The Wazir and the Witch coaaod-7

by Hugh Cook

  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 those 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.

  When these officials were assembled upon the deck of the good ship Oktobdoj, two children of Wen Endex came forth to meet them. One was a heavyweight in his forties, a confident brute with a cauliflower ear. The other was younger (in his early thirties), lighter in build (indeed, he was positively slender) and less confident (much less, for his watering eyes blinked nervously at the too-bright sunlight).

  Had these two men been of Janjuladoola breed, their dealings with the officials might have been delicate and protracted. But, as they were children of Wen Endex, their approach was blunt, direct and unsubtle. It was the heavyweight who did most of the talking.

  ‘I am Manthandros Trasilika,’ said he. ‘I am here for a reason.’

  ‘So am I,’ said his slender companion. ‘I am Jean Froissart, a priest of Zoz the Ancestral.’

  ‘A priest of Zoz?’ said the Janjuladoola-skinned harbourmaster. ‘You a child of Wen Endex yet you claim yourself for Zoz?’

  ‘He is,’ said the heavyweight, answering before his companion had time to hesitate. ‘For a wazir needs a priest, and I stand before you as your new wazir.’

  This pronouncement was so abrupt and unexpected that it was greeted with total silence among the ranks of the officials. The heavyweight betrayed a momentary and uncharacteristic nervousness by tugging at his cauliflower ear. Then his ever-confident voice rolled on:

  ‘Aldarch the Third has triumphed in Talonsklavara. All dispute in the Izdimir Empire is at an end. To celebrate his victory, Aldarch Three has sent me to Injiltaprajura to assume command of Untunchilamon and to punish those who have usurped rightful a
uthority during the years of civil war.’

  ‘Then,’ said the representative of the Combined Religious Guild, the first of the officals to adapt to this startling intelligence, ‘you should by rights report to Master Ek immediately.’

  So said the worthy Guild representative, then waited. This was the first test. If the newcomers did not know who Master Ek was, then they could hardly be the wazir and priest they claimed to be.

  ‘Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek has long been in my thoughts,’ said the heavyweight. He pulled a miniature from his pocket and tossed it to the Guild representative. ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’

  The Guild representative fielded the miniature. It hurt him to do so, for such an abrupt athletic gesture was not consonant with dignity; nevertheless, he caught the portrait adroitly, moving with an agility which betrayed his secret and shameful addiction to the outlawed sport of ping-pong. The Guild representative studied the miniature. There was no mistaking that face. Gnarled, wizened features. Black teeth. Eyes of pale orange flecked with green. It was without a doubt Master Ek himself. The newcomers had passed the first test.

  ‘Manthandros Trasilika,’ said the Guild representative. ‘I am Hoboken Ik Tau. In the name of the Combined Religious Guild, I bid you welcome. Welcome to the Laitemata. Welcome to Injiltaprajura. To the shores of Untunchilamon, welcome. Thrice welcome you are. And to you also, Jean Froissart, to you, welcome.’

  That was the start of the speech made by Ik Tau, a long speech which it would be tedious to relate in full. But the upshot is that in due course the newcomers were conducted to the presence of Master Ek himself. They took with them a present for that formidable dignitary: a death warrant commanding the immediate execution of Justina Thrug.

  CHAPTER NINE