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?