Angelmaker

VII Cuparah; dinner with the Opium Khan; close encounters with insects and bananas.

In the fitful dreams of Edie Banister, crazy old punk lady and dogbearing fugitive, the broad black deck of Cuparah is slick with brine, and she reels as another wave strikes the bow. The ship yaws hugely, lurching in the swell. Edie swallows bile, but even the sense of imminent vomiting can’t dampen her delight.

Cuparah is a submarine.

More than that, it is a Ruskinite submarine, a nacred, seaswell ghost which cuts through one wave and plays on the next. The shape is functional—a whale-ish blunt-headed shape, swirled with weird water patterns for camouflage, asymmetrical and misleading—but every detail is splendid. The conning tower is swept back dramatically, not bolted on but seemingly grown from the body, and inside, a stair unfolds from the main body to the hatchway which makes the tower look like the entrance to a ballroom. The hatch itself is trimmed on the underneath with oiled brown leather, tooled with the names of the men who built it, and despite years of use the principal odour wafting from below is leather and varnish: warm, living smells.

“For Christ’s sake, get up here and in,” Amanda Baines says. Corporal Albert Pritchard—known mostly as Songbird, and last seen gasping in Mrs. Sekuni’s Number 4 wristlock—gamely grips Edie by the shoulder and buttock and boosts her over the guard rail to the hatch. Songbird is one of Edie’s lads, a team of veteran uglies who will support her by breaking heads and blowing things up should she require it. The others are already on board and no doubt arguing over bunks.

Edie peers down into the depths of Cuparah. There’s red light in the depths, and a cool scent of unwashed male rises out of the dark. Curiously, her nausea ebbs. She climbs down inside the hatch, and Songbird follows.

“Welcome aboard,” Amanda Baines says, passing Edie a waxed canvas grip filled with something heavy and soft. Behind her, the rest of Songbird’s squad nod greetings and grin shyly. Edie’s command. Her boys. Lethal and wicked and noble as the day.

Edie nods, stares at the narrow gang and breathes in the air. A Ruskinite, draped in black, hurries past with a strange brass tool in one hand and a concentrated expression on his face. As he passes through a hatch, she sees in the cabin beyond a familiar bank of valves and vacuum tubes. Of course. What could be more mobile, or more difficult to destroy, than a submarine code-breaking station?

The dead man’s hatches between compartments are fitted out in brass, and the cut steel is scrolled with elegant spirals and curlicues, a maker’s mark stamped into the upper left quadrant. Mockley fecit. “Mockley made me.” Edie grins. Nice to know who created the machine on which your life depends. She trusts Mockley, and hence also Cuparah. When she looks up, she finds a wide sky above her, a beautiful illusion of clouds and air. Cuparah is a thing to lift the heart, even down here in the dark beneath the waves.

“Best get used to the uniform,” Amanda (Captain) Baines adds, gesturing to the case. “Try it on before you sleep, and wear it in the morning.”

“Yes,” Edie says. “Of course.”

In her cabin—Cuparah, of necessity, is big; in fact, it is huge for a submarine, like a Gothic destroyer sunk and overturned, with an Art Deco cruise ship inside, so cabins are like rooms in very expensive boutique hotels—Edie Banister stares at the photograph, and the face in it stares back at her in the light of her cabin’s curlicued reading lamp. All around her, there’s a whisper of water and air: the submarine has two hulls, one within the other. The inner walls are a honeycomb—for strength, flexibility, and lightness, the Ruskinites on board have told her, and to permit cabling and pipes. As the ship moves, it sighs and chuckles to itself, so that Edie fancies herself surrounded by a giant, generous, asthmatic dog.

The white shirt has trim sleeves and a severe cut which vanishes her already minimal bust. Over the top goes a jacket with broad shoulders, making a very male, very triangular torso dropping to her hips. Rummaging in her bags she finds her rank pins, and twists them through the thick collar. She also has a false moustache not entirely unlike Shem Shem Tsien’s, a brace of neat sparrow’s wings. Careful, she fixes them very firmly to her upper lip (in absolutely no sense does she wish to have a conversation with the Opium Khan which begins: “Commander Banister, your moustache has fallen in the gazpacho”) and turns to look in the mirror.

The effect is rather more than she had anticipated. A pale, severe face stares back at her, a young man’s only just out of boyhood—perhaps trying a little too hard—but definitely not a woman’s. How curious. She puts her cap on and looks again. Actually, that young man in the glass is quite attractive—not in a rugged way, but in the manner of a refined creature, inexperienced yet supple, in need of Edie’s skilled, frank schooling. An entirely different set of fantasies winds across her inner vision. My oh my… her hands trace the outline of his—her—uniform. Ho hum. It’s rather a shame she can’t go to bed with herself. She turns sideways… Delicious.

And distracting. Edie sneers at her reflection, hoping to produce a dangerous expression. Hm. That’s not a look which will stop an advancing foe. She tries again, going for confident disdain. It doesn’t work, but produces a strange, fey look of murderous intent instead.

Cuparah shudders and barks; it’s something called the thermocline. Edie doesn’t know what that may be, but hitting it and bouncing off it is like running the rapids, and every time it happens she abruptly remembers how far beneath the waves she is, and how very far from home. If only she could get some warmth into her bones. A hundred feet down in an iron cigar filled with working men, why the Hell is it so cold? She wonders if she can ask Amanda Baines for a heater.

