by Conner, Jack
Ani gasped when the undershorts came off, and Avery wrapped a hand over her eyes. She pried his fingers apart. No matter; the prisoner had covered himself with shaking hands by then—not that there was anything remotely erotic about the scene. Quite the opposite. The condemned man stared first out over the crowd, blinking furiously, but his gaze was drawn irresistibly down to the frothing, crackling waters of the aquarium and the things inside it. Guards escorted him to the lip of the platform, directly above the water, and it was then that he started screaming. A small blast of lightning from the water, really just a minor discharge, lit his face in stark blue-white terror.
The man who must be mayor or judge continued speaking, and the crowd listened in surprising quiet. The man spoke Azadi, so Avery asked the nearby Captain Greggory what the condemned man was charged with.
“He’s a pirate,” Greggory spat. The captain was surprisingly clean-shaven for a grizzled sailor. Bright red hair crowned a long, jowly, acne-scarred face, and the unpleasant bulge of a mole grew from his left nostril. “They all are. Rapists and murderers, every one. Bastards’ve been getting bold since Octung’s navies withdrew from the area. The Azadi catch them when they find them in port, but most get away. These fucks must’ve gotten sloppy. Doubt it will deter any others, but I’m happy to see him et just the same.”
Avery didn’t have to ask what would do the eating. The vendors still loudly hawked their edible eels of all types, symbols of the real stars of the show. Some men even wore giant eel heads on their heads, giving the impression from afar that they were mutated into eel-men. Some may have been.
At last the judge or politician finished reciting the pirate’s crimes, and the constables shoved the still-screaming man into the water without so much as offering him a chance at any last words. His final sound was a terrified squawk as he vanished into the fluid, which instantly bubbled and frothed even more violently than before.
Trembling, Ani pressed against Avery. When he replaced his hand over her eyes this time, she didn’t try to peek.
Green coils flashed and whipped through the smeared glass of the aquarium, occasionally beating against it with a loud thump, and a dark cloud filled the water, hiding for the most part even such quick glimpses of the creatures. Avery wondered how many great eels the aquarium held—no more than three or four, surely, each ten feet long or more. And with half a dozen prisoners, they would get a good meal. The last few they would probably just electrocute and save for later.
“It’s horrible,” Ani said.
“I know, honey.” Avery squeezed her shoulder. “I know.”
Many in the crowd were cheering—some of the sailors from the Verignun, too. “Fucking pirates!” one said. Another cupped his hands around his mouth as if to create a bullhorn and shouted, presumably to the eels, “Eat ‘em up good and shit ‘em out green!” That drew a laugh.
The official speaker called out, more bugles blew, and the next condemned man was shoved toward the aquarium while the mayor (Avery had begun to assume that’s who he was, anyway) read the man’s crimes aloud. Terror filled the condemned man’s face as he approached the aquarium—
The attack came out of nowhere. One moment Avery was standing beside Layanna, Ani against him. The next a hurtling shape, having threaded through the dense crowd, flew forward and knocked him aside. A gleaming knife flashed in a pink-scaled hand, right at Layanna’s back.
Layanna, her eyes on the imminent execution, didn’t see any of it.
Avery screamed a warning, and she turned. The knife merely scraped her ribs, and the assailant—one of the completely mutated ngvandi—sailed past. One of the whalers tackled him to the cobblestones, and others piled on. Seeing that the attacker wasn’t going anywhere, Avery’s attention returned to Layanna.
“You all right?”
She wavered for a moment, a hand pressed to her side, then collapsed.
Avery rushed over. A line of blood ran along her ribs, but the cut was shallow and wasn’t bleeding too much.
“You’re just in shock,” he said.
“No. I don’t ... not healing.”
At full strength it was nearly impossible to kill a Collossum without some sort of extradimensional weapon, Avery knew. They healed with shocking speed, or should.
“Rest,” he said, trying to hide his concern. Had the blade gone deeper than it looked?
Glancing over, he saw the whalers beating the attacker into submission. The fish-man thrashed on the cobblestones, foam beading his lips, his clawed feet scratching violently against the ground. The crowd drew away, not wanting to be too close to the violence—but not far enough away to miss it, either. The execution of the next pirate had been temporarily delayed.
Avery noticed the blade, spattered with Layanna’s blood, and plucked it from the cobblestones.
“Poison—it must be,” he said, though when he sniffed it he didn’t smell anything. He took in the elegant blade, the hilt embedded with flashing rubies. “A sacrificial knife, maybe.”
“Extradimensional,” Layanna said. Her breath came in labored gasps. “Specially made. That’s why ...”
Frustrated—and, he admitted to himself, actually scared—Avery wheeled on the attacker. “Who sent you?”
Limp, the fish-man said nothing and may not even have understood Avery. The whalers had stopped beating him and were only holding him down for constables, when they arrived, to take into custody.
“He’s one of them,” Layanna said, nodding toward the balconies and alleys where the watchers still kept their vigil.
Suddenly Avery saw that some of the watchers had moved into the courtyard and were slipping forward. Toward Layanna.
