by Hugh Cook
‘But someone else will-’
‘They won’t! They’re all slaves, that’s what, no more sense than a coconut, or they’re mad algorithmists, just cogs and wheels and binary logic, that’s all they think of, not, not keeping two legs two arms stopping from getting turned inside out that kind of, of important stuff. I should-’
‘You should come inside,’ said Odolo, trying in an avuncular way to calm his intense young companion. ‘If you’re consecrated to the cause of victualling our crustacean-in-residence then you’d best look after yourself.’ By such talk the imperial favourite persuaded young Chegory to climb the steps and pass within the portals of the pink palace.
‘Business?’ said a guard, one of seven on duty within the foyer.
‘Petitions,’ said Odolo, and nodded pleasantly, and led Chegory onwards.
One of the guards had a black eye and a heavily bruised cheek, suggesting he might have been one of the unfortunates who had been overwhelmed during the rioting in the treasury in the night just gone. Chegory expected the man to leap forward and arrest him, but no such thing happened.
‘Up here,’ said Odolo. ‘Up the stairs.’
Up the stairs they went to the Grand Hall where the petitions session had already started. For a moment, the world wavered, and Chegory imagined he saw a fanged monster coming to quench its thirst upon his flesh. For that moment, reality tottered. Even as it did so, he knew what he was enduring: a flashback consequent upon his nighttime indulgence in zen.
Then the outlines of the world hardened again into the everyday, the quotidian, the expected and the expectable. The Grand Hall with unlit chandeliers hanging from its high ceiling. An unruly press of petitioners being held back by guards with scimitars naked. The Empress Justina high-seated upon a throne of ebony. Her white ape, Vazzy, even now being dragged away after perpetrating some (temporarily) unpardonable misdeed. Expressionless slaves standing to either side of the throne, their muscles working huge feathered fans to cool the ruler of Injiltaprajura.
Behold Justina! Vigorous her lips and big her nose, high her brow and plump her cheeks. Massive are her breasts, their weight threatening the carmine silk which binds them in. Stalwart are her thighs and thick her wrists. Surely she is the daughter of a mighty father!
Behind Justina’s ebony throne stood a huge cage with bars of black iron. Even Chegory Guy knew it for a starvation cage. It had long fallen out of disuse, for Justina was true to the traditions of her forebears, and the Yudonic Knights prefer disciplinary solutions which lead to sharp and bloody death rather than the exquisite forms of lingering agony brought to such perfection by the connoisseurs of the Izdimir Empire. Nevertheless, the lock on the door to the cage glistened with a sheen of oil which spoke of loving maintenance.
‘This way,’ said the conjurer Odolo.
Chegory let himself be led. His mouth was agape. He was staring at the battle-shields on the walls. The shields were objects of outright wrath adorned with the bloody coats of arms of the Yudonic Knights of Wen Endex. A riot of monstrous jaws, skulls, bones, sundry decapitations, hacked amputations, dripping blood and worse.
Odolo, by taking advantage of his status as imperial favourite, soon led young Chegory closer to the Seat of Mercy than he would otherwise have got in the course of the whole afternoon. For the petitions session had attracted an uncommon number of supplicants, since the searches, seizures, raids, captures, inquiries and interrogations of the last five quarters had flushed an extraordinary tally of criminals, sinners, law-breakers, tax avoiders, deserters, traitors, drug-dealers, miscreants, vandals, delinquents, runaways, truants, swindlers, perjurers and embezzlers from their caves, sewers, cellars, lairs, pits, attics, hideouts and houseboats.
Notable among those crowding close to the scimitars was a big man massively scarred by burns. Where skin remained one could see the remnants of once-glorious tattoos of dragons, sea serpents and such.
‘Who’s that?’ said Chegory, pointing him out. ‘Uckermark, the corpse master. A regular visitor.’ ‘Why?’
‘He’s always offending one religion or another.’
‘He’s a — a blasphemer?’
