“Feminine wiles, of course. Gods love that sort of thing. And if it gets messy, well, you do have certain powers of your own, don’t you?”
I stared at her. “You had better not be suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.” The only power I had that could stand up against the might of a deity was something I never wanted to inflict upon the world again. I shivered, remembering the ice-white hair and trilling, insane giggle that my dream had reminded me of. No thank you.
“We can keep her as a last resort,” said Bounty.
“Last resort after the universe ends,” I snarled. “You know better than that. What else have you planned that doesn’t involve your flirtation skills or my so-called powers?”
Bounty smiled her sweet smile, the one that comes under the heading of ‘feminine wiles’. It did little for me. “I have this.” She reached inside the skimpy bodice of her chainmail costume and pulled out a filigree hair net. At least, I thought it was a hair net since it was so fine and light, but it kept coming until it was large enough to cover a person.
I touched it, watching the way that it sparkled in the dim morning light. It smelled faintly of salt. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Property of Oceandra, former goddess of sea-nymphettes. I bought it last year, when the Emperor staged that auction of the abandoned property of the ex-gods. I got it cheap, considering its awesome powers over the mortally challenged. It’s strong enough to bind up to twenty deities for a small eternity, according to the auction catalogue.”
“Good,” I said, releasing the net so she could tuck it back into her bodice. “I’m glad you have that.”
“I know,” she said, and our eyes met in a brief moment of seriousness.
I knew why Bounty had bought the net long before the bounty was set on Aolpho the Apostate. He wasn’t the only god who had evaded the Decimalisation. There was at least one other, and she was the most dangerous creature the Empire had ever seen. Ironically, Bounty was the one taking precautions. It should have been me.
–§–§–§–§–§–
After several more hours of trekking, hiking and clawing our way up one of the Skullcap peaks, we found ourselves up to our ankles in something truly disgusting. “Yuck!” said Bounty, leaning down for a closer inspection. “Are they flowers?”
They did look like flowers, if flowers were strange and gooey and their colours ran into each other. “The Scented Swamp,” I said as the smell of rotting roses overwhelmed my poor little nose. “I thought this was on the other side of the Skullcaps.”
“Maybe it moved.” Bounty sank a few more inches as she tried to step out of the seething, colourful mess.
The muck was up to my knees now, cold and clammy with the occasional soggy lump in it, like week-old porridge. I was close to passing out from the powerful flower fumes. “Are those primroses?”
“Daffodils,” gagged Bounty. “And violets, I think. Warped beyond all imagining. How does a smell like this happen?”
I tried to ease a leg out of the sucking, scented slime and found myself dragged down to hip-height. “Has anyone ever survived the Scented Swamp?”
“I’ve never heard any ballads about anyone surviving it. If I survived something like this, I’d write a ballad.”
“That’s what you said about that plague of mutant hydra-monkeys.”
“Have you ever tried to find a rhyme for mutant hydra-monkeys? I agonised over it for weeks. Um, Delta, I’m sort of stuck here.” The slime-flowers were up to her waist now. She shuddered as the vibrant muck closed over the lower half of her bare midriff. “Isn’t it time you came up with a brilliant plan?”
“I’m not weighed down by a metallic costume. You come up with a brilliant plan.”
“My plans are always stupid,” she said hysterically. “You’re the one who’s good under pressure!”
My mind was blank, utterly unhelpful. My body was half-immersed in a relentless, multi-coloured swamp that smelled like a thousand funeral bouquets a year after the funeral. What I needed was an alternate brain and body to take over for a while, to give me some breathing space and hopefully spark off some constructive brainstorming.
Luckily, thanks to a rather unique physiognomy, I had an almost unlimited supply of alternate brains and bodies.
