"Clothes are soaked." She chewed every time she spoke, as if her jaws worked away at a lump of gristle. "Should take them off, 'fore you catch a cold."
"Oh…" Rayya looked at Lencia, then down at herself. "Yeah…"
Clara's neck itched. The woman was right, but she wanted to shout, stop her friend, and didn't know why. Rayya peeled off her clothes. They splatted on the floorboards by the rug, and the girl stood there in her undergarments.
"Those're wet too."
"I… They'll get dry." Rayya moved closer to the fire, angled her body towards it.
Lencia shrugged. She looked at Clara.
"Go on. You'll catch a cold else."
"I'm okay."
"And drip water all over my house."
"Oh…"
Clara undressed and dropped her clothes on the pile. Lencia gathered it up in her arms, glanced at the fire, then went to a rack in the corner. She hung each garment and dragged the contraption closer. The scrape juddered through Clara's bones like fingernails on the school blackboard.
"Hungry?"
"No," Clara said.
"Yes," Rayya said.
"There's stew. Get dry. I'll bring some."
"Thank you."
Lencia went into the next room and closed the door. Clara joined Rayya at the fireplace. Heat touched her flesh and made no difference.
The woman came back in with a tray. Two bowls steamed on it, and the air smelled of offal. Rayya took one and thanked her. Clara didn't want the other bowl but lifted it anyway.
"Thanks," she said.
Lencia put the tray on a table. The wood was almost as thick as a tombstone, but she gripped its edges, her forearms bulged, and she hefted it. Its legs thudded down near the hearth. Clara's shoulders tensed. Lencia picked up two chairs and swung them over, then a third. She sat at the head of the table.
"Can't eat standing up, like horses."
One chair was right beside them, its back to the fire. The other stood on the other side, a mile away. Lencia watched them. Clara let Rayya take the nearer seat, and forced herself to leave her friend's side. She walked around the foot of the table, took her place. Lencia's eyes lingered on Rayya.
"Eat up. Warm your insides too."
Rayya put a spoonful of stew in her mouth. Clara did the same. A kidney disintegrated between her teeth and she wanted to spit it back out. She swallowed. Bitterness oozed down her throat. What herbs were those?
"It's good," Rayya said, after a few spoons.
Clara blinked at her. Rayya's eyes and smile shimmered. Clara shifted her lips from side to side. Had her own taste buds burned away along with everything else? She took another mouthful, but it was just as bad. Her stomach churned, bubbled. Clara smiled at her hostess anyway, though the woman didn't even look at her.
"Where were you two going?"
"Hogmire," Clara said.
"Lemstras." Rayya burped and covered her mouth. "My brother lives there. I need to tell him our parents are dead. Kharjis killed them."
Clara's jaw hung open. Rayya's voice didn't change. She might've been talking about apples or the weather, and gobbled more stew.
"Poor thing…"
Lencia stroked Rayya's cheek. Clara's own flesh tingled there, and she shivered. But Rayya didn't flinch.
"Poor, poor, thing."
Lencia pushed her chair back. Wood grated, and vileness sloshed around Clara's belly.
"Come, sit with me."
Rayya's smile levelled, but she didn't resist when Lencia touched her arm and coaxed her. She sat down on the woman's thigh.
"Rayya-"
Clara's stomach convulsed and she gasped.
"Poor little girl…"
Lencia stroked the other cheek. Her fingers crept lower, and Rayya tried to shrug them off. The woman's grip tightened. Rayya frowned, mumbled something. She twitched, but there was almost no strength in it.
"Hey…" Clara pushed against the table, stood. Her innards clenched. She doubled over like someone'd punched her. "Get off…"
Rayya struggled. Lencia squeezed an arm till Rayya's skin whitened, but her other hand caressed and probed. Clara staggered at her. She held on to the woman's forearm.
"Let her go!"
Lencia's arm tore free, seized her hair. Clara yelled. Lencia wrenched her around and her scalp screamed.
Broken bowl, spilled porridge, blood…
Clara flew across the room. The wall smashed her shoulder and skull. She lay there on all fours.
Blood! Blood! Blood!
"Clara…" Rayya thrashed. "Clara!"
