The Wazir and the Witch coaaod-7

by Hugh Cook

  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 r ight?’ 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 t
oward 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.

  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.

  But it was hopeless, the words did her no good at all, and when she tried to say them again she was blubbering so much that the words were quite unintelligible.

  Olivia was still crying when she came into the Crab’s cave.

  When she had whiled away the nights in that cave in the arms of her dearest Chegory, it had always been dark. But tonight, the Crab’s wind chimes — the copper wind chimes which Olivia had made for the thing — were glowing green. What did that mean? That the Crab did not like to be in the dark, not if it was alone?

  ‘Are you awake?’ said Olivia, speaking through tears.

  No response came from the hulking shadows of the Crab. And Olivia, suddenly furious, thumped on the thing with all her strength, pounding its carapace with her fists.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Wake up!’

  ‘Please,’ said the Crab huffily. ‘I am not a percussion instrument. Besides, even if I was, you are not a drummer, are you?’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’ said Olivia fiercely.

  ‘I do not make jokes,’ said the Crab.

  ‘That’s just as well,’ said Olivia. ‘Because I’m not in a mood for any jokes.’

  ‘No,’ said the Crab. ‘By the sound of it, you are in a very bad mood. I recommend a nice soothing walk. Four times round the island should do it.’

  ‘I’m not here for my health,’ said Olivia.

  ‘What are you here for, then?’

  ‘To beat some sense into your thick ugly head.’

  ‘I am a crab,’ said the Crab. ‘I do not have a head.’ ‘No!’ yelled

  Olivia, giving the thing an almighty thump. ‘You don’t have any sense, either. You want to be human? Or don’t you?’

  The Crab sighed.

  ‘I know what you’re on about,’ said the Crab. ‘You want me to get the organic rectifier. It’s in the Temple of Torture, right?’

  ‘Right!’ said Olivia. ‘So you know all about it! So why don’t you get on with i
t?’

  ‘As I told Log Jaris-’

  ‘I’m not Log Jaris, I’m Olivia Qasaba,’ said Olivia. ‘I don’t care what you told the bullman, I’m telling you now, you have to get the organic rectifier, right now.’

  ‘If it’s really there to be got,’ said the Crab.

  ‘Of course it is!’ said Olivia. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be here tell ing you all this.’

  ‘You might be,’ said the Crab. ‘Humans are incredibly duplicitous creatures, as I’ve learnt to my cost.’ ‘Duplicitous?’ said Olivia.

  She was so sick with fear, rage, hate and fatigue that she had quite forgotten whether she did or did not know that word.

  ‘Yes, yes, duplicitous, that’s what they are,’ said the Crab. ‘Che ats, liars and lords of deceit.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t understand anything!’ said Olivia. Then, abruptly, her animating rage left her. Olivia, deserted by her fury, sat down in a wet, hot, saggy heap. She wept.

  After a time, Olivia calmed herself.

  It was quiet.

  The Crab was saying nothing. Maybe it had gone back to sleep. Some where, a slabender frog was talking to the night. Then, across the wat er, someone screamed.

  ‘You hear that?’ said Olivia to the Crab. ‘Someone’s getting hurt. That’s Master Ek, that’s what, he’s doing it, hurting people. You could stop him, you know.’

  The Crab said nothing.

  It remained stolidly silent.

  Olivia closed her eyes, and waves of black despair swept over her.

  ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘you are an Ashdan.’

  ‘No,’ said the Crab. ‘I am a Crab.’

  ‘And a big, stupid, silly Crab at that,’ said Olivia, getting to her feet. She bit her lip. Then: ‘Open your claw. This one. Come on! Do what I say! Open it! Come on, silly, we haven’t got all night.’

  The Crab’s left claw opened with a slight creaking sound. Olivia held up her right hand.

  ‘You see this?’ she said. ‘You see this hand? The organic rectifier can make it better. If there really is a rectifier. If I’m not lying. If I’m telling the truth. You grant me that?’

  ‘If you can choose the axioms, you can win any argument,’ said the Crab.

  ‘Well what’s that supposed to mean?’ said Olivia. ‘What I say makes sense, doesn’t it? If there really is an organic rectifier, you can get it for me, can’t you? So you can fix my hand. If my hand gets hurt, I mean.’