The Wazir and the Witch

by Hugh Cook

  As for his companion:

  Though he was travelling to Untunchilamon to be the new wazir of that island, Manthandros Trasilika was at heart a merchant; and a fat merchant; and a rapacious, rascally merchant. But he was not a cowardly merchant. The traders of Port Domax are noted for their ferocity in battle and the unmerchantlike joy which they take in the same; which helps explain the long and uninterrupted independence of their city.

  When the sailors had been separated, pummelled and dismissed to the brig, a sweating Trasilika said to a panting Jean Froissart:

  ‘Cheer up,’ said Trasilika. ‘Soon I’ll be wazir and we’ll all be rich.’

  ‘Or dead,’ said Froissart. ‘Ek could be the death of us.’

  ‘Not Ek,’ said Trasilika. ‘Ek could be many things to us, but death is not one of them.’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘Relax! I’ve a gift for Ek. Something he wants. Something he wants really, really badly. Something which will sweeten his heart till he sings to us as a lover.’

  ‘What?’ said Froissart.

  ‘A death warrant,’ said Trasilika. ‘A death warrant for the witch of Injiltaprajura. Justina Thrug, whom he so bitterly hates. My first act as wazir will be to have the bitch slaughtered. Then Ek, oh, Ek will love us indeed.’

  Manthandros Trasilika was the very picture of confidence, but Froissart was not entirely convinced. He worried. And his worries were worsened when, that very day, he experienced a perturbing new symptom. Not the stabbing chest pains he had previously suffered with such anguished apprehension, but something equally ominous, if not more so. It felt like a heaviness in the region of his heart, as if that organ had been lumbered with a burden of lead. For the rest of that day he lived in fear of a massive, crushing heart attack.

  ‘Nonsense,’ muttered Froissart to himself. ‘Hypochondriacal hysteria. I’ve the constitution of an ox and a clearance from a heart specialist.’

  The force of such self-reassurance was strengthened toward evening, when the weight at last eased from his chest, and he was almost able to persuade himself that the whole incident had been a figment of his imagination.

  But, while fears of heart attack could be attributed to hypochondria, fears of Nadalastabstala Banraithan-chumun Ek were not so easily dismissed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Empress Justina woke in the depths of bardardor-nootha, that quarter which starts at midnight and ends at dawn. She woke alone, for she had gone to bed unpartnered; the current political crisis had almost ended her customary indulgences, for she needed all her wit and energy to ensure her own survival.

  Her twin sister Theodora was not as continent. Nightly, Theodora was holding revels with Troldot ‘Heavy-Fist’ Turbothot, a trader from Hexagon who owned and captained one of the ships which had been anchored in the Laitemata all through the Long Dry. But Justina herself slept solo, except when she took the Princess Sabitha to bed.

  On waking, the Empress listened for drums. She had banned all ‘drumming’ in the precincts of the pink palace, but someone was disobeying her orders. At odd moments of night and day, she had heard the ominous tok - tok - thuk of a small hand drum echoing through her hallowed halls. The culprit might be a young soldier; or a waiter; or someone else. Whoever it was, Justina wanted them caught and stopped.

  Justina listened.

  She heard . . .

  A mosquito.

  The clicketing of some unidentifiable night insect.

  And:

  Her own heavy breathing.

  Apart from that, nothing.

  The night was not ruled by sound but by heat, the ever-heat of the tropics, the soft wet suffocation of the island nights. Justina felt as if she was wrapped in warm wet dishcloths. Her folds and clefts were swampy with sweat, with the hot ooze of fluid, the slow spralpablan-darakatarla of a woman’s bloodsea waters.

  Justina Thrug scratched at her sweating armpits, digging her fingers into her tousled axillary hair as if trying to dislodge lice, then lay back on the damp sheet and pondered her dreams, as was her habit. She was a child of Wen Endex, and her own culture lacked a formal theory of dreams; nevertheless, Justina had developed her own personal oneirocritical methods, and applied them regularly to her own reveries.

  What had she dreamed of?

  Of home.

