Mantivore Prey

by S. J. Higbee

  She bustled in with her roaching hover tray trailing in her wake. I hated that tray.

  “Morning, Your Ladyship. And what the Distant Dream have you done to yourself, eh? All these bruises… and scratches! Tsk, tsk. And this wound on your knee! It looks as though something has been drilling into your leg. Mm. Just a minute…” She reached for her meditab, pressed pressureholds, and muttered into it. She frowned and shook her head. “I’m really sorry, Kyrillia, I don’t have the right phage. It needs to contain several specific anti-bacterial cultures I don’t keep.”

  I knew I should’ve gone to Beneth. “If you contact the local Healer, she’ll have the right stuff.”

  Ellern’s face was sour enough to curdle vinegar. “I’m sure I don’t know what I’ve done to incur your displeasure, Your Ladyship.”

  I rolled my eyes under my goggles, before realising they didn’t hurt. And that I’d forgotten to use her eye drops during the last couple of days, what with one thing and another. “I’m not displeased! Why would I be? This is nemmet country, as we discovered last night. Back in Gloriosa, the only place you’ll encounter a nemmet is in a roaching zoo, where they’re defanged anyway.” I took a breath, trying to keep my voice from rising again. “So, it’s obvious that Beneth will have supplies on hand, given how filthy nemmet bites are.”

  “I take it that you are ordering me to liaise with the village healer, Your Ladyship.”

  I took a breath. “I’m not ordering you to do anything, but I’m suggesting you might contact Beneth as wound infections happen to be something she is used to dealing with. Just as you are skilled and experienced with bot-crush injuries – something she wouldn’t know much about.”

  “I like to think my range of expertise extends beyond bot-crush accidents. After all, I was able to alleviate many of your more distressing symptoms when you were rushed into my department at Gloriosa High Hospital. And no one had ever seen anything like your case, before.”

  “Of course, Madam Healer Prime,” I said, wishing I hadn’t started the conversation. “Do what you see fit. So long as I can walk and run on the leg before mid-morning.”

  She sucked in a sudden breath, looking scared. “Why d’you say that?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “About mid-morning?”

  “I believe I’ll be receiving a visitor.” Don’t want to mention Jessob by name. Not yet.

  Her expression turned coy as she glanced over her shoulder to where Seth was drinking tea in Felina’s dining room. “I didn’t realise they’d told you and that you’d be smooth with it. Don’t worry, Your Ladyship, I quite understand the situation!” she whispered.

  Which is more than I do! What situation? And do I really care? Leaning back on the bed, while she poked at the nemmet bite, muttering yet more numbers – or was it Coding? – into her meditab, I realised I was still very tired…

  When I awoke, Beneth Healer was by my bed. “Morning, Your Ladyship. Sorry to hear about the stray nemmet that wandered into Felina’s house. Someone must’ve left the door open.” She winked at me.

  So that’s the story going the rounds to explain our injuries.

  She lowered her voice, “Been a very hungry nemmet. I’ve been treating its bite victims throughout the night and into this morning.” She bent over to have a look. “Ah. Yes, not serious, though don’t let it get wet again till the anti-bac serum takes, or we will have a problem. Knees are hard to replace if they start to rot,” she added, rather too cheerfully, as she squirted some liquid into the puffy hole in my knee, dusted it with some sort of powder and wrapped it up with a breathable gauze dressing.

  I sighed, knowing from my days when treating Osmar once that covered a wound, it had to be kept dry. No shower for me this morning.

  After drenching myself in perfume, which had something of a nemmet taint about it, I got dressed, already feeling a lot better. Phages treating nemmet bites had to be fast-acting as the poison was designed to overwhelm the bite victim’s system. Fortunately for us, nemmets weren’t designed to kill humans, so we had more of a chance of surviving. Jaspers always died when bitten.

  I was also ravenously hungry. Seth and I had a peaceful brekkie together, enjoying each other’s company while eating our favourite food. I had a big bowl of porridge, while Seth treated himself to a slab of Ajene’s cadia fruit cake with sweet zephyr sauce.

  When I told him what happened to me the last time I’d eaten too much of it, he laughed so much he choked. I had to thump him on the back.

