by Hugh Cook
‘My clothes!’ wailed Chegory.
‘Don’t worry,’ said someone. ‘You’ll get them back.’
Then he was in Reni’s office and the physician was checking him over. Scrutinising, prodding, poking, thumping, interrogating. Whores, boy? Have you slept with whores? No? Then with what? Have you ever had a pig? No? You don’t know what you’ve missed! Yaws, boy, have you got yaws? Very well. Lepers, boy. Have you met any? Have you…
On and on, till Chegory’s head was spinning.
At last Reni concluded his investigations, popped a boil on the back of Chegory’s neck, then declared him basically fit and well.
‘However,’ said physician Reni, ‘you are slightly anaemic. Therefore I prescribe a little mead.’
‘Mead?’ said Chegory. ‘I thought that was a medicine for hysteria only.’
He had heard as much said when mead was discussed by his uncle Dunash Labrat, who had a licence to brew up the stuff.
‘Hysteria, anaemia, dementia, depression, psychosis and the common cold,’ said the physician gravely. ‘Mead is the best medicine known for all of those and more, although in truth all classes of alcohol are possessed of such virtues.’
‘But,’ said Chegory in bewilderment, ‘alcohol is a poison.’ ‘And is not salt?’ said Reni. ‘In my fist alone I could hold salt sufficient to make you retch, cramp and die. Yet without salt you would sicken and die in any case.’
‘Salt we must have for our blood comes from the sea,’ said Chegory.
‘Aha!’ said Reni, with the slyest of grins imaginable. ‘So you adhere to the evolutionary heresy, do you?’
‘The Empress Justina has declared religious freedom on Untunchilamon,’ said Chegory stoutly.
‘Even so,’ said Reni, ‘you are but a fool to enlist heretical superstition in a debate with medical science. Our science, young man, has proved beyond doubt that all poisons are capable of medicinal uses.’
‘I don’t do drugs,’ said Chegory flatly.
By now the red-skinned one had conceived a deep suspicion of the imperial physician. Surely no true practitioner of the healing arts would feed poisons to a patient! ‘You take hashish, do you not?’ said Reni.
‘Hashish is no drug,’ said Chegory. ‘Drugs are toxic things which kill. Nobody ever died from eating a hash cookie or smoking a little kif. You a doctor! Yet you slander the Herb of Healing by making it one with the Drink of Death which can kill in a night or less.’
‘So!’ said Reni. ‘It is but an Ebrell Islander, yet thinks itself the complete pharmacist. It is but an Ebrell Islander, yet it will lecture its doctor. It is but an Ebrell Islander, a thing which cannot read, write or figure, yet it will lecture a philosopher who has degrees from three of the elite universities of the Izdimir Empire.’
‘Alcohol kills,’ persisted Chegory stubbornly, not bothering to protest his literacy or his numeracy. ‘It takes but three cups of pure alcohol or less to kill a man in the prime of his health and strength.’
This was true, or near enough to being true, yet did not suffice to win the argument, for Reni persisted:
‘You drink tea, do you not?’
‘Tea,’ said Chegory stiffly, ‘is not toxic.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Koskini Reni, ‘tea is a lethal toxin if abused. A few pinches of tealeaves consumed without caution will kill the weak and frighten the hearts of the healthy to a frenzy most dangerous to the constitution.’ Chegory knew slaves sometimes abused tea in this fashion when they wished to report sick to escape a day’s work. Yet he remained unconvinced.
‘No normal person eats tea,’ he said.
‘Likewise no normal person drinks your theoretical three cups of pure alcohol,’ said Reni. ‘Remember, all things taken to excess can kill. Why, there are even cases of people who have died of a surfeit of water.’
‘So you admit the danger exists!’ said Chegory. ‘Doubtless,’ said Reni. ‘That is why alcohol is only available on prescription. This sovereign remedy for all ills is destructive in the extreme if it once escapes the control of professionals. Yet here within the pink palace we use it safely, for it is controlled and prescribed in strict accordance with medical ethics.’ Then Reni indulged himself in a condescending smile and said: ‘You see, my boy? There’s nothing to worry about.’
Yet he tucked Chegory’s prescription for mead into a thin manilla folder, leading the young Ebrell Islander to believe he had won the debate even though the physician refused to concede defeat.