  Of Wen Endex, land of upthrust rock and watersky winds, of sea-shocked dunes and horizon to horizon swamp-lands, of gloating quicksands and whirlpool rivers, of black-boughed forests where only the brave or the foolish dared to venture. Of the slopes of Mobius Kolb and the battlements of Saxo Pall, of the dark gutterals of the Riga Rimur and the uncanny flirtation of the zana. Red, gold, green, blue and pink were the zana.

  ‘Ah,’ said Justina, breathing her loss.

  Tears filled her eyes. She was - for the moment -utterly homesick. She longed for the mud of Galsh Ebrek and the shores of the Winter Sea. And, possessed by such longing, Justina found it impossible to get back to sleep. Did Tromso Stavenger still rule the Families? Did Qa still lord it over Island Thodrun? Did heroes still quest for the saga swords, the brave blades Kinskom, Edda and Sulamith’s Grief?

  ‘Enough of that,’ said Justina firmly.

  If she survived the dangers of Untunchilamon, then one day she would return to her homeland. But for the moment she must concentrate on the struggle for survival.

  So thinking, the Empress did her best to get back to sleep. But insomnia defeated her. At last, abandoning the struggle, she rose from her bed, the shadows of her nakedness wallowing in her bedroom mirrors as she hunted for a silken robe of spiderweb silver, that shade known to the Janjuladoola tongue as rolabalibolifontas-dima. Once dressed, she left her room, the fluent fabric of her robe slick-sliding against her flesh as she strode down darkened corridors.

  The Empress Justina, ruler of the hearts and ribs of many, ascended some stairs and ventured out on to the roof. The night was possessed by a sweltering heat despite the steady breeze; it was moonless but bright-pricked by stars.

  Justina looked out over her city of dreams and nightsweats. Somewhere, a cockerel screamed, its arrogant challenge abrupting through the dark without warning. Somewhere, a dog barked, then was silent. Apart from that, the city was quiet.

  Green, blue and white shone the stars; red and purple; yellow and mauve. Were stars related to the zana? And if so, then how? Were there any black stars? And supposing there were, how would one see them against the night? Those stars low on the horizon trembled incessantly, as did the night-lights of the fishing canoes out on the Laitemata Harbour. There is a Janjuladoola myth which says the night sky is a sea fished by a race of lesser gods, and that the stars are the fishing lights of those gods; Justina knew that myth, but preferred the tale native to Wen Endex which declared the stars to have been cast into the sky at whim by a spirit of frivolous inclination. To play with such conceits was particularly pleasing at a time like this when life had become, for the most part, so very very serious.

  Justina stalked the rooftop in her silver robe, and was pleased to be challenged by the sentries posted in each of the four belfries. The bells themselves had been removed and destroyed on the orders of the Hermit Crab. No longer did they ring out to announce the start of bardardornootha, istarlat, salahanthara and undokon-dra. The day’s four quarters merged into each other without formal announcement; and for some obscure reason this seemed to increase the oppressiveness of the heat, the humidity of the air, and the zest possessed by that great tormenter, the mosquito.

  Ah, the mosquito!

  Lord of blood, master of—

  But I must restrain myself; for, once started on the subject of the mosquito, I would be unable to stop until my scorpioned handwriting had covered both sides of a full quire of fooskin. That I would have done when I was younger and not so sane as I am now. But increasing age and sanity have given me a better sense of proportion. And, besides, the price of fooskin is monstrous, and likewise the opium needed to subdue the pains of
my arthritis; and both these factors encourage me to adopt the terse concision of this present text, so different from the expansiveness of my earlier years.

  Therefore I here say nothing whatsoever about the mosquito, that winged vampire which the Dagrin say is the creation of the devil-god.

  (And here please note that the devil-god in question is the Evil One, Storpandif the Stone Fish, the death-lurker of the coral reefs; and is not to be confused by that mightier deity of the Dagrin, the formidable Elasmokar-charos, who is identified with the shark.)

  Avoiding the subject of the mosquito - that beast with the teeth of a cactus, the whine of a woman and the morals of a pirate - I continue my account of the Empress Justina, who, having identified herself to her guards, ventured to her pool, the rooftop swimming pool which alone made these days of waiting bearable.

  Waiting?

  Yes, that was how the imperial days were largely spent.