  I recall we were still giggling together like a couple of giddy teens, when Helston strode into the room, holding Clete Gator’s arm, his gun aimed at the roacher’s head. There were a squad of soldiers behind him. “Your Ladyship… Lord Seth…”

  I sprang to my feet, glad my knee was less sore. “What’s gone wrong?”

  “Betrayal!” shouted Seth, right at my shoulder, as he hurled a chair at Helston, grabbed my hand and pulled me through the bedroom, slamming the door shut.

  “What—”

  “Didn’t you see Gator tucked in behind the roacher, grinning all over his fat Uppie face?” said Seth, grabbing the bed and tipping it on its side. “C’mon, angel. Gimme a hand, here.”

  Together we shoved the bed against the door to Felina’s living quarters, after I coded it shut. Help! Helston’s turned traitor and Clete Gator’s in the house!

  “Kyrillia? Kyrillia, honey… you need to stop this nonsense. There’s no escape. Unlock the door and behave, there’s a good girl,” drawled Clete through the door.

  “Go rut a nemmet!” I yelled, furious that he’d managed to turn Helston against me.

  “I’d rather rut with you, my sweet,” cooed Clete.

  “Whereas I’d choose the roaching nemmet over you!”

  Seth steered me towards the outside door, leading to the village Stores complex. “C’mon, Libby,” he murmured.

  Once more, I locked the door after us, and turned to see Ellern standing in the corridor.

  “There’s a bit of trouble, Madam Healer Prime. If you stay in your room—” Seth started to say.

  And stopped as she drew a weapon, pointing it at him. “I don’t think so, Lord Seth.” She fired. Seth’s look of surprise would have been funny any other time, as he toppled to the floor.

  “Oh nooo! Oh, Seth… no, no, no…” I sank down beside him, sobbing dryly, numb with shock, as I stroked his face and felt for a pulse which – thank the stars – was beating strongly.

  “Kyrillia! Your Ladyship…” Ellern was tugging at my arm, trying to get me to stand up and leave Seth on the floor.

  “Why? Why hurt him? I thought you liked him – I trusted you!” My world had upended. All the folks around me that I’d depended upon had turned against us.

  Ellern’s face softened. “Poor little soul… That’s all I could think, when I first saw you seizing and seizing with those dreadful fits in the Hospital. So skinny, yet sooo beautiful. And this boy stapled to your bedside, muttering his godding prayers. As if they helped!”

  “They did! They helped me.” I looked down at Seth’s crumpled body on the dusty floor, desperate to stay with him.

  But Ellern’s grip tightened on my arm, which she suddenly twisted behind my back, forcing me ahead of her. I tried to struggle, but she increased the pressure until my bone started to bend. Gasping with pain, I stopped.

  “That’s better,” she cooed. “I tried to argue with your uncle. Get him to see that you simply didn’t belong in Gloriosa Prime. I hadn’t appreciated that he’d named you for his heir – a desert rose with flaming hair…”

  What’s she talking about roaching flowers for?

  “So homesick and out of place, that you stuck by the awkward Priestling with nothing much about him other than a sonorous voice and a memory for oldentime verses.” Her voice hardened, “And that terrible creature. What possessed you to bring a monster like that into our midst?”

  “He was already in your midst! Crawling with voreleeches, s
tarving and abused, he was imprisoned right under your roaching noses. Not that any of you cared. And you should. You really, really should!” Because he is the actual Overlord of the planet, not me.

  She sighed. “There you go again, that soft heart of yours. If only the world worked the way you want it to, dear little Kyrillia. But it doesn’t. Certainly Gloriosa Prime doesn’t. We need an Overlord who will rule with more aggression. And you… I don’t want to see you turn into your Uncle Trislen or Clete Gator. That would break my heart.”

  “But it’s shady if I’m shackled to him and reamed by him every roaching night, is it?” my voice was shaking.

  “He’s a strong man with a good family behind him. He’s promised to make you a kind husband. A loving one, if only you’d let him.”

  “What’s he offered you?”

  She jerked my arm so hard, I cried out. “It isn’t about that! It’s never been about that, don’t you see, you little fool? I love you like a daughter, and I want you out of that snakepit and free to be your own person, at last.”

  “Married to Clete Gator? He wants me blind, he said so!”