Actually, she knows why it’s cold. Excess heat is a major problem in submarines, and Cuparah is worse than the average because she is bigger and contains all manner of clever doohickeys, including the coding machine, which gets so hot that in England it would be operated by girls wearing only their most sensible underwear. Because this is a Ruskinite submarine, it has an incredibly clever solution involving water being pumped around the vessel between the inner and outer hulls. This water is also—even more cunningly—used to assist in manoeuvring, and because it is not compressible, actually adds to the strength of the hull. Cuparah’s cooling system is the Keeper’s best work. Amanda Baines calls it Poseidon’s Net, and smiles a little when she does because she is the only submarine captain who has one. It is brilliant.

It also makes all the cabins in Edie’s section really cold.

Conscious of the weight above her, Edie slips out of her uniform. She steps carefully, feeling a ridiculous nervousness about leaning on the walls in case she punctures the armoured skin and drowns the boat. Ridiculous. Impossible. But she can’t shake the aching horror of the idea, shed the imagined feeling of an eggshell cracking.

She draws her blanket around her and falls asleep, wishing very devoutly for a friend in need, or actually, just the warm embrace of a friend in bed.

James Edward (Edie) Banister, sword on hip, walks along the gang of Cuparah. His boots are very black and very shiny, and his steps are the clipped, certain steps of a son of Empire. The playing fields of Eton have birthed him, and if they have not also been successful in teaching him classical Greek or mathematics, nor made any attempt to instil a sense of compassion, they have at least prepared him for his likely tasks with a sense of monstrous entitlement. Wherever he goes, in whatever ridiculous foreign court he walks, he walks in the warm shadow of Henry V and Queen Victoria, in the palm of the hand of Shakespeare, and let the heathen take heed.

“The gig is waiting, Commander Banister,” Amanda Baines says, without a shadow of humour. “I believe you already know these men?” And yes, he does—four of Mrs. Sekuni’s really very very not very good students, now grudgingly approved, in full rig and quite respectful.

“Yes, Captain,” Edie replies quietly.

“Carry on, then, James. Good luck.”

The long, maroon Rolls-Royce has grey leather seats and is driven by a respectful man called Tah. Tah assures his passenger that the journey will pass without incident. From behind James Banister’s whiskers, Edie wonders what sort of incident he is thinking of. She peers back along the road, comforted by her escort in their own car. A small squad of hard cases from the fighting parts of England, and very welcome, too.

The road is very straight and very flat, and lined with cherry trees. It is a perfect road through a barren place. Once, along the way, Commander Banister sees a grandmother plucking a stone from the track. Looking back as the car whooshes past, Edie sees the woman stoop again, and again, and realises that this is her task.

“The Khaygul-Khan is very progressive,” Tah says proudly. “He believes in full employment.”

“So I see.”

“And in civic works. This avenue is the work of the Khaygul-Khan’s modernising project. The cherry trees are brought from Japan. They are the most beautiful cherry trees in the world. Matched pairs.”

“The Khaygul-Khan believes his country should have the best,” James Banister agrees.

“Also, in engineering for the future. Our nation will not survive in the new world without infrastructure. We use modern construction techniques. No elephants.”

“What, none?”

“None at all. It is not modern.”

“That seems a shame.”

“The Khaygul-Khan does not greatly admire elephants. He says they are lazy by nature and prone to outbursts of temper. He was forced to have several of them impaled, because they would not serve in his army of peace. Elephants are of the past. In the future, there will be none in Addeh Sikkim.” Tah chokes a little on this last. James Banister makes haste to move the conversation along.

“I’m sure that’s very wise,” he says.

“Naturally, all our people wish to be part of the Khaygul-Khan’s great project,” Tah asserts stoutly.

“Naturally.”

“It is only the brigands from over the border who are against this. They foment rebellion and unrest. And the pirates from the Addeh.”

“I’m sure pirates are very wicked.”

“Yes. Pirates are wicked. Exactly.”

Tah nods emphatically.

In the gaps between the proud, imported trees, squalid houses and hopeless faces.

Edie hears Abel Jasmine, in her head: This is not the fight, Edie. No crusades. The fight is survival. We’ll do the good things, the right things, later. For now, the fight is the thing.

She doesn’t like it, but she knows it’s true. She settles herself, twirls her false moustache with one hand, and tries to think like a bold scion of Empire.

