Chapter 3
EDGEWORTH HAD NOT troubled to confirm the time of day when Zacharias might expect him, but he did not leave Zacharias in suspense for very long.
Zacharias had not been in his study for an hour when his manservant knocked on the door, begging pardon for interrupting.
Mr. Edgeworth had arrived with his guests.
“Foreign gentlemen, sir, two of them,” said Simpson. He hesitated. “And a lady—I believe the wife of one of the gentlemen.”
Zacharias saw the reason for his hesitation soon enough. The two gentlemen Edgeworth ushered into the room were impressively attired in rich foreign dress, but it was the fourth member of the party who made Zacharias stare.
“Your Highness, may I present to you Mr. Wythe, our Sorcerer Royal?” said Edgeworth, addressing the more gorgeous of the two gentlemen.
“Sultan Ahmad governs the island of Janda Baik in the Malaccan Strait,” he added, turning to Zacharias.
“His companion is Mr. Othman, and this is his royal wife. I hope you do not object to Her Highness’s joining us.
The sultan cannot be comfortable leaving her alone in a foreign land, as I am sure you will understand. ”
Edgeworth’s pointed look recalled Zacharias to his manners, and he averted his eyes from the sultana, his cheeks warm.
She was a pretty creature, very young, but it was her incongruously large belly that had drawn his gaze.
It seemed extraordinary that she should have undertaken the rigours of travel in her condition.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Pray take a seat, Your Highness. I beg you will not be concerned by the skull at the window—it is only a harmless relic. In life it belonged to Felix Longmire, who was exceedingly mild-tempered as Sorcerers Royal go.”
This did not seem to assuage his visitors’ nervousness.
Zacharias’s study bore the marks of his predecessors, whose taste had run decidedly stoicheiotical.
They had had a fondness for skulls with burning lights in their eye sockets, crystal balls in which mysterious shapes came and went, and dark velvet window curtains traced with obscure runes.
Though Zacharias had asserted himself so far as to cover the walls in a light sprigged paper, which did wonders for the room, the study was still wont to induce unease in the unmagical.
His guests sat at the edge of their seats, drawing their feet away from the mystic sigils inscribed upon the floor.
Zacharias was scarcely more comfortable than they.
At least it did not seem likely that Edgeworth would confront Zacharias with the dwindling of English magic, since he had brought a foreign potentate with him.
But if Edgeworth had not discovered their crisis of magical resource, then his visit must be for the usual reason the Government sought out the Sorcerer Royal—in reliance upon that magic, and in expectation that it should be used for whatever purpose the Government deemed best.
“Janda Baik, alas, is beset with magical difficulties,” began Edgeworth unpromisingly.
“When Sultan Ahmad approached us for assistance—for His Highness knows what an interest we take in everything concerning his nation—I told him I knew just the fellow to help him. Mr. Wythe would settle these wretched females in a trice!”
“Wretched females?” said Zacharias, glancing at the globe by his desk.
Janda Baik was a minute speck in the Malay archipelago, so small it seemed hardly to merit a name—but to the east lay the riches of China; to the west, the vast waters of the Indian Ocean, to which Bonaparte had such convenient access from the Isle de France.
The reasons for the Government’s tender concern for Janda Baik were obvious.
“I daresay the trouble is best explained by the sultan himself,” said Edgeworth.
The sultan was a slender, handsome man, not much older than his wife. Though he had looked askance at Zacharias upon their introduction—a black man could not have been his idea of Britain’s first magician—his manner was courteous when he spoke. Mr. Othman interpreted.
“Our kingdom is afflicted by a group of old women who profess to practise magic,” Sultan Ahmad began. “Aunts and grandmothers, whom we have tolerated out of respect for their great age, and because we believed they did no harm with their chantments.”
“Witches, in short!” interjected Edgeworth, who was enough of a thaumaturge to grimace at the notion.
Nothing disgusted a thaumaturge so much as a witch.
Shameless, impudent, meddling females, who presumed to set at naught the Society’s prohibition on women’s magic, and duped the common people with their potions and cantrips!
