Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

‘Pipes!’ roared Jericho. ‘All chambers, all stations. Brace! Brace! Brace!’

They were heading for the last vessel and about to tear the top off the tricorn hat.

Omar struggled against his bonds, but he was tied to the chair too tightly. Not that he could have achieved much against the line of claw-guards formed up behind the prisoners’ chairs. Farris Uddin, Commodore Black and First Lieutenant Westwick were all tied to their chairs, not to mention what looked like the true Caliph Eternal. The bound and gagged ruler of rulers seemed to hold a strange fascination for the grand vizier’s pet, who kept peering around Salwa for a better look at his flesh twin. Despite his obvious curiosity, he held back from touching the true Caliph Eternal, as if to do so might negate his own existence in a sudden flash of sorcery. I can sense the difference between them now I’m so close, much good may it do me. He had to work hard not to sob at the thought.

They were inside a dim, dark chamber, facing a mirrored wall. The grand vizier motioned to Salwa to open a large womb mage’s chest and he — she? — withdrew a set of blood-filled vials, making the case ready for the grand vizier. Now Omar knew the truth of what had happened to Shadisa, he could hardly stand to look at the creature of sorcery that had subsumed her body. How could she do this to herself? How could she do this to me ? She had swapped her beauty and her soul and her honour for this? Power, the chance to follow the grand vizier around like a lapdog.

‘It is always good to know who you are dealing with,’ said the grand vizier, pacing the room. ‘I believe it was the fourth book of Ben Issman that said that no one should rise to heaven with a lie in their heart or a falsehood on their tongue.’

‘You dare to treat the Caliph Eternal like this,’ spat Omar, ‘the blood of Ben Issman himself, and then talk of the truth .’

‘The blood of Ben Issman?’ laughed the grand vizier. ‘How naive, how hopelessly romantic.’ He pointed to the gagged form of the Caliph Eternal. ‘Meet the much-diluted, much-copied, twentieth-generation enculi of a very distant cousin who managed to wrest power centuries ago from an equally distant enculi of some inbred fool who was briefly ruthless enough to seize the throne. It was said that Ben Issman took five hundred wives. There’s probably more of his blood in your veins, guardsman, than in this pathetic pair. There’s certainly enough of some others …’ He pointed at Farris Uddin. ‘Does the last son of Barir know, officer of the Pasdaran? He’s what, your great-great-great grandson?’

Farris Uddin said nothing as Omar stared at him in shock. Is it true? Was that the real reason why Farris Uddin had rescued the House of Barir’s last half-blood bastard of a son from a bandit’s blade?

‘Special shackles for you, my aged Pasdaran friend. I have extracted most of your abilities from your blood code. You have been gifted with a shape-switcher’s face and the ability to sweat acid and see in the dark. Enhanced strength, speed and senses. How old are you? The amount of trace drugs in your blood suggests you must have been taking pure lifelast for a very long time. You would have served my little enculi’s flesh father for most of his reign. How fitting for you to be here at the founding of a new dynasty.’

At last, Farris Uddin spoke, jerking his head towards Salwa. ‘An abomination as the power behind the throne? You are, I presume, the same as this thing?’

Salwa moved closer and punched him in the face. ‘You should not listen in to other people’s conversations.’

‘Our present forms are a necessary deception,’ shrugged the grand vizier. ‘The empire is not yet ready for a female grand vizier. And my male form should not disgust you, for in a very practical sense, it was you and your kind that made me, my Pasdaran friend. You are as much my begetter as you are the boy’s here.’

‘What do you talk of?’ spat Farris Uddin.

‘Do you remember when the satrapy of Hakaqibla rebelled all those years ago? When the Pasdaran came and executed everyone in the sultan’s family — all the males anyway. It’s not an easy thing to be a twelve-year-old girl, raised in luxury as a princess, innocent and artless, knowing nothing of the world, and then to have all that ripped away from you in a single night of savagery.’

‘You were there …’

‘As were you, I expect. You have no care for what you and your people did to me, do you? What you did to all of us. After such a gentle upbringing to find myself being whipped as a slave, watching most of my sisters and cousins die as we were dragged half-drugged behind sandpedes across half the empire. But I was lucky, if you can call being kept alive after what I experienced lucky. I was the prettiest of the survivors — the slavers made sure I got just enough food and water not to stumble and perish in the desert. Eventually, when I went on the block in Bladetenbul, I was purchased at no small expense by a very old and powerful womb mage who stood senior in the order’s ranks. I became his very special little slave, and somewhere in between abusing me, the sweaty old goat fell in love with what I still was in those days, as did his young fool of an apprentice. Between the two of them, I learnt every skill of the womb mage’s craft, until the pair didn’t even realize that their innovations were more my work than their own. I drove the old goat into a fit of jealousy by my dalliance with his apprentice, drove him into murderous fury, and made sure he pushed the young boy out of one of the towers of Mutantarjinn.

‘It was then that I replaced the apprentice, in every sense of the word, having developed a changeling virus to assume his assistant’s gender. How furious my owner was when he saw what his beautiful little slave had turned into. But he could say nothing without being executed by my side as the murderers we had become. And when the time was right, I slipped a draught into the old goat’s wine that burst his heart like an overripe fruit, leaving me to claim his legacy.’

Omar stared appalled at Immed Zahharl. More of an abomination than anyone had suspected. How similar and yet how different they were. Both Omar and the grand vizier had once been slaves, both risen beyond their station. He freed — indirectly — by her machinations, and she clawing her way back to privilege, becoming a chimera through the darkest murder and treason. How many lives had ended in the fall of the House of Barir, the Sect of Ackron declared heretic to make room for her followers’ rise in the Holy Cent; how many more would die in the war against the north? My father, my people, my home. She had slain Boulous, and worse yet, completely corrupted his beautiful Shadisa within and without. Filled the Sect of Razat with monstrosities made in her own image by sorcery — then filled them with the lust for power and the blood of men. How much better if that young princess had been left to her guileless pleasures in her distant province.

The grand vizier’s eyes narrowed. ‘I should plant you in the torture gardens, Farris Uddin, so I can thank you every morning for making me what I am today. Unfortunately, old man, you have too few years left for me to enjoy your company, so we shall have to put your body to a more practical use.’

The grand vizier was now near enough to Westwick’s chair for her to spit at his feet as she cursed him for a traitor.

Immed Zahharl just seemed amused by the woman’s little act of defiance. ‘I would free you if I could and convert you into one of us. But you are as much a product of the Pasdaran as the old man here. How clever of the secret police to send agents across the border masquerading as escaped slaves. And every girl born of her mother’s womb as much a slave to the Caliph Eternal as his troop of beyrogs. The changes in your body that imprint your loyalty to him run too deep and subtle for me to remove them without killing you. A pity. What an assassin’s blade you would have made for me. But don’t worry.’ The grand vizier tapped the vials of blood that had been extracted from the prisoners. ‘I have your design here. We can have a few more like you bred, I think, with the recipient of your devotion corrected to a more appropriate choice of candidate. The original, I fear, we must feed to the creatures in our stables. Some of them have quite a healthy appetite, you see.’