cherished routines. His brush with death and with the law had awakened him to a terrifying appreciation of his own mortality. He also found himself alive to the world of the flesh.
To the world of beauty.
Olivia Qasaba!
Long had he denied the lust which urged him to possess her. Yet in the here and now it was hard to deny his desire. Soft were her curves and bright was the sheen of her skin. A light was alive in her eyes, and he allowed himself to imagine that she was remembering the valour with which he had contended against the kraken on the harbour bridge.
The caution which had governed his relations with Olivia in the Dromdanjerie was at low ebb. He was possessed by something akin to the recklessness which stirs the blood in time of war and sets the appetites seething. He imagined Olivia indulging him with a kiss. He was conscious of the gloss of her hair and of a certain fragrance which hung about her. He imagined But we all know exactly what he imagined. There is no need to elaborate further. Suffice to say that he studied the young woman intently while pretending to scrutinise his fingertips.
Olivia of the moods uncertain! What was she thinking of? What thinking? What? Only one way to find out. Ask!
‘Olivia,’ said Chegory.
He meant to make her name itself a poem. But he was truly tired despite his enthusiasm for the life of the moment. His tongue slurred her name, thickened it, made her middle-aged and dowdy, insulted her beyond redemption. Or so thought Chegory. Yet Olivia answered him:
‘Yes?’
Yes. She said yes. But to what? To nothing, for the moment. But one day, surely, she would say yes to all. To him, to his strength, to his need, to his urgency.
Chegory found himself trembling.
Then an outbreak of uproar abruptly ended this delightful dalliance. The two young people got to their feet in alarm as the building echoed with shouts, screams, the thumping of trampling boots and the resounding crash of sledgehammers smashing down doors.
‘Gods!’ said Olivia. ‘What is it?’
‘We’re being raided,’ said Chegory. ‘Come on! Let’s get out of here!’
But attempts to escape were futile. Chegory and Olivia had scarcely got out of the bedroom when shadows jumped them. Chegory was seized. Slammed up against a wall. Mobbed by a good half dozen soldiers.
‘Help!’ screamed a nearby panic.
His own throat shouted:
‘Olivia!’
Then he was slammed again, hit, struck, pounded. All voice knocked out of him by twenty knuckles, thirty. An elbow hard against his face then sharp, sharp, a swordpoint sharp-needling into his throat.
‘Don’t move, Ebby!’ said a snarl. ‘Or you’re dead!’
‘You’re under arrest,’ said an authority. '
Chegory felt his legs buckling.
‘Don’t move, I said!’
But down he went regardless, helpless to save himself, the world crashing around him as he fell.
He was kicked to his feet.
‘You’re under arrest,’ said a triumph.
‘I told him that already,’ said an authority first heard but moments before.
Then another voice:
‘The charge is drug pushing.’
‘Wha-’
Thus his throat, mouthing a single syllable void of meaning. His legs void of strength. Curt efficiency dragging him away already. His feet kicking behind him. Screaming. Someone screaming. Olivia, Olivia!
But Chegory was helpless to save her. All fight, all sense, all thought had been knocked out of him. Like a carcase he was carried, dragged, handled, thrust. He had lost track of where he was, where they were taking him, how far they had come.
Then a bright and blinding light lit his surroundings. He was in the main hall of the warehouse. Artemis Ingalawa was struggling, fighting four soldiers who had hold of a limb apiece. Firfat Labrat and Ivan Pokrov were being hustled out of an office at swordpoint, protesting loudly. Above Light light light!
Shabble, surely.
‘Chegory!’ cried Shabble. ‘Chegory, dearest!’
Then, in extremis, Chegory Guy found his voice.
‘Don’t do anything!’ yelled Chegory.
If Shabble let rip and fried a few soldiers, then Chegory Guy would most certainly get the blame. Then the army might of its own initiative launch a pogrom against all Injiltaprajura’s surviving Ebrell Islanders, no matter what the Empress said.
‘Burning,’ chanted Shabble. ‘Burning burning burning.’ Then Pokrov’s voice rose above the uproar in a shout large-volumed by his desperation.
‘Shabble! Come here! Right now! Or I will send you to a therapist immediately!’
To Chegory’s great relief, the lord of misrule obeyed, and no further threats of incineration were issued from that source as Chegory and his fellow captives were hustled outside into the night.
CHAPTER TEN
Shortly after the raid on Firfat Labrat’s premises in the dockside quarter of Marthandorthan, some prisoners were brought to the gates of the Temple of Torture in Goldhammer Rise. Firfat himself was not one of those prisoners. At that very moment he was back at his warehouse remunerating the soldiers who had just done him a favour by demonstrating to him the manifest inadequacy of his security arrangements.
Chegory, however, was in no position to buy himself out of trouble. For a start, he had no money. Also, unlike Firfat he did not have friends prepared to help him with negotiations. Firfat, on the other hand, had a judge, three priests, a couple of bankers and Injiltaprajura’s harbourmaster all on his side.
Could Firfat have saved young Chegory Guy? Perhaps. If he had really exerted himself. But then again, perhaps not. After all, the soldiers did have a quota to fill, and thus were glad to be able to deliver Chegory Guy, Olivia Qasaba, Artemis Ingalawa and Ivan Pokrov to the detention centre.
Shabble was not technically under arrest but bobbed along with them anyway, soaring out of the way whenever an irritated soldier tried to swat the beacon-bright summoner of all night-flying insects.
At the temple gates the prisoners were signed for, as if they were a consignment of cassava or so many sacks of coconuts. Then they were taken into the temple precincts, which were crowded with detainees of all ages, races and sexes, many slumped in sleep already despite certain obstacles to peaceful repose in the form of squalling babies and squabbling in-laws.
‘Oh well,’ said Chegory, ‘it doesn’t look too bad. Let’s find a quiet corner and get settled.’
To Chegory’s horror, Ingalawa and Pokrov had no intention at all of quietly settling down. Instead, they began to protest long and loud, demanding lawyers, bail, release, apologies. Chegory feared they would all get beaten up. He was already stiff and sore from the thumping he had taken in Firfat’s warehouse, and had no wish whatsoever to add to his injuries. To his relief, Ingalawa’s protests diminished after a fellow captive explained that they could not get access to lawyers because a State of Emergency had been declared.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That explains it. Okay then, we’ll make the best cf it. But I do wish we had mosquito nets.’
These Ashdan liberals! Weird is too weak a word for it! Ingalawa typifies some of the attitudes of the breed. She had protested vehemently solely on the grounds that she was being deprived of her legal rights. On a point of principle, in other words. For that she had risked a beating. Then, once she knew their detention was lawful, all her
