Bellis’s stomach lurched. The vampir were cutting her off, confining her on the ship with them. She pressed against the wall and could not move, as if a film of ice held her.
On an old trawler, below mildewing eaves, Uther Doul put his blade through a man’s face. He turned away from the split, screaming thing he had made and raised his voice over the sounds of violence.
“Where,” he bellowed, “is the fucking Brucolac?”
And as he spoke, he was facing the Grand Easterly. He paused for a second at his own words and looked up at the steamer’s rail, toward its invisible deck and its miles of corridors, where he had left the Lovers in emergency session with their scientific advisors, and his eyes widened.
“Godsdammit!” he shouted, and began to run.
Bellis could hear a voice.
It came from very close to her, just around the corner from where she stood frozen, by the doors to the raised section. She held her breath, her heart quite cold with fear.
“Do you understand?” she heard. The voice spoke tersely, hoarse and guttural. The Brucolac. “He’ll be somewhere in that section—I don’t know exactly where, but I’ve no doubt that you can find him.”
“We understand.” Bellis closed her eyes at that awful second voice. It sounded as if the whispered words were chance echoes in parting slime. “We will find him,” it continued, “and take back what was stolen, and then we will leave, and the avanc will move freely again.”
“Well, I’ll be quick then,” the Brucolac said. “There’s two people I still have to kill.”
Footsteps receded. Bellis risked opening her eyes and moving her head a tiny way, and she saw the Brucolac stalking calmly and at speed toward the raised section of superstructure below which were the Grand Easterly’s meeting rooms.
Bellis heard the door open, and quick wet sounds brushing the threshold as the intruders entered.
Understanding and amazement hit her so hard she reeled. She knew in a sudden gust of insight what those newcomers were, and what—and whom—they were seeking.
So far . . . ? she thought, giddy. So far? But she had no doubt.
Holding her breath so that her terrified hyperventilation would not betray her, Bellis looked around the corner. There was no one in sight.
She tried desperately to think of what to do. She heard a rushing sound and a series of terrible screams from the ships below. She could not help but give a quiet cry when she saw what the intruders’ thaumaturgy had done, what was now happening to the men and women of Armada. She shook her head and moaned, stupefied by the blood and disfigured corpses she saw.
Another burst of energy crossed the air from the Hoddling, and a vivid anger settled very suddenly in Bellis’ guts, making her tremble. Her fear remained, but this new rage was much stronger.
It was directed at Silas Fennec.
You fucking bastard! she thought. You fucking stupid selfish swine! Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve brought here! She watched the carnage, her own hands bloodless.
I have to stop this.
And then she knew how.
She knew what had been stolen, and she knew where it was.
As the vampir sawed at the age-fused rope of the last of the Grand Easterly’s bridges, a sword-wielding figure hurled himself up the slats. The vampir stepped back in surprise and fumbled for their weapons.
Uther Doul reached the deck. The vampir closest to him brought out her flintlock and turned it on him, flickering her tongue and snarling, her fangs extending like a snake’s. Doul beheaded her with a kind of contempt.
Her two fellows watched the tattoo of her heels on the wood. Doul walked toward them without hesitation, and they ran.
“Where,” Uther Doul bellowed after them, “is the Brucolac?”
Crying out with every stroke, Bellis battered at the handle and lock with the candlestick she had grabbed, swinging it with all her strength. She wedged it into the crack and levered. The wood splintered and dented, but the door was thick and well made, and it was several loud minutes before the lock gave way. Bellis bayed in triumph as the door swung open, bleeding wood chips.
She threw open Doul’s cupboards and rummaged under his bed, kicking at floorboards, searching for the statue. It was not in the weapons rack, or by the weird instrument he had said was a Ghosthead artifact. Minutes passed and kept her in agonies as she imagined the bloodshed that must be continuing outside.
Bellis found the statue suddenly, wrapped in its cloth at the bottom of a cylinder in which Doul stored arrows and javelins. With a sudden reverential fear, she cradled the heavy thing as she ran through the Grand Easterly’s empty corridors, finding her bearings, remembering where she herself had been held in jail, searching for the secure wing of the old ship, looking very much as if she held a baby.
The Lovers were gathered in a meeting room with those few of their advisors they could find. The fighting was not yet an hour old.
The Lover was yelling uselessly at the frightened scientists, telling them that Aum and Tearfly were dead, and that there was something tearing their city apart, and that they had to know what it was, to fight it, when the door flew open, its bolt disintegrating.
In the shocked silence, everyone in the room turned to face the Brucolac.
He stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, his jaw stretched wide and his teeth wicked. He tasted the air with his serpent’s tongue and cast his yellow eyes over the assembled. Then he swept his arm quickly, encompassing everyone in the room except the Lovers.
“Leave,” he whispered.
The exodus took only a few seconds, and the Lovers and the Brucolac were left alone.
They watched the vampir, not fearful but wary, as he stalked toward them.
“This ends,” he whispered, “now.”
Without speaking, the Lovers moved slowly apart, making themselves two targets. Each had drawn their pistols; neither spoke. The Brucolac made sure neither could get past him to the door.