  Unlike Vorn the Gladiator, Justina could achieve nothing by careering around the universe trying to lop off heads. Those decisive destructions in which Vorn so casually indulges himself were forbidden to the Empress, for incontinent violence would serve only to secure her own death and ruin for ever her hopes of evacuating her supporters from Untunchilamon.

  Until the Trade Fleet came, Justina’s best strategy was to preserve the status quo; and that she could best do by bluff, which meant carrying on the routines of her life with every appearance of imperturbable confidence. Until the Trade Fleet came, heroic action of any description was quite out of place; and nothing Justina could do would hurry the advent of that Fleet.

  Justina, her modesty (such as it was) preserved by night, slipped off her robe and lowered herself into the water. Though dawn was not far off, the water was still warm. It would be strange to return to Wen Endex, where wet and damp were always so chilled that they must be feared as life-threateners. If she returned to Wen Endex . . .

  If all else failed, a very swift return might be possible, at least for Justina herself. If the flying ship worked.

  The flying ship?

  This fantastical construction looked for all the world like a gigantic nest constructed by an untidy and braindamaged bird. It sat atop the roof of the pink palace near the swimming pool; the wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin had spent days working on this weird contraption, and averred that he would shortly make it fly. But Justina had her doubts. She had little acquaintance with wizards, hence was inclined to accept the sorcerers’ valuation of the breed; the wonder-workers of Injiltaprajura were adamant that the magic of wizards was weak stuff, slow to work if it ever worked at all. Still, they would very shortly see one way or another, for the ship’s maiden flight was scheduled for that very morning.

  Such was the length of Justina’s leisurely swim that dawn was breaking before she at last hauled herself from the water.

  Dawn!

  Mosquito torment ceases. The sun rises red on the far horizon, staining sea and shore alike with the colours of blood and over-ripe cherries. Flies and maggots alike stir to industrious life. Monkeys scream in the jungle undergrowth which chokes the steep gullies which finger their way through portside Injiltaprajura. The sullen heat of night is stoked and steamed anew by the powers of the sauna-making sun.

  As the sun rises, Pelagius Zozimus busies himself in the kitchens of the Analytical Institute, preparing a special flying fish sauce for the Crab’s breakfast. In the cave of the Crab, Chegory Guy awakes in the arms of his true love Olivia. Both are tired, for they spent very little of the night sleeping. Neither slept well when they did sleep, for only some coconut matting separated them from the rockfloor. But both look remarkably happy, and their yawns are interrupted by silly grins, and then by blissful kisses.

  Elsewhere, in the docklands of Marthandorthan, in the warehouse known as Xtokobrokotok, the corpse-master Uckermark wakes with his wife Yilda. They have slept in Xtokobrokotok (rather than in their own house in the slumlands of Lubos) because Uckermark is a corpse-master no longer. Instead, he has risen to a position of especial power and influence, for he is—

  But I get ahead of myself, and must cure myself of the habit, for it eats up the fooskin alarmingly, and my own bank manager is no more understanding than the monster who tormented the days of the conjuror Odolo. Therefore, abandoning the overview of Injiltaprajura by dawn upon which I almost launched myself in earnest, let me return to the rooftop of the pink palace, and to the sight of the Empress Justina, who is squeezing the water from her hair and is saying:

  ‘I wish.’

  That she said, and then:

  ‘I wish the Trade Fleet would come.’

  Then, as she straightened up after slipping herself into her silken robe, she saw the Fleet had come indeed.

  Or, at least, the first two vessels of the Fleet.

  Yes, there were two ships creeping into the harbour. They must have taken hair-raising risks to navigate the coral-clogged reefs in the dark. But there were always a couple of skilled and confident navigators prepared to dare such dangers in order to reap the profits available to the first ships of the Trade Fleet.

  Justina watched the ships with mingled fear and excitement. At the very least, they would bring news. News of Talonsklavara. Had the civil war in Yestron been decisively settled? Or would the military turmoil continue for yet another year? Another year was the best Justina could hope for. Hope she did, though her analysis told her the civil war was almost certain to be at an end, and that Aldarch the Third was by far the most likely victor.

