‘And what will happen to him if I keep the crystals?’ I asked.
The salamander shrugged. ‘It is doubtful whether he’d survive long in the realm of fire, at least not in this form.’
I walked over to the bed and looked down.
‘Take your time,’ the salamander said sarcastically.
Beautiful Pharaoh. Forever a boy, full of love and life and laughter. He also hated me. I was everything he despised and loathed, and it took an awful lot for him to despise and loathe anything, however foul it was. I realised that once the salamander had gone, it would be quite possible that Pharaoh Hallender would still hate me just as much. On the other hand, if I let the fire elementals keep him, I could retire and get him out of my system altogether by forgetting about him. If only I could know now what he’d be like when he woke up.
The salamander cleared its throat. ‘The crystals or the witch, Mr. Guilder?’
Too bad. I turned my back and said, ‘Take him.’
Or at least I thought I did. It was like someone else was in my body saying, ‘Take the crystals. And go.’
The salamander whipped the bag from my hand with an air of glee. Pharaoh stirred and writhed upon the bed. Had I really said that? No, of course I hadn’t.
‘You have just ruined me,’ I said.
He sat up and brushed the hair from his eyes. ‘Where are we?’
‘Aboard a cruiser on its way to Ganymede East.’
‘The spell worked?’
‘Yes, with your own inimical mark upon it.’
‘A sticky moment. I was nearly lost.’
I threw up my hands in disgust. ‘Pharaoh, I have just saved your life! All I’ve earned from this venture is enough to keep me well-fed for three weeks!’
‘On the contrary. You have also learned a very important lesson. But it wasn’t you who saved my life, Tavrian. If I hadn’t been so resourceful, at this very moment you would be speaking to my sister Raifina and doubtlessly arranging to meet her somewhere.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’ I asked acidly, aware that an unfamiliar tinge of real anger was colouring my voice.
He rolled his eyes. ‘As I said; childlike.’ He hopped from the bed. ‘I’ll have to use some of your clothes for the time being, Tavrian.’
I sat down on a chair, dejected, as he rummaged through my bags. A thought was hammering through my brain; I’d disobeyed my own, first commandment. Walk away, always walk away. For Pharaoh, I’d turned back. What lesson had I learned from this other than to trust my own instincts? I should have told Mrs. Amberny I didn’t want the job, couldn’t do the job. But no. I just had to use it as a means to lay eyes on the incomparable Pharaoh Hallender once more, thinking I could turn the tables. Now I was a wreck, defenceless, bleeding, directionless.
‘Why aren’t you dead?’ I asked, dully.
He carried on rummaging. ‘What? Oh, I always take precautions. Only a fool wouldn’t, and I’m certainly not that.’
‘So it’s back to where we were, is it, when you first arrived on Asher Tantine?’
Pharaoh turned and smiled at me sweetly. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I never bear a grudge. You obviously like me, Tavrian, so I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones.’
I stood up and held out my arms in premature relief.
He raised a cautionary finger. ‘However, I feel it’s only fair to warn you that should you attempt any course of action that may cause me harm or grief, I shall have to put your new psychological implant into play.’
‘What do you mean?’
He came and kissed me briefly on the lips. ‘Tavrian, two spells were worked in Mrs. Amberny’s house. The bewitchment of Matthew Breed was child’s play, and took me barely a minute. The potential for his affair with Mrs. Amberny was there already; I soon worked that out. So it required hardly any effort at all to remove the obstacles, namely the more unsavoury aspects of his moral character. The other work took more time, but I am happy to say that it too was successful. Tavrian, I can govern your words. I can make you say anything I want to. I can govern your actions too. As you can no doubt predict, this could cause you considerable embarrassment should I wish to exercise it.’
‘You monster,’ I croaked. ‘I’ll fight you! I...’
Pharaoh shook his head and smiled. ‘No, no, no, Tavrian, you can’t. If you need an illustration of the effectiveness of this technique, cast your mind back to how Lenora Sabling answered my call.’
‘What?’ My croak had degenerated into an undignified squeak.
