She hugged her chilled shoulders. ‘Well … you have rather lost that certain mysterious cachet I kept you for, I must say.’ She bit at a finger with perfect white teeth. ‘I’m going to have to let you go, Thurule.’
The man’s brows clenched as he bowed. ‘I understand. I am unworthy.’
Oh, Dark Mother! Please! She turned away, snapping her fingers. ‘Palley! Where are you? My hair is drying! The court awaits me!’
Her maid rushed back into the room. When Envy glanced back the man was gone. Thank the false gods! Really. How positively embarrassing.
*
Madrun and Lazan Door were tossing dice against the steps of Lady Varada’s estate house when four masked Seguleh entered the compound. The two shared knowing looks as Lazan scooped up the dice.
‘Our taciturn kin approach,’ Madrun rumbled. ‘Perhaps we too should remain silent as well. We could stare at one another till the gods pack up the world and return from whence they came.’
‘And these would yet remain none the wiser,’ Lazan answered. ‘No, reflections of themselves these understand all too well.’ They straightened to meet the arrivals, the giant Madrun in his clashing patchwork clothes looming over all. ‘You are bold burglars, sirs,’ Lazan greeted them.
‘You two are known to us,’ one said. ‘Cause no trouble and you may remain.’
‘This is of no help,’ Madrun complained to Lazar. ‘Trouble has so many facets.’
‘Stand aside. We are here to search the premises.’
‘Does doing our job constitute trouble?’ Lazar enquired, smiling, revealing his silver-tipped gold teeth.
The four spread out. The spokesman stepped forward. Olive green dominated the swirls painted upon his mask. From the pattern Madrun and Lazan Door knew him to be of the Four Hundredth. ‘I shall enter,’ he said calmly. ‘If you interfere my companions will act. Is this clear enough even for you?’
Madrun raised his hand. ‘A moment, please. If you would. Am I to understand, then, that you mean to enter while your companions wait, poised, in case we should attempt to stop you? Is that what you are trying to explain?’
The spokesman remained silent for some time. From behind his mask his gaze stabbed between the two, blazing. He drew breath to speak again, reconsidered, and clamped his jaws against it. His hand went to his sword.
‘Gentlemen and lady …’ a sibilant voice quavered from the doorway, ‘may I direct your attention to what I have here?’
All turned to face the doorway where Studious Lock floated amid his gauzy layers of tattered wrap. He held in one rag-covered hand a glass sphere containing a dark mist. ‘Spores of the Even-tine fungus. Known as the Mind-gnawer among the clans of the northern Odhan. Inhaled, they germinate within, sending fibres stealing up into the brain and releasing pathogens that render the poor victim insane … before killing him … or her. My companions have of course been consuming an inoculating chemical regularly. I myself am immune for reasons I need not expound here.’
Inoculating chemical? Madrun mouthed to Lazan.
‘So, gentlemen … and lady,’ Studlock added, nodding to the female Seguleh, ‘will you enter?’
The spokesman eased his hand from his sword. ‘We shall not press the matter now, Studious. But we shall return.’
‘Please do so. I look forward to expounding on yet another of my preparations. Or, perhaps, remaining silent and exploring the results in dissection. Always most edifying, that.’
The spokesman bowed, keeping his eyes upon Madrun and Lazan, then backed away.
Once the four had left, the gazes of the two guards swung to Studlock. The giant Madrun’s carried a degree of alarm. Lazan’s held grudging approval. ‘Well played,’ he murmured. ‘That orb, I presume, holds nothing of the kind.’
Studious, who had been admiring the object, now blinked at Lazan from behind his gauzy mask. ‘What’s that? Nothing of the kind? Not at all. It holds precisely that.’ And he threw it down to shatter on the steps.
Both guards leapt from the vicinity.
A good five paces off Madrun straightened his waistcoat and the billowing frilled shirt beneath it and cleared his throat. ‘This inoculating chemical you mentioned, Studious. Its efficacy is beyond reproach, yes?’
The castellan was examining the stone steps. ‘What’s that?’ He waved a wrapped hand. ‘Oh, that. There is no known antidote.’
‘No known …’ The gazes of the two guards met across the thirty feet between them. Lazan slapped his hand over his nose and capped teeth.
‘Well, that should be the end of them,’ Studlock announced, satisfied.
‘End of who?’ the giant Madrun fairly squeaked.
The castellan gazed at him, his masked head tilted. ‘Why, the ants of course! What else? Even-tine spores affect only them.’ He floated back inside. ‘Didn’t I say that?’
The two regarded one another for a time in silence. Lazan eased out his long-held breath. He raised a hand and shook it, rattling the dice. ‘The bones didn’t see that,’ he commented.
Madrun nodded in profound agreement. ‘Yes. Spores. Much too small to be seen.’
*
They took turns keeping watch at the ruined door to the bar. A barrier of a table and heaped chairs blocked it. A few of the regulars had banged on the table to be let in and Picker nearly speared one fellow who refused to believe the bar was actually closed and tried to climb in over the chairs.
Two days after the Seguleh entered town Blend was watching the street from a front window when she called out, ‘Trouble!’
Spindle snatched up his makeshift spear and ran for the front. He peered out between the slats they’d hammered across the window: the hunched mage, Aman, across the way. With him were several Seguleh. Spindle glanced back over his shoulder. The historian sat at his usual place. Picker had run for the rear. The bard was out. ‘Hood. We are so dead,’ he groaned.
He set aside the spear to pick up one of the readied crossbows. Blend did the same. ‘Raise your Warren,’ she told him.
‘My Warren’s no use here.’
Blend sent a scornful look from her window. ‘Your Warren’s never of any damned use. What about your other help?’
He was silent for a time, considering. Blend fired through the window. ‘The next one won’t miss!’ she bellowed. ‘Stay away!’
The mage, or whatever he was, Aman, remained across the street, watching, while the Seguleh advanced. Duiker came to Spindle’s side. ‘I’m unarmed. Perhaps I could talk to them …’
‘You could try,’ Spindle told him; then, to Blend, ‘My other help says we’re not alone here.’ He was forced to fire on an advancing Seguleh. The woman knocked the bolt aside with her blade. Gods damn! From only twenty feet away, too.
‘What are your terms?’ Duiker called from the scorched doorway.
‘Your heads are my terms,’ the mage shouted back.
A scream of surprise and terror sounded from the rear and Blend jumped. Picker? She threw down the crossbow and ran for the door to the pantry and kitchen. Duiker took her place, thrusting with a spear. He drew the haft back, surprised, to examine its cleanly severed end.
As Blend reached the door it was thrust open to reveal a Seguleh. She swung, her blade biting into the man’s chest. He responded by grasping her arm and twisting. She buckled, hissing her pain and leaving the long-knife standing from the man’s leather-armoured chest.
Spindle stared, then sniffed the air. Vinegar? Blades hacked at the wooden slats behind him. ‘Hey — it’s them pickled fellows from downstairs!’
Picker rushed out from behind the preserved Seguleh. She twisted its grip from Blend’s wrist and it moved on, ignoring them. Spindle and Duiker retreated from the front where the living Seguleh were pushing back the barrier. They watched in disbelief as three more of the slow-walking, deliberate creatures emerged from the rear and took up defensive positions with the one Blend had stabbed: two at the front and two others holding the windows. The rest, Spindle assumed, were covering the back. At the entrance the two attacking Seguleh thrust and cut so beautifully he could only watch, awed. But their preserved — undead? — brethren, while slower, possessed the insurmountable advantage of already being dead. And so blades sliced into leathery hardened flesh to no visible effect and the attackers could make no headway.