Constables were also moving forward, and up on the stage the mayor was shouting something, but Avery had eyes only for the approaching ngvandi.
“Get ready,” he told Layanna.
She grimaced, a hand still on her ribs. The air blurred around her, and he knew she was trying to bring her other-self over.
It didn’t come.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
The fish-men slipped closer. They gripped long poles tipped with sharp, strangely-colored metal, like overlong harpoons—to puncture Layanna’s sac, Avery realized, if she had been able to bring over her other-self. The attackers had come prepared to kill a god.
“The poison,” Layanna gasped. “I can’t ...”
The fish-men approached. Truly afraid now, Avery shoved Ani toward one of the whalers, then spun to Captain Greggory.
“Your pistol!” he demanded. “Shoot them!”
“What—?” Greggory said. He’d removed the gun from his jacket and was aiming it uncertainly at one of the approaching fish-men, then another.
Avery snatched it out of his hands. “Get back! Protect Ani!”
The attackers coiled their long harpoons. The crowd had drawn away, and if any constables were trying to push through them, the press was too thick for them to get near. Avery and Layanna were in a bubble all alone, with even the whalers moving back. About a dozen attackers, he guessed. And five or six bullets.
“Get out of here, Francis,” Layanna said. “They only want me.”
The fish-men shoved through the last circle of people and entered the clearing. They looked relieved when they saw Layanna unable to bring her otherworldly aspects over.
Avery took aim at the nearest attacker, but the man was moving, and Avery knew he was not a particularly good shot in any event.
The attackers approached, the leader poised to hurl his weapon at Layanna …
Avery turned and fired at the aquarium, a suitably large target. Once. Twice. Again.
The wall of glass holding back the eels erupted. Cascades of foaming, crackling water surged out and over the cobbles, huge long shapes thrashing in the tide. The crowd screamed and scattered, almost stampeding. The attackers’ eyes widened.
The water burst over Layanna and Avery, knocking him down and dashing the gun from his fingers, nearly dislodgi
ng his glasses. A long green shape shot past, and he heard a scream. He threw himself over Layanna and pressed them both to the ground, making as small a target as possible. Water tore at them, but he held on tight. Something heavy slithered over him and was gone.
At last the surge was over. Crackling water bubbled all around in a spreading, thinning pool. Three long green shapes ripped into the nearest meals, the attackers, who writhed gruesomely under them. The rest were fleeing. Drenched and shivering, Avery and Layanna clung to each other.
Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she sagged.
Avery felt her pulse: fluttering but present.
“An ambulance!” he said. “Someone call an ambulance!”
Constables finally arrived. The group of watchers that had orchestrated the attack were slipping away, and although they couldn’t have gone unnoticed, no one stopped them.
“Papa!” Ani cried, running forward to wrap her arms around him.
“No!” He halted her with an upraised palm. “Don’t! I’m wet. You could get infected. Someone please call an ambulance!”
* * *
Janx looked up blearily when Avery arrived. The big man lay prone on a narrow table drinking from a chipped green bottle while the monkey Hildebrand hooted, gibbered and leapt about the tattoo parlor like a demon, sometimes alighting on Hildra’s lap or shoulder; she slouched in a chair along the wall, a lean young woman in a black leather jacket with scars on her face and a gun at her hip.
A squinting Azadi needler carved a bleeding face into Janx’s back. A jungle of other tattoos covered the big man’s body from head to toe, an intertwined tangle of dragons and sea-nymphs, horned slugs and tigers, a great whale, a volcano god, voluptuous women and maps of legendary lands that Janx claimed to have seen, perhaps been the only one to have ever seen. The face currently being woven into this chaos was that of Muirblaag, Janx’s dear friend, whom Janx had tried to kill two months ago.
Seeing the tattoo, Avery rubbed his own upper right arm where Muirblaag’s name had been inked weeks ago; Janx had never wanted to admit Muirblaag was gone, and had never properly honored his passing, but their encounter with Uthua on what they were calling Activation Day had finally altered his opinion. The name just below Muirblaag’s on Avery’s arm read Frederick: Layanna’s son, who had died that very day. Indeed, he had saved them all.
Janx pulled a slurp off his bottle and blinked at Avery, and the sailor that was Avery’s guard and only escort hung back as the doctor stepped forward. To Avery’s shock, tears shone in Janx’s eyes, which burned red, though he didn’t release them.
Avery touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, for what seemed like the thousandth time.
Janx offered him a pull on the bottle. Avery declined. To the tattoo artist, he said, “How long do you need?”
“Not long.”
Janx said something, but it was so slurred that Avery couldn’t make it out. He looked for help to Hildra.
“I know,” she told Janx. “I know.” To Avery: “You hear the latest?”
“Latest what?”
“The thing wiping out islands, of course. It wiped out one of the Gyrgins last night.”
“I heard. It’s terrible. That’s not why I’m here, though.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “Layanna was attacked.”
“Shit.”
Janx set the bottle down and told the tattoo artist, “Hurry up, hon.”