“I don’t want to rule,” he said, and there seemed to be a quite genuine note of despair in his voice, “but this ends. This isn’t a plan; it’s fucking lunacy. I won’t let you destroy this city.” He drew back his lips, and he hunkered down to leap. The Lovers hefted their weapons, knowing that it was pointless. They stole a glance at each other but looked quickly back at the Brucolac, who was ready to take them.
“Stand down.”
It was Uther Doul. He stood in the doorway, his sword glinting bone-white in his hand.
The Brucolac did not turn around. His eyes did not leave the Lovers.
“I know one thing about you, Uther,” he said, “one thing at least. Armada’s your home, and you need it. And I know that for all your stiff-faced shit about loyalty”—his voice became very hard for a second—“the city’s the one thing you won’t betray. And you know that they will destroy it.”
He waited, as if for a response.
“Stand down,” was all Doul said.
“If the fucking Scar exists,” whispered the Brucolac, still without turning, “and if they get us there and by some gods-fucked miracle we survive, then they’ll still destroy us. We are not an expeditionary force; we are not on some fucking quest. This is a city, Uther. We live; we buy; we sell; we steal; we trade. We are a port. This is not about adventures.” He turned and faced Uther Doul with his eyes caustic. “You know that. That’s why you came here, dammit, Uther. Because you were sick of adventures.
“Let’s have some rationality . . . We don’t need the fucking beast. We don’t need to haul arse across the world—we never have. The point’s not that some fucker centuries ago built those chains; the point is that they were left empty. And if we survive this lunacy, as long as we’re tethered to the bastard avanc these two will take us on another fucking voyage, and another, until we all die.
“That’s not our logic, Doul; that’s not how Armada works. That’s not why we came here. I will not let them end this.”
“Brucolac,” Doul
said, “you do not make this choice.”
Slowly, the vampir’s eyes widened, and hard lines broke his face.
“Gods . . . You know I’m right, Uther, don’t you? I can fucking see it on you. So what are you doing?” he hissed. “What do you have planned?”
“Deadman,” Doul spoke softly. “You will stand down.”
“You think so, Liveman Doul?” the Brucolac whispered. His voice was coarse with swallowed rage. Long strings of slaver stretched down from his extended teeth. The bones in his hands cracked as he closed his fists. “You think so? You’re a fine soldier, Liveman Doul. I’ve seen you fight. I’ve fought beside you . . . But I’m more than three centuries old, Doul. You take on a couple of my cadre, and you think you can face me? I killed my way to this city before you were born. I won my riding in war and fire. I’ve butchered things no liveman has even seen.
“I am the Brucolac, and your sword won’t save you. You think you can face me?”
The corridors of the Grand Easterly were absolutely empty. Bellis wound through the passageways, down stairways toward the jailhouse, her footsteps coming back to her in echo.
Even the hallway where Fennec was imprisoned was deserted, its guards summoned to defend Garwater like all the others. That was the bargain, Bellis understood suddenly. That was the deal. These empty corridors were what the Brucolac had delivered to the intruders.
Only the two thaumaturges outside Fennec’s cell had been left, and they were dead. Blood was still slicking across the floor as Bellis approached the corpses. The man had been attempting some hex, and little arcs of energy spat and dissipated like static from his fingers, which spasmed as his nerves died. The woman was next to him, splayed and opened.
Bellis was clumsy with fear, which welled up like vomit in her. She hovered outside the cell, standing in the blood, her hand poised to open the door, held back by terror. She battled with herself, utterly unsure of what to do.
Just throw it in there, a part of her said. Just leave it by the door, just run, just get out. And at that second there was a scream from inside the room, a dreadful panicked noise all full of terror. Bellis echoed it, crying out in horror, and she threw open the door and stepped in.
“It’s here!” she screamed, ripping the cloth from the hideous statue and holding it like an offering. “Stop! I’ve got it here. Stop! Take it; you can take it and go!”
At the far side of the room, separated from her by the bars, Silas Fennec was crawling backward, screaming again, driving himself into a corner of his cell. He did not even look at her. He was scrabbling like a child, gazing in a stupefaction of terror at what had come for him.
With a horrible slowness, turning her head through thick air, Bellis followed his line of vision, and with a spasm of cold shock that made her stumble, she saw the grindylow.
There were three. They were staring at her.
They jutted prognathous jaws, their bulging teeth frozen in meaningless grimaces, massive eyes absolutely dark and unblinking. Their arms and chests were humanoid, tightly ridged with muscles and stretched skin, grey-green and black, shiny as if with mucus. And narrowing at the waist, the grindylow bodies extended like enormous eels into flat tails several times longer than their torsos.
The grindylow swam in the air. They flickered, sending quick S-curves down the lengths of their extended tails, rippling them liquidly. They moved their arms in a random dance, like submerged swimmers controlling their buoyancy, clenching and unclenching their webbed claws.
They were absolutely quiet. Even with their hideous faces turned to her, Bellis was wooed by their languid, constant, silent motion. Their bodies were level with hers as their tails eddied in the air, suspending them above the floor.
One of them was adorned with a mass of necklaces in stone and bone. It was streaked with human blood.
