‘Stop!’ cried Dardanalti. ‘You can’t do this!’
But his protests did no good whatsoever.
Justina Thrug was dragged out of the pink palace and hauled away down Lak Street without any ceremony whatsoever. Few of the citizens of Injiltaprajura observed her plight. As yet, few people knew that Untunchilamon had a new wazir, let alone that the Empress had been arrested and was being taken to the Temple of Torture to be executed.
Here we long for a hero to intervene, a hero built along the lines of Vorn the Gladiator. But, to the historian’s regret, it must be recorded that no hero was on hand; and those citizens who observed the passage of the Empress were content to gawk at the spectacle like so many disinterested tourists.
Justina did not see a single friendly face until she had been marched down Lak Street as far as its intersection with Goldhammer Rise and Skindik Way. There Justina glimpsed an Ashdan lass she remembered from the past. The girl was loitering by a group of drummers who were tub-thumping their instruments of diabolical intoxication in the shadow of the Cabal House itself. The girl’s name? That escaped the Empress. But Justina knew the young female to be the lover of a rock gardener who had the trust and confidence of the Crab.
The Crab!
Could the Crab help the Empress on this her day of greatest need?
Justina had no time to speculate, no time to formulate a cunning strategy to pass a Crab-petitioning message to the Ashdan lass. For the soldiers turned down Goldhammer Rise: and the rock gardener’s girlfriend was left behind.
Justina was possessed of a sense of unreality. She had long anticipated such a disaster, but the precipitate haste of its enactment had taken her by surprise. The world around her seemed too large. The heads of the soldiers gross, swollen. Their weapons huge, the razorblade sunlight of their armaments brighter than reality. She found it hard to pay attention to Dardanalti who was walking beside her, rattling out instructions as if they were going to an auction or a town planning hearing.
Then she saw the Temple of Torture, which lies on the left-hand side of Goldhammer Rise as one descends from Lak Street towards Manthandorthan. She remembered once reading an autopsy report which the corpse-master Uckermark had done on a victim of that temple. She felt sick.
With the temple in sight, the soldiers quickened the pace. Orders were shouted. The syllables jagged through the air, echoed, fractured, buckled in the heat. Dardanalti said something. Gafoblik? Choglik? Moglig? His urgent utterances floundered into unintelligibility. Justina tripped, stumbled, was caught by an iron-grip soldier. Her feet hurt. Beads of sweat swarmed between her flouncing breasts, stung her eyes, hummed in her ears. The sky was pale yellow, was grey, was black.
Justina fell.
Fainting.
Down on her face she went and the boots were in, quick, quick, no chance to rape but a chance yet to hurt, bruise, break, crush. Dardanalti shouted. Threatened. A lawyer, Janjuladoola nuances on his tongue. His skin the same grey as that of the soldiers. Their anger ebbed, and two helped haul a groaning Empress to her feet.
The soldiers marched the Empress to the door of the Temple, a door on which two artists were busy painting a much-wounded human body. Dui Tin Char had wasted no time whatsoever. The Temple of Torture was back in business. From within came persistent screaming, a horrific outcry which intensified as the doors opened. Dardanalti darted inside. Justina, shoved from behind, stumbled in after him. The air stank. The stench was that of diarrhoea tinged with curry.
Then the Empress was hauled into the naos of the Temple, and there was Dui Tin Char, and there were two strangers, and weird sounds were being made by the mouths of these strangers, and there was a bulky man whom she recognized as an executioner, and she tried to speak but her mouth was full of vomit, and there was darkness, again there was darkness, darkness flooding her eyes as once more she fainted.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Earlier that day, the airship built by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin had dismantled itself. The disgruntled wizard had shortly thereafter departed from the pink palace, and had made his way to the island of Jod to confer with the master chef Pelagius Zozimus, who happened to be his cousin.
These days, Jod was assuming something of the aspect of a fortress. Earlier that year, Pelagius Zozimus had been kidnapped by persons unknown, dragged away from the Analytical Institute, stuffed full of opium and held for several days in a helpless drug stupor. Why? He knew not, but was determined that the same thing would not happen again.
As Zozimus was the master chef who served the Crab, that dignitary was equally determined that there would be no repetition of this incident, and so had supported moves to build a defensive wall to guard the approaches of the Analytical Institute.
Ever since, slaves and servants had been labouring to construct that wall, working under the supervision of Chegory Guy. Young Chegory was an Ebrell Islander possessed of a formidable musculature. Until recently, he had been officially employed as a rock gardener — even though ever-increasing amounts of his time had been spent in direct association with the Crab. Now, Chegory still served the Crab its meals and, with help from the delectable Olivia Qasaba, did his best to stop the poor thing from getting lonely in the evenings. However, he was discharging his new wall-supervising responsibilities admirably.
Chegory himself had also suffered in the previous year. After Zozimus had been kidnapped, Chegory had been ordered to the pink palace and there detained by the Empress Justina for a matter of days. What unspeakable things had happened to him? And why? Chegory ever after refused to say. In particular, he refused to discuss the matter with his beloved Olivia, the love of his heart; but his refusal had been couched in terms which had made it abundantly clear to that Ashdan lass that her sledgehammer swain had endured near-unendurable tortures in that palace.
When Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin arrived on Jod, he was soon admitted to the kitchen. The Crab’s breakfast had already been cooked and served, and Zozimus was organizing its lunch. The Crab was going to dine upon centipede soup, shark steaks marinated in a mixture of red wine and dog’s blood, fried octopus wrapped in tendrils of fresh seaweed, the meat of twenty coconuts and thrice thirty mangos, riceballs piqued with cayenne pepper, baked yams and a pie incorporating the eyeballs of five hundred fish.
Sken-Pitilkin told his cousin of the destruction of the flying ship, and thereafter the two wizards sat long together in earnest conference. Both were gravely worried, for the airship’s destruction was the first sign that Injiltaprajura’s sorcerers might be ready to actively move against them. If that happened, the wizards would have two chances: slim and none. For they could not hope to withstand an onslaught by the combined powers of the wonder-workers of Injiltaprajura’s Cabal House.
The two were still dialoguing in helpless circles when a servant ventured to interrupt their conference. Someone was coming across the harbour bridge which linked Jod to the mainland. Someone in a great big hurry.
Now, nobody runs on Untunchilamon. Not unless they absolutely have to. Climate and custom both oppose the practice. Hence a runner stands in danger of collapsing from the heat and humidity; or alternatively, being mistaken for a lunatic and hustled into the Dromdanjerie. So, while there were no psychics on Jod, those on the island were sure the hastening messenger must be bearing tidings of the utmost urgency.
Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin thanked the servant for the interruption and made sure they were on hand to intercept the messenger and hear the burden of his panic.
The messenger — a her, as it happened — was none other than Olivia Qasaba. She came hammering across the harbour bridge, raced to the wall so slowly rising in front of the white marble magnificence of the Analytical Institute, and promptly collapsed at the feet of her true love, young Chegory Guy.