She scratched at Lencia's face. The woman swore, turned her head away, but Rayya's nails gouged and red streaks glistened. Lencia roared. She heaved Rayya up, slammed her to the floor. Rayya moaned.
Clara's stomach bubbled once more. Then it blazed. Liquid fire. The inferno devoured her innards and incinerated the pain, the vileness.
Lencia pinned Rayya down. One hand held her throat. The other stroked her thigh. Rayya twisted, bucked. Lencia's bulk crushed her against the floorboards. Clara hurled herself at them. Her fists hammered the woman's shoulder. Lencia backhanded her, knocked her spinning. Clara's hip banged into a cupboard. Her hand swept across its top, scattered objects, toppled them, and bashed something. A stone mortar. Fire licked along her sinews and raged inside her right hand. Her fingers wrapped around the pestle.
Lencia's hand scuttled up Rayya's leg.
Clara smashed the side of her skull. It rocked away, then jerked back around just as fast. Crimson bloomed on her cheek. Bloody eyes glowered. Lencia went for her but Clara Mandrake didn't care. She hit out a second time and the woman's head snapped backwards. A third. A fourth. Lencia was on her back now. She rolled onto her hands and knees and Clara brought the pestle down on her spine. The thud echoed through the room but Clara didn't feel it. There was only fire, in her hand, her stomach, her eyes.
Red dribbled between Lencia's lips.
"Clara!" Rayya's voice burned away too.
The pestle landed again. Blood splashed Clara's face.
"Stop it! Clara! Please! Stop!"
She hit the woman three more times, and didn't know if she splatted blood or bone or brain. Clara dropped the pestle. Her hand throbbed. Rayya wept.
"Clara… You… You…"
Clara reached out to touch her, hug her, but Rayya flinched from scarlet fingers.
"It's okay."
"You killed her."
"She was hurting you."
"But…"
A coolness spread through Clara's head, drove the flames down into her body, towards her red right hand. Thoughts cleared and sharpened. Sound returned to the world around them. Rain drummed on the roof, logs crackled in the hearth. If things could go on after Traverd, why should they stop for this worthless woman?
"No one'll come here tonight. Not through that. And tomorrow we'll be gone."
Rayya's eyes widened.
"Go to the bedroom. I'll get rid of her."
"How-"
"You won't have to see her again."
When Rayya was out of sight, Clara stood above Lencia and watched blood pool around her skull. Did that faraway girl care? Clara didn't know, so maybe that meant she was gone forever. The fingers of her right hand opened and closed. An itch nibbled away at it. Fire-insects boiled her blood, gnawed her bones.
Clara lifted one of Lencia's legs under each arm, put her back towards the front door, and dragged. The body shifted a couple of inches and Clara grunted. How long would it take to get her outside, heave her into a well or the stables? Minutes? Hours?
The kitchen was closer.
Clara knelt down, turned the corpse. It flopped over. Knuckles rapped the floor. Something squelched. She pushed, pulled, and rolled Lencia through the doorway. Clara kicked the door shut behind her, just in case Rayya emerged from the bedroom across the way. She slumped against the wall. Her limbs and back ached, but they were dull pains. The blaze in her hand eclipsed them. Had she broken some
thing?
A light burned on the kitchen table. Clara sat on the bench beside it, and examined her digits one by one. She paused. The pot of stew lay at her elbow, and something hid behind it. A blue bottle. She picked it up, pulled the stopper out, and sniffed. Her vision swam. Her fingers opened and a blue blob hit the table, rolled off. Glass smashed a million miles away.
Clara shook her head until it cleared. The odour hung in the air, but her senses held and thoughts hardened. Her eyes flashed. That bitch! Clara's hand shook. She'd lift the pot, bring it down on Lencia's head. Bash and grind till the woman's brains smeared the floor and-
Her fist clasped shut. Joints locked in place, fingers bored into her palm. She fought to unclench them but they wouldn't budge. The inferno doubled, trebled in a ball of bone and tendon. Clara's fingers snapped open. That hellfire shot along them, into the tips. Skin tore. Blood spurted and something else came out amid the crimson. Something black.