Miss Lunatic was no good, ditto for Benedetta. Both were likely to panic and drag us further under the swamp muck. Plus, I’d just had Benedetta’s frock steam-cleaned. Herna the Huntress might have the muscle to pull us out of this, but she’s a hefty lass and I don’t think suddenly weighing twice as much would be a good idea under the circumstances. Sadonna would want to meditate us out of here (not a method I had much faith in). Flavia would waste valuable time telling Bounty how impractical her outfit was. Vampyra would try to bite Bounty. Helene would extract herself from the situation neatly then run off and leave Bounty to die. Mandra would attempt to make everyone a nice cup of tea and encourage us to talk about our feelings.
There was one persona who could save us both, no problem. She could do anything, and didn’t mind showing off her skills. She edged her way to the front, ready for action, giggling excitedly. For a brief moment, I saw the end of my braid turn ice-white as my most dangerous persona began to take control of my body. I squashed her back as hard as I could, searching for an alternative. No, not you. Not this time.
I was thinking it through all wrong, far too distracted by the squelchy feeling under my armpits. I didn’t need a single persona to do the entire job of saving us. I needed to pick the one who could come up with the best plan, then switch to the one with the powers to implement the plan.
Chriselda it was.
“Oh, no,” Bounty groaned as she saw whom I had become. My body was smaller, skinner, with wiry red hair sticking out in all directions. Gold spectacles perched on my nose, and my teeth too large for my mouth. Bounty slid further into the pungent swamp muck, the pink and purple gunge-petals swallowing up her chainmail-covered breasts. “I hate this one.”
Chriselda is one of those girls who was born a crone. She is serious, way too smart for her own good and has a tendency to lecture non-intellectuals about how they’re wasting their life. She is also good at coming up with plans.
“Okay,” said Bounty. “What ingenious plot are you going to devise to drag us out of this mudhole? Impress me.”
I looked up, quietly calculating the distance between certain trees. “It’s perfectly obvious, Bounty. The fumes from your metallic clothing must have eroded what miniscule intellectual ability you possess if you can’t see how we are going to escape this particular predicament.”
“How?” Bounty fumed.
I smiled in that annoying way that Chriselda has. “We’re going to get rescued by the lady on the rope.”
“What?” said Bounty, just as an elegant black woman swung out of the trees above us, grabbing Bounty under the arms and pulling her schloop! out of the flowery muck, depositing her on the grass. As Bounty gaped, our saviour kicked off from the grass and swung towards me.
I switched back from Chriselda (with some relief) to DV (my usual self) in time to be rescued with a second schloop!
Bounty and I were both a mess, dripping with the stinky, colourful rotten-flower swamp muck. United, we turned to stare at our rescuer, who didn’t have a hair out of place.
And how had she managed that rope swinging trick? Every time I’ve attempted something like it, I’ve ended up flat on my face. Where did the rope even come from?”
“Xandra Spydaughter,” she said in a business-like voice. “SPZ. Shall we walk? My camp is just ahead.” Without waiting for an answer, she strode off through a mass of golden trees. Bounty and I exchanged brief shrugs, then glupped after her.
Xandra Spydaughter wore a far more ridiculous outfit than anything I’ve ever seen Bounty wear (which is saying a lot!). Not many people can get away with wearing a sarong made of jangling golden coins and knee-high gold stiletto boots without looking like a hooker or a drag queen. This w
oman looked like a boss.
She had dark brown skin, black hair shaved short across her scalp and a gold (I didn’t doubt it was real) torc wrapping her slender neck. She walked across the uneven, lumpy ground in those teetering boots without limping. Or tripping.
“I think I swallowed some of that swamp muck,” said Bounty.
“What do you want with us?” I asked Xandra.
“I was thinking of offering you lunch,” she said as she strode ahead of us.
That settled it. I didn’t care whether she was a criminal, villain or a psychopath. If she was offering lunch, I was listening.
Xandra’s camp was as practical as the woman herself. I’m not sure how she managed to get an enormous silk pavilion, a metal barbecue stove and a wide array of cooking gear up the mountain without assistance, but I wasn’t complaining. She had a pot of something delicious bubbling on the stove and fresh flatbread warming beside the fire.
