Jon Grimwood - Stamping Butterflies

Hassan claimed that his uncle was the bastard of that man's bastard, the grandson of a slave and a man whose name was to become enough to make other villages surrender without a shot being fired.

"Look, if you won't go to the village, I'll go myself."

"No way," Idries said. "You know what the boss ordered. You're to stay in the house, you're not even to go near the windows. Anything you need, I get."

"Fine," said Prisoner Zero. "Get me a packet of cigarettes."

If ever a house needed ghosts it was this one. The breeze-block shell of the kitchen was hungry for feasts yet to be cooked, there were basins upstairs where no one had washed and bedrooms where no man had sulked and no woman cried herself to sleep. No one had died in their beds because there were no beds. And thus no girl had ever spread her legs to make sheets for a boy she hoped one day to love and no babies had been born of such blind and necessary optimism.

All this Prisoner Zero knew, just as he knew that ghosts had fled to this valley from Marrakech and that he might just have saved Idries's life by sending him to buy cigarettes that no one would ever smoke.

With Idries gone, Prisoner Zero picked up his cell phone and turned it off, tossing the thing into a bucket of newly mixed plaster where it slowly but certainly began to sink. Viscosity, density and displacement, he filed all three away to consider later. If there was a later.

Finding a rag in the kitchen he rinsed it under water from a standpipe in the garden and headed for a half-built stable block. Horses were still considered a sign of wealth in the Atlas and Hassan had a stallion and four mares on order, pure-bred Arabs every one. The black jeep currently occupying what would become the end stall was an old diesel, running round the clock for the second time. Its treads were worn almost bare and a bang had scraped paint off one door.

Sacks of lime plaster still sat in the back, so Prisoner Zero moved these first and then began to wipe down the vehicle. Once the doors were free of fingerprints, he climbed inside the front seat and began, as quickly as he could, to remove all trace of Idries.

He wiped down the steering wheel and gear stick, the rubber pedals and handbrake, smeared his rag across a length of plastic dashboard and then wiped down the insides of both doors. Clambering out, Prisoner Zero reached for the mats and almost ran to a half-dug flowerbed, shaking both free of gravel and dirt.

All clean, he sat himself back in the driver's seat and changed gears, running rapidly through a whole sequence. After that he turned the handles which wound down the windows and put the handbrake on and off half a dozen times. As an afterthought, he wiped down the lever that put the jeep into four-wheel drive and worked that back and forth for a few seconds.

Then he got out of the jeep and promptly leant back in again to shake dandruff from his filthy hair on to the driver's seat. All that remained was to wipe down the sacks of plaster he'd carefully unloaded.

This wasn't what Prisoner Zero was meant to do if his mobile rang and it was probably pointless, but he did it just the same. He was meant to head for the high plateau where a goatherd would meet him near the top of the path. And he was to take Idries with him.

Idries didn't know this because he hadn't been told. That was the way Caid Hammou worked. The only people to know were the goatherd, who was meant to meet Prisoner Zero near the abandoned village, and Prisoner Zero himself.

Obligation and the repayment of debts could be a very complex thing in Marrakech.

There was a certain strength and logic to Hammou's plan, but a weakness also and it was the weakness which had always undercut his family's ideas where Jake Razor, Malika and Moz al-Turq were concerned. Caid Hammou and his nephew consistently ignored the obvious, which was that some people had real trouble doing what they were told.

The bolts on the cedar front doors to the kasbah were as long as Prisoner Zero's arm and as thick as the wrist of a child. They were brass, as was traditional, although chrome had become fashionable for riads in the city.

Prisoner Zero, very intentionally, left the main doors unlocked but the soldiers still came in the windows, smashing half a dozen simultaneously to toss in stun grenades. Even with torn strips of cotton in his ears and his hands protecting his head, the shock waves made Prisoner Zero feel sick.

Dropping to a crouch, he found a wet rag he'd prepared and slammed it over his mouth and nose, shutting his eyes against the tear gas and keeping his breath shallow.

" You, down! ..."

The words were shouted in English, followed a second later by a bark of Arabic and then French, same meaning, different voices. As Prisoner Zero was already crouched in the middle of the hall, he simply tipped on his side and stretched out on his front, the rag still held to his mouth.

"Hands behind your head."

Prisoner Zero assumed the position and waited. He could see feet... Well, boots really. Mostly black boots although one pair was green, made of canvas with thinner laces. That was the pair which stopped directly in front of him, shuffling back and forward. For a moment Prisoner Zero thought those boots intended to kick him in the face.

"Roll over... No... Keep your hands where they are."

Prisoner Zero rolled, and found himself looking up at a handful of US marines, a Moroccan liaison officer and two men from an elite regiment raised in Fez. They all had guns, even the liaison officer, and all of the weapons were pointed at him. It was like being... Prisoner Zero wasn't quite sure what. A fish maybe. Pulled out of the water, finally seeing the owner of the net.

"You going to shoot or not?" Prisoner Zero asked.

"Nothing so easy," the liaison officer said. And as if a signal had been given, one of the others stamped on Prisoner Zero's leg. A kick to the head followed and Prisoner Zero tumbled into somewhere else.

"What are you looking at?" demanded Zaq.

And while he was still wondering why his jade-framed mirror refused to answer, the young Emperor remembered. He'd promised to smash the glass if it ever spoke to him again and, as he'd pointed out at the time, neither of them could afford that much bad luck.

General Ch'ao Kai stood in front of the huge glass. Almost as if protecting it from the teenager's latest tantrum. The General was doing his best not to look disgusted.

Zaq had just returned from the Ambassadors' City, his disguise strewn on the floor behind him. No one was interested in plotting to overthrow him. They were interested in body modification, who'd lived the longest and which world was the richest, most highly cultured or threw the best parties. Politics seemed beyond them.

The week before, Zaq had trawled through the back alleys of the Servitors' City, in the clothes of a cook, searching the inns and brothels for co-conspirators. Needless to say he found none. Both cities were in agreement that the Chuang Tzu's existence was beneficial to the well-being of the 2023 worlds. So certain of this fact had tonight's group been that most ambassadors at the party had trouble even understanding his suggestion.

"Morons," Zaq said, wiping off the last of his make-up with the back of his hand. Outside his window rain lashed the glass and hammered pregnant drops against the roof, always a sign that the Emperor was upset. And who wouldn't be? Zaq had returned to his pavilion expecting to be allowed to sulk in peace and found five naked concubines arranged artistically on his bed.

"Kill them," the boy ordered.

Zaq was back in full costume, complete with court sword, his hair pulled into a black ponytail and tied with ribbon. Only servitors wore queues and although visiting ambassadors were told that the tradition carried over from ancient days when servitors still believed they might be lifted to heaven by their plaits, this was untrue. The Manchu had demanded it. A sign of servitude. One that had allowed the heads of the Han to be dragged easily across the chopping block.