaping easily across empty voids. At first they seemed quite friendly, asking curious questions about the twenty-fourth century and why the cats from there were so small and odd-coloured. Once the trial began, it became clear that Ione and Igor were guards, not random audience members. They leaned in and purred in a threatening manner whenever Ruthven or Cressida attempted to talk to each other.
(Claudius, who was crocheting a sock, took no notice of the terrifying future cats, and they were not nearly as growly in his general direction.)
As the trial got underway, Ruthven learned far more about Aesop than he had ever imagined. Mostly, that she was a thirtieth century criminal who had worked with Nero to steal time travel technology. To bring that technology — the High Artefacts with their eccentric names — to the twenty-fourth century.
It could all be lies, of course, but there had to be some truth in it. Especially considering that Nero was now twice the size he had been in the twenty-fourth century, and his fur was undeniably violet. Hard to argue with evidence like that.
(Ruthven tried to imagine Aesop huge and purple, and could not. She was a calico cat! Small, dainty… covered in black and orange spots. That was her whole thing.)
It was a lot. Almost too much. Ruthven could not have a nervous breakdown up here. Everyone would see him. Ione and Igor might bite his head off.
The judge — or rather, the Judicial Felicitas, an enormous cat whose purple fur was so dark it was nearly indigo — perched on a platform in the centre of the theatre, surrounded on all sides by these branching, tiered seats and deep chasms of empty air.
