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tentacles.
    Wisdom-at-Night knelt behind the scaly form, staring ahead with blank eyes. Jasmine turned to the nearest eunuch. "Is she OK?"
    The slave opened his mouth. Behind the filed teeth, his tongue was just a stub.
    Jasmine turned back to the manifestation. It certainly looked real, except where the glittering scales ended and the smoke somehow began. No matter how closely she inspected it, she could not quite fix the point of transition. Was this one of Stella Ibis-Bear’s Spirit Forms? Or more of Lowenstein’s Anomaly?
    The Voice screamed. The Goddess’s jaw distended and a familiar swarthy face emerged from between the fangs. " Surprised ?" asked Marcel.
    The face was younger, but bore the old battle scars. "Um," said Jasmine. What did you say to the hallucinated ghost of your best friend. She shrugged. "So, what’s Heaven like?"
    Marcel’s shade grinned. " Well, there’s a lot more fighting and drinking than they let on in Sunday School. " The god’s jaws twitched. Marcel frowned. " But, I can’t talk about that. "
    Jasmine peered closer, trying to make out whether his neck was embedded in the floor of the fish’s mouth. "So, you’ve just popped in for a chat?" she heard herself say. "Can I get you a drink? The local firewater’s supposed to be good."
    "I’ll stick to mead, " said Marcel. " Now, listen up soldier girl. All this mind power stuff from Lowenstein is crap. We – you – are up against real magic."
    Jasmine’s temples throbbed. She shook her head. "Good job I’m hallucinating, or we’d be fucked."
    " You are fucked ," said Marcel. " One more thing; tell the driver of our old tank that the right throttle grip is stuck with chewing gum – it came loose ages back, but I couldn’t be arsed filling in the Maintenance Request Forms. "
    "Right…" said Jasmine. "Don’t you want to know how Tom’s doing?"
    " Tell him I approve ."
    There was a dull thud. The fish god vanished, taking Marcel with it. Lady Wisdom-at-Night sprawled face-down on the flagstones. The position hid all her piercings, except for the row of gold hoops on each ear. For an instant, she just looked like an ordinary, naked girl – perhaps a model from Rosetta's South Seas series.
    A eunuch broke his stillness to scoop up the priestess. Wisdom-at-Night raised her head slightly and gasped, "Follow."
    Jasmine stumbled into the failing daylight. There, like an intruder from another age, was the great nose of Airship 01, Ranulph’s ten Northmen still standing guard before the aluminium gangplank.
    Overhead, the clouds boiled, promising a thunderstorm.
    Jasmine descended the great stair in the shelter of the tethered airship. She tried not to see the swarms of flies orbiting the putrid hearts displayed on each side altar. Instead, she focused on checking the six creaking mooring lines.
    Wisdom-at-Night’s palace lay close by the Dancing Earth Fish's pyramid. The procession wove through a forest of square-cut columns and into a five-sided courtyard with a cushioned altar in the middle. Cymbals clashed. A gaggle of gold-collared girls — Priestesses? Slaves? Handmaidens — engulfed the eunuch. They swept the naked priestess onto the altar, and set to work with sponges and jars of fragrant oil.
    More handmaidens descended on Jasmine. Giggling, some tugged at her blouse, then her belt buckle. Others knelt at her feet to unlace her combat boots.
    It was too hot to struggle. Jasmine let them peel away her sweat-soaked uniform and regulation grey underwear until she stood pale and naked amongst the dark-skinned girls.
    Somewhere, a drum pulsed. The girls organised themselves into an aisle leading up to the platform. Slowly, keeping time with slap of palm on drum-skin, Jasmine’s bare feet measured out the distance to where the priestess lay like a sacrifice on her stone bed.
    As Jasmine reached the altar, a handmaiden moaned. Another whimpered. All around her, hands flickered and girls shuddered and shimmied on the spot.
    The damp