  As Justina watched, the two ships dropped anchor; their sails were shortly brailed up, leaving the spars skeleton-bare. Already canoes and paddle-boats were crowding round the ships. Hearing what? Learning what? Justina would know soon enough; her spies were efficient, and all knew that incoming news had the highest priority for the Empress.

  In a deliberate exercise of self-discipline, Justina turned her back upon Injiltaprajura’s portside, the Laitemata Harbour and the freshly arrived ships. She turned just in time to see Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin’s eccentric creation start to dismantle itself.

  The dismantling began with a single stick which detached itself from the crow’s nest confusion of the airship. It hung hesitantly in the air then spindled upwards. Then, in slow motion, the rest of the ship began to discard to the sky as Justina watched in open-mouthed astonishment. As she gaped, Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin himself arrived. The wizard was there to conduct the first flight-trials of his skycruiser, and he was as astonished as the Empress to see the thing tearing itself apart.

  ‘Moist!’ shouted Sken-Pitilkin. ‘Moist, moist!’

  But the sticks paid no heed to this frantic command in Toxteth. So the wizard switched to the High Speech of the eight orders of Drangsturm’s Confederation. In that tongue he commanded the fragments of his swiftly disintegrating ship. But to no avail, for a brisk and gathering wind scattered the sticks across the landscape.

  Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin greeted this disaster with horror-struck anguish. The Empress Justina, though angry (this must be the work of those perfidious sorcerers!) was comparatively phlegmatic. Sken-Pitilkin’s airship could scarcely have carried a dozen people at best, whereas she needed to remove a dozen ship loads to safety. She was less concerned with the loss of the airship than with any immediate danger which might be posed by the incoming ships.

  What news did they bring?

  Unfortunately, the answers to Justina’s many questions would have to wait until her spies brought their reports to the pink palace. So the Empress took herself from the roof to her dining room, there to breakfast upon the delicate fragrance of papaya lightly laced with lime juice, upon the fibrous sweetness of fresh-chopped pineapple liberally dosed with the sap of crushed sugar cane, and upon the white flesh of hot fried flying fish.

  As Justina savoured her papaya, munched down her pineapple and anatomized the flesh which lay beneath the freckled skin of her flying fish, spies loyal to her regime (or as loyal as anyone could be expected to be in t
hose chancy times) were already making their way toward her palace with ambiguous intelligence.

  In shouted conversations with shipboard crews, the spies had been told that Talonsklavara had still been in progress when the two vessels departed from Yestron. The civil war might have ended by now, for a major battle (perhaps a decisive battle) had been taking place even as the ships set sail from the continent. However, for the time being the status quo prevailed.

  One of the ships had declared itself to be a general trader, here to exchange tea, opium and iron for dikle, shlug and slaves. Prices for the last commodity were high in Yestron. In particular demand were male slaves who could be sold as soldiers to the rival armies contending for possession of the Izdimir Empire; and Untunchilamon, blessed with peace for the last seven years, was a reliable source of such.

  The other ship had announced itself as the Oktobdoj, brothel ship extraordinaire. A claim which had provoked the following dialogue between inquisitive water rats and decktop sailors:

  ‘What does a brothel ship so far from Manamalargo?’ ‘Why, sailing for profit, of course.’

  ‘Then you’ve come to the wrong place. We’ve whores aplenty ashore, aye, and poxes too. We’ve no need of yours.’

  ‘There you’re wrong. For we have aboard sophisticated delights unknown to these the provinces.’

  This and other such advertising propaganda had aroused a tepid enthusiasm among the water rats, an enthusiasm which had dissipated rapidly when they had been told there was a two-dragon fee merely to climb aboard to inspect the merchandise.

  Justina’s spies had taken this brothel-ship claim at face value, and none had been inclined to spend two dragons to confirm it. Which was unfortunate, for officials had now climbed aboard that very ship, and were being told a very different tale.

  The officials were the plague inspector (who was due a fee for giving the ship its health clearance); the pilot (who must by regulation be paid for guiding the ship into harbour, for all that he had been in his bed when it put into port); the ladipti man (a sinecurist of obscure function but certain charge); the harbour master (who was due a fee of his own, besides receiving a tithe of the emoluments disbursed to the other officials) and a representative of the Combined Religious Guild who was there to extract what was owing to the gods.