by A. Sparrow
We passed over a pod of huge, long-necked, large finned creatures. They looked too long and sleek to be whales. Some weird kind of fish? Plesiosaurs.
Ubaldo doubled back and did a loop around us to get our attention. He jabbed his finger across the bay to the huge complex of sandbars where the Pennies had made their beachhead. A large flight of falcons and condors had lifted off again were heading back along the shore towards our former camp. Had we lingered another hour, they would have caught us for sure.
We kept low, gliding just above the whitecaps until we were pretty far off the rocks. I thought for sure we would be spotted, but the Pennies never diverted from their course.
As the enemy formation homed in on the old beach camp, Olivier signaled for us to gain a little altitude, now that there was little chance of us being intercepted. The beetles thrummed their broad wings to get high above the waves.
We quickly—too quickly, it seemed—reached a point where land was no longer visible behind us and there was nothing but open water as far ahead of us as we could see. The horizons were nearer here. The planet or whatever it was, had a smaller diameter than the earth, even though its gravity felt about the same.
But now one of the beetles began to flag. The horned beetle, whose rider, a Duster, had named ‘Rhino,’ kept swooping up and down like a roller coaster, at point dropping perilously close to the water, before struggling back up. Its mate, on the other hand, seemed to have no trouble flying level.
Oliver flew down to see what was wrong. Karla came zooming across, spooking Tigger, who veered away before I was able to nudge him back.
“He should go back,” said Karla, shouting above the wind.
“He cannot,” said Urszula, hovering just above us. “The falcons would tear him apart.”
“But he is not going to make it across,” said Karla.
“Which column is he carrying?” I said. “If it’s the fake one he should just drop it.”
“Fake one?” Karla screwed up her face at me. “Are you telling me that one is not real?”
Shit. I had just spilled the beans. Olivier had apparently kept mum to everyone about the presence of our decoy
“So which one is not real?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I didn’t check who grabbed what. I didn’t think it mattered.”
“We are already half-way there,” said Urszula. “Maybe if we go slower … he can make it.”
“I don’t think our speed is the issue.”
I leaned over Tigger’s shoulder to see Rhino plummeting yet again. This time, before he could pull up, the tip of the cracker column dipped into the water and dragged a bit before he managed to pull it free.
“He should just drop it! Let it go!”
“But what if he carries the real one?” said Karla.
“Real one?” said Urszula.
“It doesn’t matter. He should just drop it. If he flops into that water, there’s no we’re getting him out. Believe me, I’ve seen enough drowned bugs in pools.”
Urszula suddenly wheeled around. “I see a boat!” She pointed down at the water.
The boat was a bulky, angular contraption with twin sets of oars moving in in perfect synchrony. I expected to see oarsmen, but there were none. Each oar was linked to a central mechanism operated by a single Hashmal harnessed to a cage amidships, much like a condor pilot.
Silhouetted against the glint of the sea, Ubaldo’s wasp was already descending in a broad arc, circling around behind the craft.
“Holy shit! He’s gonna attack!”
Without me having to twitch a muscle, Tigger pulled out of the formation and dove after him. For once, my intentions and those of my beast were perfectly aligned.
***
A Hashmal standing watch on the prow spotted me and Tigger coming at him and screamed into the hold. Several more Hashmallim scrambled out, crossbows at the ready.
Ubaldo reached them first. He swooped low along the hull, his wasp’s claws slashing through the water, then popped up and stopped on a dime, blasting the watchman with a tight pulse from his staff that burned a hole right through the thick of his armor.
I had my sword, and my will manifested easily, once again I was shooting blanks. My plasma spread too wide and buffeted the Hashmallim like a strong breeze. But at least it was enough to throw off their aim and delay them from firing at Ubaldo.
Olivier thudded down onto the stern and leapt from his saddle, staff ready for business. The rest of our party, beetles excluded, came screaming down behind us. I let loose a second shot that had more force, though not nearly as deadly as Ubaldo’s. At least it knocked one of the bowmen off his feet, and forced the other to retreat behind a capstan.
