The Wazir and the Witch

by Hugh Cook

  To hear bells, yes, and trumpets; to see smiles, yes, and laughter; to have uproar and gaiety, and a death to decorum. But Justina feared her people would think her mad were she to order such ceremonies for the hatching of this babiest of dragons. Furthermore, there was no alternative Occasion which she could reasonably propose as an excuse for an Outbreak. Therefore Justina denied herself pleasure and concentrated on the practicalities.

  ‘Food,’ said Justina.

  Again she had recourse to her cosmetics case. She took some little balls of cotton wool. One she soaked in water and another in goat’s milk, which was fresh-fetched from the kitchen at her command. These cotton wool balls she placed upon the saucer so this tiniest of dragonets could suckle upon them at will. Then she took a corpse maggot (a delicacy also commanded from the kitchen) and chopped it up very finely, and upon the saucer she raised a little pyramid comprising the resulting shreds of this most delicate of meats.

  One task alone remained before she returned her charge to its fishbowl sanctuary.

  The dragon must be named.

  ‘I name thee . . . what? No, not what. You need more of a name than what. Untunchilamon bore thee, hence . . . Injiltaprajura I name thee.’

  Injiltaprajura squirmed upon the blotting paper, which by now had soaked up most of the egg-slish of her hatching. Yet some organic aftermath of birth still clung to the dragon’s transparent scales. As Justina watched, Injiltaprajura opened her jaws, and began to lick herself clean with a tongue more slender than a cat’s whisker.

  And Justina smiled, in triumph and in hope for the future.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  It was night on Untunchilamon. The day quarter was undokondra; and, in the dark of that quarter, safe in the fastness of the Temple of Torture, an old man meditated upon the forthcoming delights of the Festival of Light. The old man was Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek, High Priest of Zoz the Ancestral, and in his imagination he was rehearsing whole catalogues of torture.

  Elsewhere, on the rooftop of the pink palace which lorded it over Pokra Ridge, Olivia Qasaba sat as silently as a shadow as she watched the Empress Justina stripped to her nakedness.

  ‘Well,’ said Justina, smiling at the airship shadows which hid Olivia, ‘aren’t you going to join me?’

  ‘Maybe later,’ said Olivia.

  She was in no mood for disporting herself. She had yet to learn Justina’s knack of leaving her troubles to look after themselves. Besides, Olivia liked neither night nor water. The sun was her element, and she had always been a little afraid of the night.

  ‘This will do you good,’ said Justina.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Olivia formally, ‘but no.’

  ‘Then do you want to go back downstairs and go to bed?’

  ‘Not just yet,’ said Olivia.

  She was frightened by the menacing silence of the palace by night. Everyone who could leave the pink palace had done so in anticipation of some forthcoming disaster. Olivia did not like to be alone in the place.

  ‘As you wish,’ said Justina.

  Then turned to the water.

  The moon had swollen to the full. Justina saluted that luminary with unaccustomed formality before she plunged into her pool to porpoise and grampus at her leisure.

  There were no soldiers to observe the imperial disports, so Olivia appointed herself sentry, and kept a sharp lookout for assassins. Justina, as if untroubled by any thoughts of sudden death, long amused herself with her swimming. The water was warm, warm, amniotic. And when at last the Empress hauled herself from the water, the air enveloped her with a similar heat.

  Adrift in the air was a mosquito, which, lacking any intimation of its own mortality, settled upon the imperial forearm and proceeded to feed. Moments after it alights, a mosquito cannot be felt, for it injects a numbing fluid into the flesh when first it pierces the human integument. But Justina, alert to such assaults, felt that first feathering of mosquito feet. She knew it was there. The imperial benevolence proved less than infinite: and, moments later, the mosquito was a smear of greasy grey against Justina’s skin.

  Justina found herself possessed by a pervasive sadness, a languid melancholy. It was not the mosquito’s demise which affected her thus, for she had already forgotten the fate of that fragile beast. Rather, it was the swollen moon which drew from her this sense of slightly self-indulgent regret. She realized that perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she had never expected to survive, had never expected to leave Untunchilamon alive. So now, as the odds stacked up against her, as her enemies sharpened the jaws of the trap . . .

