The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers coaaod-6

by Hugh Cook

  Thus went Chegory, coming at length to the harbour bridge, where he turned left and went through the reeking slumlands of Lubos till he came to Skindik Way. Uphill he went, passing the slaughterhouse where men were chopping up huge chunks of one of the krakens which had died in the Laitemata on the previous day. Not to the Dromdanjerie did he go, but rather to Ganthorgruk, the huge rotting doss-house which rivalled Justina’s pink palace in size. He ascended creaking stairs to the uppermost (hence cheapest) levels where he knocked on a door.

  It did not open.

  ‘Teeth of a chicken!’ exclaimed Chegory.

  He kicked the door.

  Then it did open, and there was Ox No Zan, looking somewhat bleary since he had dosed himself heavily with the opium Doctor Death had prescribed for the toothache — or, more exactly, for the ache where that dentist had torn a number of half-rotten fangs from the jaw of the unfortunate Ox.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ox.

  ‘Go,’ said Chegory.

  [A weak joke. The Ashmarlan alphabet includes the sequence Oh Go Ro To Po. Oris Baumgage, Fact Checker Minor.]

  ‘Go?’ said Ox.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Chegory.

  [The implication is that No lacked either a sense of humour or a solid understanding of Ashmarlan. One would like to know what language this discourse was being conducted in. It is elsewhere implied that No understood Ashmarlan, yet one would be inclined to believe that Guy conversed with his friend in Janjuladoola. Oris Baumgage, Fact Checker Minor.]

  ‘Never mind what?’ said Ox.

  ‘Never mind anything,’ said Chegory. ‘Can I come in?’ ‘No,’ said Ox. ‘I’m sick.’

  ‘Don’t be so gutless,’ said Chegory. ‘I need help.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Ox.

  ‘Oh, I understand all too well. You don’t want to get involved.’

  ‘You’re not being fair. I warned you! Didn’t I? Wasn’t I there when you, when you — after the kraken I mean, you remember, you came off the harbour

  bridge, there I was, I-’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Chegory, ‘so you-’

  ‘I did my duty. All right? So that’s all!’

  ‘Listen,’ said Chegory, ‘aren’t we meant to be friends?’ ‘Yes,’ said Ox, with a touch of desperation. ‘So what are you doing here? You’re all mixed up in, oh, fighting with soldiers, burning people, some kind of treason, a coup at the palace or something, you were-’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Chegory.

  ‘Well, weren’t you there? Up at the palace? Last night? When they had the revolution?’

  ‘Revolution? Ox, you’re-’ ‘It’s true! They were fighting, they got weapons off the guards, they-’

  ‘Oh, that was just a riot,’ said Chegory, ‘just some-’ ‘Just? You could get burnt alive for less than that. You could get, well, the sharks, you know, or knives, you don’t have any idea, you-’

  ‘I’ve every idea,’ said Chegory. ‘I’m in trouble, deep trouble, I need help, not-’

  ‘All right,’ said Ox, cutting him off. ‘All right, let’s go down to the dining room, get some soup then talk about it.’

  ‘I’ve had breakfast.’

  ‘Then dragons for you!’ said Ox. ‘But I’ve had nothing. Come on, get out of the doorway, how can I get out with you standing there like a, like a, well-’

  Chegory sighed, and stepped aside.

  Whereupon Ox took a quick step backwards then slammed the door. The quick-witted Ox bolted it even as Chegory threw his weight against the timbers.

  ‘Open up!’ shouted Chegory, kicking and hammering. No response from Ox.

  Chegory kicked and hammered some more. He raised such a bedlam that at last a man threw open a door some three rooms down the corridor to challenge him.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ said the man in decidedly foreign accents. ‘Hey?’

  It was a stranger. Some olive-skinned fellow with close-cropped brown hair. Nobody Chegory knew.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Chegory. ‘I’m just leaving.’

  ‘Don’t let him get away!’ shouted Ox, words clearly audible despite the muffling timbers. ‘Mutiny, treason, murder, rape!’

  ‘Traitor,’ said Chegory.

  Then kicked savagely at the door. Then strode down the corridor toward the stranger, meaning to fight his way past if the man tried to stop him.

  ‘Hold it there, boy,’ said the stranger, stepping out of his room.