Clara's mouth held a scream, but she swallowed it. Her hand didn't hurt anymore. Pain and fire had spurted out too, and not even a tingle remained to show where they'd been.
Clara Mandrake spread her fingers in the lantern's light. Five black claws gleamed.
***
Xerachus stirred. His nose twitched. Even in the darkness of his dreams, that shift in the far-off scent ignited his brain.
Clara Mandrake…
Torn flesh knitted itself back together, inch by inch, hour by hour.
He had to find her.
11
"Kharji! Murderer!"
Rashida Al-Taquba froze. Quietness detonated around her, silenced the voices of merchants hawking their wares and customers haggling them down from outright robbery. The woman glared at her.
"My cousin's dead. You burned his house down, with him and his family inside."
"What? No! I never-"
"We've all heard what you did in Traverd. You and the rest of your-"
"I haven't left the city in months. I had nothing to do with-"
"Murderer!"
The woman shoved her. Rashida stumbled backwards. Her heel caught on the ground and she tottered, but her other leg found its footing.
"Oi! Get your filthy hands off the imam!"
Rashida sighed. A young man and woman jumped up from the stoop where they'd been lounging. Empty wine jugs rolled on the ground behind them. Neither wore Kharji garb, and Rashida didn't recognise them from her congregation. But their eyes gleamed. Snarls twisted their mouths.
People drifted closer. Some blinked at the commotion. Others glowered and lent their shouts.
"Bloody Kharjis!"
"Leave her alone!"
"Rip her head off!"
"Wait!" Rashida held out her hands. "Listen, I'm sorry for your-"
"Murderer!"
The woman whirled, her fingers opened and closed. They snatched the nearest weapon.
"Hey!" The fishmonger grabbed but missed. "Give that back!"
She brandished the trout, swung it round, hurled it at Rashida. The imam swivelled at the waist and it swam past her face. The blacksmith caught it in hers instead. She roared and vaulted over a collection of hammers, chisels, and tongs. Rashida thanked Allat that the smith didn't grab one of those on her way.
"You hit me!"
"I was aiming for her!"
A dozen more voices joined the din. The Kharji drunks threw the first punches, and others followed. Fists, feet, and missiles rained everywhere.
"In the name of the One Goddess, please-"
"Screw your goddess!"
Two bodies barged past Rashida, locked in a clinch. The inebriated Kharji woman took a kick that launched her over the fishmonger's table. A few wise words weren't going to fix this… The imam hastened away.
"Murderer!"
"Argh!"
Hands grabbed Rashida's turban from behind and snagged her hair with it. Rashida writhed. The turban came free. She spun around, seized it. The other woman's eyes blazed.
"Let go!"
"Kharji filth! Hanging's too good for you! We should burn you like you burned my cousin!"
Rashida yanked but the woman's fingers tightened and crumpled the turban's folds. Grime smeared its white cloth. They tugged back and forth, shouted till their words lost sense. Then the male drunkard slammed into the woman. She let go of the turban, Rashida backpedalled with it, and the two combatants rolled around in front of her.
The imam raised her hand, opened her mouth. The man and woman thumped each other's ribs. Rashida turned away. An elbow whacked her in the face and sent her spinning. She almost dropped the turban, crushed it in her grasp to keep hold of it. Her other hand went to her cheek. It came away red. She pressed down on the wound and ran.
A pair of peacekeepers charged past her. One's shoulder clipped her, but she recovered and kept going, careened through the streets of Lemstras like a lunatic. Faces flashed past. A few grinned. Shouts echoed behind her but the city swallowed their words.
She reached the masjid and panted outside it for a while. Rashida realised she still clutched her turban. She winced at its state, but put it back on her head and arranged it as best she could without a mirror.
The imam entered Allat's house, quickened her pace. It was almost empty at that hour. If she made it past the main prayer area, got to her study, she could-
"Imam Rashida!"
"What happened?"
Rashida Al-Taquba stopped and sighed. Two young women knelt nearby. Both sprang out of the prayer pose and rushed towards her.
"You're bleeding!"
Fatima pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to the imam. Rashida dabbed her cheek, grimaced, and pressed down on the cut.
"Who did this?" Yasmin's fists clenched.
