Everything in Agrabah was baking. The corners of mudhuts crinkled at the edges, and their roofs were covered with veins of cracks. The fish in the palace fountain lay quite still and lethargic, overwhelmed by the scent of cooking goldfish. Street merchants moaned their wares to the still, angry air and clapped clammy feet in clammy sandals against the bone-dry dirt.
The Royal Vizier was working in the great marble hall he had, somewhat haphazardly, transformed into an office. Despite the cool of the white marble, a thin line of sweat ran out from under his turban and balanced precariously on the end of his nose. Its progress was watched with fascinated disgust by his secretary, one Suzuki Matsumame. She had served Jafar for some five years now and the physical imperfections of the brilliant and ruthless man never ceased to intrigue her. Beside her Iago lay helpless on his back, panting and cursing alternately.
Jafar leant back and winced as his shoulders stuck to the folds of his robe. "Read that back to me please, Suzuki." He observed his secretary with the same interested confusion as she viewed him. Jafar, prior to his appointment as Chief Advisor to the childish sultan, had travelled extensively in the Oriental lands, believing them to be the very pinnacle of cultured civilisation. (Certainly the great Chinese Grand Vizier Fa Ho Sun had taught him many wonderous methods of torture using nothing more than one simple knife.)
He watched Suzuki's mouth as she recited back his instructions to the Lord High Taxgatherer. Her teeth had been improperly formed and no surgery had been attempted to correct this. When she shut her lips, a few misshapen teeth protruded onto her lower lip. It had been a deformity that had repulsed him when they first met. He had been touring Japan, much feted by the Shintos and Taoists who found his strict religion amusing. Thinking to provoke him, they had taken him to the finest geisha house in Kyoto. All the women there were what they called 'fragrant blossoms', save for Suzuki, whose otherwise agreeable looks were marred by her mouth. When he had inquired why they kept a malformed drudge about the place, they replied, "She makes good conversation." Jafar had summoned her, shuddering each time he looked at her mouth (for the teeth made drinking sake a difficult and ungainly process and all too often involved the drenching of her chin), and found her to be an exceptionally intelligent person. Were it not for the restrictions of her gender, he would have even admired her.
Every evening he returned to the geisha district, and every evening he demanded Suzuki's awkward, clever presence. There had been must jesting about it; 'The humble man of Allah swayed by the ugliest blossom on the cherry tree!' But in truth, Jafar had recognised the fine, honed mind behind the facade, and like all would-be megalomaniacs wondered how he could turn the situation to his advantage. Moreover he soon found that her physical shortcomings were a blessing to Suzuki, who disliked men and was in love with another geisha.
He received news shortly thereafter that the Sultan had lost his first Grand Vizier to old age, and wished to grant him the honour of the post of Royal Advisor. For the first time in his excruciatingly structured life, Jafar had acted on impulse. He approached the mistress of Suzuki's teahouse with a considerable sum, and Suzuki herself with the seductive prospect of a new life away from those who reviled her, in a palace where she would have unlimited access to the Royal Harem. In such circumstances, neither woman could refuse.
He was brought back to the present day by the soft clearing of Suzuki's throat. She was watching him expectantly, and he realised he ought to have been listening.
"Geddon with it," snarled Iago. "Can't you just say, 'Take away almost everything they've got then direct most of it into the Royal Treasury'?"
"Diplomacy is necessary, Iago," Jafar counselled. "Be patient."
"They're taxgatherers, Jay," Iago argued, using the nickname only he could get away with. "It's not as if they have consciences. Besides, you have to go and berate Princess Mardy. She set the fleabag on another Prince this afternoon." He rolled over and gave Jafar a beady look, as only a parrot can. "If she doesn't hurry up and marry one of your candidates soon, we might end up with a Sultan we can't control. Wouldn't that be," he smirked, despite the beak, "a novelty?"
Jafar laughed. That was the kind of joke that appealed to him.
Suzuki placed the script down gently, wiping the sweat from her palms on her kimono. That was another thing that confused Jafar- her kimonos. To his eyes, accustomed to modesty and restraint in the dress of females, the kimonos were garish and overdecorated, placed on a body hipless, breastless and androgynous.
"It's fine, honourable one," she said, in broken Arabian. "I believe this draft is sufficient. With your permission, I will attend the Council of Elders...informally."
"Keep your ears open, Suzuki," Jafar said, more or less automatically. Suzuki never once had failed him. "Come, Iago. I suppose we ought to get the unpleasant business over with. Pretty girls make for ugly tempers, don't they?"