Injiltaprajura.
Behold Justina! Vigorous her lips and big her nose, high her brow and plump her cheeks. Massive are her breasts, their weight threatening the carmine silk which binds them in. Stalwart are her thighs and thick her wrists. Surely she is the daughter of a mighty father!
Behind Justina’s ebony throne stood a huge cage with bars of black iron. Even Chegory Guy knew it for a starvation cage. It had long fallen out of disuse, for Justina was true to the traditions of her forebears, and the Yudonic Knights prefer disciplinary solutions which lead to sharp and bloody death rather than the exquisite forms of lingering agony brought to such perfection by the connoisseurs of the Izdimir Empire. Nevertheless, the lock on the door to the cage glistened with a sheen of oil which spoke of loving maintenance.
‘This way,’ said the conjurer Odolo.
Chegory let himself be led. His mouth was agape. He was staring at the battle-shields on the walls. The shields were objects of outright wrath adorned with the bloody coats of arms of the Yudonic Knights of Wen Endex. A riot of monstrous jaws, skulls, bones, sundry decapitations, hacked amputations, dripping blood and worse.
Odolo, by taking advantage of his status as imperial favourite, soon led young Chegory closer to the Seat of Mercy than he would otherwise have got in the course of the whole afternoon. For the petitions session had attracted an uncommon number of supplicants, since the searches, seizures, raids, captures, inquiries and interrogations of the last five quarters had flushed an extraordinary tally of criminals, sinners, law-breakers, tax avoiders, deserters, traitors, drug-dealers, miscreants, vandals, delinquents, runaways, truants, swindlers, perjurers and embezzlers from their caves, sewers, cellars, lairs, pits, attics, hideouts and houseboats.
Notable among those crowding close to the scimitars was a big man massively scarred by burns. Where skin remained one could see the remnants of once-glorious tattoos of dragons, sea serpents and such.
‘Who’s that?’ said Chegory, pointing him out. ‘Uckermark, the corpse master. A regular visitor.’ ‘Why?’
‘He’s always offending one religion or another.’
‘He’s a — a blasphemer?’
‘No, it’s just his job. It-’
Chegory never received an explanation of the theological disputes which interfere with the smooth flow of a corpse master’s work (certain treatments of the dead which are essential to one religion are anathema to another, and Injiltaprajura is rich indeed in religions) because he interrupted, saying:
‘Gods!’
‘What is it?’
‘Just someone I know.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, nobody, nobody, don’t worry about it.’
The someone who was nobody was actually Chegory’s uncle Dunash Labrat, upright beekeeper and dutiful taxpayer, who was moving through the crowd in company with his son Ham. They had some of their apiarian gear with them, for bees were swarming in the pink palace and the two had been summoned to remove them.
Chegory did his best to make himself inconspicuous. This was just what he had dreaded! Publicity! The embarrassment of declaring himself and his circumstances to the Empress Justina in full view of his uncle. A nightmare come true! Then the Labrats were gone, ushered deeper into the palace by a guiding guard, and Chegory breathed easy once more.
’ ‘Well,’ he said, eager to get his ordeal over and done with now he was irrevocably launched upon the petitioning path, ‘what’re we going to do? Push in ahead of those people?’
‘No,’ said Odolo. ‘We wait. The Empress takes breaks at intervals. Then we’ll join her in a place more private and plead your case beyond the mob’s survey.’
Serendipity!
This was more than Chegory had dared to hope for!
A private audience with Justina, oh yes, that was the way. He could say everything, confess all, knowing it would not be near instantly the common talk of the streets. Under such circumstances he would count it both a pleasure and a privilege to bare his soul to his Empress. Justina the merciful! Justina the good! Most saintly of rulers, most blessed of lawmakers!
One need not search far to find the sources of such extravagant royalism. It was, after all, the Family Thrug which had overthrown Wazir Sin, that dedicated pogromist who had made it his business to wipe out Ebbies first then others afterwards. If it had not been for the intervention of Lonstantine Thrug and Justina’s subsequent adherence to her father’s policies then Chegory Guy would still have been living as a hunted animal in the wastelands of Zolabrik. Hence young Chegory was a patriot, a royalist, and a staunch supporter of imperial rule.
Chegory waited impatiently while the Empress dealt with one petitioner after another. Then he was astonished to see someone he recognised stepping forward to declare himself.
He was astonished?
Why, you ask, was he astonished?
After all, he was an Ebrell Islander, hence drug-dealers and law-breakers of all descriptions were his common companions. Surely he could have been expected to recognise many a petition-pleading miscreant on a day so busy. If you have prejudged young Chegory thus then your prejudices are not misplaced, for, as this chronicle has demonstrated already, he was typical of his kind. Nevertheless, his astonishment was fully justified, for the man instantly standing before the Empress Justina was no ordinary petitioner.
No, this was the elven lord whom Chegory had met Downstairs in the night just gone. Or, rather, this was the individual whom Chegory had misidentified as an elven lord on the strength of the glittering fish-scale armour he had been wearing in the underworld. The man in question was actually Pelagius Zozimus, a wizard of the order of Xluzu and the quest-companion of Guest Gulkan (pretender to the throne of Tameran), Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin (a fellow wizard) and Thayer Levant (a cut-throat from Chi’ash-lan).
For the Petitions Session, Pelagius Zozimus had abandoned his miraculous fish-scale armour in favour of an unadorned light green ankle-length robe. A linguist had already established his competence in Toxteth, and even now a guard was using that language to ask Chegory’s ‘elven lord’ the standard question:
‘Have you in your voluntary or involuntary possession any knife, bodkin, knitting needle, dragon hook, sword, spear, bow, catapult, arbalest, fighting stick, battering ram, snake, scorpion, basilisk, vial of vitriol or other weapon of death or terror or violence?’
Whereupon Zozimus answered in the negative, was subjected to a swift but expert search, then was allowed to step closer (but not too close!) to the Empress. The Imperial Linguist stepped forward with him. Both elven lord and linguist bowed.
‘Toxteth,’ said the linguist, then bowed again and withdrew.
Chegory was appalled to see the elven lord standing almost within striking distance of the Empress Justina. Alone and unaccompanied. What designs did the alien uitlander have upon his beloved Empress. What treason was here afoot?
The elven lord bowed once more.
‘Speak,’ said Justina, for such was her style.
‘Fair star of Injiltaprajura,’ said he, ‘most gracious of the daughters of Wen Endex, most-’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Justina, impatiently, ‘I’ve heard all that before. Tell me something I don’t know. Get down to business, man!’
‘I crave forgiveness for sins enormous, for crimes near unpardonable,’ said the elven lord.
Chegory relaxed. So the miscreant was going to confess all. He was going to admit to the Empress that he had come to Injiltaprajura to try to seize the wishstone. Chegory knew that to be the ruling purpose of the elven lord and his companions for they had told him as much after they had captured him Downstairs.
‘Crave on,’ said the Empress.
‘My name is Pelagius Zozimus,’ said the elven lord. ‘Long have I dwelt in the wastelands of the Scorpion Desert. There, to my sorrow, I have served the evil warlord Jal Japone. His employ have I deserted, here to come to crave forgiveness.’
‘How did you serve Japone?’ said the Empress.
‘I was his chief of cookery,’ said Pelagius Zozimus, ‘for there lies my talent. I’m a master chef, the unsurpassed lord of twenty-seven styles of culinary delight. I hear my ladyship has a vacancy for such a one.’
