“Silly woman,” the eunuch said in his reedy voice, heading towards his trunk. “Could she know the true absence of sexual pleasure-”
“Silly? Not at all. From shock to shame to indignation. She is right to feel offended, at me and at her own eager response. I am now considering a scholarly treatise on the ethical context of Bloodwine. Member emboldened by chemical means, desire like a flood, overwhelming all higher functions, this is a recipe for procreative and indeed non-procreative mayhem. It is a great relief to my sensibilities to know how rare Bloodwine is. Imagine a ready supply, available to all humans the world over. Why, they’d be dancing in the streets brimming with false pride and worse, egregious smugness. As for the women, why, pursued endlessly by men they would swiftly lose their organization al talents, thus plunging civilisation into a hedonistic headlong collapse of swollen proportions-rather, sizeable proportions-oh, never mind. Clearly, I will need to edit with caution and diligence.”
Korbal Broach knelt in front of his trunk and flipped back the lid. Wards dispersed with minute breaking sounds, as of glass tinkling.
Bauchelain frowned down at his friend’s broad back. “Humbling, the way you do that.”
“Ah!” cried Korbal Broach as he leaned forward and stared down at his seething, slurping, burbling creation. “Life!”
“Is it hungry?”
“Oh yes, hungry, yes.”
“Alas,” observed Bauchelain, coming up to stand beside his companion and looking down at the monstrosity throbbing in its gloomy cave, a score of beady eyes glittering up at him, “would that it could do more than heave incrementally in pursuit of prey. Why, a snail could flee it with nary shortness of breath and-”
“No more,” sighed Korbal Broach. “Pleasant past-time. I harvested all the rats on board, yes?”
“So you did, and I wondered at that.”
“Child is now propelled by a flurry of feet.”
Bauchelain’s brows rose. “You have melded rat appendages to your offspring?”
“Feet, limbs, jaws, eyes and spines and tails, yes. Child now has many, many mouths. Sharp teeth. A snivel of noses, a perk of ears, a slither of tails.”
“Nonetheless, who would condescend to being gnawed to death?”
“Child will grow, clasping all to itself and so become more agile, larger, ever more hungry.”
“I see. Is there a limit to its girth, then?”
Korbal Broach looked up and smiled.
“I see,” Bauchelain said again. “Is it your intent to set your child in pursuit of the lich? Into the warrens?”
“Hunt,” the eunuch said, nodding. “My child, freed to hunt!” He licked his thick lips.
“This will delight the crew.”
“For a time,” and Korbal Broach giggled.
“Well, I shall leave you to it, then, whilst I set out to find my sword-for the time when your child flushes our unwelcome guest.”
But Korbal Broach was already mumbling rituals of sorcery, lost in his own, no doubt pleasant, world.
Emancipor Reese opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the horrid, desiccated visage of an ancient, toothless, nearly skinless woman.
“Aunt Nupsy?”
From somewhere nearby a thin voice cackled, then said in a rasping tone, “I have you now, demon. Slit your throat. Cut out your tongue. Twist your nose. Pluck your brows. Oh, pain delivered to start tears in your eyes and blood everywhere else! Agony and nerves afire! Who’s Aunt Nupsy?”
Emancipor set his hand against the dead face hovering in front of him and pushed the corpse away. It toppled to one side, folding in a clatter against a wicker wall.
“I’ll get you for that! See this knife? An engagement with your navel! Hard about and cut your sheets, snip at the wrists and over the side-all hands on deck! Husbands are a waste of time so don’t even think it! I bet she hated you.”
Bruises, knobby bumps on the brow, gritty blood on the tongue, maybe a bruised rib or three, throbbing nose. Emancipor Reese tried to recall what had happened, tried to figure out where he was. Darkness above, a faint ethereal glow from the grey-haired corpse, swaying, creaking sounds on all sides, the moan of the wind. And someone talking. He twisted round onto one elbow.