Urszula and Karla came zipping by to harry the other bowmen with shots of their own. Ubaldo’s wasp attacked the oarsman’s cage, stabbing through a gap only to be stung itself by a pair of bolts from the crossbows.
Olivier tangled hand-to-hand with the watchman, beating him with the club end of his staff. The watchman countered with a powered mace with blades that spun like buzz saws and chewed into his staff. We hovered just behind Olivier. I was aiming to take the man down with a well calculated blast but Tigger had ideas of his own and took off, flitting all around the boat, acting more like an excited spectator than a participant in this clash.
Seconds apart, a pair of bolts slammed into Olivier’s legs, and he screamed and crashed to the deck. “Motherfucker!”
This time Tigger and I were on the same page and he surged after the Hashmallim who had hit Olivier, plucking one right off the deck, snapping his neck with a quick chomp of his mandibles, and dumping him over the side.
As the watchman, blades twirling, closed in on Olivier lying prone on the deck, Olivier swung his mangled staff and summoned a pulse that thudded into the watchman’s chest and made him crumple.
The last Hashmal standing threw down his weapon and dropped to his knees, holding his arms high. Urszula had her scepter leveled at his head, a wish away from crushing his sky.
“Spare him,” said Ubaldo, climbing down off the oarsman’s cage. “He might be useful.”
Wings thundered and one of the beetles came alighting down onto the deck, carefully laying down the cracker column.
“Where’s Rhino?” said Karla, landing beside him.
Far behind us, a cracker column bobbed in the swells, and beside it, Rhino, wings spread and soggy, his rider still sitting in the saddle.
***
Ubaldo pulled the oarsman out of his cage and strapped himself in his place. Rowing, it turned out, worked pretty much like flying, with the added control of hip motion as a means to turn the rudder. While Urszula tended to Olivier, the rest of us flew off to see about rescuing Rhino and his rider.
Even working together with multiple lines, the beetle proved too heavy for us to extract. But Ubaldo maneuvered the boat close enough for Rhino latch on. The beetle pulled himself partway up the side, water dripping from his waterlogged wings. His rider, a Duster named Georg, had gotten soaked but was otherwise fine, if a bit miffed about Rhino’s lackluster performance.
Not much was left of the cracker column when we reached it. It was already soft and soggy, and beginning to come apart like a donut in a mud puddle. There was no way we could salvage it.
Back on the boat, Urszula was still working on getting Olivier patched up. One of the crossbow bolts had struck only muscle, but the other had cracked his femur. Urszula managed to stop the bleeding, but was unable to do much for the other damage. None of us had the skill to heal him on the spot. Ydris might have, but we had sent him back to the bogs with Viktor.
“Assholes! They had to go after my fucking legs.”
“What did you want them to shoot?” said to smirking. “Your face?”
“Might improve my looks.”
We helped him onto the easy chair-like saddle that we had taken off his scorpion fly.
I went over to our last cracker column and peeled b
ack the wrapping with some trepidation.
Olivier and Urszula watched me intently.
“So? Which one did we lose?”
I examined the pebbled surface carefully, running my finger along the grooves.
“I … I honestly can’t tell.”
“Well, we had better figure it out, no? I mean, if we don’t have a working column, that kind of changes things.”
“The only way to tell would be to try and activate it. This is … a pretty good copy … if I say so myself.”
“Told ya. Well shit. We got a fifty-fifty chance, right? Not bad odds. Good enough to proceed.”
“Are we … are you ready to move on?”
“Yeah, sure. Once we get Rhino and Georg dried out. Might as well.”
Ubaldo dropped anchor and got ourselves and our bugs all watered and fed. Even way out here, this ocean could not have any deeper than the deep end of a public pool. The water was crystalline. We could see right down to the gravel beds and make out every bristle on every crab that traversed them.