In any case, there was no time for Chegory to worry his head about this any further because other demands awaited. He (still naked) was whirled down a corridor to a room dizzy with perfume and colour. There he was annointed with olibanum and a sweet ambrosia founded on ambergris. Then a fussy man with rings on his fingers and pearls at his throat was dressing young Chegory in gorgeous silks of startling yellow and sea dragon green.
‘Clothes!’ protested Chegory. ‘Clothes, I had my own clothes, they, they said I’d get them back when I, well, after the bath and things, where are my-’
‘You’ll get your rags, boy,’ said a hard-faced brute from Wen Endex, who seized Chegory as soon as he was dressed and hauled him away to a windowless room. ‘Sit!’
‘But what-’
‘Sit!’
This in a shout of such violence that it sat young Chegory down in the greatest of hurries. His chair was of wood. It was most uncomfortable.
‘You know who I am?’ said his interrogator.
‘A — a — you’re from — you’re-’
Chegory meant to say that his interlocutor was without a doubt a Yudonic Knight from Wen Endex and that he (Chegory) had the greatest respect imaginable for such men. Thus he meant to speak, but the words refused to come.
‘Gods!’ said the interrogator. ‘What will she drag in next? Boy, I’m Juliet Idaho. Captain of the Praetorian Guard. Now here’s what I’ve got to say. Don’t fool with us, boy. We know who you are, and what. As for me, I’m the man who kills you. One false move, that’s all it takes. One mistake and you’re dead.’
‘I, well, I, look, I’m here for a, I don’t know what you’ve been told but I’m here for a banquet, okay, Justina, she — there’s a banquet, I’m invited, well, that’s what I’m told, okay?’
‘A banquet,’ said the grim-faced Idaho. ‘That’s what I’m telling you about. Table manners. Understand?’
Chegory had a sudden vision. A memory! Himself and Olivia at eats in the Analytical Institute. Kicks exchanged under the table. The curry powder spilling. The flying fish sauce slopping everywhichway. When? Only yesterday! But it felt like a million years ago. Like something from another life.
‘Yes, yes, surely, manners, okay, what do you think I am, kicking people under the table and everything, you think I’m going to cut up like that at a banquet, you crazy?’ ‘What’s this?’ said Juliet Idaho, producing a vicious piece of sharpened metal.
‘That, it’s a — a-’
‘A stab, isn’t it? But you eat with your fingers. Get it?’ ‘With my fingers,’ said Chegory. ‘Okay, sure, fingers, that’s not a problem. Whatever you say.’
‘I say fingers. There are stabs by every plate. That’s good manners on our lady’s part. She shows she trusts her guests with cold steel. But if you actually touch one of those stabs…’
‘Then what?’ said Chegory.
‘Do I have to spell it out?’
‘I think maybe you should!’ said Chegory.
‘All right, Ebby. Listen! There’s muscle behind you right through the banquet. You touch that stab and… whap! Off with your head!’
‘But why?’ said Chegory.
‘To keep you from killing Justina.’
‘But why should I want to do that?’ said Chegory. ‘We’re not fooled! We know why you came here!’ ‘Why?’ said Chegory, baffled.
‘You’re an assassin, aren’t you? A trained killer! We know you! You had that knife, didn’t you? Oh, you fooled the Empress nicely, but you do
n’t fool me. My men have their orders. You lay so much as a single finger on a piece of cold steel and — wwwhst! Off with your head!’
‘The Empress, she, she might not like that,’ ventured Chegory.
‘Because what?’ said Juliet Idaho. ‘Because we’d have to wash the tablecloth afterwards? Don’t count on it, Ebby! She’s not soft in the head. Maybe I am, though, or I wouldn’t let you out of here alive. Okay. I’m letting you live. For the moment. But remember — one mistake, one finger out of line, and it’s all over. No charge, no trial, no argument. Just wwwhst!’
‘Wwwhst,’ repeated Chegory.
‘That’s right, Ebby. Wwwhst — chop! Okay, let’s get going, we’re late as it is.’
Then Juliet Idaho led young Chegory Guy from the interrogation chamber to the apartments of Justina’s major domo. There Uckermark was waiting. Like Chegory, the corpse master had been bathed, massaged, perfumed and adorned in silk.
‘So here you are!’ said Uckermark. ‘I wondered where you’d got to. Come on then. This way, this way!’
