Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

‘What is it?’ said Justina.

‘We have news of the latest arrivals,’ said the manservant, referring to the two ships which had come into the Laitemata at dawn.

‘Good,’ said Justina, pleased to see that her orders were being obeyed; it was most important that the palace had intelligence about each new vessel that arrived in the harbour.

‘One is a general trader,’ said the manservant, retailing the information freshly delivered by Justina’s spies.

‘And the other?’ said Justina.

‘It is a cruise ship, ma’am.’

‘A what?’ said Justina.

‘A — a ship of ill repute,’ said the manservant.

‘He means a brothel ship,’ said Dardanalti.

‘Oh,’ said Justina. ‘I didn’t know there really were such things. I thought that was just a story.’

‘Manamalargo is famous for such cruise ships, ma’am.’

‘Well, well,’ said Justina. ‘One lives and learns. What news of Yestron?’ ‘Talonsklavara wages still. The war is undecided.’

‘Good,’ said Justina. ‘You are dismissed.’

The manservant departed, and Justina smiled.

‘That seems to solve our immediate problems,’ said Dardanalti.

‘It gives us time in which to manoeuvre,’ said Justina. ‘But no more. The sooner we choose and train our wazir the better. Come! The bedlam awaits.’

The impetuous haste with which Justina set forth for the Dromdanjerie is best explained by the agonies of impotent waiting which she had endured for so long. At last she had a plan of action: risky, uncertain, perhaps lunatic. But a plan regardless. Something she could do. And this fired her frame with energy. So forth she went with Dardanalti at her side.

But Justina had got no further than the front steps of her palace when she was intercepted by Juliet Idaho, who demanded to see her in private. Immediately.

Justina sighed, commanded Dardanalti to wait, then walked Idaho to her office. Juliet Idaho was a warrior’s warrior, a hero who would have made a fitting companion for Vorn the Gladiator on any of the missions of peril undertaken by that lusty swordsman; but Justina was not a gladiator, and sometimes (just sometimes) Idaho got on her nerves.

Once in her office, Justina sat.

‘What is it?’ said she.

‘This,’ said Juliet Idaho, passing over a document.

‘And what is this?’ said Justina.

‘That’s what I want to know,’ said Juliet Idaho, seating himself without invitation.

Justina studied Idaho’s offering, a single sheet of ricepaper nearly obliterated by a million chicken-scratchings in vermilion ink.

‘It appears to be writing,’ said she, squinting at the miniscule letters so painfully executed in a crabbed and scorpioned hand. ‘But in what language I cannot say. The words are like our dummer’s drums: they say something, but say nothing intelligible to me.’

‘The text is written in Slandolin, my lady,’ said Idaho.

Justina had never got round to learning that language. She supposed she should have; but then, there were so very many tongues that the learning of them could easily have overwhelmed a lifetime.

‘What is your interest in this… this Slandolin?’ said Justina. ‘What have we here? A work of scholarship?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Idaho. ‘It purports to tell of the creation of a dragon. A new kind of dragon. A dragon no longer than your finger.’

‘This dragon?’ said Justina.

So saying, she pointed at the little nest of cat’s fur and feather-fluff which sat upon her desk. Within was the dragon Untunchilamon, so named by the Empress Justina. This was a beast of heroic lineaments but decidedly unheroic physical capacities; seven days previously it had been mobbed by a squabble of seagulls on the island of Jod, and would have died but for the personal intervention of the imperial veterinarian, who had been upon Jod to give the Hermit Crab a medical check. The poor mite of a dragon had been half-dead when brought to the palace, but had been recovering steadily ever since; indeed, the veterinarian averred that it would soon be fit to fly.

For those who lack knowledge of alien tongues, it should here be noted that the dragon Untunchilamon was so named for the same reason that cats are so often called ‘Cat’. In the Janjuladoola of the Izdimir Empire, ‘Untunchilamon’ means ‘dragon’, hence many firedrakes have thus been called, and doubtless many more will thus be denominated hereafter.

Why then was Justina’s island named ‘dragon’ in Janjuladoola? Here there is no great mystery. The ruling rock of the island was and is the sunset-tinged bloodstone, its red colour oft associated with fire and hence with dragons.

‘The document,’ said Idaho, ‘would appear to speak of the creation of this dragon, yes. However, there is a fractional notation of greater interest at the very bottom of the page. A translation reads thus.’

He handed the Empress a piece of paper, rough stuff incorporating patent splinters of wood. The Slandolin of the purple script had been translated into Janjuladoola and set down in large letters of lamp-black ink written in a bold, confident hand. The translation read thus:

‘A neat trick, this creation of dragon from cockroach. But greater feats have been done in the past. Take for example the attainments of the organic rectifier, that magnanimous piece of machinery which allowed selected citizens of the Golden Gulag to make themselves immortal. Such was the jovial vigour of its accomplishments that it could jest a man to woman in less time than a twinkling wave takes to break from curves as smooth as haunch and hip to a flurry of foam and galactic scintillations, which is certainly less time than it takes to write these words which seek to encapture that motion. Damn this light! And how is a man to work with the dogs so wrath? Anyway: the rectifier. It could easily have delighted the Crab by converting that frustrated dignity to human form. Furthermore, though Untunchilamon knew it not, there was-’

Justina frowned.

She read through the translation a second time.

The implications made her head spin.

‘Are we to imagine that there might be a… a device of some kind?’ said she. ‘Here, I mean? On Untunchilamon? A device to magic Crab to human?’

‘I’m a Yudonic Knight,’ said Juliet Idaho. ‘I don’t imagine things. I kill things. I vote we find the person who wrote the original. Find, interrogate, torture, kill. That strikes me as better work than any labour of imagination.’

‘Julie, darling,’ said Justina, smiling upon her trusted retainer. ‘Your energy and enthusiasm are a constant inspiration to me. Verily, we shall seek the author of the original text. Where did that text come from?’

‘It was thieved from the Cabal House by one of our spies,’ said Juliet Idaho. ‘He knew not the value of what he had carried away, for he could read no Slandolin. In truth, he is illiterate; he reads nothing.’

‘What else did he steal?’ said Justina.

‘A great many bills, most of them invoices for deliveries of medicinal alcohol. A book of bad poems, a lampoon upon Aquitaine Varazchavardan, a street map of Obooloo, the plans for a twenty-oar galley, the deeds to the title of Ganthorgruk and a letter addressing birthday greetings to Jal Japone.’

‘Try to find another thief,’ said Justina. ‘A literate one. With such a thief found, send him into the Cabal House to steal some more of this purple writing. Meanwhile: who did our translation?’

An obvious question, since Juliet Idaho knew no more of Slandolin than did the Empress herself. Furthermore, since no imperial business was conducted in that Ashmo-lean tongue, no official translators of such were on tap.

‘A soldier,’ said Idaho. ‘I knew it for an Ashdan tongue so I sought out an Ashdan to read it. Shanvil Angarus May.’