“You’re not really in the Secret Police of Zibria, are you?” said Bounty. “I’ve been trying to join for years, but I could never get anyone to admit they exist—and I’ve trained as an upper level courtesan in Zibria! I gave up in the end, figured they were mythical after all.”
“Only slightly mythical,” said Xandra. “Fancy some citrus duck noodle stew?”
Zibrians. They do the best things to food.
–§–§–§–§–§–
After Bounty and I had wiped off most of the flowery gunge in a nearby spring and were settled comfortably with large bowls of lunch, Xandra Spydaughter explained who she was, who she worked for, and why she was here.
Why she was here was the most interesting bit, because she was after the same thing that we were—Aolpho the Apostate, stray god at large. At this point, I stopped eating, concerned that if she saw us as rivals she might have spiked the stew with troll sleepy dust, or something even more dangerous. It’s hard to spot even the most flavourful poison under the spicy taste of citrus duck. Bounty ate on, unconcerned. Eventually, I did too. Why waste a good meal?
“There’s no need to be suspicious,” said Xandra airily. “I only want to talk to him. I’m not after the bounty.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Half the known world is out to capture this god for the bounty, and you want a quick chat?”
“Why rescue us?” asked Bounty with her mouth full. “There are search parties swarming all over these mountains at the moment. You could have allied yourself with any of them.” She looked over the rim of the bowl at Xandra. “It is an alliance you want, isn’t it? The SPZ aren’t known for performing random heroic deeds.”
“I chose you because you have Oceandra’s net,” said Xandra to Bounty. “And I know what you have, too,” she added to me. “A god can’t be cornered against his will without major powers, and I think you two are the only ones in the Skullcaps likely to have half a chance of neutralising this one. I want to work with you. We capture Aolpho together, and after I find out the information I need, you two can take him to the Emperor and get your bounty.”
“What’s in it for us?” demanded Bounty. “I have Oceandra’s net, and DV has…her particular skills. What do you bring to the party apart from wicked fashion sense?”
Xandra leaned down and slid a gold-hilted knife out of her boot. She placed it in the air in front of her, where it hovered unaided for a moment. Slowly, it began to rotate until the blade was pointing west. “You’re not the only one who bought something in the post-Decimalisation auctions. This is the knife of Glorios the Backstabber. It’s a god-detector.”
–§–§–§–§–§–
My clothes still smelt of rotten flower sludge. I tried switching to some of my alternate personae in the hopes of shifting it, but it even lingered when I was the fresh and perfect Benedetta. I decided to just live with it as DV.
Then again, maybe the smell was coming from Bounty.
If the Glorios blade was accurate, our friend Aolpho was moving around a lot. We tracked him through a purple forest, a series of pink valleys, and finally a frozen orange lake at the very tip of one of the spikier of the Skullcap peaks.
“We didn’t consider this,” I grumbled, huddled in my griffin-hair blanket for warmth. “We might be able to track him, fight him and capture him, but he still moves at godly speeds. We’re never going to catch up to the bugger.”
“Have faith,” said Bounty, whose eyes were fixed on Xandra.
“A gold coin frock wouldn’t suit you,” I said firmly.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“I’d stake my life on it.”
A large salmon fell at our feet, flapping wildly. Bounty prodded it with her toe. “Supper? I’ll cook.”
“It’s not supper,” I said sharply, examining the sky. “It’s rain.” The clouds had that nasty pinkish-silver sheen which suggested that major seafood storms were on the way.
Bounty looked at me disbelievingly. “Oh, come on. We don’t really get rains of fish. That’s something we say to scare the tourists.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t tell me this is actually your first trip to the Skullcaps?”
“I climbed a mountain or two in my carefree youth, but I’m more of a city girl these days.”
“Fabulous. Xandra!” I called out. “Do you know what a rain of fish means?”
