Gregory Keyes - The Infernal city

“What the Xhuth! are you talking about?” Annaïg demanded. “You were there—you heard Toel. If I had wanted you dead, you would be dead.”

“I know,” she cried, wringing her hands. “It didn’t make any sense. The only thing I can think of is that you want to do it yourself, when I’m not expecting it. You could probably think of something really inventive and nasty. Look, I know you’re probably mad at me—”

“‘Probably’ mad at you?” Annaïg exploded. “You tried to kill me!”

“Yes, I see now how that might upset you,” Slyr said. “To be fair, I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with any sort of … Well, this .”

“Yes,” Annaïg said, measuring her words. “Yes, I understand that because you imagined I would be dead. Now I’m not, and because you haven’t a decent bone in your body, you assume no one else does.”

In that instant, her anger constricted violently into the most vicious rage she’d ever known. She felt a sudden jerk on her wrist and then something slid around her pointer finger and stiffened.

Qijne’s filleting knife. Of course—all she needed was to really want to kill someone. And she could. Two steps …

“Please, don’t joke with me,” Slyr pleaded. “I can’t even sleep, I’m so miserable.”

Annaïg willed her heart to slow. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You’ve been sleeping with Toel.”

Slyr blinked. “I’ve been procreating with Toel,” she admitted, “but you don’t imagine he lets me stay in his bed all night! I’ve been sleeping in the halls, terrified of what you’re going to do next.”

“Next? I haven’t done anything to you.”

“You didn’t poison the Thendow frills this morning?”

“They were poisoned?”

“Well,” she hedged, “not that I could tell. But I heard you were down there, handling them, and that doesn’t make much sense unless you were up to something. And you knew I was supposed to make the decoction of Thendow—”

“You aren’t dead, are you?”

“Of course not! I made Chave do the Thendow.”

“Unbelievable,” Annaïg said. “And did Chave die?”

“You’re clever enough to make something that would only affect me—I know you are. My hairs are all over our room.”

Annaïg rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to kill you, Slyr. At least not today.”

But then she remembered her appointment with Glim, and she shot the other woman a nasty smile.

“But there’s always tomorrow.”

“I’ll do anything,” Slyr said. “Anything you ask.”

“Perfect. Then go away and don’t talk to me again unless it’s pertaining to our work.”

It was probably twenty minutes after the woman left that the knife slowly withdrew back to Annaïg’s wrist.

The kitchen wasn’t still at night; the hobs were there, cleaning, jabbering in a language she didn’t know. She had wondered about that, from time to time. Everyone she had spoken to claimed that everyone came out of the sump, went back to the sump, and so forth. But what about the hobs and scamps? Were they “people” in the sense that chefs and skraws were? Or were they like the foodstuff that came from the sump and the Fringe Gyre—things that grew and reproduced in a normal sort of way?

Maybe Glim knew. After all, he’d been working in the sump.

The hobs gave her curious looks as she passed through the kitchen. She wasn’t worried—she doubted they would say anything to their masters, but if they did, it would be too late.

Before entering the pantries, she stopped and looked back, and for a moment she almost seemed to see herself, or a sort of ghost of herself, the person she might have become if she’d followed Toel’s advice instead of her heart. The ghost looked confident, effective, filled with secrets.

Annaïg turned and left her there, to fade.

The dock, unlike the kitchen, was very quiet, and dark, and she had no light. She stood there, waiting, starting to feel it all unravel. What if it was all a trap of some sort, a trick, a game?

But then she heard something wet move.

“Glim?”

“Nn!”

And he was there, his faintly chlorine scent, the familiar rasp of his breath, his big damp scaly arms crushing her to his chest.

“You’re getting me wet, you big lizard,” she said.

“Well, if you want me to leave …”

She hit him on the arm and pushed back. “Daedra and Divines it’s good to see you, Glim. Or almost see you. I thought I had lost you.”

“I found Qijne’s body,” he said, “and the others from her kitchen—” He choked off into a weird, distressed gasping sound that she hadn’t heard since they were both children.

“Let’s not talk through our chance,” she said, patting his arm. “Plenty of time to talk later.”

Glim snorted. “No one is going to try and stop us,” he said. “No one here can conceive of leaving the place.”

“Toel would stop me, if he knew,” she said. “So let’s not dally.”

And so Glim guided her onto one of the big dumbwaiter things, and shortly they began ascending,

“I’ve never been up this,” Glim said. “But I suspect it’s a lot easier than the route I’ve been using. And you won’t have to breathe underwater.”

“Which is nice,” she replied. “Although I’ve got that covered, if it comes to it.” She patted her pockets.

“Do you?” he asked. His voice sounded a bit odd.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing that matters now.”

They arrived at a dock not unlike the one they’d left, but Glim found a stairway that took them up and out to the Fringe Gyre. Both moons were out, making a glowing ocean of the low clouds that came up almost to Umbriel’s rim. The gyre fanned below them, as fantastic a forest as she could ever imagine. And behind—the dazzling spires of Umbriel as she had never seen them—at night from the highest level. Even Toel was far below her. One tower rose higher than all of them by far, a fey thing that might have been spun from glass and gossamer. Who lived there? What were they like?

She took a deep breath and turned firmly away. It didn’t matter.

Then she handed Glim his dose.

“Drink,” she said. “Your desires guide you, do you understand? We want to be as far west of here as we can get.”

“I’ll just follow you,” Glim said.

She took his hand. “We’ll go together.”

And they drank, and they dropped away from Umbriel, and flew over the lambent clouds.

Sul furrowed his brow and mumbled something under his breath. The air before them shivered and coruscated, and suddenly a monstrous daedra with the head of a crocodile stood between them and the walking dead. It turned to face Sul, its reptilian eyes full of hatred, but he barked something at it, and with a snarl it turned and rushed into their attackers.

Sul waded in behind the thing, and Attrebus followed. He hacked at the rotting, boiled corpse of an Argonian; he hit its upper arm, and Flashing sheared through the decomposing flesh as if it were cheese, hit the bone, and slid down to cut through the elbow joint. The thing came on, heedless of its loss, and he had to fight the urge to vomit. It reached for him again and he cut off its head, which of course didn’t stop it either, so he next chopped at its knees.

The next one to come at him had a short sword, which it jabbed at him in a thoroughly unsophisticated way. He cut the arm off and then slashed at its legs, so it fell, too.