Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

(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.