Mademoiselle Clattersmash placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, my dear. The matter of the dissonance must be addressed at once.” She pointed at Clarissa and me. “We should deliver these two to the House of Lords immediately.”
“Oh, very well, very well. Humph! Humph! Humph! But I insist that the acquisition of clothing must follow right afterwards! What!”
“I shan’t argue,” Clattersmash said. She raised her hands to her face and wriggled all her fingers excitedly. “I’m positively eager to pick out a dress!”
The Ptall’kor took us down to the third terrace, turned right onto a wide thoroughfare, and came to rest outside a monumental white edifice that reminded me a little of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Two figures were standing on the steps that led up to the building’s ornate entrance. One, a Yatsill, was wearing top hat and tails, with a white shirt and perfectly enormous bow tie. While his trousers were black, as one would expect in such an outfit, the jacket and hat were pink. His mask resembled the face of a heron, with a long pointed beak.
The other was plainly a Koluwaian male, though, like the witch doctor Iriputiz, he was of a considerably taller and skinnier build than the average islander. He was wrapped from head to toe in purple robes, had a cloth of the same colour wound around his head, and wore a Pierrot mask over his face.
“Saviour favour you,” the Yatsill said to Spearjab as we disembarked. “It’s bloody good to see you again, Yazziz Yozkulu. Welcome to New Yatsillat!”
“Colonel Momentous Spearjab now, Prime Minister. Humph! And you, sir?”
“I have settled upon Lord Upright Brittleback.”
Spearjab bowed. “Tip-top! Very nice! Very nice indeed! And New Yatsillat! How wonderfully appropriate! I sensed a great deal, of course, but not that particular morsel! Ha ha!” He waved a hand toward Clattersmash. “My Lord, you know Tsillanda Ma’ara, now Mademoiselle Crockery Clattersmash. Harrumph!”
“I do indeed.”
Clattersmash held out a hand and the prime minister reached to shake it, hesitated, then took it by the fingertips and raised it to the end of his mask’s beak, giving it a light peck. “You chose the female gender, then, Mademoiselle?”
“I did,” she replied. “It occurred to me that those in the Council of Magicians would mostly select the male. I thought it might give me an advantage to go the other way.”
“Shrewd, as always,” Brittleback responded. He turned to Spearjab and flexed his fingers toward the purple-clad Koluwaian. “You know Mr. Sepik, of course.”
“Harrumph! Back from one of your long meditations, hey, Mr. Sepik!”
The Koluwaian bowed and said, in a whispery voice, “I serve best when refreshed, Colonel. My occasional withdrawals are a spiritual necessity.”
“Humph! If you say so, old thing! I can’t quite see how not being present makes you a better Servant, but there you are! There you are! And you’ve learned this new-fangled lingo, too, hey? Jolly good show! Fast work! What! And the togs?”
Brittleback gestured toward the tall islander and said, “Mr. Sepik