Steph Swainston - Dangerous Offspring

‘I’ll speak to his Select.’

Rayne beckoned a doctor. ‘Watch over Serein and remove his armour.’ Then she turned to her next patient. She wouldn’t be diverted until all that could be done had been done.

I set off towards the water pumps where containers were stacked. I filled as many as I could carry and slung them around my body on two crossed leather straps. As I left, the last of Tanager’s lancers raced in. They didn’t seem to be bringing many survivors-some injured men rode pillion, but others were little more than chewed parcels, slung over saddlebows.

I flew bottles of water, packets of food and enough coffee to keep Frost going out to the dam for the next two hours. I even managed a couple of spades for which Frost was even more grateful than the coffee. Each time, the spoil heap by the portcullis had grown. By the fifth or sixth time I climbed through the window of the winch tower, it had completely blocked the portcullis and was slumping through to the walkway. Inside, a chain of men were passing buckets along and the one at the end threw the dirt onto the mound.

I sat on the ledge and hooked the supplies on a winch that Frost had rigged up. One of the soldiers lowered them, hand-over-hand, while I climbed down the wall.

Soldiers stood around the machinery, leaning on it to eat the latest packet of bread. They had all kept their helmets on for protection underground, and they were filthy; their faces black with dirt and glossy with sweat. They were surprisingly cheerful, though; I took their measure as I approached Frost.

She was sitting on a pile of burlap sacks, intent on her writing. Her jaw was clenched so tightly she had dimples in her cheeks. Tears ran down both sides of her nose.

She had a climbing rope wrapped around her waist, through a metal loop and coiled on the floor. She had obviously found it easier to abseil down the shaft, and the soldiers looked as if they would be happy to belay her anywhere.

I touched her shoulder and she jumped. ‘Jant? Wait, I’m finishing this letter. For the…will of god…and the…pro-tect-ion of the Circle,’ she pronounced as she wrote, and signed it. ‘Arch-it-ect for the Sovereign…Emperor San…and Chief Eng-in-eer of River-works Com-pa-ny.’ She blew on the paper, then folded it and dripped candle wax along the fold.

I said, ‘I brought more bread. It’s all I can carry.’

She nodded, and bellowed down the maintenance shaft, ‘Change of shift! Come up, the kettle’s boiled!’

She tittered hysterically, hyperventilated a few breaths, and checked herself. Her teeth were edge-on-edge, her forehead furrowed.

I offered her a muddy loaf. She wiped the tears away with her brigandine cuff and shook her head contemptuously. ‘No! No more time off!’ She sat down on the sacks. ‘Will you take the note to San?’

‘Yes. Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine. There’s no problem. I don’t know why you think there’s a problem, because there isn’t.’ I could hear the steel in her voice. She was showing both her personalities at once. Her extreme stress had laid them bare in front of me and it was like talking to two different people. I didn’t know whether to speak to the tearful, emotional woman or the single-minded engineer; whether to give her a comforting hug or a quadratic equation.

She took her bandanna off-her hair flowed loose, matted with mud. She blew her nose on the bandanna and stuffed it in her pocket. ‘Right! Comet, we have broken through into the downstream passageway. We’ve made a big hole in the maintenance chamber floor that the water will drain through. Now we are digging on the other side of the gate where the tunnel’s full of water. If we can keep up this rate, I expect to make a breakthrough sometime in the early hours of the morning…and the lake will start to drain…’ She turned to the men preparing to take the place of the even grimier diggers climbing out of the shaft. ‘Do ye hear that? The faster you shovel, boys, the more lives you will save! People out there are being savaged! Your fellow fyrdsmen are dying in whole battalions! Insect spawn are crawling all over the town and more of the… horrible things …are coming out of the lake every minute. Accept victory, and we will win. We will do what we set out to do!’

The men cheered.

She gave them a smile, then drew me aside to the spoil heap. Her eyes were bloodshot and brimming. ‘My last p-project. Riverworks’s final contract will be successful. The Emperor must then c-complete our plan and advance the t-troops over the lakebed…’ She caught a breath. ‘…And kill all the larvae we leave stranded in the mire. You must give him this-’ She handed me the letter.

‘Of course.’

She looked at me levelly, she seemed to have swung round to a calm phase. ‘Describe to the Sapper exactly what I am doing. Tell him the Glean Road will be passable but the Lowespass Road will not. The waters will take two days to subside. Will you tell him that?’

‘Of course.’

‘I never-ah-oh, Jant, I never built the basin for a hydraulic jump this huge…It’s…’

‘ Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. You must also send a semaphore to Summerday…Tell them to evacuate.’

‘Most of the Summerday people are here,’ I said. ‘The governor has been fighting.’

‘I know. But some are left in the town, and you must evacuate them.’

‘Why?’

She glanced over to the wall, on the other side of which was the lake. She breathed out the breath she had been holding for a few seconds, and tittered. Then she panted another breath. ‘When the lake drains, their…streets might flood.’

‘Might?’ I had never known her to be so unspecific.

‘Mm. Tell them to get out, immediately. And tell Mist to move the ships he has in the river mouth. I don’t remember who Mist is at the moment; I mean, what his real name is…So many come and go. But if he’s the Sailor, he’ll be able to do it.’

‘I’ll tell them.’

She nodded slowly. ‘Then goodbye, Jant.’

‘See you, Frost.’

I turned to go, but she clenched my hand. ‘Goodbye. Goodbye, Comet.’

Tears rolled unnoticed down her cheeks. She bit on her bottom lip, then smiled at her workers gathered around the hearth. ‘Oi! Shift B! Did I give you five minutes or five hours? Go back down there and dig faster!’

I climbed up the wall. As I slipped through the window, one leg in, one leg out, I looked down to see her sitting on the sandbags. She had taken the brown velvet rabbit from her lapel and was holding in both hands, looking at it as if in silent conversation.

Dusk was obscuring the gruesome remains. Larvae were crawling everywhere, covering the uneven ground sickeningly swiftly, and gathering in hordes around any flesh they could find.

I only saw adult Insects in the distance towards Plow-they were already moving on. I wondered why and then I saw larger larvae among the rest-the second moults. They moved nearly as fast as adults, eating their smaller brethren. Maybe the adults were leaving because they feared their own growing spawn turning on them.

I noticed one about to shed its skin and circled low, watching. It suddenly raised its head and froze. I could see through its shell; a slimy bulk was moving inside, pressing uneasily against the surface as if struggling to get out.

Its thorax split down the midline. A pale bulge pushed out through the crack and arched up: the new thorax. The nymph pulled back and withdrew its head from inside the head of the empty carapace. Its chitin was almost white; its legs looked soft as it clasped its empty shell, standing on top. It had a dented, unfilled look but it arched its back and pulled its abdomen free of the casing. As I watched, it began to harden, turning darker brown. The hollows in its abdomen filled out and rounded; its short antennae began to move.