  ‘Are we ready to go yet?’ said Olivia.

  ‘Go?’ said Justina sadly. ‘I don’t think we’re going to go anywhere, not you and me.’

  Then she slipped back into the water. Crooning down-soothings of rain began to fall, night rain downfalling though the moon shone clear. And, swimming by moonlight in the rain, Justina felt a great calm descend upon her. She had done her best. She could do no more. By an act of intelligent daring, she had converted Manthandros Trasilika to her cause, at least temporarily. She had sent Log Jaris to the Crab and Dunash Labrat to Jal Japone. Help from either quarter was most unlikely, but nobody could say she hadn’t tried.

  As Justina swam, she once again let all political concerns slip away from her. She amused herself by endeavouring to imagine what it was like to be a whale. And then, when the rain ceased, she ascended again from the pool, her body wet with the moon which shimmered in rain-slick surface of the glitter dome.

  ‘I’m all wet,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Then go in and have a swim,’ said Justina. ‘Then you’ll be wetter still, and you won’t notice it.’

  Then the Empress spied what Olivia - despite her concern for assassins - had not. A silent shadow had ventured out on the rooftop.

  ‘Ho!’ said Justina, deepening her voice in unconscious imitation of her father’s battle style. ‘Who goes there?’

  ‘I go there,’ answered Log Jaris. ‘And here. And elsewhere.’

  Olivia rose as the bullman bulked forward. A note of good humour in his voice had convinced her already that he had been successful.

  ‘The Crab!’ said Olivia. ‘Is it with us?’

  ‘No,’ said Log Jaris.

  ‘No?’ said Olivia, in dismay. ‘But you sounded happy!’

  ‘To have swum the Laitemata twice by night, yes, that’s happiness enough,’ said Log Jaris. ‘To be here, and not in the maw of a shark. I’ll not ask for more, not at times like this.’

  ‘But you asked the Crab for more,’ said Justina.

  ‘Indubitably,’ said Log Jaris.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Olivia, who was tired, and could not remember whether she knew that word or not.

  To Olivia’s discomfort, neither Log Jaris nor the Empress answered her directly. Instead, Justina said to the bullman:

  ‘So. So that is it. We must trust to Jal Japone.’

  ‘But we can’t!’ protested Olivia. ‘He’ll never get here in time. Besides, what’s to say he’ll come at all?’

  Thanks to lessons in geography and politics administered by Chegory Guy, her dearest darling Chegory -who had once languished long in the northern stronghold commanded by Japone - Olivia knew full well that there was not much hope of help from the north. But Justina and Log Jaris knew that as well, and saw no need to listen to lectures from a chit of a girl. Instead, Justina invited Log Jaris inside for some wine.

  ‘And you, Olivia,’ said Justina. ‘You can have some wine as well, if you want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Olivia, with great dignity. ‘But I’m going to go for a swim.’

  Something in the way she said it made Justina stop. ‘Are you all right?’ said Justina in concern.

  ‘No!’ said Olivia, with a violence close to hysteria. ‘I’m not all right! That horrible therapist thing still has Chegory, and maybe it’s eating him right now. All the ships have gone, there’s no ships left, we can’t get off, we can’t escape
, and - and—’

  She stopped, for she could not go on.

  ‘Come,’ said Justina, advancing on Olivia. ‘Best you have a little wine, some dry clothes, and then to bed.’

  But Olivia backstepped and gave herself to the pool. Sploosh!

  ‘You must not go in backwards like that,’ said the Empress reprovingly. ‘You’ll hit your head and break your neck.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Olivia, flounder-floating in the water. ‘But not this time.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Justina, ‘you swim for as long as you like, and when you’ve had enough you come downstairs.’

  ‘I will,’ said Olivia. ‘I will.’

  Then the Empress Justina departed with Log Jaris.

  When she was quite sure they were gone, Olivia Qasaba hauled herself from the pool. She stood by the bulk of the airship on which Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin was working with such a lamentable lack of urgency. Then she went to the edge of the roof and looked out over the streets of portside Injiltaprajura. She looked down Lak Street and out across the darkened waters of the Laitemata where the island of Jod floated in the moonlight.

