Glenda Larke: The Last Stormlord

Terelle stepped back into the passage leading to the main reception room. Light flickered as some of the lamps guttered. There was someone coming the opposite way, and she politely flattened herself against the wall to let him pass. But he didn't pass. He stopped: the pedeman in the blue tunic. She turned to hurry on, but he barred her way, his arm braced against the wall at chest height.

Her heart scudded; fear broke through on her skin in goose bumps. She did not look at him but kept her head lowered. "Excuse me, pedeman. I have work to do."

He did not move the arm but lowered his head to whisper close to her cheek. "How much is your first-night price, child?" The tip of his tongue thrust into her ear, seeking to know her.

She tilted her head away, reminded of the forked tongue of a snake questing after prey. "I'm not a handmaiden. I'm a servant." Her voice sounded thin and frightened to her ears. Her terror was out of all proportion to her danger; after all, one way lay the security of Garri and Donnick, the other way Opal and her servants. No one would allow him to touch her. Not this night. Yet she shivered as if the cold of a desert night wind brushed her skin.

Madam Opal won't sell my first-night before my bleeding starts, will she?

"You're a lying Gibber child," he whispered. "And you should not try to deceive your betters. I will buy your first-night, and you'll pay for that lie." He placed a hand on the bud of her breast and squeezed, the touch a promise of horror. "It won't be long now, will it, sweetmeat?" She pushed him away, ducked under his arm and ran for the safety of the reception room at the end of the passage.

But the safety was illusory, her danger only postponed.

She was crying when she entered the room, and dipped her head to hide the tears. The night was unending. The man in the blue tunic did not come back, but from one of the handmaidens she learned his name: Huckman. Pedeman Huckman, and worse still, he was a relative of Opal's. He owned a train of packpedes and ran cargoes from the coast to Scarcleft, bringing pressed seaweed briquettes to fuel the ovens and fireplaces and smelters of the city.

A wealthy man, and wealthy men bought what they wanted.

Fear fluttered at the edges of Terelle's thoughts for the rest of the evening. She still felt his hand on her breast, bruising her as he enjoyed her shock. Just thinking about him made her stomach churn.

At last the final dirty dishes and mugs were delivered to the kitchen and Opal indicated she could go to bed. Feet dragging with fatigue, she walked down the passage to the courtyard once more, on her way to the servants' stairs. Merch Putter was walking in front of her, on his way out after his time upstairs with one of the handmaidens.

Donnick opened the gate for the merchant, but before the man stepped through, he turned to press a tinny token into the youth's palm. And that was when they all heard it: a shrill keening, like a fingernail being dragged down a slate. No, more than that, a screech so horrible it shrieked of danger, of death on the move. Terelle had never heard such a sound before. She was terror-struck, rendered motionless. The merchant flung himself back into the courtyard, plunging sideways into the potted pomegranates.

Garri, on the other side of the courtyard, yelled "Zigger!" He dropped the bundle of dirty tablecloths he had been carrying and ran towards Donnick. "Close the gate! Close the blasted gate!"

But Donnick stood rooted, his mouth gaping foolishly at Garri, as if the danger was coming from his direction.

And the zigger flew into his mouth.

Terelle glimpsed it as a black blur the size of a man's thumb. The keening stopped abruptly, replaced by the shriek of Donnick's agony. He clutched at his throat and a gush of blood spewed from his mouth like water from an opened spigot. His screams faded into a choking gurgle. He fell to his knees, staring at Terelle, begging her for help she could not render. He clawed at his face, jammed his hand into his mouth, clutching for something he could not reach. She stared, appalled. His blood was splattered over her feet but she couldn't move.

Time slowed. She saw past Donnick through the gate to where a man stood on the opposite side of the street, his face muffled in a scarf. He held a zigger cage in one hand and a zigtube in the other.

She thought, her calm at odds with her shock, I suppose it's Rosscar and he meant to kill Putter. Her terror dissipated into numbing vacuity. Donnick fell sideways, his body twitching uncontrollably.

She moved then, to kneel at his side and stroke his arm, as if she could bring comfort.

Garri came to stand beside her, patting her shoulder in clumsy sympathy. "Go inside, Terelle. Nothing you can do here."

She stammered an irrelevance that suddenly seemed important: "He's from the Gibber, like Vivie and me. He tells me stuff. About the settle where he was born. His family." She started to tremble. "We must be able to do something-"

The steward shook his head. "Lad's already dead. His body just don't know it yet."

As if he heard the words, Donnick gave one last shuddering spasm that arched his back from the ground. His gaze fixed on Terelle's face, speaking his horror, his terror, his pain. When he collapsed it was with brutal finality. His eyes glazed, blank with death. The zigger crawled out through his open mouth and paused. Terelle hurled herself backwards, half sprawling as she levered herself away on her bottom, whimpering in fear.

The zigger sat on the plumpness of Donnick's lip, blood-covered and sated, purring softly while it used its back legs to clean its jagged mouthparts and brush the human flesh from its wing cases. Terelle's trembling transformed to shudders, racking her whole body.

"Kill it!" she begged, clutching at Garri's ankles. Do something, anything, please…

"I dare not, lass. That there beetle is a trained zigger, worth more tokens than I earn in a year, and someone'd blame me, sure as there's dust in the wind. 'S all right, though," he said, lifting her to her feet. "Won't hurt us. It's eaten now and won't want to feed again. In a while it'll fly back to its cage. That's what they're trained to do." He glared out through the gate to where the zigger's owner still waited, but didn't challenge him. With a sigh he turned back to her. "Go wash, child. Use the water in Donnick's day jar."

She looked down at her feet. Blood ran stickily down her legs and into her slippers. Shuddering, she kicked them off. Mesmerised, unable to stop herself, she stared at the zigger again. She wanted to flee, but couldn't bring herself to turn her back on it. Next to the gate, Merch Putter vomited messily into the pomegranate bushes.

"Remember that whining sound," Garri said, "and if you ever hear it again, take cover and hide your face. It's the wing cases sawing 'gainst each other in flight. Makes the victim turn his head, so all his soft bits and holes-eyes, nose, throat, ears-are facing the bleeding little bastard." He glanced at Merch Putter. "Go, Terelle. I'll take care of this, and tomorrow I'll report it to the highlord's guard. That's all I dare do."

"Would it-would it have made a difference if Donnick had closed the gate?" she asked.

He drew in a heavy breath. "No, I don't suppose so. It would've flown over the wall, wouldn't it?"

Just then the zigger spread its brightly veined wings and flew off, heading straight towards the cage held by the muffled figure on the other side of the street. Garri bolted the gate behind it, as if it was a departing guest.

Terelle fled towards the servants' rooms, leaving a line of bloody footprints across the courtyard. It was hot up on the flat roof of the snuggery. Terelle pulled the day bed into the shade cast by the adjoining wall of the snuggery's uplevel neighbours, but the heat of the afternoon shimmered in the nearby sunlight, dragging her water from her with its ferocity. She sat cross-legged on the woven bab ropes of the bed, a stone mortar jammed against her shins while she pounded the pestle. When the rubyleaf powder was fine enough, she added water to make a paste. She puzzled over the oddity of how something green could end up staining things red-brown. She failed to come up with a satisfactory answer, but anything was better than remembering the way Donnick had died the night before. Or the words Huckman had murmured in her ear and the way he had squeezed her breast.