A scrawny wide-eyed child huddled against a curved wicker wall, clutching a knife in her small, chapped hands. “Don’t hurt me,” she said in a mousy squeak. Then added, in that wise rasp he’d heard earlier, “She’s not for you, oh no, demon! My teeth will leap at your throat! One by one! See that knife in my daughter‘s hands? It has drunk the life from a thousand foes!”
There was a rope tied round one of his ankles, the skin beneath terribly abraded. All his joints ached, leading him to a certain theory of what had occurred. “I’m in the damned crow’s nest. They strung me up, the bastards.” He squinted across at the girl. “You’re Bena Younger.”
She flinched back.
“Easy there, I won’t be hurtin’ you. I’m Emancipor Reese-”
“Mancy the Luckless.”
“Some things a man can’t live down, no matter how lucky he is.”
A cackle. “Lucky?”
“Gainfully employed, aye. Secure income, civil masters-why, my wife must be dancing on the mound in our backyard, back in Lamentable Moll. My children worm-free at last and with clean, evenly waxed teeth and all the other modern conveniences. Aye, my ill-luck is long past, as dead as most of the people I knew back then. Why-”
“Shut up. The nails, fool, have twisted free. Spirits unleashed, wailing spectres and wraiths, yet one has risen, yes, above all the others. Clawed hands snatching. Souls grasped-oh hear their shrieks in the ether! Grasped, devoured, and the one grows. Power folded in, and in, layer upon layer, grim armour defying banishment-sweet in its multitude of nostrils the scent of mortal life, oh how it now hunts, to take all into its fang-filled, slavering, black-gummed and unpleasantly-smelling mouth! Lo, I hear skull bones crunching, even now!”
“You addled, child? What is this old hag’s voice that comes so wrongly from your young lips?”
Bena Younger blinked. “Mother,” she whispered, nodding towards the corpse. “She speaks, she warns you, yes-why look upon me so strange? Why ignore her terrible glare so fixed upon you, sir? Bena Elder warns us-there is one below! Most terrible, oh, we have nowhere to go!”
Grunting, Emancipor Reese sat up and began loosening the knot at his ankle. “You’ve that right, Bena Younger. Nowhere at all.” He knew to tread now with great care with the hapless girl, whose mind had so clearly snapped, imprisoned up here in this wicker basket with a mother who was weeks dead at the very least. The gulf of loneliness, of abandonment, had proved too deep, and into the cauldron of madness she had gone.
Bena Elder reappeared in the manner of suddenly bared teeth on her daughter’s face. “Everyone shall die. Except me and my daughter-when the one comes, scaling the mast, and reaches so sure into this nest, it shall be your throat it shall grasp, Luckless. And we shall watch as it drags you over the edge. We shall hear the snap and crunch of your bones, the gurgle of your blood, the squishy plop of your eyeballs-”
“Think it won’t smell you two up here? Your daughter for certain, her life blood, the heat of her breath-all a tender lodestone to an undead-”
“I shall protect her! Hide her! In my embrace, yes!”
Emancipor struggled to his feet, leaned against the basket edge. “Might work. I wish you both the Lady’s tug. As for me, I’m going back down-”
“You mustn’t! Hear them down there! Insanity! And the one stalks, drinking deep on terror-”
And, as if to confirm the horror of all Bena Elder described, more shrieks from below. Renewed, redoubled, repeated. Nether, despairing, primal.
The mast and crow’s nest rocked as if buffeted by a giant’s fist. Sharp, splintering sounds. They heard a yard slide from rings then crash onto the deck below.
“Hood’s breath!” Emancipor gasped, clutching the edge, then twisting round and squinting downward. Shadows flitted here and there across the deck, more nightmarish than real. A body was sprawled near the hatch. There was no sign of what had struck the base of the main mast, but Emancipor could make out white lines to mark the splitting further down, almost luminescent against the tarred wood. “Something hit us down there, maybe even at the step down in the hold.” He glanced back to warn Bena Younger of the risk, caught a blurred sight of a knife pommel, flashing for his head.