The Song of the Quarkbeast: Last Dragonslayer: Book Two by Jasper Fforde

will take. We’ll not make the same mistake we made last time. Licensing the power of magic to individuals and companies placed sorcery in the hands of the unscrupulous. Magic belongs in the hands of all – or none.’
    We stared at one another for a few moments. It was a view that the Great Zambini had embraced, and almost everyone at Kazam.
    ‘Well,’ said Mr Trimble, ‘would you take it to your sorcerers anyway? I’d like to report back to my clients that the refusal was unanimous.’
    I agreed I would speak to them, and Mr Trimble rose to fetch his hat, which had automatically made its way to the hatstand, part of a self-tidying spell that ran throughout the building.
    ‘I’m most grateful to you for your time,’ he said. ‘The executives at BellShout will be very happy to talk if you change your position.’
    And after shaking my hand, he left.
    I wasn’t alone for long. The Prince dropped by with his day’s schedule, and I could see he wasn’t happy.
    ‘Pizza deliveries again ?’ he said in exasperation. ‘When do we do some proper carpeteering?’
    ‘Maybe sooner than you think,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got a task for you.’
    His Royal Highness Prince Omar Smith Arkwright Ben Nasil was one of our carpeteers, which might have been a noble and exciting profession were it not for an incident one wintry night when Brother Velobius and his two passengers died when their Turkmen Mk18C ‘Bukhara’ broke up in mid-air owing to rug fatigue. For safety reasons, the Civil Aviation Authority had introduced strict rules that made it almost impossible to make magic carpet flight profitable. Limited top speed, navigation lights – and worst of all, a ban on passengers. All we could do were deliveries.
    ‘Here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘Kevin has foretold the Great Zambini returning tomorrow afternoon at 16.03 and fourteen seconds.’
    ‘Let me guess,’ said the Prince, ‘Kevin knows when but not where?’
    ‘That’s about the size of it. We need Zambini back, Nasil, 5 so stick to Zipp like a limpet. If he has a vision about where Zambini might show up, I want you to come and find me immediately.’
    He said he wouldn’t fail me, made some comment about needing to take his carpet off the flightline next month for some remedial patchwork, and we said goodbye.
    ‘Is he really a prince?’ asked Tiger, who had just returned.
    ‘Second in line to the Duchy of Portland,’ I told him. ‘What’s the deal with Moobin?’
    ‘He said come up any time. He said you’d be impressed.’
    This worried me as Moobin liked a challenge, and was quite used to risking life and limb on weird experimental stuff that he described as ‘important, cutting-edge stuff’ but we saw more as ‘just being a nuisance’.
    ‘Let’s do it.’ I sighed. ‘It’s not like things could get more weird this morning.’
     
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    1 Since carpets cover the whole floor and rugs only a part of it, a ‘flying carpet’ is misnamed. Translated from the Persian – from where all flying rugs originate – as a ‘flying carpet’ in the seventeenth century, the term has become so entrenched that common usage has them now as carpets. A carpeteer is correctly called a Rugeteer, or, if you’re French, a Tapisigator.
     
    2 The first slogan they used was: ‘Boss-eyed? You need Vision Boss!’ but it was not well received, and hastily withdrawn.
     
    3 Sister Yolanda’s strike rate was the best ever at an astonishing 92 per cent. But then she only made two hundred and twenty-five in her sixty-seven years, which may explain it. Most precogs spew them out by the dozen, daily.
     
    4 Constuff is a contraction of ‘Consolidated Useful Stuff PLC’, the Ununited Kingdom’s leading purveyor of cheap and shoddy goods. They are so large they actually own a country – Constuffia – which is full of factories where poorly paid labourers toil ceaselessly in order to make the unUK the leading exporter of cheap and shoddy goods. A recent