“At first they contented themselves with rain-making and wave-settling, to which we made no objection, since it pleased the people,” continued the sultan.
“But now we have reason to regret our magnanimity. Of late our witches have entered into commerce with evil spirits, even taking these creatures into their own homes. We find ourselves overrun by monsters! The lamiae swarm our isle, so that decent people cannot sleep peacefully for fear they will be devoured in the night. It is to succour our people that we travelled here to seek assistance.”
The young sultana leant over to whisper in the interpreter’s ear. Mr. Othman cleared his throat and said:
“The French approached us with an offer of support, but we declined. We hate that tyrant Bonaparte, and our loyalty to our friends could not permit of our accepting aid from their enemies. We knew that the British would not fail to help us!”
“His Highness knows Britain is a friend to Janda Baik,” said Edgeworth. “Our man Raffles made the introduction, and I assured the sultan we should do everything in our power to help.”
“Certainly,” said Zacharias, after a pause. Addressing the sultan, he said:
“I hope you will forgive my ignorance, sir, but Oriental lamiae are a species of magical creature of which I have had no experience. I have read Du Plessis’s monograph, and understand them to be a type of ghoul—the vengeful spirits of mortal women wronged in life—but though his is the best exposition we have of the subject, Du Plessis says nothing of how they may be dealt with.
If you would be so good as to explain, what form of assistance is it that you seek? ”
His sentence had scarcely been conveyed to the royals when the sultana sat up and let out an urgent stream of words. This was translated succinctly.
“Guns!” said Mr. Othman.
“That is out of the question, of course,” Edgeworth said hastily. “As your Highness knows, mere artillery would be nothing to witches and vampiresses. We discussed that yesterday, if you recall.”
Zacharias wondered, not without a touch of irony, whether they had also discussed the fact that the Government was nearly as overstretched as the Society.
The long war had drained the nation’s resources.
Britain was pressed so hard that it was very unlikely it could spare either troops or ships for a squabble over a remote island, however commanding its position.
“Mr. Edgeworth is in the right of it,” he said. “Lamiae being already dead, guns would not frighten them.” Before he could wonder aloud whether cannon might nonetheless be efficacious in blowing the lamiae apart, Edgeworth cried:
“We are of one mind! I have already told His Highness that you will be only too happy to oblige with some thundering piece of magic—some fearsome hex, vastly better than any number of guns, which will put these vampires in their places. Sultan Ahmad was delighted. His Highness understands that the Sorcerer Royal is an enchanter of considerable powers.”
Zacharias was so taken aback that he scarcely knew what to say, or how to look.
This, then, was the reason Edgeworth had given him no forewarning of what would be asked of him.
Edgeworth knew how little likely Zacharias was to agree to any involvement in a foreign dispute.
The Society’s policy of non-interference in affairs of state was of long standing, and the history of the vexed relations of England’s thaumaturgy to its sovereigns had proved its necessity.
But Edgeworth meant to back Zacharias into a corner.
He knew Zacharias could not easily object in the sultan’s presence, or express his indignation at Edgeworth’s high-handedness.
No one would have dared play such a trick on Sir Stephen, but Zacharias was untried.
Perhaps Edgeworth thought the new Sorcerer Royal might be more docile than an Englishman—or ought to be.
Zacharias went to the window, turning his back to his guests. He was in such a state of cold anger that he could not trust himself to speak. It was tempting to leave both Britain and Janda Baik to resolve their own difficulties.
But Zacharias’s was a changed world. Unlike the sorcerers before him, he could not retire to a tower and spin curses in splendid isolation. Like England herself, Zacharias ignored the world beyond at his own peril.
He turned, swallowing his indignation, and began, “I should counsel against rushing into any sort of violent action—” when Felix Longmire toppled off the windowsill.
A faint persistent magic lingered in everything to do with a sorcerer, and the skull fortuitously avoided collision with anything that might cause it injury.
It dropped onto a cushion that had fallen off an armchair, where it was forgotten by the living—for their attention was engrossed by the crystal ball vibrating upon the sill.