not exactly enraptured by the arrival of another pair of uitlanders claiming to be wazir and priest. However, Ek concealed his anger, for he was smooth; and subtle; and all the more dangerous for that. Master Ek was as smooth as the Coral Current which flows through the Green Sea, and as subtle as the sharkskinned death which swims in those waters, and as lethal to the unwary as that fearsome combination of shallows and sharks is to the inept pilot.
As Manthandros Trasilika declared that his priest would prove himself true by submitting to trial by ordeal, Ek had to accept Trasilika as wazir — at least on a provisional basis. Though Ek was inclined to think this new Trasilika and his Froissart to be as fraudulent as the first, he was secretly impressed by their audacity. Froissart would dare the ordeal of iron? The man must be mad. Or truly sure of his faith. For, to the best of Master Ek’s knowledge, no priest of Zoz had proved himself by this test for at least four hundred years.
Thus Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek acknowledged Manthandros Trasilika as wazir, and (on a provisional basis) consecrated him as such. This did not stop Master Ek from protesting vehemently when Manthandros Trasilika commanded the release of Justina Thrug and those arraigned alongside her: but he had very little say in the matter.
Very little?
None!
To ease his frustration, Master Ek withdrew to the sanctuary of the Temple of Torture, there to practise the rhetoric of steel upon a vampire rat. While Ek sought such solace, news of the arrival of a new wazir spread through Injiltaprajura. Till then, the new-coming ship had remained a mystery; for its crew had remained continent in the absence of Froissart and Trasilika, refusing to reveal the bark’s business. Now all was revealed.
As the new wazir had been shocked to learn that he had earlier been executed, so Injiltaprajura was startled by the sudden resurrection of a name which they had thought consigned for ever to history’s list of losers. The arrival of Manthandros Trasilika took them unawares, like the shock of a monolithic sky-stone plunging into their lives from out of a clear blue sky.
It is unfortunate that the arrival of a political crisis is seldom accompanied by Signs or by Portents that would warn the populace of what has befallen them. Fire signals itself with uprising smoke; and earthquake by a general destabilizing of the earth; and tsunami by the immediate overturning of ship and shore alike. But citizens are not so easily alerted to climactic conflicts in the body politic; so that some continued in ignorance of the changes long after they had taken place.
As Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek tutored a vampire rat in the ways of pain, ice miners still worked Downstairs in total ignorance of the latest twist to the ongoing political crisis. Ox No Zan, a timorous student of Janjuladoola breed, lay in an opium stupor following yet another visit to Doctor Death, this time for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth. And many others were similarly afflicted by ignorance.
How multitudinous is humanity!
To pretend to give a full accounting of the complexities of Injiltaprajura would be fraudulent, for a thousand volumes could not contain one part in a thousandth of the intricate life of that metropolis. But we can flirt with the notion of such an accounting, touching on the life of Injiltaprajura here and there, much as if we were to sample a few grains of sand from a beach in an effort to assess the variety of the whole, each grain being unique in its own configuration even if on those rare occasions when the whole beach derives from rock of the same parental stock.
Let us sample, then.
Thus:
A woman in the second day of labour. Her knowledge, interest, delight and concern in, with and of politics is precisely zero.
Two children picking their way over a landscape of outrage, shuffling through the ashes of their family home in search for the bones of their mother and father, flame-victims consumed by the fires of wrath which have so lately devastated the city.
A cat with a burnt tail investigating the cindered ashes of a moribund pharmacy. An athletic ephebe mourning a pederast’s passing. A finagling heiress contemplating matricide. A jeweller experimenting with a miraculous optical device lately dredged from the sea, a device with which he can see the bones in his own hand.
Look elsewhere.
Here a goat, raising a bleating cry just before its slaughter befalls it. A cat, preening and priding. A schoolmaster, slowly dying of cancer, lecturing bored children on the evils of ignorance, cruelty and perversity. Slanic Moldova, temporarily living in Moremo, starting work on a baroque mural in which an insurmountable mountain of bones rises from zombie shadows.
An astrologer delves amidst the quirks and weaknesses of a fearful member of his clientele, someone seeking the psychic equivalent of soothing drugs and charmed potions.
Shall we look elsewhere yet again?
In one of the coolhouses of Injiltaprajura’s desert side in which market gardeners grow cold climate vegetables, an apprentice idles away his master’s time by beating on a drum. He is supposed to be boyhandling blocks of ice imported from Downstairs, but the drum has him in its thrall, and he makes no movement but for the pat — pat — slap of his hands. In a house not far away, the boy’s master makes experiments with melting ice, thinking to make a device to measure the day into fractions in accordance with how long a block of standard size takes to melt.
Back on port side, a marriage proceeds in the Xtokobrokotok, where Shabble is presiding over the grand nuptial ceremonies of a Janjuladoola couple. Already these two are dreaming of sweet and pungent sources of organic pleasure, of a carnal embrace which combines the flesh of the visible world with the spirit of worlds unseen…
And, not very far from Marthandorthan, amidst the ruins of the Dromdanjerie, a solitary lunatic dances to the tune of instruments unheard by other ears. Living a life scored by heavenly music, this mystical corybant pays no heed to anything as mundane as politics, as the lovers and ice miners and beggars and apprentice boys pay no heed.
This is how it is, how it was, back in the days of the testing of courage, back in the distant past when your historian could see all colours sharp and bright, and did not yet have arthritis.
In some places it was rumoured that the new Manthandros Trasilika was not a wazir sent from overseas at all; rather, that he was a psychopathic maniac long confined in the Dromdanjerie, and who, having escaped from that now burnt-down bedlam had taken it into his head to gamble all in the company of a fellow maniac. A full half- dozen informants took that story to Injiltaprajura’s secret police, only to be sent away with kicks and curses. The secret police had gone on strike because, as a consequence of the rapid deterioration of the machinery of government, they were no longer getting paid.
In his mansion on Hojo Street, a very uptight Aquitaine Varazchavardan received the news of the advent of a new Trasilika and a new Froissart with a combination of exhaustion and panic. He did not think he could sustain many more shocks to flesh and psyche. The recent rapid gyrations in the political order had dismayed him mightily. Varazchavardan was one of those people who longs for order. He desired to make his intelligence subservient to a mighty Power, to be regimented and controlled, to find safety through obedience to the ruling order.
But, increasingly, Injiltaprajura offered no stable order to be obeyed.
If only Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin would finish his airship, and quickly! Then Varazchavardan could get the hell out of Injiltaprajura. Unless he made such an escape, and soon, surely he would die in the next riot; or be executed by Master Ek on some half-lawful pretext; or be chopped to bits by one wazir or another on account of his past association with Justina Thrug; or be mugged and murdered on the increasingly lawless streets.
Such was Varazchavardan’s plight.
And what of Sken-Pitilkin? Why, he was still working for no more than half a day at a time. And his progress was no faster, even though he had an assistant. Nixorjapretzel Rat was that assistant.
After converting Pelagius Zozimus to a fast-changing serial life-form, young Rat had almost been killed by a wrathful Log Jaris. Rat had escaped from the bullman, though only with difficulty; and had eventually taken refuge in the Cabal House. But the wonder-workers of the Cabal House, wishing to keep tabs on Sken-Pitilkin’s airship rebuilding programme, had ordered Rat to make his peace with the bullman Log Jaris by way of humble apology, to return to the pink palace, and to place himself at Sken-Pitilkin’s service.
All this Rat had done, albeit reluctantly.