Pharaoh shrugged carelessly. ‘Naturally, I had you investigated Tavrian. Did you really think I’d come to Asher Tantine unarmed?’
‘I could have been killed!’
Another shrug. ‘I doubt it. Did you see the way her hands were shaking? Anyway, I wouldn’t have let her. That wasn’t part of my plan. Foolish of you to try and break out of the circle. Foolish of me not to have protected myself more thoroughly; an oversight. Still the salamanders burned me into health again. It’s fortunate that I have such an excellent relationship with them, isn’t it. Perhaps the injury was karmic punishment for my display of pride, but I’m afraid I couldn’t resist it. I have no excuse. You’ve tasted the extent of my power, Tavrian. It has grown considerably since we last met. I haven’t been idle these past few years. You humiliated me in the past, before my family and friends. It’s bad for you to get away with things like that and I looked upon it as my duty to make sure you don’t in the future. You thought you were so clever, calling me to help you, didn’t you? I expect you thought it an easy way to squirm yourself back into my bed.’ He laughed delicately, which stung as much as a slap across the face. ‘It was me who arranged for Mrs. Amberny to be given your name, Tavrian. It was me all the time. I wove a web and drew you to its centre. You came like a child; a role that suits you incidentally. Your brutishness does have a strange, infant quality.’
I could not speak. The inhuman enormity of his plan appalled me. He touched my cheek. ‘Don’t look so downhearted, Tavrian. Some of your qualities disgust me, but you are still beautiful, witty and proficient in the arts of pleasure. I loved you once; perhaps I can learn to do so again. We shall have a long and happy life together now. You earn a fortune as a pleasure giver, don’t you? All you needed was a manager to stop you wasting your commissions. Coupled with the fact that I’ve removed the claws that used to lead you astray, I think you’re now the ideal mate.’
My body had become icy cold.
‘Poor Lenora,’ Pharaoh said, shaking his head. ‘I hope she can organise the threads of her life again. I wanted to see to her before we left but... well. You didn’t hurt her, did you? How is she?’
‘Oh, she’s all right,’ I managed to say. He didn’t know everything and things were bad enough for me as it was.
‘What she said was right, you know,’ Pharaoh said. ‘You did destroy people with your heartlessness, but it certainly won’t happen again. Now, I’m hungry. Is there a good restaurant on this boat?’
I’m not naturally a vindictive person...
As it Flows to the Sea
Sabriel Leaves left the club by a back door. I have lost before, he thought, shrugging himself further into his coat. It is nothing. People have lost more than I did. He found that such reassurances meant very little in the face of the enormous financial squashing he’d just received. What made it worse was that the grin he’d had to face across the table belonged to his erstwhile partner, Gustav Mealie. The rings on Mealie’s fingers had glittered with appalling smugness as he’d scooped the credit shards over to his already handsome pile of winnings. Outside, the air was humid and thick, the town lit by the glow of an immense, vapid moon. Sabriel Leaves decided he disliked this world, a revelation made all the more depressing since he now owned no funds with which to leave it.
Cambium Delta should never have been colonised, he decided. It appeared to offer very little; its fields and forests were grey and ragged, unpleasant to all five senses, and its animal life
was colourless and hairless and invariably toxic. The planet’s only attribute was its situation in the galaxy; men had turned it into a sprawling space-port of several, linked townships. When he’d arrived, Sabriel had thought the stark, industrial buildings had possessed a weird kind of beauty, now he saw them as temporary, off-centre, heartless.
That evening, he’d been under the impression that he was meeting with his partner, Mealie, to discuss business - they owned a thriving, inter-planetary export company, dealing in cheap, local trinkets that could be sold for scandalous amounts once shipped half-way across the galaxy. Mealie had given no intimation of what was to come. Sabriel had walked into the crowded, low-ceilinged bar, smiled and sauntered to the table where he could see Gustav Mealie sitting with a couple of tarnished-looking females. It was only after two bottles of liquor and the first game of fayning that Mealie had announced he was breaking the partnership up. Sabriel had been careless; he hadn’t covered himself. He’d let Gustav handle all the financial side of the operation and had no way of proving whether Mealie’s claims that the last shipment had gone down in flames over Tatarka was true or not. Mealie had said they were ruined, although his smile and his jewellery spoke otherwise.
