“So.” The Margrave finished his long, convulsive shudder. “You see the problem.”

Mordak had been sitting very still, and his face was a complete blank. “Yup.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Yup.”

The members of the Dark Council looked at each other. “Well?” said a senior necromancer. “What do we do?”

Mordak steepled his claws. “What indeed?” he said. “Here we are, the senior representatives of Evil, forced to the inescapable conclusion that the Dark Lord, who epitomises Evil so completely that it’s practically impossible to define it without reference to him, has gone potty. Someone or something—” A flicker at the corner of Mordak’s mouth didn’t go unnoticed. “Someone or something,” he repeated, “has got to him, messed with his head, and as a result we’ve got to get rid of him before he utterly screws up everything we believe in or stand for. Is that about the shape of it?”

The troll-wrangler nodded. “Pretty much.”

“But we can’t get rid of him,” Mordak went on. “Can’t kill him, we all know why. Can’t lock him up somewhere, because he’ll only get out again, he always does. And whatever it is we do, we’ve got to do it very, very soon, because whatever we may think of Internal Affairs, they do a very thorough job, specially when it comes to finding out about conspiracies, so ‘living on borrowed time’ is a pertinent concept here.” He paused, frowned, and went on. “If it’s all right with you, I think I’d like to consult with my special adviser.”

Sharp intakes of breath. “You mean her,” said the Margrave. “That—”

“Yes,” Mordak said. “Now, if you don’t mind.”

So they had her brought in and took the bag off her head (it had two holes pre-cut in it, for the ear-tips) and Mordak quickly summarised what he’d just been told, and immediately added, “It’s not funny,” before she could open her mouth, which was probably just as well. She made a very faint squeaking noise, but that was all.

“So,” Mordak continued, “I was thinking. We’ve got an embodiment of evil to get rid of, right?”

Efluviel looked at him. “Only you can’t.”

“Quite so. But it’s got to be done. And I was thinking—”

Suddenly she grinned. “You were thinking of a place where they’re down one embodiment of evil, in consequence of which they’re in grave danger of blowing up.”

The Council started muttering, but Mordak silenced them with a look. “Quite,” he said. “And since we can’t send them back their embodiment, because we carelessly lost him—”

“Why not send them ours?” Efluviel nodded, so briskly she nearly stabbed herself to death. “Nice idea. Will it work?”

Mordak shrugged. “Search me. What do you think?”

“You need to ask someone.”

“Yes.”

“That Curator person.”

“He’d know, if anyone would.”

“Just a minute—” objected the Margrave; and then Mordak looked at him and all power of speech and thought deserted him for a moment; and when he’d recovered, he knew without having to think about it any further that the Principle of Evil had just found itself a new Dark Lord. “Sorry,” he mumbled, but Mordak wasn’t listening.

A few minutes later, the Dark Council shuffled quietly out, leaving the king to finalise the details of his plan of action with his senior adviser. Outside in the courtyard, the Margrave said, “So that’s all right, then.”

“Yes,” objected the troll-wrangler, “but she’s an—”

The Margrave shrugged; or at least, his empty black robe billowed in a certain sequence. “Things change,” he said. “Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud. Get with the programme.”

“Yes, but she’s an—”

“Listen,” the Margrave said; nothing so melodramatic as a hiss, he just spelled it with nine S’s. “He’s the boss now, and what the boss says, goes. Like I said, things change. We evolve. It’s time to put the evil back into evolution. Capisce?”

“Yes,” the troll-wrangler said. “But she’s an—”

“Oh be quiet.”

The Curator looked up from his screen and stared. “Archie?” he said.

How he knew was anyone’s guess, since the last time they’d met, Archie had been human, and the creature who jumped through the doughnut portal on to the workbench was anything but. Nor was he alone. “And you’ve brought a friend,” the Curator added. “How nice.”

The sharp-faced young woman made a furious tutting noise, deleted the file she’d been working on and started again. The goblin who wasn’t Archie nudged the goblin who was, and whispered, “Is that him?”

Archie nodded. The other goblin jumped down off the table and looked round, presumably for weapons and ambushes. Most of the people working in the lab didn’t appear to have noticed him.

“This is Mordak,” Archie said. “King of the goblins. My boss,” he explained.

“Good Lord,” the Curator said. “We’re honoured. Somebody get His Majesty a chair.”

“He wants to ask you a question.”

“Fine. Only we’re a bit busy right now. We have twenty-one seconds before this universe explodes, so if you wouldn’t mind taking a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”

“It’s about that.”

The Curator raised his hand, and everything stopped dead. “Fire away,” he said.

Mordak, talking fast, explained about Mr Winckler’s disappearance and his planned coup d’état against the Dark Lord. “We can’t get rid of him in our universe,” he said, “so we were wondering. Do you think we could send him here?”

The Curator thought for a moment. “Is he evil?”

“He’s the Dark Lord.”

“Please answer the question.”

So Mordak told the Curator some of the things the Dark Lord had done; the civilisations he’d overthrown, the great cities he’d laid waste, the derelict homes and abandoned farms and workshops in every region of his empire, the chaos and misery he’d inflicted on countless millions, the generations for whom there could be no hope, only despair. The Curator listened carefully. Then he said, “So basically you’re suggesting we accept your Dark Lord as a replacement for our rogue investment banker.”

“Yes. Will he do?”

“Well,” the Curator said, “it’s a start.”