From the Door of Humility—where appellants enter the throne room of the Opium Khan—to the dais where Shem Shem Tsien sits, fanned by houris and waited on by eunuchs, is a distance of forty paces. The whole chamber is lit by row upon row of gas lamps, tiny globes burning very bright and hot, but interspersed between them are strange coils of actinic blue. Every so often they crackle and spit as a moth or fly blunders into them. A lavender silk carpet runs the length of the room and culminates in a shin-high bar of gold and rubies at which one is required to kneel. The Englishman, Banister, removes his cap and places it under his arm. He has already politely given up his sword and pistol to the flunkey on his left. He turns, leaving his personal guard of four at the back of the room, and walks the long carpet slowly but without ceremony. The Opium Khan watches him every step of the way, past the sturdy marble columns sheathed in mosaic to give the impression of being quarried whole, and the great gold sculptures depicting the achievements of the Khan (suitably edited) and the organist playing the Khan’s personal anthem, and finally—this is where most petitioners are finally overawed—over the small bridge which crosses a jagged chasm, the bottom of which cannot be detected, so deep it is, but from which emerges in strange, sudden flashes yet more blue light and a sound of seething geology, like a dragon turning in its sleep. Behind the Opium Khan is a huge spiderweb of blue coils, the radial arms like the limbs of a many-limbed god. Approaching the throne is like walking into a storm cloud; one’s hair stands slightly on end.

Commander Banister reaches the bar, and bows his head respectfully.

“From Her Britannic Majesty, greetings,” he says briefly. His voice is light, even high, but then the English nobility are often said to be an effeminate race.

The flunkey coughs.

“It is customary that visitors kneel before the Khaygul-Khan,” he says.

“I ain’t a customary visitor,” the young man replies smartly, with a condescending smile. “I’m an ambassador o’ the British Crown. Don’t kneel in Beijing, don’t kneel in Moscow. Never been done. Never will be. Might kneel for Don Bradman, mind you. Decent batter. Whaddaya say, Khan? Bradman any good?”

“Bradman is excellent, Commander Banister. Although I always feel that Larwood’s better nature precludes a proper confrontation.”

“How so?”

“Larwood declines to risk hurting him severely, Commander Banister. Even with the new bodyline. He holds back.”

“Nature of the game, Khan. In the end, victory ain’t the point.”

“A very English game, Commander. Which is why I do not play.”

“Dear me. But however do you spend the summer, athletic fellow like you?”

“Fencing, Commander Banister. Hunting. War, sometimes. And of course, I must tend to my flock.”

“Sheep? Curious notions you fellas have. Sheep, eh? No pastime for an aristocrat, I’d say, but you know your nation, I s’pose, Khan.”

The Khan’s eyes are very sharp upon Banister’s face.

“My people, Commander.”

“Oh, indeed. Metaphor. Well, to each his own. Need a lot of looking after, do they?”

“Constant.”

“Int’restin’ how that happens in warmer climates. Your Frenchman requires very little maintenance, your yeoman Wessexer none at all. The Scots and the Dutch are positively against it. But come down into the heat and everyone needs schooling and regulation. Inconvenient, I call it.”

“It is a solemn duty which affords me the chance to be closer to God. Do you feel close to God?”

“Course I do. Dieu et mon droit, you see. Bein’ an ambassador’s very nearly like bein’ a bishop.”

Shem Shem Tsien smiles. “Bishops cannot make love.”

“Ambassadors should avoid makin’ war and nuns ain’t supposed to drink; fishermen are silent, not to mention ministers are selfless and judges are incorruptible. Surprisin’ how often all of us slip up, though.” Commander Banister smiles a broad, idiotic smile, his eyes very sharp in his pale, girlish face. Shem Shem Tsien nods in appreciation. Yes, indeed. Here is a man worthy of his attention. A buffoonish mask offered without pretence of truthfulness, and just a hint of a dare: Shem Shem Tsien has been challenged to find the truth of James Banister and just perhaps his price as well.

“Nice decorations,” Banister says, indicating the great disc behind his host.

“You like them? The aesthetic aspect is secondary, of course. Still, a throne decked in storms is something of a statement, I feel.”

“Secondary, eh? So what’s primary?”

The Opium Khan’s smile thins a little. “I have a morbid fear of insects, Commander Banister.”

“Insects? Big fella like you?”

“Mm. I once caught a Japanese merchant wandering through my kingdom, Commander, with a selection of wine glasses. Amid some truly excellent English crystal and some lost wax pieces by Lalique, he had a small number of cylinders containing mosquitoes which had been fed upon dying men. The diseases they carried were extraordinarily virulent. Do you see? I believe the idea came from an American author—a man who had no love for Asia, as it happens. Of course, the Americans—by which I mean, I suppose, the white Americans—have some history with spreading disease among those who are in their way.”

“Charmin’.”

“Indeed. As a ruse of war, it is efficacious. As an act of man, despicable.” See me, Commander Banister. I say the word, but I do not feel it. Understand: I have no limits.

James Banister’s bland expression does not falter, and the Opium Khan snorts lightly through his nose. Is the man dense? Or brave? The Englishman goes on.

“I understand you’ve been havin’ a wee war of your own?”

“Rabble from the forests. Woodcutters and charcoal burners. There is a real conflict abroad in the world, and it is at my gates. What you refer to is but a local issue of authority, nothing more.”

“Unruly peasants?”

“Misled by the last remnants of an old conflict.”

“Dear me. Best to finish that sort of thing at the time.”

“Indeed. It’s rare that I have occasion to regret my mercy.”

Commander Banister nods. Yes, he has grasped the implication there. “I imagine that it is,” he says coolly, and snaps his heels together by way of punctuation. “If I may?”

Shem Shem Tsien nods magnanimously. “We will eat in an hour, Commander. My chef has been instructed to prepare some traditional dishes for your amusement.”

