To Isabella and Conor it felt as though the entire world shook. The stairwell spewed forth flame and smoke as though a dragon lurked below, and from the courtyard came the screams of islanders, as chunks of the tower crashed down from above.

I need to get us out of this place, thought Conor. No one else can save us, not even Father.

There was no way to walk down, not through the inferno below. There was only one way down, and that was to fly.

King Nicholas was down the corridor, in the privy, when his daughter blew up his apartment. He was admiring the new Royal Doulton wash-out toilet he had recently had plumbed into his own bathroom. Nicholas had considered installing them throughout the palace, but there were rumours of a new flush toilet on the horizon and it would be a pity to be one step behind progress.

We must embrace progress, be at the forefront of it, or the Saltees will be drowned by a tidal wave of innovation.

When the first explosion rattled the tower, Nicholas briefly thought that his own personal plumbing could be responsible for the din, but realized that not even the bottle of home-brewed ale that he had consumed with Declan Broekhart the previous evening could result in such a disturbance.

They were under attack then? Unlikely, unless a ship had managed to approach undetected on a clear summer’s afternoon.

A thought struck him.

Could he have left the cap off the lens box? If so much as a spark took flight in that room…

King Nicholas finished his royal business and yanked the door open, quickly closing it again as a roiling cloud of smoke and flame invaded the bathroom, searing his lungs. His apartment was destroyed, no doubt about it. Luckily there was no one in his rooms or above them, so the tower’s other occupants should easily escape.

Not the king, though. King Nicholas the Stupid is trapped by his own mouldering experiments.