Saloona bit her lip. She prodded her omelet with her fork, and reflected unhappily on how little joy she had taken from Paytim’s cooking in the last day and a half.
Before another fit of trembling could overtake her, she began to eat, with far less avidity than had been her wont.
Sky and shadows mingled in an amaranth mist as twilight fell that evening. At the edge of the forest, the prism ship had for some hours kept up a high-pitched litany of admonition, interspersed with heartrending cries. Since Saloona now seemed to possess a heart, the ship’s lament frayed her nerves to the snapping point, and drove the fire witch wild with anger. Twice Saloona had to physically restrain her from reducing the ship to smoking metal and charred wire.
“Then silence it yourself!” demanded Paytim.
“I cannot. The neural fibers that give it sentience also propel it and govern its navigation.”
Paytim’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Then we will walk.”
“And arrive tomorrow,” said Saloona with impatience. “Perhaps this is an opportune moment to test your beeswax plugs.”
The fire witch exhaled with such force that the hem of a nearby curtain curled into gray ash. Saloona ignored this and returned to her bedroom.
Clothes were strewn everywhere. Stained lab tunics; an ugly crinoline diapered with paper-thin sheets of tellurium that whistled a jaunty air as she tossed it aside; an ancient silk kimono, never worn, embroidered with useless sigils; rubber booties and garden frocks; a pelisse she had made herself from a Deodand’s skin, which still gave off a whiff of spoiled meat and blewits.
Saloona stuffed these back into the armoire from which they’d emerged, then sat brooding for some minutes on the edge of her little carven bed. She had lived here alone, had taken no lover for many years now, and had virtually no interest in fashion. Still, a sartorial cantrap was well within her powers.
But if one lacked an affinity for fashion, or even a mild interest, what use was such a spell? Might not the attire it procured turn out be inelegant, even fatally offensive? Certainly it would be unsuitable for an affair of such magnificence as the after-ball.
Saloona was, in fact, naive. She shared the province’s general disdain for the ruling dynasty, but she had never visited court, or entertained the notion that she someday might. Her anxiety at the prospect was therefore extreme. She once more flung open the door of her armoire, inspected the garments she had just rejected, and continued to find them wanting.
After a fraught quarter-hour, she still wore her faded lab tunic.
“Are you ready?” Paytim’s voice echoed shrilly down the hall.
“Another minute.”
Saloona bit her lower lip. She undressed hastily, retaining only her linen chemise and crimson latex stockings — the color, she thought, might be viewed as a sign of admiration. She pulled on a pair of loose sateen trousers, a deep mauve, and then an airy silk blouson, white but filigreed with tiny eyes that opened to reveal scarlet irises whenever bright light shone upon the fabric.
“Saloona!” The fire witch sounded almost frantic. “
Saloona gave a wordless cry, swept her marigold hair into an untidy chignon that she secured with a pair of golden mantids whose claws tugged painfully at her roots. A final glance into a mirror indicated that she looked even more louche than she’d feared. The subtly glowing necklace of toxic vesicles around her throat seemed particularly out of place, its false bijoux glowing like Viasyan adamant. The entire effect was not mitigated by her worn leather slippers, which had long curling toes that ended in orange tassels.
But she had no time to change her shoes. As Paytim’s footsteps boomed down the corridor, Saloona grabbed the silk kimono and rushed from her room.
“I’m ready,” she said breathlessly, wrapping herself in the kimono’s folds.
The fire witch scarcely glanced at her; merely dug her fingers into Saloona’s elbow and steered her out the front door and toward the paddock. “Your ship knows the way?”
An answering retort, midway between a turbine explosion and the shriek of a woman in childbirth, indicated that the prism ship was aware of the destination.
Saloona nodded, then glanced at her companion, her eyes widening.
The fire witch rewarded her with a compressed smile. “It’s been such ages since I’ve worn this. I’m surprised it still fits.”
From her white shoulders to her narrow ankles, Paytim was encased in a gown of pliant eeftskin, in shades of beryl, sea-foam, moonlit jade. Where twilight touched the cleft between her breasts, opalescent sparks shimmered and spun. Wristlets of fiery gold wound her arms, wrought like adders and fileels. A comb of hammered copper, shaped like a basilisk’s head, restrained her shining hair so that only a few golden tendrils fell saucily against her cheeks.
“Your attire becomes you,” said Saloona.
“Yes.”
The fire witch smiled mirthlessly, displaying the placebit carved from her lover’s fingerbone; then raised her hand. The wand that had confounded even Resta Gestille glowed as though it were an ingot just hauled from the flames. It was so bright that Paytim blinked and looked aside.
More discomfiting to Saloona Morn were the sounds that emanated from the wand. A subtle, refined yet cunning cascade of notes, at once bell-like yet ominously profound, as though played upon an instrument whose tympanum was the earth’s very skin, its sounding rods the nearby crags and stony spires. The notes rang inside Saloona’s skull, and she gasped.
But before she drew her next breath, the sound faded. The ensuing silence, fraught with malign portent, Saloona found more disturbing than the uncanny music.
She had no time to ponder her unease. With a soft command, Paytim urged her toward the paddock. As they approached, the air grew increasingly turbulent. The evergreens’ heavy branches thrashed. Dead fir needles and bracken rose and whirled in miniature wind-funnels. Fenceposts buckled, then exploded into splinters. A flock of mal-de-mutes rose from the topmost branches of the tallest spruce and fled screaming into the darkening sky.
“Can’t you control it?” Paytim shouted.
Saloona shielded her eyes against a bolt of violet plasma. “I don’t think it wants to go.”
As she spoke, the air thickened until the ship’s outlines grew visible, coruscant with lightning.
“BETRAYAL DEPRAVITY DISSOLUTION DESPAIR,” the ship thundered. “INIQUITY CATASTROPHE DOOM DOOM DOOM.”
“I’ll speak to it.” Saloona hurried past the fire witch, beckoning the ship open. Translucent petals emerged from the air and she slipped onboard.
“You must bear us to the Crimson Messuage without delay.” Saloona pressed her palm against the navigational membrane. “We are, I am, a guest of his Majesty Paeolina the Twenty-Eighth.”
“TWENTY NINTH,” boomed the ship, but, as Saloona exerted more pressure upon the porous membrane, its violence abated and its voice dropped to a rasp. “A chaotic and incestuous heterarchy, their lineage is damned!”
“
“What is the spell?”
Saloona lowered her face until her lips brushed the ship’s warm plasmatic membrane, and breathed her reply.
“Paytim Noringal claims it is the Black Peal; the Seventeenth Iteration of Blase’s “Azoic
“A harmonic charm of indisputable force,” the ship remarked after brief reflection. “Best I kill you now, painlessly.”
“No!” Saloona snatched her hand from the navigational membrane. “It may be the spell can be averted. If