The insects indeed seemed grateful for the rest. They snacked noisily on some kind of slurry they had discovered in the cisterns that lined the outer rail.
Olivier hobbled down the deck, ignoring Urszula’s request to stay off his feet. He dunked a finger into one of the open cisterns and stuck it in his mouth.
“How is it?”
“Like something between horse crap and mushroom juice.” He spat out the traces over the side and wiped his hand on his trousers.
“Yum.”
“Whatever. The bugs seem to like it. But if this is what they eat in Heaven, I’m going back to Hell.”
Ubaldo had climbed down into the hold with Georg and the only true Frelsian remaining on our expedition, a mild-mannered African named Solomon.
“What’s down there?” said Olivier, calling down a hatch. “Anything useful? Cracker columns perhaps?” He looked at me and twitched his eyebrows lecherously.
“Cherubim,” said Ubaldo. “I estimate … two hundred.”
“Damn!” I said.
“They any threat to us?”
Ubaldo shook his head. “Their sides are bound … with some kind of webbing. They are in a deep sleep. Still … if they awaken while we are still on the boat….”
“Fuck that. I say we toss ‘em right now.”
“Toss them?”
“Chuck ‘em all overboard. That way we don’t need to worry.”
“But … there are hundreds.”
“Hundreds fewer we’ll meeting up again with down the road.”
I heard a splash. Georg had already stuffed the first Cherub through one of the ventilation ports.
“Need help down there?” I asked.
“No. We have it under control,” said Ubaldo. “It’s pretty crowded down here.”
I went over and dangled my legs off the bow with Urszula and Karla, who had somehow taken to hanging together. We made an awkward trio. I did my best to alleviate the tension with diversionary small talk.
The trussed up Hashmal lay beside us, limbs appressed to his sides with strands of gooey plasma. He looked like some poor moth wrapped up to be some spider’s dinner.
“This must be your doing Karla,” I said. “You have a knack for conjuring goo.”
“At least I am good at something.”
“Remember that time you wrapped up Urszula?”
“Yes,” said Urszula, giving me a look so serious it scared me.
I gazed down into the water.
“Wonder how hard it would be to catch one of those crabs?”
“Too big,” said Urszula. “They would drag the boat under.”
“Really? As big as our bugs?”
“The water here is deeper than it looks. Trust, they are big.”
I sighed. “Sure would be nice to have some seafood for a change. Some of these damned manna chips.”
“You want food? I can make some,” said Karla. “I love cooking. Just tell me what you like and I can make it. It may not look very nice but I guarantee it will taste just like the thing you are expecting. Maybe better.”
“Okay. Hot fudge sundae. Fried shrimp battered with coconut.”
Karla laughed. “Better make it one thing at a time or else get both all mixed up.”
“Okay. Shrimp first.”
Karla reached into a pouch and pulled out a handful of lively shreds of root. She stared them down and they transformed as we watched, shrinking, rounding out, turning golden brown. They didn’t look so much like shrimp as some kind of low-end, microwavable chicken nuggets.
“Go on. Try one.”
I reached over and popped one in my mouth. It was hot and crispy and exploded with flavor, all spicy and coconut-y with bursts of cilantro, way better than the popcorn shrimp we used to get at Red Lobster.
“Holy crap! That’s … amazing.”
I looked at Urszula.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I am not making you a sundae.”
“Try one! They’re good.”
Karla was hunched over and squinting at me.
“James? What is wrong your chin?”
“My chin? Nothing. Why?”
“And your fingers. You have no fingers.”
“What?”
Urszula sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh wonderful. The times he chooses to fade! Now we will be stuck on this boat … for how long?”
Chapter 60: Stalked
Spikes of pain jabbed my shoulder where the Hashmal’s arrow had struck me back in the Deeps, like some hard-shelled creature using its claws to dig itself from my flesh.
