I do not know how she could pick one teardrop out of all the rainwater on my face, and I do not know how I knew that was what she had done. But I was sure.
Gently, she lifted the dress from my arms with her other hand. She smoothed the fabric with her hands, and smiled at it, a smile of long-lost memory, wistful and sad.
Still moving with slow gentleness, she reached out with her hand again and took my shoulder. Her fingers dug into my shoulder cruelly. I winced, but did not cry out.
Like a second head of a two-headed giant, her scorpion tail now rose over her shoulder, pointed its stinger blade at my heart, and drew back.
I said, "I am sorry for your son. I am sorry I didn't love him. I am sorry that he died for me. But I did not kill him. None of these people on this boat killed him."
There was a blur of motion as the scorpion tail shot forward. I closed my eyes, expecting death. I felt the breeze of rapid motion near my face. Her hand was still digging into my shoulder.
I opened my eyes again, and wished I hadn't. The sting was now hanging four inches in front of my eyes.
I could see every little detail in the way the sting was constructed. The barb had many little backwards-pointing hairs epoxied together into a single shaft. I saw the mucous membranes surrounding the orifice where the sting retracted and extended from the poison sac. I could smell the heady smell of the venom. It smelled a bit like turpentine, or almonds.
I heard a voice. I am not sure if I heard it in my ears, or in my heart.
Who, daughter, who?
I said aloud, "Will you promise to spare the people aboard this ship?"
Who killed your bridegroom, daughter?
The fingers dug more deeply into my shoulder. The long red nails drew blood from my flesh.
I said, "Ow! Promise me. Uh—Mother… ? Promise me, please—ouch! Ow!"
A look of impatience came over her face. I could see the tension in the tail rise to a peak, and…
"Mavors! Mavors sent his bird. But it wasn't his fault. Grendel was about to kill Colin, and he…"
She took her hand from my shoulder, raised one finger, and laid it softly across my lips.
Hush, daughter
With another great surge and rustle of snaky folds, her head went swooping away from me, and train upon train of serpent-mass rose and slithered and folded after her. She did not move like a sidewinder, but, rather, she undulated in an up-and-down sine wave, hypnotic.
Echidna moved away. Chairs and tables, pillars and posts, were torn up and thrown aside in the wake of her passage.
She sine-waved out into the storm, and crossed the wreckage of the deck.
Now she was at the rail of the ship, and her size had in-creased by tenfold. She seemed also to be surrounded with a shadow that grew and grew darker as she grew.
Echidna turned and looked over her shoulder at me. Her hair lifted up in a weightless cloud, as if she were already underwater again, and drew a veil across her chins and lips.
Over top of that veil, I could see her eyes, her cold, mad, crazed eyes. In those eyes there was a look of softness.
None of the other women wept for him.
Like an avalanche falling from a sea cliff into the sea, with her graceful hands sweeping back in a swan dive behind her, Echidna fell into the sea. The train of her body surged up in a writhing mass and unwound in midair to follow her into the waters.
After she was gone, I fell to my knees and put my face in my hands, and wept, and wept. These were merely tears of fear, coming now, senseless, now that the cause for fear had passed.
5.
The rain hammered down, less and less.
I looked up when I heard a noise. The rain was getting weaker. I saw a silvery ship in the waters below me, shining.
I heard quick footsteps behind me. I turned just as Vanity, her red hair all plastered down by rain, and sopping wet, threw her arms around me and gave me a hug.
Colin was a few steps behind her.
Vanity sobbed into my shoulder, "You're alive!"
I said, "Where are Victor and Quentin?"
Colin said, "Victor is lowering a lifeboat. Quentin is with him."
I said, "And what the hell are you doing here? My orders were for you to change shape and run away."
Colin spread his hands, raising his eyebrows and looking innocent. "I tried, Dark Mistress, really I did. I just wasn't inspired. I couldn't fly with you left behind—my heart wasn't in it."
"That is the same tone of voice you used to use on Dr. Fell when you hadn't done your assignments."
"It's my paradigm…"
"The making-up-excuses paradigm! You are going to get us all killed if you don't learn to obey orders!
We are going to have a court-martial, and you are going to be punished for this. Don't tell me I can't punish you; I can have Quentin turn you into a newt!"
Vanity said, "It's my fault. My powers just came back on. I felt…"
"If it's your fault, then you will be punished, too! We can't survive if the group doesn't follow orders!"
Vanity looked shocked, and her lower lip trembled a bit.
Colin stiffened into a proper beefeater's attention and snapped out a salute. "Leader! Ma'am, yes, ma'am! We thought you were dead! We thought you were committing suicide to let us get away! You forgot to appoint a second-in-command! Ma'am! There was no way to vote in a new leader, ma'am! It was a two-to-two tie! Ma'am! So actually, it's your fault, ma'am, if you don't mind my saying so, ma'am!
Private First Class Fair reports that someone is watching us now! We may be under attack!"
I said to Vanity, "What's going on?"
I could see that she really didn't want to talk to me, because she thought I was being unreasonable and cruel, but she straightened her spine and stiffened her trembling lip and spat out in a voice as calm and controlled as anything Victor could do: "The moment you were killed—we thought you were killed—something far away turned and looked at us. Like an alarm bell ringing. I thought it might be Mavors. Ma'am."
I opened my mouth to say she didn't have to call me "ma'am," but then I closed it again. Maybe she did have to. It might be good for her. Build character.
Vanity forgot about being angry with me in the very next second. "Oh my God! There she is! It's my ship!
Yoo-hoo! Hullo!" And she pointed toward the waters behind me.
There was a flash of lightning at that moment, and all the sea was lit up.
In that single, suspended split-instant of dazzle, I saw the fleet surrounding us.
These were warships of ancient make, like Vanity's ship, but black as night.
The gods of Olympos had come.
Here Ends Fugitives of Chaos, Volume Two of the Chronicles of Chaos to Be Concluded in
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John C. Wright
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Fugitives of Chaos Page 34