  She shuddered.

  Then she said to herself, remembering words spoken to her by Artemis Ingalawa:

  ‘Remember you’re an Ashdan.’

  With her resolve thus strengthened, she set off downstairs. Through the dark and silent palace she went. She slipped out through the unguarded portals. She paused on the steps and looked first right, then left. But nothing was moving on Hojo Street. So she started downhill, down Lak Street. On either side rose the grand mansions, some glowing softly with moon paint. Here and there were rip-tooth intrusions of shadow and ruin where riot and fire had claimed some of Injiltaprajura’s most expensive architecture.

  Downhill went Olivia. On her left was the huge chunk of bone known as Pearl. She allowed herself a sentimental tear as she gazed upon this monument to the inexplicable, for well she knew that this might be the last time in her life that she would ever see it. Further downhill, she came to the Cabal House, guarding the intersection where Skindik Way and Goldhammer Rise branched off from Lak Street.

  She paused.

  She could turn left, and go down Skindik Way and then through Lubos to the waterfront. It was something of a short cut. But . . . the ruins of the Dromdanjerie lay that way. She did not care to go past those ruins, least of all by night. For a moment, grief choked her throat. Her father! Gone, missing . . . dead?

  ‘You are an Ashdan,’ said Olivia firmly.

  Overhead, there was a minor explosion. Startled, she looked up. Blue and yellow sparks flared from the top of the Cabal House. A heavy smell of sulphur drifted down from that eminence, to be followed by some drunken laughter. So the sorcerers were up and about - and, no doubt, up to no good. Trying to convert lead to gold, perhaps, or something equally as idle.

  Momentarily, Olivia considered going into the Cabal House and asking the wonder-workers for help. But she knew it would do no good. If she wanted to save the world from going to rack and ruin, she would have to do it on her own.

  ‘I have to do it,’ said Olivia.

  And she did.

  Otherwise, Master Ek would start killing and torturing, if he hadn’t started already. She could see that coming. Justina would get locked up, and probably get her head cut off - if she was lucky! And Chegory would undoubtedly be eaten by the therapist. What was it the therapist thing had said? Men make better hostages because . . .

  No, better not to think about that.

  Doing her best not to think, Olivia went downhill until she came to the waterfront, then she turned left and strode purposely along the embankment.

  ‘Halt!’

  A voice from the dark.

  A soldier.

  One of the soldiers quarantining Jod.

  ‘I’m halted,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Who goes there?’ said the soldier.

  ‘Nobody,’ said Olivia. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ve halted, remember?’

  The soldier stepped out of the shadows of Morthaldi-pan’s boatshed and rock-crunched toward Olivia. Moonlight glinted from the blade of his spear as he levelled it at Olivia’s heart.

  ‘Who are you?’ said he.

  ‘I am Olivia Qasaba,’ said Olivia Qasaba with dignity. ‘I have been entertaining Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek. He’s sent me home. He’s an old man, you know. Evenings are enough, he doesn’t want all night.’

  ‘What are you doing here then?’ said the soldier.

  ‘Standing talking to you,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Don’t play games with me, child,’ said the soldier.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Olivia. ‘I play games with Master Ek. He might like to play games with you, too, if you’re not careful.’

  ‘A sentry,’ said the soldier, ‘has the full weight of the authority of the Izdimir Empire behind him, that authority including the authority of Aldarch the Third, Mutilator of Yestron.’

  ‘You belong in law school,’ said Olivia. ‘You’d be safer there. It’s far too dangerous for the likes of you to be out on the streets at night. Obooloo’s a long, long way away, and Aldarch the Third wouldn’t give a damn if my dearest darling Ek had you sharked in the lagoon tomorrow. Which he may.’

  ‘I do not think he will,’ said the soldier, who was if anything amused by the pretensions of this child concubine.

  However, he raised his spear, so the blade now threatened the stars rather than Olivia’s quick quick-pulsing heart.

  ‘Where are you going to, then?’ said the soldier.

  ‘Home,’ said Olivia, sensing that the man was ready to let her go.