  “If you give him those Codes he needs, then you’ll be safe as the wife of the most powerful man on the planet. And unlike him…” She jabbed at Seth’s inert body with her foot. “He’ll be feared and respected. Come on. We’ve wasted enough time.” She slapped a patch on my neck. “I’m sorry about this. I know it will feel awful for a while, but there’ll come a time quite soon when you’ll be thanking me for what I’m doing today.”

  “No. I won’t…” My lips were numb and I staggered sideways, suddenly giddy.

  “Whoops. Stand up, now. Needed to give you a strong enough dose that you can’t flush it through with the help of that horrible scaly pet of yours. Who’ll probably be crashing to the floor about now. Come on, my petal, let’s go.” Her voice echoed as if from a long way away.

  Need to r-run… need… I-I need… The blurry journey around the back of the building took an age as I took three steps sideways for every one that went forward, with Ellern struggling to keep me upright. At one point I started giggling because it seemed funny.

  We were met by three helmeted guards while still somewhere on the path running behind the buildings, though I’m not exactly sure where. One was Helston.

  I smiled up at him. “’Lo! Howser bite?”

  He scowled down at me. “What the godding hell have you done to her? She’s s’posed to be just out of it so she can stand by his side as if she wants to be there. Not acting as if she’s drunk a year’s worth of the village brew!”

  Ellern’s face folded into the sour version I knew so well. “Easier said than done! You try drugging her so that monster of hers doesn’t purge it through his system. Because that’s what he does. Did you know that? No, I didn’t think so!”

  Helston grabbed my arm – the one that Ellern hadn’t bent up my back. “I’ll take her from here. You’ve done your bit.”

  Ellern didn’t let go. “Oh no. The deal is that I accompany her. Make sure no harm comes to her.”

  He looked at her as if she’d just crawled out of his bottom, while I swayed like a palm frond in a high wind, wishing the world would stop spinning.

  “Course she won’t be harmed! She’s got those sodding Codes, for starters. And thanks to that MindTrawl you’ve done on her, the Bridgedeckers already know they can’t just MindReam the info they want out of her.”

  The witchbitch MindTrawled me? I lurched around to face her, intending to tell her just what I thought of her shoddy treachery, but all that fell out of my mouth was an embarrassing amount of drool alongside a series of horrible noises.

  Helston’s laugh wasn’t pleasant. “You’ve really blixed this up, haven’t you, Madam Healer Prime? There’s no way Gator can parade her in front of the journos for the photo-fest he’s after, while announcing their whirlwind romance and sudden engagement. Not while she’s in this state.”

  He doesn’t like Ellern… It took far too long to focus on that thought, which kept trying to skid away under a layer of blurriness. It was all I could do to hold it in my head, never mind trying to use it against my former Captain. Fickle-fingered turd that he is! Do turds have fingers? The idea seemed hilarious. I found myself giggling, even though a part of my mind was yelling I should stop this wet-witted nonsense and haul myself together.

  Helston swore. “He’s waiting for her. You’d better tell him she’s been taken ill.”

  Ellern scowled. I was distantly pleased that someone else was on the receiving end of one of her glares, as she snapped, “And why can’t you go? I need to stay with her, monitor her condition.”

  “So you did get the dosage wrong, then. Is she in danger?” Helston sounded worried.

  Probably concerned he won’t get paid… Slumped helplessly against him, I willed my legs to take my weight, but they also betrayed me.

  “Of course she is! Whenever anyone is drugged to a standstill, there’s the potential for it to go wrong,” said Ellern.

  “That’s not what you said when he asked you if it was possible to drug her so she could take part in a pic parade, without putting up a fight.”

  Ellern shrugged. “She’s a special case – always has been. I warned him about that, remember.”

  It came to me that neither one of them wanted the job of telling Clete Gator that his scuzzy little plan had glitched. Hope he chops you both off at the knees, you roachers!

  And then it didn’t matter, because a waft of his sickly cologne as the door hissed open told me that he was here, anyway.

  “What the Distant Dream is going on?” he shouted, grabbing my chin and painfully jerking my head round.