‘No, it’s just his job. It-’
Chegory never received an explanation of the theological disputes which interfere with the smooth flow of a corpse master’s work (certain treatments of the dead which are essential to one religion are anathema to another, and Injiltaprajura is rich indeed in religions) because he interrupted, saying:
‘Gods!’
‘What is it?’
‘Just someone I know.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, nobody, nobody, don’t worry about it.’
The someone who was nobody was actually Chegory’s uncle Dunash Labrat, upright beekeeper and dutiful taxpayer, who was moving through the crowd in company with his son Ham. They had some of their apiarian gear with them, for bees were swarming in the pink palace and the two had been summoned to remove them.
Chegory did his best to make himself inconspicuous. This was just what he had dreaded! Publicity! The embarrassment of declaring himself and his circumstances to the Empress Justina in full view of his uncle. A nightmare come true! Then the Labrats were gone, ushered deeper into the palace by a guiding guard, and Chegory breathed easy once more.
’ ‘Well,’ he said, eager to get his ordeal over and done with now he was irrevocably launched upon the petitioning path, ‘what’re we going to do? Push in ahead of those people?’
‘No,’ said Odolo. ‘We wait. The Empress takes breaks at intervals. Then we’ll join her in a place more private and plead your case beyond the mob’s survey.’
Serendipity!
This was more than Chegory had dared to hope for!
A private audience with Justina, oh yes, that was the way. He could say everything, confess all, knowing it would not be near instantly the common talk of the streets. Under such circumstances he would count it both a pleasure and a privilege to bare his soul to his Empress. Justina the merciful! Justina the good! Most saintly of rulers, most blessed of lawmakers!
One need not search far to find the sources of such extravagant royalism. It was, after all, the Family Thrug which had overthrown Wazir Sin, that dedicated pogromist who had made it his business to wipe out Ebbies first then others afterwards. If it had not been for the intervention of Lonstantine Thrug and Justina’s subsequent adherence to her father’s policies then Chegory Guy would still have been living as a hunted animal in the wastelands of Zolabrik. Hence young Chegory was a patriot, a royalist, and a staunch supporter of imperial rule.
Chegory waited impatiently while the Empress dealt with one petitioner after another. Then he was astonished to see someone he recognised stepping forward to declare himself.
He was astonished?
Why, you ask, was he astonished?
After all, he was an Ebrell Islander, hence drug-dealers and law-breakers of all descriptions were his common companions. Surely he could have been expected to recognise many a petition-pleading miscreant on a day so busy. If you have prejudged young Chegory thus then your prejudices are not misplaced, for, as this chronicle has demonstrated already, he was typical of his kind. Nevertheless, his astonishment was fully justified, for the man instantly standing before the Empress Justina was no ordinary petitioner.
No, this was the elven lord whom Chegory had met Downstairs in the night just gone. Or, rather, this was the individual whom Chegory had misidentified as an elven lord on the strength of the glittering fish-scale armour he had been wearing in the underworld. The man in question was actually Pelagius Zozimus, a wizard of the order of Xluzu and the quest-companion of Guest Gulkan (pretender to the throne of Tameran), Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin (a fellow wizard) and Thayer Levant (a cut-throat from Chi’ash-lan).
For the Petitions Session, Pelagius Zozimus had abandoned his miraculous fish-scale armour in favour of an unadorned light green ankle-length robe. A linguist had already established his competence in Toxtet
h, and even now a guard was using that language to ask Chegory’s ‘elven lord’ the standard question:
‘Have you in your voluntary or involuntary possession any knife, bodkin, knitting needle, dragon hook, sword, spear, bow, catapult, arbalest, fighting stick, battering ram, snake, scorpion, basilisk, vial of vitriol or other weapon of death or terror or violence?’
Whereupon Zozimus answered in the negative, was subjected to a swift but expert search, then was allowed to step closer (but not too close!) to the Empress. The Imperial Linguist stepped forward with him. Both elven lord and linguist bowed.
‘Toxteth,’ said the linguist, then bowed again and withdrew.
