“‘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.”