Oh gods and Jabber look at you, thought Bellis in a kind of frantic croon. Look at you. You’ve come so fucking far . . .
The grindylow waited.
“Here . . .” Bellis’ voice was spastic with fear. She held out the statuette to them, gripping it carefully, scared that it would slip from her violently shaking hands. “I have it for you here,” she whispered. “I brought it. So you can leave now. You can go.”
Cold and quiet as abyssal fish, the grindylow merely watched her, flicking their tails.
“Please take it,” she said. “Please, I brought what was stolen from you. Take it, and . . . you can leave. Back to The Gengris.” Leave us alone, she prayed. Leave us be. The statue was heavy in her outstretched hands.
With a swift flash of his tail, the necklaced grindylow swam closer to her through the air, close enough to touch.
Bellis flinched violently as Silas Fennec screamed at her, “Bellis get out!”
The grindylow twisted its head toward her, quizzical, the blood that fouled it running in all directions across its skin, against gravity. With a languid yawn it opened its jaws.
Bellis flinched, let out a cry.
But from within its throat came a deep, breathy cough. Beadlets of blood from its teeth spattered the statue that Bellis held. Then another cough, and another, in careful rhythm: uh . . . uh . . . uh.
The grindylow was laughing.
A horrible, incompetent parody of human laughter.
The grindylow stared at her, unblinking, as she lowered her quivering hands. It clenched its teeth with a stone sound, then opened them again, and with its mouth held open and still, its throat flexed with the precision of human lips, it spoke.
“You think this?” the voice whispered, without nuance or intonation. “You woman think this is what was taken? For this you woman think we cross a world?
“We siblings cross from the dark cold of the lake, from pabulum towers and the vats, the algae palace, from The Gengris. We track this place across two four eight many thousands miles, many thousands. Tired and hungry and very angry. Many months. We siblings sit and wait under your place, and hunt, and at last find word, always looking for this man. This robberman, thief. For this?”
The grindylow began to ebb back and forth in front of Bellis, watching her, still pointing at the figurine.
“For this you think we came? This stone thing? Our magus fin? Like primitives you think we abase before gods carved in rock? For hocus-pocus in trinkets?”
The grindylow snatched out, and Bellis gasped and pulled back her hand, letting go of the statue as if it were hot, and the grindylow caught it before it had begun to fall. It hefted the rock figure, holding it up to its face. It stroked its cheek with the filigree of skin.
“There is essence here, but still, for this?” The throat gasped. “You think we are children, we siblings, to cross the world for a puissant toy?”
With a long, exaggerated, slowed-down motion, the grindylow swung its arm in a great arc, curling the figurine through the air with a dramatic, petulant movement, releasing it. It must have been traveling very fast, but Bellis could see it clearly as it spun toward the bars, its arms tucked tight around a coiled-up tail, exquisitely and unpleasantly rendered, its gross mouth puckered and ready, its one eye glinting at her with cold humor.
The figurine hit the iron with a massive sound and broke apart.
Shards scattered, and cold drops of something like oil.
Bellis was stunned. She watched the particles settle and felt something in the aether resonate and go out.
In the middle of the floor, surrounded by stone dust and gelatinous residue, was a sliver of flesh. The magus fin, looking like some rotten wrinkled fillet.
The grindylow ignored it, and fluttered their tails, and approached Silas Fennec behind his bars.
“We have found what was stolen from us,” the grindylow whispered. And then it moved with a strange violence, wriggling through air as if the air fought back, and reaching up, it parted the bars as if they were waterweed, pulling them apart so that it seemed they might tear into stringy fronds. But they held; they oozed back and were solid and upright o
nce more, and the grindylow had passed through them to the other side.
It hovered quite still over Silas Fennec, and he flailed in its shadow.
Bellis could not watch Fennec’s degradation, see him so stripped. She could not have imagined that he could be so afraid.
“We have what was taken,” the grindylow murmured, and it pulled back knife-sharp fingers and stabbed them down, and when she did not hear a cry or some wet sound Bellis opened her eyes again and saw that grindylow had rummaged in the rags that lay on the floor like castoff skins, and from them had pulled Silas Fennec’s notebook.
Bellis remembered it well: black-bound and thick, distended with inserted papers. She recalled its reams of nebulous jottings, heliotypes and inexpert sketches, notes, questions, and mementos.
The grindylow turned slowly through the pages. Periodically it would turn and hold up a page to the bars, showing Bellis something that told her nothing.
“The salp vats. The weapon farms. The castle. Our anatomy. A gazetteer of the second city. And see here,” it said with opaque triumph, “coastline maps. The mountains between the ocean and the Cold Claw Sea. Where our placements are. Where there are fissures, where the rock is weakest.” And something moved in Bellis’ mind: the first stirrings of comprehension.
“Would you tell your masters where is best for their excavations, robberman?” it asked. Cradling the stump of his arm, Fennec tried to move further away.
Bellis could see the page the grindylow had opened. She had seen it before, in her room, and in Croom Park, months before. Rough scribbles suggesting engines, red lines of force and striae of rock types crosshatched in ink. The hidden positions of The Gengris on the Cold Claw side; the paradoses and defenses; the traps.