Shortly Uckermark was showing Chegory on to the long balcony which ran the length of the southern flank of the pink palace. There a number of elegant people in silk and satin were sipping at sherbet served by obsequious slaves. Sherbet was proffered to Chegory. He took it. Realised he was holding a glass of crystal worth probably more than he made in a year of rock gardening.
He sipped at the sherbet.
Tentatively.
Was it real?
Was he really here?
He was possessed of a near-unshakable sense of unreality. He could not believe that he, a common rock gardener of Ebrell Island descent, was shortly to banquet as a guest of the Empress Justina. Or that he was doomed to be slaughtered if a single move he made was misinterpreted.
Then someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and found himself face to face with the Empress herself. He stooped, intending to grovel at her feet, but she caught him, restrained him. Sherbet spilt all over his hands.
‘I am not who you think,’ she said.
‘You are Justina,’ said Chegory.
Already he was shaking with fear lest some move he made be misinterpreted, lest Juliet Idaho come roaring up behind him to chop off his head.
‘I am Theodora, her sister.’
‘Oh,’ said Chegory, ‘oh, I–I-’
He could see it, now. This woman was heavier of body and feature, her skin coarser, signs of her legendary abuse of her flesh already writ clear in her countenance.
‘And you?’ said Theodora. ‘You, my delightful young chevalier? Who are you?’
‘This, my lady,’ said Uckermark, intervening with a suavity one would not have expected from a mere corpse master, ‘is Chegory Guy, the guest of honour at tonight’s banquet.’
‘So,’ said Theodora. ‘So. My sister has chosen, has she? If she unchooses, then…’
She looked at Uckermark and much was exchanged between corpse master and imperial sibling in no more than a single glance. Then Theodora was moving away, hunting game not already spoken for, and a scrupulous slave was cleansing spilt sherbet from Chegory’s fingers with a piece of fine linen. Chegory’s spilt glass had already vanished, plucked neatly from his fingers by a servant so dextrous in appearance and disappearance that he was well-nigh invisible. Before Chegory could think to ask for a replacement it was in his hands already, and the slave who had cleansed those hands had conjured himself elsewhere.
‘Come,’ said Uckermark. ‘Come, let’s admire the view. It’s not often you get to see Injiltaprajura from this angle, is it?’
‘No,’ said Chegory. ‘No, it’s not.’
Chegory then allowed Uckermark to lead him to the balcony, ostensibly so they could admire the view. Was it mere accident that led the corpse master to position himself within earshot of Theodora, who was by then already in conversation with a short, determined man with a wrestler’s build? Or had he parlayed his position as some-time paramour of the Empress Justina into something more permanent? Was he her spy, informer, investigator private? Or what?
These questions must remain forever unanswered, for the corpse master was notoriously close-mouthed about his past, present and future. But the conversation between Theodora and her wrestler can be cited with total accuracy, for auditors were many, and later scandal gave all occasion to recall the interplay between Justina’s twin and the flesh of her fancy.
‘I am Troldot Turbothot,’ said he.
‘Oh,’ said Theodora. ‘And where do you hail from?’
‘From the island of Hexagon in the Central Ocean,’ said Turbothot. ‘My lord, the Baron Farouk of Hexagon, has chosen me to be the hero to circumnavigate the world.’
‘Do tell,’ said Theodora, with a delicious little simper.
Whereupon Turbothot struck a pose more fit for stage than for cocktail conversation. Then he declaimed thus:
‘Seven years ago I departed from Hexagon. I sailed west through storm and hurricane alike. Cannibal isles I landed on where men have two heads each and ride their women as horses. Gaunt cities betrayed their secrets to mine eyes. Huge towers there were of metal built, of metal empty of all but echoes. Through reefs of metal likewise did I ship, while scurvy, drought and bleeding plague did thin my crew thrice daily.
‘We ate our dead and ground their bones with wood to make our bread. Our leather then we soaked and that consumed, then ate we the canvas and the very rigging of our ship. But all came right at end, for, favoured by the weather and the gods, we dared with the dying trades to Untunchilamon’s shores. There long in the Laitemata did we linger, doomed perforce to while away the days in barter and in mercantile pursuits.
