Chapter 24: Removing the Magicians

      King Zaniddiate secretly abdicates the throne, and Bishop Joey crowns a new king. Zaniddiate, Wright, Sunshine, Emily, Amelia, the new king, and others move to confront the magicians.

     They reveal their discovery that the magicians had been manipulating both sides of the war with Meinong's jungle and, along with their allies in RICO on elsewhere in the kingdom, had been responsible for the attacks that had taken place in the kingdom.

     The magicians and the mockingbird reporter are smug about the confrontation until the learn the identity of the new king.  They weren't expecting that person to be crowned king, and the magicians realized that they wouldn't be able to outwit or manipulate the new king.

   Seeing that they had lost the game, they thought only of escape.  The magicians, reverting to their true form, transformed into rats and ran from the room. The dishonest reporter Henderson Hook reverts to his true form as a serpent and slithers from the room.

    The new king inspects the royal treasury and finds it empty.  Bastiat advises him that the real sources of the kingdom's wealth is not in gold and silver but in the productivity of its citizens.

     The king asks Bastiat to remain as the royal advisor.  Bastiat tells him that he must return to Marbella to see his wife, whom he hasn't seen in forty years.  Amelia then realizes that Bastiat is someone that mermaids remember and still mention.  Amelia tells Bastiat how much his wife misses him, though Amelia withholds certain delicate information.

     As the mermaids, naiads, undines, melusines, fairies, and humans cast their dragnet across Royalton Peninsula, enchanted creatures revert to their true forms.  To name a few, lawyers become vultures, legislators become wild hogs, bankers and news reporters become rats and serpents, and bureaucrats become cockroaches.  

     One thing that government bureaucrats and cockroaches have in common is that you're not as concerned about what they'll steal and carry off as you are by what they'll fall into and mess up.

     Many patrons of bars, barber shops, and beauty parlors reverted to their true forms as herds of lemmings and flocks of chattering magpies.

     Emily and Amelia come up with an idea on how to deal with the cockroach infestation.  Dozens of Irish step dancers and fiddlers are lined up at the far end of the peninsula.  On a signal, they step dance all the way from there to the other end of the peninsula, stomping cockroaches as they go along.  By the end of the day, the Irish step dancers stomp every cockroach on the peninsula.

     Fairies report to Commissioner Wright that the magicians have been spotted at a boathouse along the Joan River, waiting for the opportune time to cross the river and escape.  The Royalton Police and the Aquatic Watch prepare to close the dragnet.