‘So our bright friend Blackmail, he sends Drumel one number. So Drumel goes to the bank. A thousand dragons he gives to the bank. They look up their ledgers with numbers in twins. They write down the dragons by the side of the twin. Then bright spark Blackmail, in he comes the next day with numbers in doubles. Both numbers he gives to the bank, and the dragons they give him.’
‘Why,’ said Bro Drumel, amazed at such uncharacteristic penetration on the part of the battleman Idaho. ‘A single cast, yet your hook finds its fish.’
‘Yes,’ said Idaho. ‘And we find us friend Blackmail as well. Easy, isn’t it? He’s now but a number to us and the bank. But flesh he must have to cash numbers for dragons. He can’t come as a ghost, can he?’
‘There are ways and means,’ said Justina darkly.
‘But we could try,’ said Bro Drumel, keen to catch friend Blackmail if there was one chance in a thousand of doing it.
‘What do you mean, try?’ said Idaho, a touch of outrage at work in his voice. ‘It’s a sure thing, isn’t it?’ ‘Not,’ said Justina, ‘if ou r blackmailing friend leaves his deposits untouched till the island ha s fallen to Aldarch the Third.’
‘Then let’s grab in quick,’ said Idaho. ‘Grab the records, see what’s there to find.’
‘It’s just numbers,’ said Bro Drumel, unable to suppress his exasperation. ‘Just numbers, that’s all!’
How could he get it through to this big lunk of a headlopper? A raid on the bank would give them numbers, no more. No name, no address, no identikit, nothing.
‘Listen, sklork,’ sasid Idaho, edging his words with murder. ‘I’m a killer, okay, but I’ve brains for brains, not dogshit. Understand?’
‘Dogshit!’ said the Empress Justina, pretending to be shocked and scandalized.
‘My lady,’ said Idaho, starting to get heated. ‘My apologies. But I won’t be patronized by this — this Janjuladoola thing!’
‘He does have a point, Julie my darling,’ said Justina gently. ‘We would win but numbers if we won with a raid.’
‘Aye,’ said Idaho. ‘And what are numbers but history, if money’s at stake? No doubt they’ll have dates with their ledgers. A date for the account’s genesis, for example.’
‘No,’ said Bro Drumel, pleased to win yet another point off this uncouth uitlander who so obviously had dogshit for brains, yet fearing that the loss of too many such points might make that same uitlander run amok in a berserker fury. ‘The accounts are undated, for who knows when they’re bought? They come from a barrel, remember. All envelopes jumbled. A choice of a thousand.’
‘Privacy perfect,’ said Justina in agreement.
‘Yes,’ said Idaho, reluctantly conceding the point. ‘But dates they’ll have for other things. Surely. Not when the account was opened, perhaps. But money gone in and money gone out. All signed for and dated. It has to be! Not by the customer, maybe, but their own staff must sign when they play with the gold. A banker’s as much a thief as the next man, is he not?’
‘Well,’ said Bro Drumel, annoyed to find that there was a certain amount of good sense to this. ‘That’s all very well, but-’
‘It’s a start,’ said Justina decisively. ‘We’ll get on to the bank this instant.’
‘But,’ protested Drumel, ‘if all we can learn is deposits, disbursements and dates…’
His voice trailed away as he began to understand the implications. Once they had the history of the blackmailer’s account, complete with the current balance and dates for all deposits and any disbursements, they would have a pattern on which they could exert their intelligence.
A slim hope indeed, but far better than none.
‘There is also something else we could try,’ said Idaho. ‘What?’ said Justina.
Then listened in silence as Idaho explained.
‘Why, Julie!’ said Justina in amazement. ‘That’s a brilliant idea! Why didn’t I think of that?’
In truth, Idaho’s idea was so good that even Bro Drumel felt compelled to congratulate him.
Their meeting was then effectively at an end, for all business had been dealt with. But Bro Drumel was not prepared to depart without asking one last question.
‘My lady,’ said Drumel. ‘Is the Crab… has the Crab really chosen to be wazir? Or is it…?’
‘The Crab is very much wazir,’ said the Empress Justina decisively. ‘Believe me, Brody. I’d never lie to you.’
Thus spoke the Empress. And Bro Drumel believed the Thrug, and was comforted by her blatant lie.
The truth was quite another matter entirely.
The truth was that Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba had dared a desperate bluff, claiming that the Crab had declared itself wazir when in point of fact it had done no such thing.
Each day, a great many state papers were carried across the harbour bridge to the island of Jod; and each day a stream of orders, commands, declarations and petitions were returned from that island. But the Crab played no part in this two-way flow. Instead, Injiltaprajura was effectively been ruled by the young Chegory Guy and the even younger Olivia Qasaba.
With, it must be admitted, a little help from the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, a certain amount of assistance from the analytical engineer Ivan Pokrov and the algorithmist Artemis Ingalawa, and daily advice from the Empress Justina herself.
Were this history to adopt the style of Greven Jing, it might say something like this:
‘So far, the innocent citizens of Injiltaprajura had no idea that power had been seized by two members of the dreaded drumming cult. But they would find out. Soon enough. For, nightly, the drums beat on the island of Jod, competing with the slabender frogs for the dominance of the night. And the hellish rhythms of the drums spoke of fear; and death; and torture; and things far worse still yet to come.’
But this is a history, therefore it must avoid such artificial hysteria wherever possible. Let the truth be told. While Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba are known to have associated with ‘drummers’ from time to time, there is no evidence to show or suggest that they actually engaged in ‘drumming’ themselves. Even though Olivia once gave the Crab a drum of its own, there is no evidence to suggest that she used it herself (or that the Crab employed the instrument, though it did not reject the gift).
Besides, the fear, death and torture which at that time threatened so many good citizens of Injiltaprajura owned nothing whatsoever to the fringe cult of ‘drumming’, but stemmed instead from the nature of the main stream political struggle.
The historian apologizes to the reader for so stressing a point which has perhaps been adequately made earlier; but the nature of the final days of the rule of the Family Thrug has been so confused by the agitated fictionalizing of those who make a living from sensationalizing ‘cults’ and ‘cultists’ that the historian feels the point needs to be made yet again.
Another thing must be made clear:
While Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba played a vital role in the politics of that time and place, their roles owed everything to their association with the Crab, and nothing whatsoever to the cult of ‘drumming’; and the fact that the Crab allowed Chegory and Olivia to issue imperial decrees in the Crab’s name should not be allowed to obscure the fact that all the decisions made by those two infatuated children were largely influenced and controlled by the constant advice they received from the responsible adults on whose good counsel they relied and depended.
Now this has been clarified:
Read on!
If you dare!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The day after Bro Drumel’s meeting with the Empress Justina, the Narapatorpabarta Bank began to experience an unusual number of withdrawals. Juliet Idaho engineered this run on the bank, and did so in the simplest way imaginable. He made up a list of likely account holders (anyone rich enough to have money worth hiding from the Inland Revenue), visited the people on his list, and ordered each to bring him documented proof of a withdrawal from the N’barta. Or else!