Xandra was suitably alarmed. “We passed some caves a while back. Let’s get to shelter.”
“I can’t believe you two are getting all hysterical about a few flying kippers!” Bounty laughed.
By the time we reached the shelter of the caves, Bounty had stopped laughing. Her bare arms were scratched and torn by the claws of falling lobsters, and she had a nasty head wound from a projectile perch. The trouble with rains of fish in the Skullcaps is, sometimes the fish come down frozen. The rain that blattered in with the fish was close to freezing. The other two shivered wildly when we crammed into the first cave we came to. I felt quite smug to be the only one in sensible clothes.
“Light a fire,” Bounty commanded with blue lips. She had dragged a large lobster in with her, holding it at arm’s length. “I’m going to boil this sucker alive. See how he likes being bitten.” One of its claws nipped her on the wrist and she yelped, throwing it back out into the storm. “Never mind. Light the fire so we can warm up!”
“No wood,” I told her.
“Don’t you have a woodcutter persona?” she suggested. “With a full bag of kindling as part of her costume?”
“Nope. No woodcutters, no pyromaniacs.”
Xandra peered out through the cave opening. “It might be easing off. All I see is a light shower of guppies.” There was a loud squelching sound from outside, and she moved rapidly back inside the cave. “Whale,” she said shortly. “Messy. Let us never speak of it again.”
I sighed. It can be exhausting, living in this magic-infested empire of ours. There must be places in the world where people wake up safe in the knowledge that they’re not going to have to cope with a rain of sea-mammals and assorted crustaceans.
We rode out the storm without a fire, which meant we were all cold and grumpy for the next few hours. We took turns trying out the knife of Glorios the Backstabber, but it had taken to always pointing directly at whoever was working it, which was less than helpful.
“You said this would be easy,” I accused Bounty. “You said you had inside information that would help us find him.”
“Thing is,” said Bounty. “I don’t know if anyone can find a god who doesn’t want to be found.”
I looked at her incredulously. “You mention this now?”
“He has to want to find us. My information suggested that Aolpho has a thing for feisty women.” She preened a little. “If we interest him enough, he’ll come straight to us.”
“That’s your plan?” Xandra demanded.
“We’re the bait,” I sighed. “Bounty, you know I hate being bait. This is the stupidest plan you’ve ever come up with.”
“I agree,” said Aolpho the Apost
ate, appearing among us. He flicked his hazel eyes in my direction. “You must be really annoyed that it actually worked.”
–§–§–§–§–§–
To be honest, we were all surprised. For a god who was clever and powerful enough to dodge the most cataclysmic religious event in history, Aolpho was underwhelming. He was small, with brown hair and a wiry body. Usually gods create impressive forms for themselves: height, beauty, intimidating muscles. This one dripped with ordinary.
He sat cross-legged, and patted the cave floor. A perfect campfire appeared, complete with marshmallows on sticks. He had done his research.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Bounty said redundantly, sitting down in a hurry.
“I know that,” said the stray god. He looked at Xandra. “You wanted a conversation with me?”
She cleared her throat. Not even the sight of a god put a dent in dignity. “Before the Decimalisation, Zibria was glorious. We were the gold-paved city, with hundreds of amazing gods at our beck and call. Khalali the Protector of Children, Iseus the Bronze, Xorban the Peacemaker…”
“Glorios the Backstabber, Michi the Sneak-thief, Yalora of the Gratuitous Violence…” added Bounty helpfully.
Xandra gave her a dirty look. “And when the Emperor’s Decimalisation left us with only one god as our patron, who did we get? Not Llura the Lovable or Quixar the Magnanimous…”
“Zorbah the Drunken, Khisthmus the War-starter…” muttered Bounty.
“We got Raglah the Golden,” Xandra snapped. “A useless waste of space who spends his time turning into different kinds of bird in order to chase after women. The sexual harassment suits alone are bankrupting the city!”
Mocklore Box Set (Mocklore Chronicles) Page 105