  I glared him, gritting my teeth so as not to give him the satisfaction of hearing me whimper. One of these days I’m gonna slice and dice your fat, sweaty face into gob-sized pieces and feed you to the fishes!

  “Don’t do that!” snapped Ellern.

  “Why – can she feel it, when I do this?” Clete asked, squeezing harder.

  Under my goggles, my eyes watered with the pain.

  “No. If she could, she’d react. She’s not that far under,” retorted Ellern.

  “Too sodding far. She’s no good to me in this state, you feeb-brained fool!” He let me go with a contemptuous jerk.

  I let my head slump against Helston’s armoured chest, blearily aware that I had just a bit more coordination and control than I’d managed a few moments earlier.

  “This whole operation has been a bot-brained wreck from the very start, Captain!” snarled Clete, pacing. “I’m still unsure why you saw fit to return with the monster and the priestling. They were supposed to be held in the caves as surety for her good behaviour!”

  It was an effort to stay limply plastered against the roacher as I sluggishly realised the enormity of the betrayal. Those troops last night weren’t loyal to me. They were Clete’s faction! So… what was supposed to happen? Other than holding Seth and Vrox hostage, that is?

  Helston tensed as he answered, “We were lucky to escape, Your Lordship. Those creatures… they’re like something out of a godding nightmare. They swarmed, then rushed us. If it hadn’t been for the mantivore, Her Ladyship here and some scruffy lad who turned up, we’d have been eaten alive.”

  “Oh yes? For someone who claims to have barely made it out alive, you look remarkably hale.” Clete’s voice became a threatening growl, “You’d better not double-cross me, Helston! I make a very bad enemy.”

  “Double-crossing you is unthinkable, Your Lordship.”

  You piss-soaked piece of flotsam! I concentrated on staying limp, grateful for the tremors running through my body as a spasm of rage at Helston’s roaching treachery escaped my flimsy control, while I yearned for a knife so I could dig a hole in his kidneys.

  “…given my brother’s fate is in your hands,” continued my feeb-brained Captain.

  Oh, Helston, why didn’t you come to me when your brother was taken? We could’ve w
orked something out. Found a way to rescue him from Clete’s scuzzy clutches…

  “Because if you try to use those troops you’ve claimed were gobbled up by some ravening creatures against me, I’ll take your brother apart tendon by tendon, telling him throughout the whole agonising business that it’s your fault. Then send you the complete tab. Understand?” said Clete.

  “Understood, Your Lordship,” said Helston, expressionlessly. Though his body quivered against mine.

  “How much longer will she be this useless?” snapped Clete, turning to Ellern.

  “It’s hard to say, Your Lordship, given her MindLink—”

  “I don’t want to hear another recital of your sorry excuses for not getting the job done. I want to know when it will be fixed!”

  I could feel the backwash of Clete’s desperate fury, even slumped helplessly against Helston and staring at the ground as a subdued Ellern muttered excuses and started examining me.

  He’s frightened. Because? I gritted my teeth, trying to focus through the thick syrup that slowed my thinking. Because there’s a time component. Sooner or later, The Council are going to work out that Clete is moving against them. If I can avoid this journo-fest he’s set me up for, they’ll send reinforcements to rescue us. I knew there was something else… another element that I needed to account for… But I couldn’t concentrate while the Healer Prime waved her meditab at me, took my pulse and checked the patch on my neck. I now needed to focus on keeping still and not punching her very hard on the nose.

  “That interfering Detective, you’ve now secured him?” snapped Clete, turning back to Helston with a swish of his robes.

  “Detained in the Security Suite, with the Keeper and the mantivore, Your Lordship,” replied Helston.

  It was a solid relief when Ellern stepped away. Judging from the tapping and clicking, she was still playing tunes on her meditab, while Clete continued questioning Helston. “And the vore is under control?”

  “He went down like a broken bot when the Lady Kyrillia was drugged, apparently,” said Helston.

  Hope Felina is shady… I debated trying to contact her, but given her habit of yelling loud enough to make my brain ring, I decided against it. Now wouldn’t be a good time to give away the fact I was beginning to recover from the neck patch. I carefully didn’t think about Vrox, who must have toppled over so fast, I didn’t even get a sense of it. He’s survived so much, there’s no way this roaching neck patch will majorly hurt him. Will it?