Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

‘May!’ said Justina. ‘I know him well. But he tells himself to be from Ashmolea North. Are not the secrets of Slandolin the sole possession of the south?’

‘Of livers and kidneys and buckets of blood, of such is my teaching,’ answered Idaho, speaking with unabashed violence. ‘I asked as a soldier will. I asked: can you do it. He answered: yes. So I told him: do it.’

‘Well!’ said Justina, sounding slightly miffed. ‘I’m sorry I asked!’

‘Forgive me, my lady,’ said Idaho.

That much he said in a stiff and formal manner which entirely failed to suggest remorse. But Justina replied with grace and gratitude, for all the world as if he had made an impassioned and extended apology on bended knees:

‘Julie, my love, of course I forgive you. I know what a strain you’ve been under. You’ve been working so terribly hard and doing such a darling job. I couldn’t possibly ask more of you. What say you fetch me Shanvil May so we can talk over the translation in detail?’

Whereupon the doughty Juliet Idaho — ‘Julie’ to his Empress but ‘Thugboots’ to his troops — was much mollified. He bowed to his Empress, though such was not his custom, then departed to search for Shanvil May.

While the Empress Justina ruled Idaho with velvet, it would be wrong to suppose that all her dealings with the world were thus. Some she flattered; some she urged to her assistance by feigning that melting weakness which your romantic and misogynist alike will describe as being womanly. But others she bent to her will by exercise of brute force and unprincipled violence, for the strenuous demands of keeping order in her faction-fraught kingdom did not allow her to eschew these standard weapons of stateswomanship.

Then Justina rang for a manservant and told him to fetch Dardanalti.

While the Empress still intended to visit the Dromdanjerie, and soon, she first wanted to discuss the latest development with Dardanalti himself. Was there really an ‘organic rectifier’ on Untunchilamon? An immortality machine? A device which could translate Crab flesh to human? Justina thought she had better find out, and quickly.

Unfortunately for the Empress, her time for research was going to be strictly limited. For the day had advanced while she conferred at length with her lawyer and with Juliet Idaho. Unbeknownst to Justina, Untunchilamon already had a new wazir. A heavyweight uitlander had been confirmed in that position by the High Priest of Zoz the Ancestral.

Soldiers disloyal to the Empress had been hastily summoned by Dui Tin Char, and were even then on the way to the pink palace, seeking to arrest Justina Thrug so she could be brought before Manthandros Trasilika and summarily executed.

The disloyal soldiers summoned by Dui Tin Char marched into the pink palace and sought out the Empress Justina. The men were led by Coleslaw Styx, a ruthless guard marshal.

The soldiers were soon at the door to Justina’s office. They knocked. Then knocked the door down. Then stormed into the office and seized the Empress.

‘Stop!’ cried Dardanalti. ‘You can’t do this!’

But his protests did no good whatsoever.

Justina Thrug was dragged out of the pink palace and hauled away down Lak Street without any ceremony whatsoever. Few of the citizens of Injiltaprajura observed her plight. As yet, few people knew that Untunchilamon had a new wazir, let alone that the Empress had been arrested and was being taken to the Temple of Torture to be executed.

Here we long for a hero to intervene, a hero built along the lines of Vorn the Gladiator. But, to the historian’s regret, it must be recorded that no hero was on hand; and those citizens who observed the passage of the Empress were content to gawk at the spectacle like so many disinterested tourists.

Justina did not see a single friendly face until she had been marched down Lak Street as far as its intersection with Goldhammer Rise and Skindik Way. There Justina glimpsed an Ashdan lass she remembered from the past. The girl was loitering by a group of drummers who were tub-thumping their instruments of diabolical intoxication in the shadow of the Cabal House itself. The girl’s name? That escaped the Empress. But Justina knew the young female to be the lover of a rock gardener who had the trust and confidence of the Crab.

The Crab!

Could the Crab help the Empress on this her day of greatest need?

Justina had no time to speculate, no time to formulate a cunning strategy to pass a Crab-petitioning message to the Ashdan lass. For the soldiers turned down Goldhammer Rise: and the rock gardener’s girlfriend was left behind.

Justina was possessed of a sense of unreality. She had long anticipated such a disaster, but the precipitate haste of its enactment had taken her by surprise. The world around her seemed too large. The heads of the soldiers gross, swollen. Their weapons huge, the razorblade sunlight of their armaments brighter than reality. She found it hard to pay attention to Dardanalti who was walking beside her, rattling out instructions as if they were going to an auction or a town planning hearing.

Then she saw the Temple of Torture, which lies on the left-hand side of Goldhammer Rise as one descends from Lak Street towards Manthandorthan. She remembered once reading an autopsy report which the corpse-master Uckermark had done on a victim of that temple. She felt sick.

With the temple in sight, the soldiers quickened the pace. Orders were shouted. The syllables jagged through the air, echoed, fractured, buckled in the heat. Dardanalti said something. Gafoblik? Choglik? Moglig? His urgent utterances floundered into unintelligibility. Justina tripped, stumbled, was caught by an iron-grip soldier. Her feet hurt. Beads of sweat swarmed between her flouncing breasts, stung her eyes, hummed in her ears. The sky was pale yellow, was grey, was black.

Justina fell.

Fainting.

Down on her face she went and the boots were in, quick, quick, no chance to rape but a chance yet to hurt, bruise, break, crush. Dardanalti shouted. Threatened. A lawyer, Janjuladoola nuances on his tongue. His skin the same grey as that of the soldiers. Their anger ebbed, and two helped haul a groaning Empress to her feet.

The soldiers marched the Empress to the door of the Temple, a door on which two artists were busy painting a much-wounded human body. Dui Tin Char had wasted no time whatsoever. The Temple of Torture was back in business. From within came persistent screaming, a horrific outcry which intensified as the doors opened. Dardanalti darted inside. Justina, shoved from behind, stumbled in after him. The air stank. The stench was that of diarrhoea tinged with curry.

Then the Empress was hauled into the naos of the Temple, and there was Dui Tin Char, and there were two strangers, and weird sounds were being made by the mouths of these strangers, and there was a bulky man whom she recognized as an executioner, and she tried to speak but her mouth was full of vomit, and there was darkness, again there was darkness, darkness flooding her eyes as once more she fainted.

Earlier that day, the airship built by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin had dismantled itself. The disgruntled wizard had shortly thereafter departed from the pink palace, and had made his way to the island of Jod to confer with the master chef Pelagius Zozimus, who happened to be his cousin.

These days, Jod was assuming something of the aspect of a fortress. Earlier that year, Pelagius Zozimus had been kidnapped by persons unknown, dragged away from the Analytical Institute, stuffed full of opium and held for several days in a helpless drug stupor. Why? He knew not, but was determined that the same thing would not happen again.