  Chegory’s fingers leapt to his boot sheath. Empty! The other one, the other one, his blade was in the other one. His left-hand down-darted. Fingers found knife-hilt. Drew metal for the kill. His knifehand was relaxed and low, ready to stab upwards, to rip the gut or stab between ribs to vent heart blood.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ said Chegory.

  ‘Easy now, boy,’ said the stranger. ‘Put down the knife and nobody will get hurt.’

  There was no fear in the stranger’s voice, no fear in his stance, and he showed no signs whatsoever of getting out of the way. What was he then? Some kind of combat expert? Perhaps. But only one such man in a thousand can take a knife from a trained shivman.

  ‘Nuk off,’ said Chegory.

  Then language left him as his mind cleared for action and reaction, his senses sharpening as his heartbeat hammered, as his footsteps shadowed across the ground, his feet quick-gracing as he slid in fast with his blade slammed from left to right, flickering already from feint to feint, looking for the opening, the kill.

  The olive-skinned stranger summed his approach at a glance, saw what he was up against then ducked back into his room. Slammed his door. Chegory whirled past it, turning, knife shifting from right hand to left as he dropped to a crouch, expecting the stranger to dart out to try to catch him from behind.

  Instead, the door opened no more than a crack.

  The stranger looked out, scrutinising the Ebrell Islander who crouched panting in the corridor, murder in his face.

  ‘Where you learn knife-fighting, boy?’ said the oliveskinned one.

  No reply.

  ‘You some kind of killer, huh?’

  ‘Look,’ said Chegory, recovering the use of language as his heartbeat slowed, ‘I don’t want any trouble, I just want to get out of here. Don’t follow me, you won’t get hurt. Okay? Understand?’

  ‘Are you trying to get money off my young friend No? Is that it? How much does he owe?’

  ‘Look,’ said Chegory, ‘you don’t want any trouble, do you?’

  A laugh from the olive-skinned one.

  ‘This is no bloody joke!’ said Chegory vehemently. ‘I’m in deep shit, I don’t care if I, if I — cut you up, that’s nothing, one dead man, hell, it’s all gone to shit, my whole life, don’t laugh you bastard, I’ll smash your face I’ll smash you break you cut you kill you gash you smash you-’

  He was shouting now. Giving vent to all his suppressed rage, hate, frustration. To the bloody murder which breeds in the breasts of Ebrell Islanders forced to dwell in the civilised cities to which they are so unsuited. All the unsaid things came out till he was vomiting forth hate unlimited, obscenity unpardonable.

  Then he was done.

  He stood there, panting. A little shocked at himself.

  But the stranger merely laughed.

  ‘Troubles!’ said the olive-skinned one. ‘You think you have troubles!’

  He opened his door a little more. Chegory stood on guard still, but he was no longer poised for murder. Instead, he was assessing the stranger in depth and detail. Not much to look at. A bony body with narrow shoulders. Brown hair and olive skin, as noted already. A strange face, alien, foreign, as weird as his accents. A long, narrow face, length accentuated by steep-slanting cheek bones and a sharp-pointed chin. Thin lips, hooked nose.

  ‘What’s your problem then?’ said Chegory.

  His curiosity was understandable. After all, few people laugh when face to face with a killer. Equally, few respond to violent obscenity with such
insouciance, at least not in Injiltaprajura, where uncouth speech tends to cause serious offence.

  ‘My problem?’ said the stranger. ‘If I had but one I’d be laughing!’

  ‘You’re laughing anyway,’ said Chegory.

  ‘In extremity, what else is there to do? I’m to blame for the loss of the wishstone — and that’s the least of it.’

  ‘The wishstone?’ said Chegory. ‘How come?’

  ‘Because I’m Official Keeper of the Imperial Sceptre, aren’t I?’

  ‘Well, you tell me. Who are you?’

  ‘In truth you see the Official Keeper before you. Odolo of Ganthorgruk at your service. Conjurer and sinecurist. Favourite of the Empress Justina, hence still alive, but only just. And yourself now? Who would you be?’

  ‘None of your business,’ said Chegory.

  ‘Come! Don’t be like that! If you’ve got troubles, why not share them? Can’t make things worse, can it?’

  Chegory hesitated.

