Ian Irvine - Chimaera

She went for his throat again.

‘Ullii, it’s Scrutator T’Lisp controlling you. You’ve got to stop her.’ Out of the corner of his eye Nish could see the soldiers fastening their climbing ropes to the horizontal stay cables, preparing to come after them.

‘Ullii,’ he said, forcing himself to be as measured as possible. ‘Would Myllii want you to do this?’

It was the wrong thing to say. ‘You killed him,’ she screamed, trying to bite his nose. Nish jerked his head sideways and her teeth fastened onto his cheek and sank in through the skin. The pain made him lose control.

‘And you’re killing me, for the scrutators who killed our son! Can’t you get that through your thick skull, you stupid little bitch! You’re killing me .’

Ullii reacted as if she’d been struck across the face. She threw her head back and her eyes focussed on Nish’s bleeding cheek.

He’d broken through, if just for a second. ‘Please, Ullii, if there’s anything left in the lattice, use it. ’

Ullii strained, squeezing him so hard that his ribs creaked. A red mist passed before his eyes, Nish came over all faint and her face began to fade, replaced by the oddest vision.

A black, barbed knot, like a spinning ball covered in hooks, was whirling towards him. Other knots near and far were out of focus. He had to be seeing Ullii’s lattice. So it wasn’t lost after all.

‘If I lose it,’ Ullii said plaintively, ‘I’ll have nothing left.’

It took an effort to reply, for he couldn’t draw breath. ‘You’re not going to lose it.’

‘It’s been fading for weeks. It’s nearly gone. To use it will take everything I have left.’

Nish managed to raise his head and open his eyes. ‘If you give me up to them, how would you explain that to little Yllii?’

Tears welled in her eyes, as pink as if they’d flowed across caked blood. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’

‘When Ghorr takes us, he’ll torture me to death and give you to Fusshte to play with.’

She drew a deep breath and in his vision the spinning knot slowed then stopped. Glowing filaments extended out in all directions, while the centre went from black to orange to blue-white.

Nish’s brain felt as though it had revolved in his head. ‘Ullii?’ he gasped.

The soldiers jerked on their ropes, one man spinning like a spider dangling from a web, another freezing into a rigid spread-eagle. A third lost his grip and fell.

The clamour from above ceased abruptly. Nish felt a swelling pressure and caught a whiff of charred hair. People cried out in horror or disgust; he could hear them running. Someone retched, right above his head. Then, boom-splat , and something heavy thudded onto the deck.

The canvas began to char in the shape of a head and neck. As Nish stared at the blackening fabric, it pinholed and clear fluid began to drip through, followed by a loop of yellow slime that grew ever longer. Droplets of watery blood ran down the dangling thread.

Plop . An eyeball slid through the slowly enlarging hole, dangling from its optic nerve. A red-raw tongue slithered through another hole as the charring spread across the canvas.

Then, to Nish’s disgust and horror, a smoking face, bare of skin, flopped down on its skinless, wattled neck. The canvas parted to reveal the other eye, staring at them, still alive . It was Scrutator T’Lisp, all that was left of her.

Ullii cried out in horror and tried to throw herself out of the way. Nish crushed her to him with his free arm as the blue-lipped mouth opened, the yellow, angled teeth parted in a smile that was mostly rictus. For a moment Nish thought T’Lisp was going to scream a death spell at him, but a revolting sucking gurgle cut off what she had been going to say. Her jaws were forced open, she heaved once, twice, three times, then her intestines oozed out of her mouth, popping and squelching as they came.

Nish’s stomach heaved, though all he brought up was a thin green trickle of bitter bile that burned his throat and mouth. He spat the residue carefully to one side of a now limp Ullii and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

By the time he’d finished, the other eyeball had popped out, but the charred canvas gave way under the ruined creature’s torso and, thankfully, it fell through.

Framed by the hole, not two spans away, was the horrified face of Chief Scrutator Ghorr, spattered with the indescribable remnants of his former colleague. Red-brown fumes wisped from the sable collar of his coat and, to his left, Scrutator Fusshte was doubled over, choking. Behind him a pair of soldiers reeled in circles as if drunk. Whatever Ullii had done, it hadn’t just affected T’Lisp.

‘There – are,’ slurred Ghorr, sluggishly raising his arm at them.

Acting purely on instinct, Nish swung the crossbow up and fired through the smoking hole. The bolt struck Ghorr in the left shoulder, driving him backwards out of sight.

‘Ullii,’ Nish gasped. ‘Get a grip. You’ve given us our chance!’

With eyes screwed shut, she reached up for the rope. Nish fumbled a rag-wrapped bolt out of his pocket, slipped it into the groove of the crossbow and wound furiously. He touched the tails of the rag to the smouldering canvas and the rag flared. Taking careful aim at the nearest of the naphtha-soaked knots, he fired.

The bolt went true, embedding itself in the knot, and blue flame flickered there. Nish fired three more flaming bolts; each hit their target. Fire licked up and down the vertical cables and ran around the circumferential ropes between them. It was done.

The people on the amphitheatre began shouting, screaming and stampeding away from the fire, whose flames were already nibbling at the edges of the canvas. The cables were thick and it would take a good while for fire to weaken their tightly woven cores, though the canvas would burn through in a minute. Flame ran up one cable like a wick, causing cries of panic from the scrutators, rightly terrified of an explosion of floater-gas that would threaten all their craft. Two of the soldiers hanging over the side fell, ropes blazing. The others swiftly pulled back out of sight.

‘Put it out!’ someone screamed.

Across at the nearest knot, cloaks were flapped as the soldiers tried to smother the flames, though after each thump the fire sprang out again.

Someone shouted, ‘Water, quickly!’

Nish didn’t dare stick his head up through the hole, but he put his ear to the canvas and their voices came clearly to him.

‘You can’t put out naphtha with water, fool,’ came Ghorr’s halting voice. Though in much pain, he was still in control. ‘Cut up sheets of canvas … roll it round the ropes … smother it. Guards – carry me to my lifting chair. What’s it doing way up there? Lower it at once. Healer? Where’s my healer, dammit?’

‘Are we to abandon the executions, then?’ said Fusshte. He spoke thickly, as if his tongue had swollen to fill his mouth.

‘Of course not,’ Ghorr snapped, regaining control of himself. ‘The spectacle must go on. The Council has to show that it’s in control. We can’t be driven away by a renegade traitor and a squeaking mouse.’

‘If a spark rises up to one of the airbags and sets off the floater gas –’

‘It won’t if you take control of the fires. Get on with it! Get a squad of soldiers to each fire and check the rest of the cables. And shut that rabble up.’ The prisoners were shouting, cheering and urging Nish on. ‘Where’s my captain?’

‘He’s trying to put out the cable fires.’

‘Take charge here and calm the witnesses. Order must be restored at once.’

Fusshte ran and gave the commands, then came back. ‘And if we can’t put out the fires?’