Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

— thus reaching Untunchilamon, there to be marooned by absence of wind in the languorous longueurs of Fistavlir. Where were we, now?

Ah, yes! Before it fell to me to tell of Turbothot and of his voyaging we were on the balcony ofjustina’s pink palace in Injiltaprajura. There Theodora was in conversation with the worthy hero of Hexagon. Perhaps that very day she heard from his own lips something more of the details of his fascinating adventures. Who knows? But what is certain is that the good Theodora shortly disappeared with the Turbothot creature and thereafter was so engaged with him that she quite failed to put in an appearance at the evening’s banquet.

Thus Chegory Guy, Theodora’s first-preferred, lost his best chance of further acquaintance with Justina’s sister and with those intimate delights so freely granted to the thousands. His consolation prize was enjoyment of the view to which Uckermark had led him. A splendid view it was, for he could see right across the city’s rooves to the Laitemata Harbour where three ships lay at anchor.

From the palace steps Lak Street descended steadily as it reached away to the waterfront. Chegory could see someone standing on the battlements of the wonderworkers’ Cabal House at the intersection of Lak Street, Goldhammer Rise and Skindik Way. Washing was hanging out to dry on the rooves of the Dromdanjerie and Ganthorgruk.

All of Lubos was displayed to Chegory’s scrutiny at a glance. He tried to work out which building was Ucker-mark’s corpse shop, but failed entirely. There were so many, many shacks, hovels and blockhouses all scrambled together that it would have taken an entire day to decipher the quarter’s geography.

Marthandorthan was easier to fathom since it was amply landmarked by large warehouses which Chegory knew well. He had no trouble finding the lair of his villainous cousin Firfat, or in tracing the route from the dockland quarter up Goldhammer Rise to the Cabal House, and thence up Lak Street to the steps of the palace which lay beneath his very eyes.

A troupe of beggars were on the steps working the crowd of incoming latecomers hastening to be on time for Justina’s banquet which would start shortly after the bat bells rang out to announce the end of salahanthara and the start of undokondra.

Chegory raised his eyes.

He looked again down the length of Lak Street and across the sun-fired waters of the Laitemata to the low-humped mound of Jod where even the brilliant marble of the Analytical Institute had assumed a pink tinge in the sunset. Further yet to the south lay the bloodsands of Scimitar where, even as Chegory watched, palm trees were blackening to silhouette as the sun drowned down in the west. Beyond lay the waters of the lagoon. Then there was the Outer Reef where the lazing seas of evening surfed at their leisure. Ever and ever they rose from infinities of sea which stretched away to forevers further yet where sky was fast darkening to stars.

Chegory knew then:

I love this place.

He had an intense sensation of being here, now, located, focused, balanced, present.

Then the bat bells thunderclapped, their shatter-song bursting from the belfries, and Uckermark laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and steered him inside.

The banquet was about to begin.

Justina’s palace was large but not infinite. While it did contain treasury, dungeons, torture chambers (unused since the time of Wazir Sin), kitchens, bedrooms, a rooftop swimming pool and so on and so forth, it had only two large halls. One of these was the Star Chamber, site of legal hearings of all descriptions. The other was the Grand Hall where the petitions session had been held during the afternoon. It was the Grand Hall which was the site of the night’s banquet.

When Chegory and Uckermark entered the Grand Hall no people had yet seated themselves. The long tables, which formed three sides of a square, awaited yet. Justina’s ebony throne had been removed to make way for the Table of Honour, which was that from which the two Tables Lesser depended. But nobody had removed the starvation cage. Likewise, the shields of Wen Endex still adorned the walls. The revellers would disport themselves with those images of death and destruction ever within glance.

‘Where do we sit?’ said Chegory. ‘Anywhere? Or special places?’

While the Empress had personally invited him to the banquet he did not imagine for a moment that he would be sitting close to her. After all, Ivan Pokrov and Artemis Ingalawa had both banqueted at the pink palace on occasions past, and from what little they had said of it Chegory knew neither of them had been anywhere near the imperial person.

‘Nobody sits till the Empress enters,’ said Uckermark. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be told. Look around, look around.’

With that vague command, Uckermark disengaged himself from his young companion, abandoning Chegory in favour of conversation with one of the potent contacts he had made inside the palace since his first acquaintance with Justina.

Chegory wandered round the table, unaware that everyone in the room was studying him discretely. Justina’s latest! How long would he last? A night? A week? If more than a week, he would be a very miracle worker, for Justina was persistent in her quest for novelty. So had she been since she attained the age of sixteen. Then, while growing up in Galsh Ebrek, she had demonstrated the strength of her appetites [A long and weary catalogue has here been deleted on the grounds that this catalogue, together with its attendant gynaecological details, is intrinsically boring. By Order, Ostik Vo, Master of Philosophy.]

Chegory did not think of the bedtime ordeal that awaited him, of the moment when Justina would clutch him to her flesh, when he would have to prove his manhood truly or suffer imperial displeasure extreme. No. He did not think of it because, like all humans, he had a tremendous capacity for denying reality. Despite Uckermark’s hints and outright declarations, and despite the implications of everything which had happened to him since his arrival in the palace, young Chegory still thought he would escape from the palace with his virginity intact.

Thus our Ebrell Islander thought not of bed, but worried instead about the banquet. How would he cope with the intricacies of the grandiose protocol such an occasion would surely demand? The table itself intimidated him. Crystal glittering and stabs likewise ashine. Linen as white as the snow which lies on the ground here in the Mountains of the Moon — not that the comparison to snow would have occurred to Chegory, who had never seen such a substance.

‘If you would excuse me for a moment, sir.’

This from a waiter busy distributing sheets of parchment. One for every place, to join the small dishes of pineapple chunks and coconut squares and the fragrant mosquito coils softly smoking. Chegory stepped back from the table.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the waiter, putting down another parchment.

This was Chegory’s first encounter with a proper waiter, and the young Ebrell Islander was so disconcerted by the man’s lordly manner that he took him for a high-ranking civil servant at the very least. Nevertheless, he plucked up courage sufficient to ask:

‘What are those?’

‘Those, sir, are mosquito coils.’

‘I mean the — the document things, what you’re giving out.’

Chegory asked because he could not read the Toxteth scriptwork which adorned the parchments. As he could only read and write Ashmarlan he was virtually illiterate for the purposes of practical life on Untunchilamon.

‘These, sir, are prescriptions,’ said the waiter. ‘Prescriptions?’ said Chegory.

‘Indeed. For how can we have wine without prescriptions? Further, how can we have a banquet without wine?’ ‘Prescriptions,’ said Chegory, still puzzling it out. ‘You mean — you mean all these people are sick?’