“Not goat, I hope.”

“Addeh swan with a pearl and vinegar sauce, gold-leafed potatoes and a confit of Sikkim Red Tiger.”

“Never had tiger. What’s it like?”

“I understand that depends very much on what the animal has been eating.”

“And this one?”

“I have been feeding it personally. I can assure you the flavour will be entirely appropriate.”

“Taste of steak, then?”

The Opium Khan smiles, and raises one thin eyebrow.

“Steak. Yes. And perhaps just a little of the woods, Commander Banister. One never knows what will come through.”

“ ’E’s a cauld bastid, an’ noo error,” Flagpole says in Edie Banister’s chamber, when Songbird has given the all-clear. “A total, un-mitigayt-ud bastid. World’ud be bettah off wi’oot ’un. Noo chance, I s’pose, Countess?”

“‘Commander,’” Songbird says, reprovingly, glancing at the humming coil in the corner of the room. Edie isn’t sure whether a coil like that might be made to work as a microphone as well as a bug-zapper, and has no desire to find out by being discovered as a spy. Well, all right, as a girl spy with an inimical mission: it’s pretty clear that Commander James is a spook of the first circle, but people in this world seem to take that sort of thing as natural. It’s like not minding that the other fellow has a gun so long as he points it at the floor.

“Aye, weel. Commander, then. Noo chance?” Flagpole looks down at her, rough countryman’s face hopeful, like a boy asking for a new bicycle.

Edie glances around the room; bordello chic, very much in the Soho style of accommodation for louche gentlemen wishing to try out the harem style. A subtle insult to the British soldier, or an assumption about his ignorance? Or… a warning that her disguise has been penetrated already, and here is a false room for a false fellow, as fake and obvious as her fake moustache. No way to tell. She fingers a length of orange satin, draws it across her face. Delicious. Focus.

“Not unless something goes very wrong,” she replies. Flagpole brightens.

“Whul, it usually does, ey?”

“ ’Ope not,” Songbird mutters. “Some other bugger can go aftah that ’un. ’E looked at me on the way oot a’ the room. Fair ’n’ I widdled meself. Go op agin that wi’oot orders? Buggeroff!”

A large number of Songbird’s pronouncements end in this one word, which is how he gets his name. Shortarse (who is predictably enough around six foot nine and scrawny) christened him after the first few days on Cuparah. “Fookin’ Nora, ’e’s too sophisticated fer the likes o’ me, Cap’n, I can’t sail wi’ no flutt’rin’ songbird!”

Shortarse was also the first to call Edie “Countess,” after Flagpole tried his luck getting her to share his bunk back before they made landfall. “Now then, wee lass, best we get it oot tha way, like. You’ll be wantin’ to hoist the colours fer Flagpole, sure enough, I says let’s do it reet off the bat, and mayhapp’n ye’ll be cured o’ yer infatcherashun ’fore we leave…” And so saying, he planted a wet smacker on her lips. Edie bethought herself of Mrs. Sekuni’s Second Method For Repelling Improper Advances From Bourgeois Intellectual Sex Maniacs (of which Mrs. Sekuni assured Edie there were an infinite number and they were not, absolutely not to be despised, because many of them were quite as interesting as they wished a lady to believe). She let the kiss linger and then she helped herself to a chunk of his meaty backside in each dainty hand, and locked herself against him. She drew the kiss out as the rest of the section whooped and growled, pressed her tongue between his amazed lips and squirmed in the most lewd way she knew. She roved her hands all over him, down, up, down, up… up. And as the roar subsided, she pressed her thumbs lightly against his neck at the sides, slowly and imperceptibly closing his carotid arteries. One, two, three… four.

Flagpole dropped through the circle of her arms in a dead faint. The section stared at her.

Edie Banister grinned a wide, well-fed grin, and walked out.

“Fook me,” Shortarse said, “she socked tha fookin’ life oot o’ ’im!” And then, because the British Tommy is nothing if not adaptable, “Hah! Look oot, Tojo, we’re bringing a witch, is whut it is, tae draw doon the Evil Eye on ya! Magic o’ the Islands, lads! Our varrah oon Bloody Countess!”

In the castle of the Opium Khan, Flagpole considers the ways in which this operation could go wrong. “Aye,” he says, firmly. “Let’s ’ope.”

James Banister, Cmdr., RN, holds a foreign fruit in one hand and a spoon made of ivory in the other, delving deeply in the first with the second, and reflects that a real secret agent would solve the whole thing by using the spoon on Shem Shem Tsien’s domed forehead. Sadly, spoon mayhem is harder than Boy’s Own comics would have you believe, and the Opium Khan somewhat notoriously knows how to take care of himself. Then, too, there’s the matter of unseen but no doubt well-situated archers who would almost certainly conclude any attempt before it caused their master any serious grief.

The fruit has the texture of cooked fish and tastes of mango, ginger and salt. The Opium Khan calls it a fire pear. It apparently grows only on the shores of the great Addeh River as it winds down towards the Dhaka delta.

“In unenlightened times, it was said to be the egg of a giant catfish,” Shem Shem Tsien says. “A special preparation of the plant was believed to contain the Elixir of Divine Immortality. And the dried flowers were prized… as an aphrodisiac.”

