Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

On and on, till Chegory’s head was spinning.

At last Reni concluded his investigations, popped a boil on the back of Chegory’s neck, then declared him basically fit and well.

‘However,’ said physician Reni, ‘you are slightly anaemic. Therefore I prescribe a little mead.’

‘Mead?’ said Chegory. ‘I thought that was a medicine for hysteria only.’

He had heard as much said when mead was discussed by his uncle Dunash Labrat, who had a licence to brew up the stuff.

‘Hysteria, anaemia, dementia, depression, psychosis and the common cold,’ said the physician gravely. ‘Mead is the best medicine known for all of those and more, although in truth all classes of alcohol are possessed of such virtues.’

‘But,’ said Chegory in bewilderment, ‘alcohol is a poison.’ ‘And is not salt?’ said Reni. ‘In my fist alone I could hold salt sufficient to make you retch, cramp and die. Yet without salt you would sicken and die in any case.’

‘Salt we must have for our blood comes from the sea,’ said Chegory.

‘Aha!’ said Reni, with the slyest of grins imaginable. ‘So you adhere to the evolutionary heresy, do you?’

‘The Empress Justina has declared religious freedom on Untunchilamon,’ said Chegory stoutly.

‘Even so,’ said Reni, ‘you are but a fool to enlist heretical superstition in a debate with medical science. Our science, young man, has proved beyond doubt that all poisons are capable of medicinal uses.’

‘I don’t do drugs,’ said Chegory flatly.

By now the red-skinned one had conceived a deep suspicion of the imperial physician. Surely no true practitioner of the healing arts would feed poisons to a patient! ‘You take hashish, do you not?’ said Reni.

‘Hashish is no drug,’ said Chegory. ‘Drugs are toxic things which kill. Nobody ever died from eating a hash cookie or smoking a little kif. You a doctor! Yet you slander the Herb of Healing by making it one with the Drink of Death which can kill in a night or less.’

‘So!’ said Reni. ‘It is but an Ebrell Islander, yet thinks itself the complete pharmacist. It is but an Ebrell Islander, yet it will lecture its doctor. It is but an Ebrell Islander, a thing which cannot read, write or figure, yet it will lecture a philosopher who has degrees from three of the elite universities of the Izdimir Empire.’

‘Alcohol kills,’ persisted Chegory stubbornly, not bothering to protest his literacy or his numeracy. ‘It takes but three cups of pure alcohol or less to kill a man in the prime of his health and strength.’

This was true, or near enough to being true, yet did not suffice to win the argument, for Reni persisted:

‘You drink tea, do you not?’

‘Tea,’ said Chegory stiffly, ‘is not toxic.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Koskini Reni, ‘tea is a lethal toxin if abused. A few pinches of tealeaves consumed without caution will kill the weak and frighten the hearts of the healthy to a frenzy most dangerous to the constitution.’ Chegory knew slaves sometimes abused tea in this fashion when they wished to report sick to escape a day’s work. Yet he remained unconvinced.

‘No normal person eats tea,’ he said.

‘Likewise no normal person drinks your theoretical three cups of pure alcohol,’ said Reni. ‘Remember, all things taken to excess can kill. Why, there are even cases of people who have died of a surfeit of water.’

‘So you admit the danger exists!’ said Chegory. ‘Doubtless,’ said Reni. ‘That is why alcohol is only available on prescription. This sovereign remedy for all ills is destructive in the extreme if it once escapes the control of professionals. Yet here within the pink palace we use it safely, for it is controlled and prescribed in strict accordance with medical ethics.’ Then Reni indulged himself in a condescending smile and said: ‘You see, my boy? There’s nothing to worry about.’

Yet he tucked Chegory’s prescription for mead into a thin manilla folder, leading the young Ebrell Islander to believe he had won the debate even though the physician refused to concede defeat.

In any case, there was no time for Chegory to worry his head about this any further because other demands awaited. He (still naked) was whirled down a corridor to a room dizzy with perfume and colour. There he was annointed with olibanum and a sweet ambrosia founded on ambergris. Then a fussy man with rings on his fingers and pearls at his throat was dressing young Chegory in gorgeous silks of startling yellow and sea dragon green.

‘Clothes!’ protested Chegory. ‘Clothes, I had my own clothes, they, they said I’d get them back when I, well, after the bath and things, where are my-’

‘You’ll get your rags, boy,’ said a hard-faced brute from Wen Endex, who seized Chegory as soon as he was dressed and hauled him away to a windowless room. ‘Sit!’

‘But what-’

‘Sit!’

This in a shout of such violence that it sat young Chegory down in the greatest of hurries. His chair was of wood. It was most uncomfortable.

‘You know who I am?’ said his interrogator.

‘A — a — you’re from — you’re-’

Chegory meant to say that his interlocutor was without a doubt a Yudonic Knight from Wen Endex and that he (Chegory) had the greatest respect imaginable for such men. Thus he meant to speak, but the words refused to come.

‘Gods!’ said the interrogator. ‘What will she drag in next? Boy, I’m Juliet Idaho. Captain of the Praetorian Guard. Now here’s what I’ve got to say. Don’t fool with us, boy. We know who you are, and what. As for me, I’m the man who kills you. One false move, that’s all it takes. One mistake and you’re dead.’

‘I, well, I, look, I’m here for a, I don’t know what you’ve been told but I’m here for a banquet, okay, Justina, she — there’s a banquet, I’m invited, well, that’s what I’m told, okay?’

‘A banquet,’ said the grim-faced Idaho. ‘That’s what I’m telling you about. Table manners. Understand?’

Chegory had a sudden vision. A memory! Himself and Olivia at eats in the Analytical Institute. Kicks exchanged under the table. The curry powder spilling. The flying fish sauce slopping everywhichway. When? Only yesterday! But it felt like a million years ago. Like something from another life.

‘Yes, yes, surely, manners, okay, what do you think I am, kicking people under the table and everything, you think I’m going to cut up like that at a banquet, you crazy?’ ‘What’s this?’ said Juliet Idaho, producing a vicious piece of sharpened metal.

‘That, it’s a — a-’

‘A stab, isn’t it? But you eat with your fingers. Get it?’ ‘With my fingers,’ said Chegory. ‘Okay, sure, fingers, that’s not a problem. Whatever you say.’

‘I say fingers. There are stabs by every plate. That’s good manners on our lady’s part. She shows she trusts her guests with cold steel. But if you actually touch one of those stabs…’

‘Then what?’ said Chegory.

‘Do I have to spell it out?’

‘I think maybe you should!’ said Chegory.

‘All right, Ebby. Listen! There’s muscle behind you right through the banquet. You touch that stab and… whap! Off with your head!’

‘But why?’ said Chegory.

‘To keep you from killing Justina.’

‘But why should I want to do that?’ said Chegory. ‘We’re not fooled! We know why you came here!’ ‘Why?’ said Chegory, baffled.

‘You’re an assassin, aren’t you? A trained killer! We know you! You had that knife, didn’t you? Oh, you fooled the Empress nicely, but you don’t fool me. My men have their orders. You lay so much as a single finger on a piece of cold steel and — wwwhst! Off with your head!’