  ‘What say we go to the dining room? Hey? Talk it out? You can tell me all about it over a cup of coffee or something. I’ll pay. Money’s the least of my problems, for the moment at any rate. That’s what I think, anyway — my bank manager no doubt would beg to differ.’

  Still Chegory hesitated.

  ‘What have you got to lose?’ said Odolo. ‘If I wanted to make you prisoner I could rouse the whole slaughterhouse with a shout from my window. You’d never get away. Come. I won’t say I’m your friend, but that scarcely makes me your enemy, does it? What have you got to lose?’ ‘Okay,’ said Chegory, taking a deep breath as he eased up on the knife. ‘Okay then. Let’s talk.’

  Then the two of them went down to the dining room. This was virtually empty, for most of those denizens of Ganthorgruk who were in regular employ had left for work, while those who were alcohol addicts had slipped off to speakeasies already, unless they were still sleeping off the debauches of the day (and night) before.

  ‘Like the view?’ said Odolo, gesturing to a window from which one could see all Lubos, the Laitemata, Jod, Scimitar, the Outer Reef, and vistas of blue and green sea beyond.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Chegory, without enthusiasm.

  And sat himself at a table while Odolo went for some coffee.

  Then the two began to talk.

  Both had been, till then, lonely individuals totally isolated in their individual predicaments, effectively bereft (at least for the moment) of any friend or confidant. Both found it a deep relief to indulge in confession.

  Young Chegory told of his arrest, of Shabble’s untoward intervention and his consequent escape, of rearrest, of his deportation to the pink palace to face the squealer in the treasury, of riot, of his unwitting escape through a hole in the wall of the treasury, of his long wanderings Downstairs and of all that had taken place in that underground realm.

  For his part, Odolo told of his strange dreams, some of which had prefigured (or caused?) transformations in the world itself. He told of dreaming (or creating?) the krakens in the Laitemata. Of his breakfast bowl which had come alive with boiling blue scorpions. Of other transformations, transfigurations and transubstantiations which had taken place since. Of a breadfruit which had turned of sudden into a brief-lived globe of red ants. A writing brush which had grown wings then flown away. A hash cookie turned to a cherry.

  ‘A cherry?’ said Chegory.

  ‘A stone fruit. From trees, a special type of tree. Nice enough. I’d plant the stone itself except I doubt it’d grow in this climate. That’s not all there is to it, either. There’s these words, words, my head’s crazy with words, whenever I’m not thinking hard they run amok, all kinds of words just scrambling through my head.’

  ‘Well,’ said Chegory, ‘maybe you’re… well, you know what I mean. Or maybe someone’s fed you zen, you know, I told you all about that. Different people, it, well, I’m not setting myself up as an expert or something but it does weird things to some people. Or then, what if you’re a wonderworker? But you just don’t know it? Or the wishstone, doesn’t that do magic? Couldn’t you, like, pick up magic? Since you’ve, you’ve looked after it so long.’

  ‘There’s nothing magic about the wishstone,’ said Odolo. ‘It’s, it’s beautiful, yes. It’s got a kind of soft music about it, and inside there’s all rainbows, never still but always moving, a brightness amazing when you get it in the dark. But no magic. Else what would it be doing in the treasury? Injiltaprajura’s rulers would be using it from dawn to dusk to wish and rule.’

  ‘You’ve tried it?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘You have!’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Odolo, unaccountably embarrassed. ‘But the wishes never came true. I knew they wouldn’t. The thing is a — well, let’s just say it’s an old thing. Very old. The people here, they, it’s because it’s unique that they’ve got it locked up, I mean had it locked up. A toy. A bauble. That’s all it is, at least to them. A jewel among jewels.’ ‘You speak lightly of things most valued!’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Odolo. ‘What’s all that — that gold, jewellery, junk? What does it do? It sits there, that’s all. That’s all it can do. That’s why you people never get anywhere, you’re infatuated with accumulation, things, substance. What you don’t understand is that it’s process, that’s everything. Energy! The interplay of energy!’

  He was staring not at Chegory but through him. Looking at something. A vision, perhaps. A vision distant in time and space.

  ‘I don’t know that I understand what you’re saying,’ said Chegory, ‘but I do know when I’m being insulted.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Odolo. Then shuddered. As if a ghost had walked over his grave.

  ‘What is it?’ said Chegory. ‘Flashback?’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Odolo.