‘So what do I do?’ Sabriel had asked, a question which served as a dessert to a host of others, which had begun with, ‘What money do we have left?’
‘Do, my friend?’ Mealie’s large, handsome face had shrunk back from a toothy smile. ‘Why, you have half of what was left in our account. A modest amount, but sufficient for an enterprising soul. Start anew - as I shall.’
Sabriel had demanded why Mealie wanted to end their partnership. After all, it had worked very well; he doing the planet-hopping searching for merchandise, while Gustav sat on Croon Cree looking after the administration side. Sabriel could not see why Mealie should want to change that.
Mealie’s eyes had swivelled away from Sabriel’s as he answered. He’d spoken vaguely of new interests, new fields, a desire for independence.
In truth, Sabriel had thought, he must have had a better offer from somewhere.
‘We might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here,’ Mealie had added, shuffling fayn discs with unsettling, professional ease.
The liquor had numbed Sabriel’s common sense. He agreed - and lost, crushingly.
How could I have been so stupid? he wondered, rhetorically, as he scuffed along the metallic streets. Mealie knew Sabriel’s weaknesses and had efficiently exploited them. It had been a blend of pride and defiance that had kept him playing, round after round. He remembered the feverish certainty that he would win soon; after half of his funds had slipped towards Mealie’s pile, there was no going back. His half of the ‘modest’ amount that was left him had now evaporated.
Of course, the situation was not as bad as it seemed. Sabriel still had reserves in private accounts on Croon Cree and Zanzibar Cloud, which meant that once he was home he could survive until he’d sorted himself out, but that did not answer the immediate problem of how to get home. He’d trusted Mealie too much and had neglected to memorise his private credit codes. He’d never really needed them, other than when he was at home and making deposits into the accounts. Apart from that, Mealie had always handled everything to do with finance. Sabriel had never even booked his own cruiser seats. At best, he could only work here in Euterpiax until he had enough to place an interplanetary call so that his friends on Croon Cree could forward him a ticket home or the funds to purchase one.
Sabriel crept into the flimsy hostelry where Mealie had booked him a room for the night; it was a gaudy and unwelcoming place. He felt as if destitution was a word printed indelibly all over him and shied from the furtive vision that greeted him from mirrors on the wall in the reception area. He looked like a kicked rodent and the receptionist raised her eyebrows at him in distaste. Damn the guts of Gustav Mealie! he thought as he scurried to his room.
Inside, an intense and pungent humidity hung in the air. Sabriel dimmed the lights as best he could, tore off his clothes and took a shower. Over the hiss of water, he could hear forlorn sounds coming from the town centre; honkings, mechanical groans and the sighs of listless craft sweeping drunkenly into the dark sky.
Still wet, he lay on the bed trying to ignore his reflection in the mirrored ceiling. He looked as if he had just been brought back from the dead. Memories of happier days on far worlds flitted provocatively through his mind. He dismissed them with colourful curses. If he’d had any sense he’d have made provisions to gain access to the business account, he would have salted money away as insurance against a situation such as this. Gustav Mealie had come out on top. He’d discarded Sabriel without a thought. No doubt he was moving onto better things in which Sabriel had no place. Sabriel guessed there was a lot more to Mealie than he knew about.
Burdened with a depressive gloom by such thoughts, Sabriel Leaves writhed and grunted into a shallow sleep, only to be roused abruptly several hours later by the piercing whine of the hostel’s intercom system. He waved his hand in front of the answer panel next to the bed and mumbled, ‘Yes?’
‘There is somebody in reception to see you, Mr. Mealie,’ a nasal, female voice replied.
Sabriel paused. He choked off the retort that he was not Mr. Mealie. ‘Ask them to come up in a few minutes, will you?’
‘Of course.’ The connection was broken.
Sabriel heaved himself off the bed and rubbed his face briskly. A visitor for Gustav? Here? Obviously, when the room had been booked, Mealie’s assistant must have used the wrong name. A happy oversight. For reasons unknown, Sabriel felt an inexplicable elation at the event.