James Banister looks at him for a moment, worried on cue. You do love your theatre, don’t you?

“The fruit is quite safe, Commander, I promise you. I have many, many tasters between the river and the table. Their instructions are specific.”

Yes, Edie thinks grimly from behind James Banister’s moustache, I’m sure that they are. There’s a pleasant, itchy warmth in her gut. She suspects the fruit is part-fermented or soaked in hooch—at the very least. Abel Jasmine’s lessons included a brief but memorable week of sampling amphetamines and minor poisons. Edie remembers her molars buzzing and an overwhelming desire to shout her name out loud and be worshipped. So.

James Banister makes a show of swallowing the last mouthful before letting the empty carcass of his fire pear rest on the plate.

“A very vigorous flavour,” he murmurs, without enthusiasm. “Is it the gas lamps make it so warm in here?”

The Opium Khan gestures, and more flunkeys emerge to remove the detritus of the fruit course. “Just the climate, Commander, I’m afraid. The gas we keep for lighting, and possibly for export to… friendly nations. It is not known whether Addeh Sikkim has any great reserves of petroleum, but it seems likely. Of course—” But whatever follows as a matter of course will have to wait. A great rustling erupts at the far end of the dining hall, where a double chair, like a throne or a day bed, stands in place of a carver. Something resembling a trumpet is blown repeatedly, and more flunkeys rush around laying out utensils and cushions. In the distance, a gong sounds.

“You are greatly honoured,” Shem Shem Tsien says, in the voice of a man who is himself feeling somewhat less than thrilled. “The great beauty, the rose of Addeh Sikkim and beloved of us all, my mother, graces us with her presence. Good evening, Mother.” He rises abruptly, and walks towards a litter borne by two wide-shouldered men. He stoops perfunctorily to kiss the tiny bundle of finery they carry, and it moves, revealing itself to be a grey-faced, frosty old woman who must be the letter-writing dowager, Dotty Catty. She raises one hand to her son in prohibition and turns away.

“We are at odds,” the Opium Khan explains calmly. “A family matter. Of little consequence save to historians.”

“Murderer,” the old woman replies without much energy.

“Nonsense, Mother,” Shem Shem Tsien says blandly. “Don’t be unkind.”

Dotty Catty is very small, and her chair swallows her entirely, so that when she drops without grace onto the cushions she almost entirely disappears.

“My mother’s hostility is what the alienists refer to as transferred aggression,” Shem Shem Tsien murmurs as he resumes his seat. “She feels I have failed in my duty to provide myself with an heir, and transfers this unhappiness to a false memory of the past, where it assuages her own survivor’s guilt. The mind is so very agile.”

“Don’t hold with all that stuff myself,” James Banister replies. “Freud and wotnot. Not very British, to my mind.”

Shem Shem Tsien snorts. “Quite so.”

The dowager settles a little, and beckons to one of her bearers to move the table furniture so that a floral arrangement almost entirely conceals her from her son. The Opium Khan continues.

“Heirs provoke notions of succession. Replacement. You see? One must time such things appropriately.”

“Wait until you’re older, eh?”

The Opium Khan smiles.

“You mean, until the child’s majority will approximately coincide with my incapacity?”

“Somethin’ like that. Why, didn’t you?”

“In truth, I meant that the population must grow again before I can massacre enough to demonstrate the fate of those who might seek to replace me, once the idea of an eventual succession is acknowledged.”

James Banister stares back at him.

“Bit steep,” he murmurs, after a moment.

“I cannot agree,” Shem Shem Tsien replies. “I accept that it is hard. And yet, it is godly, or god-like, do you not think?”

“Pretty heathen sort of god, Khan.”

“I wonder. Indeed, I have wondered since I was a boy. The Bible says that we are like gods, because we possess knowledge of good and evil. That is part of our sin. But it seems to me that the most salient feature of God, the most commonly experienced aspect of His existence, is His silence. His great, divine indifference to our doings and affairs. Christians will tell you that God gave us free will, Commander Banister, and in the same breath they will say that they know He exists because He speaks to them constantly in their hearts, and by means of signs.

“Well, I am not content with signs, and my heart is good for pumping fluid around my body and nothing else. The day someone speaks into it, I shall have died from loss of blood. So I propose a great project, Commander Banister. I propose to find out. I seek to be close to God.”

“That’s a noble ambition.”

“It is a unique one. I alone in the world seek to be close to God by becoming more like Him. There are a thousand holy books, and ten thousand holy men and priestesses and prophets for each word of each one of them. Nothing is revealed which can be assured. Sophistries abound and circularities pervade. Mendacity is ubiquitous. Corruption is rife. I have… cut it out… of many I have met. I have made them honest, at the end. But the only thing I have discovered, in all this time, is that we know nothing of God.”

“How do we even know there is one?”

“Indeed. And yet, I believe that there is. My only article of faith.” Shem Shem Tsien smiles a self-mocking smile, a wry quirk of the lips. “My sense of the universe, the way it interacts, the coincidences and accidents, the very neatness of evolution, persuades me of this. I behold a watch and I seek knowledge and conversation of the watchmaker. It persuades some scientists, some philosophers, some theologians. It does not persuade others. I am not concerned. It is enough for me that I believe it follows. However… the nature of this God, Commander Banister, remains opaque to me. God is obscure. Absent.”