  ‘Where’s home?’

  ‘East,’ said Olivia. ‘The East Caves.’

  The East Caves were not caves at all, but merely some shack-shanty hovels on the edge of town.

  ‘Be on your way, then,’ said the soldier.

  ‘Before I go,’ said Olivia, ‘I’ll know your name.’

  ‘The name?’ said the soldier. ‘The name’s Joy Wax. Tell that to old man Ek if you want.’

  ‘I will,’ said Olivia. ‘Believe me, I will.’

  Then she strode on along the waterfront with the moonlit waters of the Laitemata on her right and the slumlands of Lubos on her left. As she walked, she thought about the name the soldier had given her. She thought he had lied, giving a false name just in case she tried to get him into trouble. Joy Wax. There had been a mechanic with that name, a mechanic at the Analytical Institute. So how had the soldier come by the name? Was Ek having everyone with anything to do with the Institute arrested? Maybe.

  ‘But,’ said Olivia firmly, ‘whatever he’s doing or isn’t, he can’t stop me now.’

  She slowed her pace and studied the night sky. Clouds were coming across. Good.

  A few more steps, and . . . clouds shrouded their way across the moon and the night became dark.

  And Olivia quickly scrambled down the embankment and - if she stopped to think then she would never do it -into the waters of the Laitemata. Which smelt. The smell was not exactly that of the sea, but, rather, of a sewer’s discharge.

  ‘But the water’s warm,’ said Olivia to herself.

  She stood there, waist deep in the water, and tried to nerve herself up for the task. Log Jaris had done it. The sharks never got him. But then, he was a bullman all covered with fur, not a girl with the bones of a bird, a girl as tasty to a shark as a plate of fresh-cooked tolfrigdalakaptiko.

  She was frightened.

  The waters were black, black, anything could be in them, hideous things were, there were bones, there were teeth, there were jaws, stone fish which hooked your body into agony even screams could scarce describe, moray eels bad tempered as debt collectors, corals which cut and fire corals which stung, and jellyfish, lots of them, the lortageze warman being the worst of all, a monstrous jellyfish which trailed its strands across—

  ‘You are an Ashdan.’

  So said Olivia.

  Firmly.r />
  And momentarily she was not Olivia at all. Instead, she was Artemis Ingalawa, a woman lecturing a girl. Yes, she was Artemis, who had hunted in the forests of Ashmolea, who had hunted and killed, her knife running black with blood in the moonlight, oh yes, the man speaking in blood as he tried to plead—

  ‘An Ashdan,’ said Olivia.

  And lowered herself into the water and began to swim, swimming with a smooth, regular breast stroke. That kept her head free from the hideous black water, kept her head free and cut the noise down to nothing.

  Through the dark she swam.

  Then the clouds smoked away, the moon came out, and liquid silver spilt across the Laitemata, and someone on the shore shouted. Had she been seen? No matter. She was too far out, they could not stop her now.

  On swam Olivia, making for the bulk of Jod. When she was very close, she put down her feet, found rock underfoot, and strode toward the shore. When she was half a dozen paces from safety, her nerve finally broke, and she panicked out of the water, and stood gasping and panting, shuddering in the aftermath of her ordeal, water splilching from her clothes and gliberspleting down her legs.

  ‘I am an Ashdan,’ she said.

  But she no longer felt like one.

  Then she remembered the forest thing, the thing which Artemis Ingalawa had told her about all those years ago, the man in the forest and the killing, horrible, horrible, she had never though about it before, she had pretended she had never been told, she did not want to know things like that, but—

  ‘It was in me,’ whispered Olivia.

  Yes.

  Down through the years, Artemis Ingalawa had told and taught Olivia many things, and she knew them even if she pretended she did not know them.

  And then Olivia realized the truth.

  If that soldier had tried to stop her, she would have killed him. He was a grown man, but he suspected nothing. A single blow between the legs, nicely timed, and then—

  Quietly, Olivia began to cry. All these hideous, ugly thoughts and memories were far, far too much for her to deal with. It was all far too serious, and she was too tired to cope with it.

  ‘I am an Ashdan,’ she said.