  ‘If you have taken zen,’ said Chegory, ‘then you’ll get these flashbacks, like me in the dark, you know. Sudden visions, that’s what they are.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Odolo, ‘I don’t think I’ve taken zen. I don’t — I don’t know what to think.’

  But speculating about such unknowns took them most of the rest of the morning. Their conversation got steadily deeper and deeper as they made their way through (to give here their combined consumption rather than a breakdown by individual) seven cups of cinnamon coffee, four cups of tea, three plates of popadoms, two bowls of goat’s meat soup, a bowl of shrimps and then (it was not yet noon, but they were ready for lunch) two bowls of cassava and a couple of plates of fricasseed seagull with more coffee to go with it.

  They had just finished the last of their seagull and the last of their coffee when the noon bells rang out to announce the end of istarlat and the start of salahanthara.

  ‘Well,’ said Odolo, pushing back his chair and rising from his table, ‘let’s be off, then.’

  ‘To where?’ said Chegory in surprise.

  ‘To the pink palace, of course. The Petitions Session starts shortly.’

  ‘I’m not going there!’

  ‘Of course you are. Where else can you go? You’ve no friends left to turn to. You could run away, flee into Zolabrik, take up with Jal Japone again. But you’ve told me already you don’t want to do that. So there’s only one thing left to do. Petition the Empress.’

  ‘But I’d get arrested if I-’

  ‘You can’t get arrested if you’re-’

  ‘Oh, if you’re a petitioner, fine, usually, but there’s a State of Emergency, there’s-’

  ‘Relax, relax,’ said Odolo. ‘I’m known to one and all at the palace as an imperial favourite. You won’t get into trouble, not when you’re with me. You’ll do good for yourself and good for me as well. You’ll get a pardon from the Empress, I swear to it. Better, when you tell of the pirates with the wishstone then the soldiers can start searching in earnest.’

  ‘Well,’ said Chegory, ‘maybe, maybe…’

  ‘Definitely!’ said Odolo.

  Then the conjuror hustled young Chegory out of
Gan-166 thorgruk and into the noonday heat through which they went, at a pace appropriate to the heat, up Skindik Way and then up Lak Street towards the pink palace standing in all its glory atop Pokra Ridge.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘If this doesn’t work,’ said Chegory, as they sweated up Lak Street, ‘then I’m finished.’

  ‘Relax,’ said Odolo. ‘Whatever her faults, Justina’s merciful, I’ll give her that. You’ll get your pardon.’

  ‘Sure. Or get my head hacked off on the spot. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.’

  ‘Then do you want to start walking for Zolabrik?’ ‘That’s my other option, isn’t it?’

  ‘There’s a third.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Chegory. ‘Tell me about it!’

  ‘You work on Jod, don’t you? So you know the island’s ruler. So why not seek help from him?’

  ‘There’s no point going there,’ said Chegory. ‘Ivan Pokrov’s in jail, I’ve told you that.’

  ‘But that’s not who I was thinking of,’ said Odolo. ‘Who, then?’

  ‘The Hermit Crab, of course!’

  Chegory shuddered.

  ‘You,’ he said, ‘have got to be crazy. Have you ever seen that brute?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘It’s, let’s see, it’s intimidating, that’s the word. When you know what it’s done it’s not just intimidating it’s bloody terrifying. I have to give the thing meat and stuff. Oh shit! And I haven’t! It’s missed lunch, that’s, that’s, gods, maybe it’s turning people inside out right now.’

  Chegory wheeled. A marvellous view! But he wasted no time admiring it for his eyes were all for Jod. It still existed. That was something! The marble buildings of the Analytical Institute were still there, and so was the harbour bridge. But how much longer would it be before the Hermit Crab poured out the vials of wrath and inverted the island entire, or shattered it into just so many chips of scatter-stone?

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Odolo. ‘Someone else will feed your happy little friend. Or is it sacred? A sacred ritual, and you its priest?’

  ‘Priest?’ said Chegory, startled. ‘Me? No, it’s not that, it’s not sacred, but it’s a — a — it’s a trust, that’s what it is, thousands of people, all Injiltaprajura, but it’s me they trusted, so it’s, yes it is sacred, it is, a sacred trust, and I blew it, the Crab’s starving right now, it’s-’