“I know a nun says he isn’t.”

Shem Shem Tsien scowls, and claps his hands again, then gestures. The lights dim, and along one wall a drape draws back to reveal a secondary chamber. It is filled with medical paraphernalia and tiled white, and in the middle of the room hangs a man, crucified.

The Opium Khan stands, and perforce also James Banister. It appears there will be a tour.

“His body is supported,” the Opium Khan says, conversationally, as they draw closer. “I will not allow him to suffocate. And as you see, he is draped to keep him warm.” Solicitously, he lifts a soft wool blanket away to reveal the victim’s body. “The impalations were done under anaesthetic. By me, personally, Commander. I require no amanuenses. No angels.”

The crucified man moans softly as they draw near. Indeed, the rods through his hands and feet are very neat. They are also apparently made of copper. Behind his moustache, James Banister quails a little in understanding: there are scorch marks around the wounds.

Shem Shem Tsien moves around behind the man and, with a conjuror’s flourish, removes a last drape from the frame on which he hangs. A huge actinic coil sits behind the cross, dull and dark. “God, surely, should not permit this. My citadel should ring with His voice in thunder. This man was a bishop once; his church sent him here as an emissary and he chose to side with the marshy underclass against me. He raised them in a rabble and brought them to my gates. Truly, Commander, it was a remarkable day. And now here he is.” Shem Shem Tsien flicks a switch with one long finger. The coil does not light immediately. There is a buzz and a hum, during which time the man seems to wake or return from whatever refuge he has found inside his mind and realise what is about to happen. He turns imploring eyes on James Banister, and opens his mouth to speak. The coil lights, and the man arches and screams. From his hands and feet comes a smell like pork crackling. James Banister swallows bile and concentrates on the details. He suspects that if he throws up or even looks queasy, he will be murdered.

The victim is middle-aged, and was once moderately fat. Now his skin hangs like wet, grey pastry from his bones. The screaming starts long and high, then drops into an awful repetitive yapping.

“For the first month he prayed,” Shem Shem Tsien says. “Then he cursed. Now he barks. I have reduced him to the level of a beast. I strongly suspect that he worships me. In time, I will make him into clay. I will grow roses in him. Perhaps I will wait until he is dead, perhaps not. Yet God remains silent; endlessly, tediously silent. I find that frustrating.”

Shem Shem Tsien waves again, and the screaming bishop is covered again, the coil hissing and spitting as the victim’s convulsions scatter sweat across it. The sound is muffled, but not blocked, by the cloth. The Opium Khan looks briefly concerned, caught in a gaffe.

“My apologies, Commander. That was rude. Please sit. Eat. What I wished to express to you was that… many people have opinions. None have knowledge. I have no interest in more of the former, only in a full and unquestionable experience of the latter.”

“I see.”

“No. But you shall. I seek to know God by becoming more like Him. Thus I have replicated the many paths of God as recorded in our many holy books. Fratricide? Yes. I have committed fratricide, patricide… I have slain generations. I have been merciful—terribly merciful. Capriciously so. My mercy has driven men insane. I have done things so dark, countenanced monstrosities so appalling, that my cruelty has inspired fear in nations great and powerful. Even your own.

“I have drowned men in their thousands. I have extinguished species, decimated populations with disease. On that frame I stopped milord bishop’s heart. It ceased to beat—for our entire history on this Earth, Commander, the very measure of death. And I reached down and clawed him back. I returned him to his body. Because I wished it. Because it was godly.

“And never, Commander, never do I explain myself—save to you, tonight, so that you can be my prophet in the court of the English King. Do you see? God is indifferent and God is silent and God is alien. And thus I shall become. I shall rise through horror and disaster, and in doing so I shall be more and more like Him. I shall be His mirror.

“I shall have words with the Silent God, Commander. I alone, of all men, shall know God as an equal. And then, we shall see.”

Behind the drape, the former bishop barks loudly. Shem Shem Tsien frowns, and flicks his glass. The drone of the actinic coil abruptly stops. There is a gulp, and then sobbing, which rapidly fades away.

Bloody hell.

The Englishman raises his glass to his lips in acknowledgement, and wonders what to say next.

“How do you find London, Commander Banister?”

The question is abrupt and harsh. It echoes down the table from the far end, the pile of cushions where Dotty Catty is sucking some species of soup through a gold straw. Shem Shem Tsien closes his eyes for a moment. Diplomatic banter with the agent of a foreign power is like seduction, especially in that it is not greatly aided by the presence of an elderly female relative with a grand disdain for everyone else’s conversations.

“There is a war on, of course,” James Banister replies apologetically, “so I’m afraid the city you remember is much altered, at least for the moment.”

“What?” The bundle of rags cups an ear. “What did you say?”

“I say there is a war on, Madame.”

“I’m sure there are! There were always whores in my day, too. And young bucks who’d make efforts on a respectable girl. Disgraceful!” She titters.

“The Dowager-Khatun does not hear well,” Shem Shem Tsien mutters. The movie-star burnish is coming off a little in the face of this maternal assault.