Chegory was appalled to see the elven lord standing almost within striking distance of the Empress Justina. Alone and unaccompanied. What designs did the alien uitlander have upon his beloved Empress. What treason was here afoot?
The elven lord bowed once more.
‘Speak,’ said Justina, for such was her style.
‘Fair star of Injiltaprajura,’ said he, ‘most gracious of the daughters of Wen Endex, most-’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Justina, impatiently, ‘I’ve heard all that before. Tell me something I don’t know. Get down to business, man!’
‘I crave forgiveness for sins enormous, for crimes near unpardonable,’ said the elven lord.
Chegory relaxed. So the miscreant was going to confess all. He was going to admit to the Empress that he had come to Injiltaprajura to try to seize the wishstone. Chegory knew that to be the ruling purpose of the elven lord and his companions for they had told him as much after they had captured him Downstairs.
‘Crave on,’ said the Empress.
‘My name is Pelagius Zozimus,’ said the elven lord. ‘Long have I dwelt in the wastelands of the Scorpion Desert. There, to my sorrow, I have served the evil warlord Jal Japone. His employ have I deserted, here to come to crave forgiveness.’
‘How did you serve Japone?’ said the Empress.
‘I was his chief of cookery,’ said Pelagius Zozimus, ‘for there lies my talent. I’m a master chef, the unsurpassed lord of twenty-seven styles of culinary delight. I hear my ladyship has a vacancy for such a one.’
‘Why, so we do,’ said the Empress, delight speaking itself plain across her face. ‘Pardoned and employed! My major domo will show you-’
‘Ware!’ shouted a guard. ‘An Ebby!’
For Chegory Guy was plunging toward the throne. Murder was writ clear in his countenance. His intent was to see this Zozimus dead that very day quarter. To denounce the fraudulent thief who had with breathtaking audacity cozened his way into the bosom of the imperial household. To swear that Zozimus was no servant ofjapone but a rapacious reaver from across the seas, a conspirator in league with vermin more dangerous yet.
Such was Chegory’s intent.
But before the young Ebrell Islander could get anywhere near the throne he was set upon by guards, seized, inverted, punched, booted, slapped, and deprived of his sole weapon — the knife he had found Downstairs and had secreted in a boot sheath.
‘A blade!’ shouted a soldier, brandishing the weapon for all to see.
At the sight of it, the corpse master Uckermark forced his way forward.
‘Hold him, hold him!’ cried a scimitar-wielding warman.
Chegory was held. Arms and legs wrenched out in four separate directions. He kicked, writhed, struggled and convulsed. All to no avail. Someone had him by the hair and was hauling hard, hoping to stretch out his neck for easy decapitation.
‘Get your hands out of the way!’ shouted the scimitarist.
‘Wait!’ said the corpse master Uckermark.
But nobody paid any attention to that man much-scarred and much-tattooed. Not until he seized the down-chopping scimitarist and threw him out of the way. Next moment a dozen blades were out.
‘Stop that!’ shouted the Empress Justina.
Nobody paid her any attention either. So she leapt up, seized the nearest slave and charged into the fray, striking out to left and right with this convenient weapon until she stood triumphant upon the field of battle with dazed combatants in recumbent postures to left and right alike.
[One is entitled to doubt that the battle above-described really took place. In the first place, in courts of imperial power the ruler’s softest word tends to be obeyed instantly, even when the ruler is a woman. Secondly, the behaviour here ascribed to Justina is not consonant with her gender. Equally telling is that use of a human body as a weapon has already been described once — the muscleman Tolon is said to have used Chegory as such when fighting against soldiers Downstairs — and a third party is later described (in virtually identical language) as employing a similar weapon. One is led to believe that the conflicts in question were settled with far less melodrama than the Text would have us believe, and that the employment of human bodies in battle is purely a figment of the Originator’s violent imagination. Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]
‘When I say stop,’ said Justina, ‘I mean stop! Does anyone want to argue about it?’
As nobody displayed any wish to enter into further dialectical discourse, Justina dropped her slave, who crawled away groggily.
