Still, she had to eat.
She had promised the optimate his physic two days hence. If she captured another Deodand this evening, it would be a week before the spores were ripe. She secured the spore-nets against rain or intruders, then walked to the paddock beside her cottage and beckoned her prism ship.
“I would see Paytim Noringal,” she said.
A moment where only dappled sunlight fell through the softly waving fronds of cat-firs and spruce. Then the autumn air shimmered as with heat. There was a stinging scent of ozone and scorched metal, and the prism ship hovered before her, translucent petals unfolding so that she could spring inside.
“Paytim Noringal is a harlot and a thief,” said the prism ship in a peevish tone.
“She now appears to have become a vandal as well.” Saloona settled into the couch, mindful that her pharmacopoeia pouch was not crushed. “Perhaps she will have prepared lunch. It’s not too early, is it?”
“Paytim Noringal will poison you in your sleep.” The ship lifted into the air, until it floated above the hillside like a rainbow bubble. “If you’re hungry, there are salmon near the second waterfall, and the quince-apples are ripe.”
Saloona stared down at her little farmstead, a pied checkerboard of fungi, cerulean and mauve and creamy yellow, russet and lavender and a dozen hues that Saloona had invented, for which there was no name. “Paytim is a very fine cook,” she said absently. “I hope she will have blancmange. Or that locust jelly. Do you think she will?”
“I have no opinion on the subject.”
The ship banked sharply. Saloona laid a hand upon its controls and made a soothing sound. “There, you don’t need to worry. I have the Ubiquitous Antidote. It was a twenty-seven-year locust jelly. It was generous of her to send me some of it.”
“She means you harm.”
Saloona yawned, covering her mouth with a small freckled hand. “I will sleep, ship. Rouse me when we approach her enclosure.”
The glorious spruce and granite-clad heights of Cobalt Mountain fell away, unseen by Saloona Morn and unremarked by the prism ship, which had little use for what humans call beauty.
The fire witch’s villa nestled in a small valley near the caves of Gonder. The structure had seen better days. It had been commissioned as a seraglio by the Crimson Court lutist Hayland Strife, whose unrestrained dalliances caused three of his aggrieved lovers (one of them Paytim Noringal) to first seduce then subject him to the torment known as Red Dip. When, after seventeen days, the lutist expired, the fire witch prepared a celebratory feast for her fellow torturers, using skewers of oleander for the satay. All died convulsing before daybreak. In the decades since then, the seraglio had been damaged by earthquakes, windstorms, and, once, an ill-conceived attack by Air General Sha’s notorious Crystal Squadron.
And, of course, Paytim’s own mantic enterprises had left the gray marble walls and sinuous columns blackened with soot, and the famous tapestries singed and smoke-damaged beyond repair. She paced now before the ruins of the arras known as The Pursuit of the Vinx, heedless of the geckos and yellow-snouted lemurs that clambered across the backdrop to one of her more notable love affairs.
Paytim disdained magic to enhance her charms, though she had for many decades employed the Nostrum of Prodigious Regeneration to retain the dew of youth. She remained a remarked beauty. Like her neighbor, she was flame-haired, though Paytim’s braid was brazen tigerlily to Saloona’s pale margiold, and Paytim’s eyes were green. Her skin was the bluish-white of weak milk and bore numerous scars where she had been burned while conjuring, repairing the bouche a feu, or carelessly removing a pot from the oven. The scars were a mark of pride rather than shame; also a warning against overconfidence, in particular when dealing with souffles, or basilisks.
Today, her thoughts wandered along their customary paths: concoting a receipt for the season’s bountiful quince-apple harvest; estimating when her young basilisk might be successfully mated; brooding upon various old wounds and offenses. She paused in her pacing, withdrew a shining vial like a ruby teardrop from the pocket of her trousers, and, with a frown, gazed into it.
A dark shape, so deep a red that it was almost black, coiled and uncoiled within the vial. At intervals, the shape cohered into the image of a gysart in scarlet and saffron motley, which would extend its arms—in joy or anguish, she could not say—then, in a voice pitched like a bat’s, exhort her.
“Paytim Noringal, Incendiary and Recusant! Your exile has been revoked, following the abrupt and unfortunate death of Her Majesty Paeolina the Twenty-Eighth. His Majety Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth hereby requests your attendance at the after-ball following his coronation. Regrets only to be tendered by…”
Here the harlequin doubled over in a spasm and began once more to writhe.
Paytim’s frown smoothed into a small smile: for anyone who knew her, a far more alarming sight. She crossed the chamber to a low table, pressed a button that caused a cylindrical steel cage to rise from the floor. The young basilisk slept inside. Minute jets of flame flickered around its nostrils as it exhaled, also a faint sulfurous stink.
The vial bore a summons, not a request. Paytim’s exile had been voluntary, although, in fact, she loathed all of the Paeolinas, going back to their progenitor, a court dancer who claimed to have invented the gavot.
His new Majesty, Paeolina XXIX, was indulging a customarily vulgar display of power. When Paytim had been at court, she had noted the lascivious glances he directed her way. The looks had been easy to ignore at the time—the present Paeolina had been little more than a spindle-necked boy. Now his attentions would be more difficult to deflect.
Despite this knowledge, she had already decided to attend the coronation’s after-ball. She had not traveled beyond the mountains in some time. Also, she had recently made a discovery, an arcane and unusual spell which she hoped to implement, although its success was dependent upon Paytim receiving some assistance.
Not, however, from the monad gysart. She lifted her hand and gazed impassively into the vial, then nudged the steel cage with her foot. The basilisk stirred. It made a soft croaking sound, opened its mouth in a yawn that displayed a fiery tongue and molten throat.
“Inform His Majesty that I will be delighted to attend,” announced Paytim. “May I bring a guest?”
The mote ceased its wriggling to regard her with bright pinprick eyes. Flashes of silver phosphorescence overtook the whorls of crimson and jet. The gysart shuddered, then nodded.
“In that case,” said Paytim, “Please inform His Majesty that I will be accompanied by Saloona Morn.”
“Your reply has been registered with the equerry of invitations. You are welcome to bring one guest. Further instructions will be—”
Paytim’s eyes narrowed. With one long finger, she flicked open a slot in the lid of the basilisk cage. Its inhabitant scrambled to its feet and stretched out its neck expectantly, as she held the ruby vial above the opening. A nearly inaudible shriek stirred the chamber, startling the geckos so that they skittered back behind the tapestry as the vial dropped into the basilisk’s mouth, and, with a burst of acrid steam, disappeared.
From the air, Paytim’s villa resembled a toy that had been kicked to bits by a petulant child. Ivy and snowmoss covered heaps of hand-painted tiles fallen from the roof. The entire east wing had collapsed, burying solarium and manta pool. The collection of musical scrolls Hayland Strife had painstakingly assembled when not dandling some fawn-eyed courtesan was ash, destroyed when lightning struck the library tower. Its skeletal remains rose above the north wing like a blackened scaffold. Spiderwebs choked the famed boxwood maze, and the orchards of pomegranate trees and senna grew wild and blackly tangled. Saloona spied a thrasher’s nest atop a quince-apple, the white bones of some unfortunate snagged in its branches like a broken kite.