“Here in Addeh Sikkim, we have elephants. They are known for their moral fibre.”

“I hadn’t heard that about them,” Commander Banister says carefully.

“Oh, yes. Moral suasion is to be found in the eye of an elephant. You should have them in London. For education!” She nods firmly. “And the Germans, too, now,” Dotty Catty adds. “If they had elephants, Europe would not be in such a mess. Yes. I shall write to George and propose it. Or is that why you’re here? For the elephants? Eh?”

“No, Ma’am. My King wishes to discuss affairs of state.”

“Affairs! Hah! Moral fibre, as I say. I never heard such rot and impertinence. Although, one fellow in particular I do recall,” Dotty Catty continues, “used to wear flowers in his hair. Can you imagine? An Englishman. Now, what was it? Lavender? Geranium?” She scowls. “Are you even listening, man? I say ‘geranium’! What about it, eh?”

James Banister glides smoothly to his feet, glancing at his host, and walks neatly up the table to greet the dowager.

“From His Britannic Majesty, greetings,” he says.

“From gorgeous George? How splendid. There was a proper man, not like some.” She gestures angrily down the table at her son.

“Forgive me, Your Highness, if I may: is it possible the flower you’re thinking of was jasmine?”

Dotty Catty glowers up at him through rheumy, suspicious eyes.

“No.”

“I said: ‘Was it jasmine’?”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, young man!”

Commander Banister stares at her.

“No,” Dotty Catty says, “quite the contrary. I believe it may have been daisies. Yes. Very plain and dull. I do not like you. You are as pretty as he is, and quite the wrong sort. Tell George to pick his men with greater care. Tell him from me.” She gets to her feet and slaps at him. “Out of the way. Out! Out! Must I be assailed in my own house? Will my son do nothing for me? Murderer and weakling is a grim combination. The highest rooms of this palace I have, to keep me from my loves, and guards and girls to wash my feet and the mad foreigner for a guest, with her worrisome machines, and far, far from my treasures and my pretties I must dwell, oh, yes. And now you! You frightful man from London, telling me it’s all changed. Of course it has! Nothing good can last. All beauty turns to dust, and into ashes all our lust. Do you see? Pah! Out of the way, boy! I was made this way before you were born!”

Dotty Catty grabs for James Banister’s coat and misses, her ancient hand plunging instead for his crotch. And for the first time, a broad, wicked grin lights up her face. She stares at the figure in uniform and nods to herself in confirmation.

“Dearie me,” she says clearly, mad old eyes darting towards Shem Shem Tsien, “you’ll need more than that in life.”

Edie Banister removes her hand with a delicate flourish, projects her James voice ever so slightly. “I have always found what I possess quite sufficient to the task in hand, Your Highness.”

She grins again, delighted. “No doubt you have. And now he’ll offer you ‘entertainment’ to persuade you you’re a real man.” A warning there. So. And with one final “Good luck, boy,” and a rustle of paper, nearly inaudible as she thumps her other hand into a metal bowl of fruit and sends it scattering all across the table, Dotty Catty pops a missive into the British emissary’s inside pocket in fine secret agent style, and humphs out. “Not like some,” she says again, glaring at the Opium Khan.

And there is a very profound, nervous silence.

“Good Lord,” James Banister murmurs to the Opium Khan, “I thought she was going to pull the damn thing off. Narrow escape, what?”

The Opium Khan stares at him, then finds a diplomatic laugh from somewhere, and nods acknowledgement.

“Indeed, Commander Banister. Indeed, so.”

“Still, I will say, must have been quite a girl in her day, your old Ma, what?”

Shem Shem Tsien claps his hands.

“Commander Banister, you are a rare fellow. You have quite lightened my mood… Honour to our guest! Have my cygnets bring out the swan,” he says. And a moment later, the room fills with women in very small outfits made of feathers. Somewhere, amid a great deal of bare flesh, there’s an evening meal on a golden plate.

Edie Banister has one foot in the cleft of a tree and the other in a narrow noose of rope suspended from her window sill. She is still wearing James Banister’s moustache, and in addition a stiff underjerkin made of a material she has never seen before which will, in an extreme situation, offer her a moderate amount of protection from light weapons. Abel Jasmine emphasised the words “moderate” and “light.” It will make it harder for someone to slash her with a straight razor. It will not protect her from, for example, a crossbow bolt or a shot fired from the weapons carried by the Opium Khan’s guards, patrolling below. Not even a little. She tries to concentrate on what she is doing, which is climbing up the outside of Shem Shem Tsien’s palace, over the heads of three of his patrolling soldiers, to visit his mother in her chambers without getting caught. They are taking an indecently long time to patrol what seems to her to be a rather unimportant bit of garden… oh. She can smell tobacco.

Lovely. They have stopped to have a gasper some thirty foot below Edie’s exact hiding place.

It seemed like such a good plan on paper.

For additional difficulty, a large, remarkably ugly centipede is now strolling insouciantly along the trunk towards her leg. In fact, it is hunting. The disgusting creature has no concept of relative scales; it apparently proposes to take her leg by surprise, paralyse it with a single venomous bite, and feast on it at leisure. In its tiny, skittering mind, it is perfectly concealed from Edie Banister’s leg.