"A woman. In the market. Her-"
"Take us there. Point her out and I'll smash her nose."
"I'll break her back." Fatima mimed something that might've been a wrestling hold.
"Don't be foolish. We can't attack infidels in the street like common criminals."
"Allat would want her punished," Yasmin said.
"The One Goddess can see to that herself."
"Barzik Khan wouldn't let her get away with this," Fatima said. "Or the mawlana. They'd cut her down, like the infidels in Traverd."
"Did you hear about that, Imam Rashida?" Yasmin's face lit up. "They put the village to the sword and torch…"
Rashida pursed her lips.
"Don't believe infidel rumours. The Khan's a pious man. He wouldn't go to war unless the non-believers provoked him. And the mawlana communes with Allat herself…"
"But-"
"No! There must be no violence in Lemstras. Our brothers and sisters here are merchants and craftsmen, not warriors."
"Imam, we can't-"
"Finish your prayers. Now."
The imam went into her study and shut herself inside. She turned her injured cheek to the mirror, touched it, and swore.
Rashida Al-Taquba prayed that when the day came, when Allat visited her judgement on the unbelievers and crushed them all, that wretched woman would die in particular agony.
***
"Keste?" Katrina knocked on the door. "Keste Humwolt?"
Silas set the horses grazing and joined her in front of the shack. Something creaked. He touched Katrina's shoulder, nodded towards the window. The shutters were open a crack. An eye blinked in the gap, behind wisps of bone-white hair.
"Have you killed it yet?"
"No," Katrina said. "We-"
"I'm not comin' out till you've killed it. I'm not endin' up like poor Mulberry."
"What happened?" Silas moved forward and the eye squinted at him. "The kid at the inn didn't know-"
"That Hindra boy doesn't know how to find his arse with both hands. So it didn't eat him then?"
"No, he-"
"Good. He's a nice lad, just thick as pigswill. Told him to run for help, soon as I heard him goin' by in the lane."
"Something attacked yo
u?"
"Not me. Mulberry. My cat. Heard him hissin', wailin' in the middle of the night. I went to the window and saw it."
"Out here?" Katrina pointed across the road, where their horses munched the grass.
"Around the back. A horrible thin', standin' over him like a… a demon. Mulberry was… Blood everywhere. Drippin' from its fangs. It looked up at me with these big yellow eyes…"
"Did it try to get inside?"
"I… I don't know. I shut the window and hid in the chest. Stayed there till I heard the birds and knew it was mornin'."
"We'll take a look."
The eye disappeared, the gap disappeared, and a latch clunked into place. Katrina went around the shack. Silas followed, began to draw his sword. She glanced back at him and shook her head.
"Bludgeon?" he said.
"Neither."
On the other side, Keste's eye reappeared between the back window's shutters. Silas nodded to her. Katrina walked over to the red and ginger mess twenty feet from the shack. Mulberry's innards littered the ground. It was hard to believe so much had come from one cat.
Katrina's gaze darted back and forth. She looked up, towards the bushes, then went to them.
"Recognise it?" She pulled aside a clump of vegetation, exposed the shapes printed on the dirt beneath.
"Fox tracks?"
"I told you. This is what it's like most of the time. Animals scare people in the night, and they'll swear they've seen a beast from the bowels of hell. Cats, foxes… Once it was a bear. Couldn't blame them for that one. Ran into it in the forest, and it wasn't much better than facing a monster."
"What happened?"
"Backed away, slowly."
"You or the bear?"
A smile flitted across her lips. They went to the window.
"It was a fox that killed your cat," Katrina said.
"Oh…"
The breeze picked up, and the shack's planks groaned to fill the silence until Katrina spoke.
"We'll be-"
"I can bury him," Silas said. "If you want…"
Katrina looked at him, and he waited for her to chastise him. To say a pair of monster hunters had better things to do than go around digging feline graves.
"Thank you, young man. That'd… Please. If you would. There's a shovel by the outhouse."
Katrina von Talhoffer leaned against the shack, crossed her arms, and nodded towards it. Silas got the spade. He found a spot in the shade of two trees, cleared away russet leaves. The dirt was soft and it didn't take long.
Clara Mandrake's Monster Page 14
