On either side of the passage were open-fronted alcoves. Stone couches complete with carven pillows were built into all three sides of each. The corpse of an old man lay across the left-hand alcove. Two of the Nine were helping Tilphosa up from a side couch. She wore a dazed expression and kept trying to wipe her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“Well, who…?” Cashel said. He glanced at the meal he’d heard the Nine devouring when he burst in.
The creature who’d first spoken sprayed Cashel’s fettered feet tinglingly. He closed his eyes in reflex, but he’d seen more than he wanted to already. The corpse on the floor had been a man; the beard on the half of his face remaining proved that. His body had been emptied, but uneaten coils of intestine lay beside him spotted with attached blobs of yellow fat.
“You will go from Soong, will you not, stranger?” said one of the Nine. “It is better that you should.”
“We’ll go,” Cashel said. “Duzi help me, you bet we’ll go!”
He wondered if Tilphosa was really fit to travel, then decided that he didn’t care. He’d carry the girl on his back if that’s what it took to get away from this city and its charnel house.
Cashel stood. His eyes watered from the ammonia, and his stomach was turning. It wasn’t just death in the air; he thought the glue was doing something to his lungs also, though the smell of dead meat was bad enough.
Tilphosa stood, wobbly and still supported by the Nine. “Can I…?” Cashel asked, starting toward the girl before he had an answer.
“Of course,” said the creature who’d first spoken. His two fellows stepped aside for Cashel to take their place.
“Cashel, is that you?” the girl said. She clung to him like a spar in a shipwreck. Her flesh still felt cool, but she wasn’t a statue of ice as she’d been when he lifted her from the bed this morning.
“Yes,” he said. “We’re going to leave in just a moment, when you’re feeling up to it. I’ve got a boat. We’ll cross the river and then walk a ways to the east.”
He looked at the creature who’d spoken first and raised an eyebrow. Did the Nine recognize human facial expressions?
“That is a good plan,” said the creature. “We wish you well on your way, but please do not return to Soong.”
Cashel’s quarterstaff had made it all the way around the Nine. The last to examine the wood held it out horizontally to Cashel. His pincers gripped the staff so gently that they didn’t mark the hickory.
With the staff upright in his left hand and his right arm supporting Tilphosa, Cashel felt his stomach settle. Maybe it hadn’t been the smell that was bothering him after all.
“Ah, thanks,” he said, walking slowly toward the passage. Turning his back on the creatures worried him, though that was pretty silly given the way they’d handled him face on when he’d charged.
One of the Nine stepped out the passage ahead of the humans. He seemed to move by rocking his four clawed feet forward in a motion that reminded Cashel of gears in the millhouse rather than that of any animal he’d seen before walking. The legs scarcely moved at all.
Tilphosa’s mind or vision must have cleared enough for her to take in the figure ahead of them. She stiffened, but she continued forward with Cashel’s left hand lightly touching her shoulder.
“I thought I was dreaming,” she whispered. “I thought I was having a nightmare, Cashel.”
“We’re fine,” he said, words to soothe her. They were probably true, but Cashel himself wouldn’t really believe what he’d said till they were across the river and going away.
A breeze had swung the outside door nearly closed. The creature leading them opened it fully and stepped through, holding the panel for Cashel and his companion. The remainder of the Nine followed slowly.
“Sir?” he said to the creature. It rotated its narrow, sharp-edged skull to face him.
“Sir,” Cashel went on, “how is it that this…I mean, doesn’t anybody guess what you’re doing here? There’s only the few of you. If as many people as there are in the city wanted to come into your temple, you couldn’t stop them.”
“We were here before humans came to Soong, stranger,” the creature said. His voice seemed to come from the center of his chest; it had a buzzing undertone, sort of like a whole chorus of crickets were singing harmony to make the words. “The first settlers knew who we were; they built the temple we live in.”
He paused. “Their children, the people of Soong, know also, but they prefer not to think about our necessities and theirs. It is better that you go rather than stay to tell a story that others do not wish to hear.”
“But why did they agree to, to feed you this way?” Tilphosa said. As she spoke, her right hand tightened on Cashel’s left biceps. He tensed the muscle, because otherwise her pinching was going to hurt. “Did you threaten…?”
The creature scraped his beak again. That had to be laughter.
“Woman stranger,” he said, “look about you. This valley is marsh up to the ridges. The wood here burns poorly, and every year a flood would float out the contents of the graves.”
Cashel nodded. The only real choice for burial was the river. There fish would dispose of corpses in much the same way as the Nine were doing…but with the likelihood of bloated, half-eaten bodies bobbing to the surface frequently. Cashel could understand the logic, though that last thought reminded him of the corpse on the floor of the main hall.
“We gave up our fish weirs,” the creature said, “and the human settlers gave us privacy to deal with their needs.”
“Right,” said Cashel. No part of him felt it was right, but it was no more his business than some of the things old widowers in the borough got up to with their ewes. He wasn’t going to be staying in this region; that was the only important thing. “I guess we’d best be getting on.”
The creature nodded like he knew what Cashel was thinking; as he probably did. The Nine were pretty clear about understanding the locals, after all.
He and Tilphosa set out down the path, the creature walking ahead like a pull toy on wheels. As they neared the center of the garden, Cashel heard a woman cry, “Is somebody there? Help me!”
He put his head down and slanted his staff before him, then charged through the hanging branches like a plow furrowing thin soil. The nuts his rush shook off scattered all around.
Leemay was in the bog. Only her head and the tops of her shoulders still showed. “Help me!” she said. “Pull me up!”
Cashel stretched out his quarterstaff. Something gripped it from behind and pulled it back.
He turned. Their guide released the ferrule it had gripped with its deceptively delicate-looking pincers.
“This is not your affair, stranger,” the creature said. “Let us go to your boat.”
“Help me!” Leemay screamed. “Don’t listen to that demon!”
“The Nine aren’t demons,” Tilphosa said. Her voice was as cold as her flesh had been when her scream roused Cashel this morning. “The Nine saved my life when a human sent me to die.”
“Sir,” said Cashel, looking from Leemay to the impassive creature, “I can’t just…”
“We have no business with the living, stranger,” the creature said. “But this one will be our business soon, and that is justice.”
The rest of the Nine had followed them. They stood now on the path, unmoving and silent. There was no threat in their posture, but Cashel already knew he had no chance if he tried to fight them.
Tilphosa put her hand on his arm. “Come on, Cashel,” she said quietly. “I’d like to get away from here.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Cashel agreed. He followed their guide. There was a path that took them around the bog with just a single screen of branches to brush aside.
Leemay shouted again, then began to scream. When Cashel glanced over his shoulder, he saw the Nine waiting around the bog. They were as motionless as buzzards on a branch.