The smell of old feathers, lavender and unwashed dog told me I was back in that that musty, old cottage in Stromness. The fire had gone out, but I was plenty warm with a quilt tucked under my chin.
Light streamed in through holes in the curtains. Jess stood by the window, peering through a gap along the edge of a blind. When I grunted and sat up in bed, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“There are some people out there … staring at the cottage. Two men and a woman.”
I clutched my side. “Crap. It’s them. They found me.”
“Them? But … how do you know? Maybe they’re just tourists. Maybe they’re lost.”
“No. The way my shoulder’s aching. It’s the Friends. Has to be. I took an arrow from a Hashmal in the Deeps. You can’t see it, but the shaft, it’s still with me.”
“We can pretend we’re not home. They have no indication this cottage is even occupied. I haven’t been outside all day.
“You don’t get it. They know I’m here. It’s no use. And here we are, stuck on an island with nowhere to run.”
“Well, sorry. I thought we’d be safer out here. Hardly anyone comes here this early in the season.”
“It’s not your fault, Jess,” I said. “I never thought they’d find me this fast.”
“Well, the door’s firmly locked. There’s no way they’re getting in. And if they continue to loiter, I can call the police. Report them for trespassing.”
“Jess. You don’t understand. They don’t need to get through the door. Physically.”
Her cell phone pinged and she slipped it out of her pocket.
“Who texted?”
“It’s … Helen.”
“Don’t answer.”
“No worries. I won’t.”
“Are they … back in Brynmawr?”
“Well, no. They’re in Inverness and … oh … my goodness.”
“What’s up? They’re not still looking for Karla are they, because … there’s no need. I told you ….”
“No. Not Karla. It’s Isobel. They’ve found Isobel!”
“Really?”
Her phone pinged again.
“Turn off the ringer!”
Jess ignored me and it probably didn’t matter.
“Helen says they found someone who knows someone who knows Izzie. And now they’re trying to get in touch with that second someone to find ou
t her location.”
Jess peeked around the curtain again. She gasped.
“One of the men is coming up the walk!”
I threw myself out of bed and wobbled over to the window. I gave my head a shake, trying to rid my mind of cobwebs. A man in a grey suit and a chartreuse tie stood at the door, rummaging through a suede courier bag. Two other people—a curly-haired fellow who looked a bit sleepy and a sharp-featured woman with a blonde ponytail—leaned against the coarse stone wall of a building across the lane.
I backed away from the window and sighed.
“Yup, Belinda’s with them. These are the Friends of Penult.”
“Remind me again,” said Jess. “Are they the ones who killed that poor man in Aberdeen?”
“Yup. It was them.”
“But … these are not those assassins?”
“Nope.”
“So does this mean that the old assassins are now the good guys?”
“Maybe. For the moment, anyhow. But things change fast around here.”
Something rustled at the front door. A sheet of paper was being shoved beneath it. Fancy stationery. It almost looked like parchment. I had expected to see a message. ‘We know you’re in there. Come out!’ Or something on that order. But the sheet was blank.
As I stood over it, though, it began to fold and curl spontaneously. Paper horns and pincers protruded from an angular little body. It rose up on spindly legs and took a step into the fool, feeling around with its feelers.
Jessica ran to the desk in the corner and pulled a pair of scissors from a drawer. Something glinted from a pit in the center of the creature’s head. It had acquired an eye. I grabbed a stone paperweight and chucked it while Jessica stalked the thing with her scissors.
The paperweight thudded against the floorboards, narrowly missing the creature. It had dodged aside nimbly, doing so, scurried within Jessica’s reach. She lunged and snipped off a leg. Frantically, it attempted to refold itself, but I took advantage of its distraction and stomped on it, pinning it to the floor. Jessica administered the coup de grace, dismembering the creature with her Fiskars.
“I need to get out of here!”
“Don’t you mean we?”
“Jess. They won’t hurt you unless you get in their way. I’m the one they want.”