Edie wonders briefly what Mrs. Sekuni would make of this single-minded ambition. It is open to question whether a Marxian analysis of Chilopoda economics would reveal pre-proletarian profiteering or proto-socialist communalism, and whether the insights gleaned would be transferable to human society. Suppose for a moment that the centipede successfully killed her leg (it hasn’t actually realised yet that its prey is part of a larger animal which is patiently waiting for it to make a move so that she can nail it silently with a kukri and continue her climb without being bitten); would it in fact share with the wider group of centipedes to which it is presumably related, and without whom it cannot fulfil the reproductive imperative, but also with whom it is in savage competition in a battle to secure territory, mates, and food? Or would it declare a temporary mini-state and try to patrol the border of her leg while consuming it?

The centipede—she has christened it Richard—is fifteen whole inches long and thick like a blood sausage. Revoltingly, it is also the approximate colour of blood sausage (pre-cooking). Bleugh. Everyone in Addeh Sikkim kills these things on sight because, revoltingly, they bite. Edie would very much like to smash Richard flat, but she can’t take the risk that the corpse might fall on a patrol, alert them to her presence, and cause what Songbird would call a “total goat-fucking.” Thus her bleugh is internal, and she observes Richard with watchful loathing. Bonk bonk bonk bonk BONK… BONKB​ONKBO​NKyou​littl​ebast​ard.

Richard is the second thing to have designs on her inside leg tonight, the first having been a mostly naked waitress with a plateful of baked cat. The Opium Khan likes to mix his pleasures; the feather-clad bimbos of his personal brothel went into rhapsodies and paroxysms of joy when he removed his jacket and revealed arms bare to the shoulder and beautifully tanned. Edie wasn’t entirely unmoved herself, the fire pears bubbling away in her gut like an erotic combustion engine, and when he began to dance a tango with one of the girls—a slow, lingering statement of absolute sexual abandon, ya ta TA TA TA, ya ta-ta taaaaah TA!—she began to sweat a little. Part of that was a concern that she might be required likewise to disrobe; by this time Shem Shem Tsien was entirely bare-chested (hence her concern; her own chest would have been cause for non-trivial comment and discussion) and giving off a scent like a mating fox. Then the whole thing became rather more immediate, as a young woman who refused to be known by any name other than “At Your Service” sat in Edie’s lap and insisted on feeding James Banister slices of swan and bits of veg doused liberally in precious metals.

Between mouthfuls, At Your Service allowed her hands to stray sharply downwards (and thank God, Edie thinks, that the Opium Khan’s houri has no interest in foreplay) and stroke at what she imagined was the Commander’s suitably heroic male organ through his uniform trousers. Indeed, on discovering the impressive proportions of the object in her grip, she became vehement and just a little demanding, pressing and cajoling and revealing by way of encouragement parts of herself not normally seen during the middle stages of a meal.

At Your Service would likely have been somewhat piqued to discover that she was practising her seductive arts on a large green banana which Edie had taken the precaution of stowing in the relevant area after Dotty Catty’s timely warning. But Edie was unable to be smug about this because the dratted thing was pressing directly against her skin in a most lewd way, fitted tight to the curve of her body and pressing with a pliant, rubbery accuracy against her most sensitive parts. While At Your Service’s ministrations were not directly effective, therefore, simple mechanics and the relative stiffness of the banana entailed a degree of… there was no other word for it… stimulation.

When At Your Service sat down on top of her and wriggled a slow, eager figure of eight, Edie bit down on a piece of Red Sikkim Tiger and managed not to make a noise like a woman being driven to the brink of sexual ecstasy by an intimately concealed Asian plantain. She was only marginally successful. Fortunately, the Opium Khan was otherwise engaged.

In the warm darkness, she peers at Richard the centipede. There is a distinct resemblance to a young Guards officer she met in Pimlico about the mouthparts. Right, that’s it. You’re definitely for it, laddie-buck. And bleugh again… The original Richard was clean-shaven, and proud of his monumental chin. This one has fine hairs on the lower half of its mouth. Possibly a sort of Puritan beard. Son-of-Richard. Edie shifts her weight slightly, and unsheaths the kukri. Son-of-Richard edges closer, as if finding something terribly interesting off to Edie’s immediate left. From the clock tower above, there comes a loud, convenient bonging. Edie brings her arm down hard in time with the next bell, and Son-of-Richard is pinned to the branch with a soft slee-utch.

Hah.

A moment later, the patrol has gone and Edie continues her climb. One foot up, and here’s a convenient ledge… she reels in the rope. Off to meet a fair lady, tra la la. Yes, indeed: Dotty Catty, not dotty at all but sharp as a tack. In Edie’s pocket, the note telling her where to go and how to get there, and when. Other foot, up. She stops, listening for the sound of a karabiner tinkling against a stone wall, giving her away. No. It’s fine. Someone moving glassware on the second floor. Up, up.

Sweat rolls down her back, between her shoulder blades, and her legs tremble. It’s a long way down. She grins to herself, and starts the traverse. Girls wishing to serve their country, indeed.

Ten minutes later, she hauls herself up through a narrow window, and finds herself looking into the saddest, most beautiful, most aged face she has ever seen.

Dotty Catty is waiting for her.