‘Right!’ said Justina, tucking her breasts back into the confines of the crimson silk from which they had escaped during her exertions, ‘Let’s have some explanations!’
[This is an amusing little anecdote, though it lacks the hilariousness of the Originator’s tale about Theodora and her employment of chickens. However, while this anecdote amuses, it cannot possibly be true. Yet again we find the Originator’s imagination distorting the historical realities which underly the Text. A woman, whether Empress or otherwise, is never so casual about the public exposure of her anatomy. When her shame is revealed she reacts with flinching panic, with blushes and delightful squeals of alarm. I myself have observed this on a number of occasions. We would expect that if the Empress Justina had been exposed in the manner detailed then she would have been forced to withdraw from the public eye to come to terms with her shame and to recover her composure. Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]
[One is shocked to find one so venerable as Sot Dawbler ‘amused’ by the grossness he has discovered in the Text directly above. Or by the tale of Theodora and her chickens, which, since it is the vile and disgusting invention of a patent lunatic, has been extirpated from this Text on my order. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]
The corpse master Uckermark was the first to recover himself sufficiently to speak.
‘The boy,’ he said, ‘the boy is my apprentice. He’s, he has fits of unwittedness, but he’s a good boy, your highness, and the knife he had is but a tool of trade. If we can be gone from here I’ll chastise him mightily once we’re back at the corpse shop. I ask only that — the knife, my lady. It’s consecrated to the work of corpses, hence sacred, hence could we have it back?’
Justina considered.
Chegory’s fate hung in the balance.
Fortunately, Justina was acquainted with the corpse master Uckermark. Well acquainted. Very, very well acquainted. In truth, acquaintance of the kind which existed between the Empress and the corpse master went far beyond the borders of that cautious propriety which should by rights govern relationships between females of imperial standing and males of the lower orders. Thus Justina was inclined to gratify the wishes of her loyal subject Uckermark.
And, while she was about it, to gratify herself.
But first she had some questions.
‘This boy,’ she said, ‘is he a clean living young man?’
‘Oh, very clean living,’ said Uckermark. ‘A virgin in truth.’
‘Is he fit?’ said Justina. ‘Is he healthy?’
‘I guarantee him capable of the most vigorous exertion,’ said Uckermark.
‘Has he learnt his table manners?’ said Justina.
‘That he has,’ said Uckermark. ‘Furthermore, if you wish to have him as a guest at banquet I’ll ensure some revision.�
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‘You read my very mind!’ said Justina, clapping her hands together in delight. ‘Then the boy will banquet with me tonight. You will accompany him to banquet.’
Then the Empress seated herself sedately on her throne, her slaves resumed the work of fans, and Uckermark recovered the knife so recently taken from young Chegory Guy and hustled his dumbstruck captive away. Chegory cast one glance of appeal at the conjuror Odolo, but the imperial favourite merely spread his hands in a gesture expressive of helpless amazement.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Chegory was so shattered by fate’s perversion of all his expectations and by the sheer velocity of the events which had overwhelmed his life’s routines that he asked not a single question as Uckermark marched him out of the pink palace, down Lak Street as far as the Cabal House of Injiltaprajura’s wonderworkers, down Skindik Way then through the narrows of Lubos to the Corpse Shop.
‘This is my house,’ said Uckermark when they got there. ‘Not for long,’ said Chegory. ‘It’s on fire!’
The door stood ajar — and black smoke was pouring from within. But Uckermark merely laughed and threw the door wide open. Chegory stepped back as clouds of thick, choking fumes billowed outwards.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Uckermark.
‘You’re mad!’ said Chegory, coughing and choking. Then, as the smoke thinned a little, he saw the fumes issuing from large double-handled pots set just within.
‘In,’ said Uckermark.
‘But — but the — but why the smoke?’
‘Because flies love flesh,’ said Uckermark. ‘In, so I can close the door.’
Chegory went inside. Uckermark put the lids on the smoke pots then closed the door entirely. When Chegory had finished coughing and crying — the smoke was devilish for stinging the eyes — he began to look around and get his bearings. There was death everywhere he looked.