“So how bad is it?” he asked Avery some minutes later, as they made their way through the packed streets. Janx listed and swayed as he walked, still drinking, but he was used to massive amounts of alcohol and stayed mostly on course. Hildra helped him when needed.
“She’s in the hospital,” Avery said. “We’re going there now. The doctors have done all they can. The wound’s superficial, but the poison is unknown. We think it’s in the metal itself.”
“But she’s okay?” said Hildra.
“She was awake and talking normally when I left, and I think the worst is past. The poison’s main property seems to have been to prevent her from bringing over her other-self and to slow her healing. To make her killable, in other words.”
“She’s alone now?” Hildra actually sounded worried.
“I had a few whalers stay to guard her. Captain Greggory was there, too. I just wish I knew more about the attackers. Whether they mean to try again.”
Janx shrugged. He was bare-chested, and when he rolled his huge shoulders blood oozed around the bandage on his back where Muirblaag’s face had just been inked. A fly idly buzzed around it.
“If they do, we’ll be ready,” he said.
From his perch on Hildra’s shoulder, Hildebrand hooted in agreement. Webbing ran between the fingers of the monkey’s right hand, and his teeth were sharper than they should be, some almost needle-like. Metallic green scales showed along part of his neck and back. Other than that, the little primate had come through being infected by the sea quite well, although he had been sick for nearly a week after the party was picked up by the Verignun.
“Look at this.” Avery produced the weapon the would-be assassin had used against Layanna, and its jewels winked under the sun. Avery had told the police the water had swept it away, but there had been no way Avery would let such a weapon escape him. It could kill a Collossum.
“A sacrificial knife,” Janx mused.
“Think I saw one like that in Vasnir,” Hildra said. “Maybe it couldn’t kill a whatsit, but it looked a lot like that one.”
“Vasnir?” Avery asked.
“You know. One of the sewer towns under Hissig.”
Avery smiled. It was an old urban legend, the mutant cities in the sewers. “There are no such things. Anyway.” He returned his attention to the knife. “It seems they wanted to kill her according to their rites.”
When they reached the hospital, Layanna glanced up from her bed, where she sat cross-legged behind Ani. To Avery’s shock—and bark of startled laughter—Layanna was braiding Ani’s hair. Ani had short dark hair, and the braid wouldn’t be very long, but the girl was smiling happily as Avery closed the door.
“What do you think, Papa?” she asked. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“I think it’s adorable,” he said, kissing her on the top of her head, then giving Layanna a somewhat longer kiss on the lips. A bandage wrapped around her side. “But I thought I told you to go back to the ship.” He shot one of the four whalers in the room a sharp look.
The man shrugged. “She wouldn’t go.”
“I’m not leaving Aunt Lay,” Ani said. “Besides, I wanted my hair done!” She said this as if it were imminently sensible.
“Whoever attacked could return,” Avery said. “It would be better for you to be on the ship.”
Ani crossed her arms over her chest and said nothing. He sighed.
“How’re you feeling, blondie?” Hildra asked the patient in what almost sounded like concern.
“Much better, thank you.” Layanna looped another braid. This was the most feminine thing Avery had ever seen her do. “You know, we could do this for you, too.”
“Ha,” said Hildra. “Don’t you touch me.”
“Oh come on,” said Ani. “It would be fun.”
“Who were they?” Avery asked Layanna. “The attackers? You seemed to recognize them.”
That divot of concentration reappeared between her eyebrows, and she glanced momentarily to the whalers, then Ani.
“Could we have some privacy?” Avery asked them.
They left. Ani refused, and after a moment Avery decided the girl might as well hear this.
“They were the old families,” Layanna said. “The ones descended from those who inhabited the islands before the modern age, before processors could ward off infection, before the islanders had much contact with the outer world.”
“I gathered that,” Avery said. “They were all completely mutated; born that way, surely, and since they were all that way suggested they hailed from the more ancient Azadi
lines. But that doesn’t tell me why they attacked you.”
“Doesn’t it? Think about it.”
Avery had been. Slowly, he said, “The Mnuthra ...”
“Go on.”
“They were gathering the ngvandi in the Borghese. Organizing. Motivating them. Harnessing the infected into one force, an army to wield against the foes of Octung, perhaps even Octung itself.” When she didn’t interject, he continued, “Perhaps other Collossum, or even non-transformed R’loth—since this is the sea, after all—have been organizing and brainwashing the Azadi infected in a similar fashion.”
“The peoples of the sea have worshipped us for centuries, Francis,” Layanna said patiently. “We’ve nurtured and encouraged this, and benefited from their offerings. Some even have active, functioning altars by which to send us those offerings to this day.” She paused. “The Azad Islands aren’t one of them, however. Their altar went mostly defunct years ago. My people would have guided them in repairing it, but such a small minority of worshippers was left here after the modernization that it wasn’t deemed worthwhile.”
“Obviously they have some contact with the R’loth,” Avery argued. “They knew how to make the knife, and they knew your face.”
“Or my extradimensional signature, yes, and some way of detecting it. Either way, they could communicate with my kind in some fashion.”
“The R’loth ordered ‘em to kill you,” Janx said.
