Angelmaker (35 page)

“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
.