Hugh Cook - The Wazir and the Witch

Momentarily, Olivia considered going into the Cabal House and asking the wonder-workers for help. But she knew it would do no good. If she wanted to save the world from going to rack and ruin, she would have to do it on her own.

‘I have to do it,’ said Olivia.

And she did.

Otherwise, Master Ek would start killing and torturing, if he hadn’t started already. She could see that coming. Justina would get locked up, and probably get her head cut off — if she was lucky! And Chegory would undoubtedly be eaten by the therapist. What was it the therapist thing had said? Men make better hostages because…

No, better not to think about that.

Doing her best not to think, Olivia went downhill until she came to the waterfront, then she turned left and strode purposely along the embankment.

‘Halt!’

A voice from the dark.

A soldier.

One of the soldiers quarantining Jod.

‘I’m halted,’ said Olivia.

‘Who goes there?’ said the soldier.

‘Nobody,’ said Olivia. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ve halted, remember?’

The soldier stepped out of the shadows of Morthaldi-pan’s boatshed and rock-crunched toward Olivia. Moonlight glinted from the blade of his spear as he levelled it at Olivia’s heart.

‘Who are you?’ said he.

‘I am Olivia Qasaba,’ said Olivia Qasaba with dignity. ‘I have been entertaining Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek. He’s sent me home. He’s an old man, you know. Evenings are enough, he doesn’t want all night.’

‘What are you doing here then?’ said the soldier.

‘Standing talking to you,’ said Olivia.

‘Don’t play games with me, child,’ said the soldier.

‘I don’t,’ said Olivia. ‘I play games with Master Ek. He might like to play games with you, too, if you’re not careful.’

‘A sentry,’ said the soldier, ‘has the full weight of the authority of the Izdimir Empire behind him, that authority including the authority of Aldarch the Third, Mutilator of Yestron.’

‘You belong in law school,’ said Olivia. ‘You’d be safer there. It’s far too dangerous for the likes of you to be out on the streets at night. Obooloo’s a long, long way away, and Aldarch the Third wouldn’t give a damn if my dearest darling Ek had you sharked in the lagoon tomorrow. Which he may.’

‘I do not think he will,’ said the soldier, who was if anything amused by the pretensions of this child concubine.

However, he raised his spear, so the blade now threatened the stars rather than Olivia’s quick quick-pulsing heart.

‘Where are you going to, then?’ said the soldier.

‘Home,’ said Olivia, sensing that the man was ready to let her go.

‘Where’s home?’

‘East,’ said Olivia. ‘The East Caves.’

The East Caves were not caves at all, but merely some shack-shanty hovels on the edge of town.

‘Be on your way, then,’ said the soldier.

‘Before I go,’ said Olivia, ‘I’ll know your name.’

‘The name?’ said the soldier. ‘The name’s Joy Wax. Tell that to old man Ek if you want.’

‘I will,’ said Olivia. ‘Believe me, I will.’

Then she strode on along the waterfront with the moonlit waters of the Laitemata on her right and the slumlands of Lubos on her left. As she walked, she thought about the name the soldier had given her. She thought he had lied, giving a false name just in case she tried to get him into trouble. Joy Wax. There had been a mechanic with that name, a mechanic at the Analytical Institute. So how had the soldier come by the name? Was Ek having everyone with anything to do with the Institute arrested? Maybe.

‘But,’ said Olivia firmly, ‘whatever he’s doing or isn’t, he can’t stop me now.’

She slowed her pace and studied the night sky. Clouds were coming across. Good.

A few more steps, and… clouds shrouded their way across the moon and the night became dark.

And Olivia quickly scrambled down the embankment and — if she stopped to think then she would never do it — into the waters of the Laitemata. Which smelt. The smell was not exactly that of the sea, but, rather, of a sewer’s discharge.

‘But the water’s warm,’ said Olivia to herself.

She stood there, waist deep in the water, and tried to nerve herself up for the task. Log Jaris had done it. The sharks never got him. But then, he was a bullman all covered with fur, not a girl with the bones of a bird, a girl as tasty to a shark as a plate of fresh-cooked tolfrigdalakaptiko.

She was frightened.

The waters were black, black, anything could be in them, hideous things were, there were bones, there were teeth, there were jaws, stone fish which hooked your body into agony even screams could scarce describe, moray eels bad tempered as debt collectors, corals which cut and fire corals which stung, and jellyfish, lots of them, the lortageze warman being the worst of all, a monstrous jellyfish which trailed its strands across ‘You are an Ashdan.’

So said Olivia.

Firmly.

And momentarily she was not Olivia at all. Instead, she was Artemis Ingalawa, a woman lecturing a girl. Yes, she was Artemis, who had hunted in the forests of Ashmolea, who had hunted and killed, her knife running black with blood in the moonlight, oh yes, the man speaking in blood as he tried to plead ‘An Ashdan,’ said Olivia.

And lowered herself into the water and began to swim, swimming with a smooth, regular breast stroke. That kept her head free from the hideous black water, kept her head free and cut the noise down to nothing.

Through the dark she swam.

Then the clouds smoked away, the moon came out, and liquid silver spilt across the Laitemata, and someone on the shore shouted. Had she been seen? No matter. She was too far out, they could not stop her now.

On swam Olivia, making for the bulk of Jod. When she was very close, she put down her feet, found rock underfoot, and strode toward the shore. When she was half a dozen paces from safety, her nerve finally broke, and she panicked out of the water, and stood gasping and panting, shuddering in the aftermath of her ordeal, water splilching from her clothes and gliberspleting down her legs.

‘I am an Ashdan,’ she said.

But she no longer felt like one.

Then she remembered the forest thing, the thing which Artemis Ingalawa had told her about all those years ago, the man in the forest and the killing, horrible, horrible, she had never though about it before, she had pretended she had never been told, she did not want to know things like that, but ‘It was in me,’ whispered Olivia.

Yes.

Down through the years, Artemis Ingalawa had told and taught Olivia many things, and she knew them even if she pretended she did not know them.

And then Olivia realized the truth.

If that soldier had tried to stop her, she would have killed him. He was a grown man, but he suspected nothing. A single blow between the legs, nicely timed, and then Quietly, Olivia began to cry. All these hideous, ugly thoughts and memories were far, far too much for her to deal with. It was all far too serious, and she was too tired to cope with it.

‘I am an Ashdan,’ she said.

But it was hopeless, the words did her no good at all, and when she tried to say them again she was blubbering so much that the words were quite unintelligible.

Olivia was still crying when she came into the Crab’s cave.

When she had whiled away the nights in that cave in the arms of her dearest Chegory, it had always been dark. But tonight, the Crab’s wind chimes — the copper wind chimes which Olivia had made for the thing — were glowing green. What did that mean? That the Crab did not like to be in the dark, not if it was alone?

‘Are you awake?’ said Olivia, speaking through tears.