‘Then fate to the palace did then my soul compel, where there the grace of fortune did me bid face to face with that fair damsel of enchantment unsurpassed who now before me do mine eyes behold. The vision of her beauty must then my heart console when I to sea anew do take my ship. Across Moana must I dare, yea, to Ashmolea’s shores, then in despite of fear ride south to dare my ship around the southernmost point of Argan. Thus must I dare before I head my craft for home.’
So spoke Troldot Turbothot, spouting such stuff and more in effortless torrents. Injiltaprajura later learnt (when interest expressed itself in questions some of Turbothot’s crew talked) that Baron Farouk of Hexagon had exiled Turbothot for writing bad verses, for dramatising the same, and, worse, for seducing members of the Family Farouk to admiration of such dramatisation.
Farouk had framed the exile in terms of a quest impossible, but Turbothot was such a fool he had not known the questing proposition to be but a polite invitation for him to remove himself from Hexagon before the baron removed his head from his shoulders. Instead, the versifying clown had sailed to certain death, a most reluctant crew compelled by oath to join him in the venture. Yet, after seven years, some few still lived, in astonished and astonishing defiance of statistical probability.
Their story [Here the Originator of this Text yields to temptation and gives in precis the story of the voyage of Turbothot around this planetary orb on which, or so material philosophers allege, we voyage through airless wastes at a velocity at once (such are the paradoxes of this preposterous theory!) immense yet imperceptible. While the Originator’s summary thus given takes up a mere three hundred thousand words or so, it has been thought best to delete it on the grounds that most of it is a tissue of manifest lies. Turbothot claimed, for example, to have met with the ostrich, that purely mythological bird which is conjured to have the height of a man, the habits of a chicken and speed (on land, mark, for myth disclaims the power of flight for the creature!) sufficient to outpace a racing stallion. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]
— thus reaching Untunchilamon, there to be marooned by absence of wind in the languorous longueurs of Fistavlir. Where were we, now?
Ah, yes! Before it fell to me to tell of Turbothot and of his voyaging we were on the balcony ofjustina’s pink palace in Injiltaprajura. There Theodora
was in conversation with the worthy hero of Hexagon. Perhaps that very day she heard from his own lips something more of the details of his fascinating adventures. Who knows? But what is certain is that the good Theodora shortly disappeared with the Turbothot creature and thereafter was so engaged with him that she quite failed to put in an appearance at the evening’s banquet.
Thus Chegory Guy, Theodora’s first-preferred, lost his best chance of further acquaintance with Justina’s sister and with those intimate delights so freely granted to the thousands. His consolation prize was enjoyment of the view to which Uckermark had led him. A splendid view it was, for he could see right across the city’s rooves to the Laitemata Harbour where three ships lay at anchor.
From the palace steps Lak Street descended steadily as it reached away to the waterfront. Chegory could see someone standing on the battlements of the wonderworkers’ Cabal House at the intersection of Lak Street, Goldhammer Rise and Skindik Way. Washing was hanging out to dry on the rooves of the Dromdanjerie and Ganthorgruk.
All of Lubos was displayed to Chegory’s scrutiny at a glance. He tried to work out which building was Ucker-mark’s corpse shop, but failed entirely. There were so many, many shacks, hovels and blockhouses all scrambled together that it would have taken an entire day to decipher the quarter’s geography.
Marthandorthan was easier to fathom since it was amply landmarked by large warehouses which Chegory knew well. He had no trouble finding the lair of his villainous cousin Firfat, or in tracing the route from the dockland quarter up Goldhammer Rise to the Cabal House, and thence up Lak Street to the steps of the palace which lay beneath his very eyes.
A troupe of beggars were on the steps working the crowd of incoming latecomers hastening to be on time for Justina’s banquet which would start shortly after the bat bells rang out to announce the end of salahanthara and the start of undokondra.
Chegory raised his eyes.
He looked again down the length of Lak Street and across the sun-fired waters of the Laitemata to the low-humped mound of Jod where even the brilliant marble of the Analytical Institute had assumed a pink tinge in the sunset. Further yet to the south lay the bloodsands of Scimitar where, even as Chegory watched, palm trees were blackening to silhouette as the sun drowned down in the west. Beyond lay the waters of the lagoon. Then there was the Outer Reef where the lazing seas of evening surfed at their leisure. Ever and ever they rose from infinities of sea which stretched away to forevers further yet where sky was fast darkening to stars.
