Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

‘As you wish,’ said Justina.

Then turned to the water.

The moon had swollen to the full. Justina saluted that luminary with unaccustomed formality before she plunged into her pool to porpoise and grampus at her leisure.

There were no soldiers to observe the imperial disports, so Olivia appointed herself sentry, and kept a sharp lookout for assassins. Justina, as if untroubled by any thoughts of sudden death, long amused herself with her swimming. The water was warm, warm, amniotic. And when at last the Empress hauled herself from the water, the air enveloped her with a similar heat.

Adrift in the air was a mosquito, which, lacking any intimation of its own mortality, settled upon the imperial forearm and proceeded to feed. Moments after it alights, a mosquito cannot be felt, for it injects a numbing fluid into the flesh when first it pierces the human integument. But Justina, alert to such assaults, felt that first feathering of mosquito feet. She knew it was there. The imperial benevolence proved less than infinite: and, moments later, the mosquito was a smear of greasy grey against Justina’s skin.

Justina found herself possessed by a pervasive sadness, a languid melancholy. It was not the mosquito’s demise which affected her thus, for she had already forgotten the fate of that fragile beast. Rather, it was the swollen moon which drew from her this sense of slightly self-indulgent regret. She realized that perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she had never expected to survive, had never expected to leave Untunchilamon alive. So now, as the odds stacked up against her, as her enemies sharpened the jaws of the trap…

‘Are we ready to go yet?’ said Olivia.

‘Go?’ said Justina sadly. ‘I don’t think we’re going to go anywhere, not you and me.’

Then she slipped back into the water. Crooning down-soothings of rain began to fall, night rain downfalling though the moon shone clear. And, swimming by moonlight in the rain, Justina felt a great calm descend upon her. She had done her best. She could do no more. By an act of intelligent daring, she had converted Manthandros Trasilika to her cause, at least temporarily. She had sent Log Jaris to the Crab and Dunash Labrat to Jal Japone. Help from either quarter was most unlikely, but nobody could say she hadn’t tried.

As Justina swam, she once again let all political concerns slip away from her. She amused herself by endeavouring to imagine what it was like to be a whale. And then, when the rain ceased, she ascended again from the pool, her body wet with the moon which shimmered in rain-slick surface of the glitter dome.

‘I’m all wet,’ said Olivia.

‘Then go in and have a swim,’ said Justina. ‘Then you’ll be wetter still, and you won’t notice it.’

Then the Empress spied what Olivia — despite her concern for assassins — had not. A silent shadow had ventured out on the rooftop.

‘Ho!’ said Justina, deepening her voice in unconscious imitation of her father’s battle style. ‘Who goes there?’

‘I go there,’ answered Log Jaris. ‘And here. And elsewhere.’

Olivia rose as the bullman bulked forward. A note of good humour in his voice had convinced her already that he had been successful.

‘The Crab!’ said Olivia. ‘Is it with us?’

‘No,’ said Log Jaris.

‘No?’ said Olivia, in dismay. ‘But you sounded happy!’

‘To have swum the Laitemata twice by night, yes, that’s happiness enough,’ said Log Jaris. ‘To be here, and not in the maw of a shark. I’ll not ask for more, not at times like this.’

‘But you asked the Crab for more,’ said Justina.

‘Indubitably,’ said Log Jaris.

‘What does that mean?’ said Olivia, who was tired, and could not remember whether she knew that word or not.

To Olivia’s discomfort, neither Log Jaris nor the Empress answered her directly. Instead, Justina said to the bullman:

‘So. So that is it. We must trust to Jal Japone.’

‘But we can’t!’ protested Olivia. ‘He’ll never get here in time. Besides, what’s to say he’ll come at all?’

Thanks to lessons in geography and politics administered by Chegory Guy, her dearest darling Chegory — who had once languished long in the northern stronghold commanded by Japone — Olivia knew full well that there was not much hope of help from the north. But Justina and Log Jaris knew that as well, and saw no need to listen to lectures from a chit of a girl. Instead, Justina invited Log Jaris inside for some wine.

‘And you, Olivia,’ said Justina. ‘You can have some wine as well, if you want.’

‘Thank you,’ said Olivia, with great dignity. ‘But I’m going to go for a swim.’

Something in the way she said it made Justina stop. ‘Are you all r ight?’ said Justina in concern.

‘No!’ said Olivia, with a violence close to hysteria. ‘I’m not all right! That horrible therapist thing still has Chegory, and maybe it’s eating him right now. All the ships have gone, there’s no ships left, we can’t get off, we can’t escape, and — and-’

She stopped, for she could not go on.

‘Come,’ said Justina, advancing on Olivia. ‘Best you have a little wine, some dry clothes, and then to bed.’

But Olivia backstepped and gave herself to the pool. Sploosh!

‘You must not go in backwards like that,’ said the Empress reprovingly. ‘You’ll hit your head and break your neck.’

‘Maybe,’ said Olivia, flounder-floating in the water. ‘But not this time.’

‘Well then,’ said Justina, ‘you swim for as long as you like, and when you’ve had enough you come downstairs.’

‘I will,’ said Olivia. ‘I will.’

Then the Empress Justina departed with Log Jaris.

When she was quite sure they were gone, Olivia Qasaba hauled herself from the pool. She stood by the bulk of the airship on which Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin was working with such a lamentable lack of urgency. Then she went to the edge of the roof and looked out over the streets of portside Injiltaprajura. She looked down Lak Street and out across the darkened waters of the Laitemata where the island of Jod floated in the moonlight.

She shuddered.

Then she said to herself, remembering words spoken to her by Artemis Ingalawa:

‘Remember you’re an Ashdan.’

With her resolve thus strengthened, she set off downstairs. Through the dark and silent palace she went. She slipped out through the unguarded portals. She paused on the steps and looked first right, then left. But nothing was moving on Hojo Street. So she started downhill, down Lak Street. On either side rose the grand mansions, some glowing softly with moon paint. Here and there were rip-tooth intrusions of shadow and ruin where riot and fire had claimed some of Injiltaprajura’s most expensive architecture.

Downhill went Olivia. On her left was the huge chunk of bone known as Pearl. She allowed herself a sentimental tear as she gazed upon this monument to the inexplicable, for well she knew that this might be the last time in her life that she would ever see it. Further downhill, she came to the Cabal House, guarding the intersection where Skindik Way and Goldhammer Rise branched off from Lak Street.

She paused.

She could turn left, and go down Skindik Way and then through Lubos to the waterfront. It was something of a short cut. But… the ruins of the Dromdanjerie lay that way. She did not care to go past those ruins, least of all by night. For a moment, grief choked her throat. Her father! Gone, missing… dead?

‘You are an Ashdan,’ said Olivia firmly.

Overhead, there was a minor explosion. Startled, she looked up. Blue and yellow sparks flared from the top of the Cabal House. A heavy smell of sulphur drifted down from that eminence, to be followed by some drunken laughter. So the sorcerers were up and about — and, no doubt, up to no good. Trying to convert lead to gold, perhaps, or something equally as idle.