Shortly, a small, elegantly attired gentleman named Caspar Soames presented himself at Sabriel’s door. Sabriel had activated the air freshening system in the room, dressed himself in clean clothes and had slicked back his dark hair with water. Now, he felt more capable of dealing with the situation. Caspar Soames strutted into the room, making genuflections of greeting that hailed from some little-known culture. Sabriel responded languidly.
‘I had problems locating you, Mr. Mealie,’ Soames said in a reedy voice. ‘I seem to recall you were to leave a message as to your whereabouts at Spaceport Delph.’
‘I regret the inconvenience,’ Sabriel replied. ‘Still, you are here now.’ His mind was tumbling over itself wondering how to conduct this interview. Clearly Soames had not met Gustav in the flesh before. Was this the new business partner? It seemed likely. Sabriel thought it too good an opportunity to miss.
‘I had to ask information to look for your name on the hostel reservation lists,’ Soames was saying. ‘They weren’t too happy about it. It was costly.’
Lucky that this place was fortunately placed alphabetically, Sabriel thought, otherwise Mr. Soames might have gone straight to Gustav. ‘My office will reimburse your expenses,’ he said. ‘Take a seat. Would you like a drink?’
The small man pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘I anticipate only staying here a moment or two. I have little time to spare, as I’m sure you appreciate... in my line of business.’ He grinned in a particularly unpleasant, fleshless way.
Sabriel inclined his head. ‘Naturally.’ He hoped that Soames would introduce the subject of the meeting and played for time by mixing himself a complicated cocktail from the room’s portabar.
‘All I require from you at this stage is the deposit we talked about,’ Soames said, sniffing.
‘My office will arrange it.’
Soames made an exasperated sound. ‘Have you forgotten, already? I stipulated cash for this venture.’
Sabriel was glad he had his back to the man. Cash? What an outmoded concept. He smiled. What on earth was Gustav getting mixed up in?
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working too hard recently. Facts escape me. A keepsake from a childhood illness, the symptoms of which included a fever to the brain.’
Mr. Soames clutched his throat with one hand. ‘How unfortunate.’ He looked suspicious.
‘I hope this disability will not affect our transactions.’
Sabriel shook his head. ‘Unlikely. You have proof as to my success. Surely that reassures you.’
Soames shrugged. ‘You have a partner,’ he said. ‘Even though my investigations as to your financial position produced sound results, it is still possible that Mr. Leaves was the mastermind behind your schemes. I’m still perplexed as to why you wish to exclude him from this business. He seems trustworthy.’
‘You do not know him,’ Sabriel replied, which he felt was how Gustav would have responded to such a remark.
‘True. Anyway, I have the sample you requested. Do you wish to try it now?’
‘Er...’
‘It is fine quality psychedrine, refined by the thought processes and essential juices of Tellagoona maidens, pounded with piquant oils and sieved by the white hands of exquisite, blind eunuchs of Shar C’mui...’
Sabriel turned his back again while his features wrestled with expressions of shock, disbelief and, regrettably, sheer fright. Psychedrine was possibly one of the few narcotics that various authorities still tried to ban the use of. Therefore, it was an extremely desirable and costly item. It wasn’t so much that the effects of psychedrine were dangerous or addictive, but rather that the method of refining it was questionable to say the least. Its components included the essences Soames had mentioned - that alone meant natives of Tellagoona had to be farmed and butchered to obtain them - and there were also the rumoured elements of live foetus marrow and animal remains. Only a fanatical enthusiast of unexplored experiences could possibly wish to try such a drug. Sabriel was sure it would even taste of blood and suffering. He’d always suspected Gustav of being totally amoral as well as hard, selfish and cunning. Now his suspicions had been confirmed. The penalties for being discovered possessing psychedrine were so harsh, anyone caught doing so could expect never to see the light of day again. The benefits of dealing it successfully were similarly extreme. Gustav could look forward to lifelong affluence on the strength of a single deal, Sabriel was sure.