by D Des Anges
El Alacrán attacked.
Ferdinand stumbled behind the nearest tree-trunk, dragging with him Hajar’s now unresisting body. Once more he found his mouth open and his hands plastered across it as he watched, his horror renewed and living in spite of his attempt to think clear.
El Alacrán darted beneath the great green arthropod, his elevation giving him greater speed, and struck upward with his tail. He aimed, Ferdinand supposed, for the soft places on the creature’s belly: but the beast danced her way from him and thrashed at the scorpion with her great serrated forearms.
The scorpion scurried out of the path of the blow, which struck a vast branch from the nearby tree as if it were kindling, and snapped at the creature’s delicate-seeming heels as he went.
“They are running about over his brain,” Hajar said in a voice devoid of feeling.
Ferdinand saw her sag against the tree trunk before her, and turned his attention back to the fight:
El Alacrán had seized upon one of the great beast’s forearms with his claws, and clung to it with the tenacity of a limpet or barnacle. The beast lifted him from the ground with such effortless ease that Ferdinand was compelled to bite his own hand to keep from crying out.
The scorpion dangled from the creature’s forearm like washed clothing from a line, still thrashing out with his whip tail. And now, now he sought to drive the wicked barb it was tipped with into the beast’s eyes, Ferdinand saw, now El Alacrán held nothing in reserve.
The great beast tried with its other jagged arm to clamp any part of El Alacrán and sever it as the two tangled and danced together like monstrous lovers.
Even hanging from this arm, El Alacrán was not without manoeuvre, for he swung and thrashed and whipped his way free of the path of the great arm with breath-taking grace. Twice he flinched up all his legs and curved up his tail – taking the opportunity even to aim a stab at the arm to which he had clung – in order to avoid the heavy arm.
Ferdinand did not quite see how it came about, but one of the green arthropod’s determined efforts to shake El Alacrán from its forelimb resulted instead in the creature launching an angry scorpion onto what Ferdinand could not help but think of as its face.
He was swept with a simple sense of triumph as El Alacrán clung to the creature’s head with all his feet and snapped with bold ferocity at the place where the murderous forelimbs met the beast’s thorax –
One flailing forelimb caught the curve of El Alacrán’s tail and with a thud which sickened the very pit of Ferdinand’s stomach to hear it, it snapped shut with force that made El Alacrán’s great claws seem puny indeed.
The force of the snap was shown in the instant, as El Alacrán gave a screech, and half of his tail came away as the huge limb pulled back.
“No,” Ferdinand breathed, through his fingers.
He heard his sentiment echoed in Hajar’s voice, but there was little time for dismay: El Alacrán, thus disarmed, did not seem yet ready to surrender the fight.
Instead the great scorpion dove at the arthropod’s neck with a renewed fervour, slashing and snapping at the connection between head and body with terrible blows. It looked so delicate a neck that Ferdinand was sure the beast’s head would fly clean off and the fight be won –
But the great flailing limbs again caught El Alacrán as pinchers and seized upon the legs of his left side, ripping them from his body without pause.
The screech that came was weaker, this time, and Ferdinand wished he might risk covering his eyes to save himself from seeing.
The next blow of the arthropod knocked the unbalanced scorpion from its body altogether. Though El Alacrán, propped on his right side only and missing half his tail, still snapped his claws with menace and vigour Ferdinand could see this was no contest any longer.
He averted his gaze, and in so doing almost failed to duck when the hateful arthropod flung one of El Alacrán’s claws direct at the tree behind which he stood.
Hajar tugged him down by his garb, and they sank into a shaky squat in fear of any further missiles.
But the arthropod had, it seemed, finished its hurling. As Ferdinand watched, once more unable to look away, the beast snapped in two El Alacrán’s body.
It was not so simple a blow as the severing of his tail, and took (Ferdinand once more bit his own hand to keep from crying out) several snaps of the serrated forelimbs to achieve. With each blow, with each single blow El Alacrán’s one remaining claw snapped at the beast, weaker, and weaker.
The green arthropod did not spare them a further glance. Having bested its adversary, it took to its long, strong legs at a gallop, and was gone into the forest with a crash and a clatter without comment.
For a long, long time, Ferdinand and Hajar squatted behind the tree trunk. They gazed as if bound out at what had become a clearing through dint of destruction, and a charnel-house through the dint of terrible loss.
At last Ferdinand turned from the gruesome scene and sat with his back to the tree trunk.
He laid his arms across his knees and his head in his hands, and saw naught but the shredded remnants of Benjon’s skin and El Alacrán’s carapace even when he squeezed shut his eyes.
He said nothing, for at this moment there was nothing either of them could have said.
Chapter 26
Though she would not later admit to it, it was more than forty full days before Hana al-Fihri Auda Bedu Ird grew to experience true concern over the whereabouts of her daughter.
Had she been of the disposition to admit to this, she would have indicated with polite correctness: she had received notice of Hajar’s leaving; medical emergencies often changed in length from their predicted duration, for medicine was a delicate subject, and a rare illness hard to predict; and that her daughter was, by the time of Hana’s first flickering unease at her prolonged absence, full thirty years of age and quite capable of making her own decisions.
Nevertheless, as grime-greyed snow clung to the rooftops and roads of Durham with varying degree of success, Hana found that her replies to perfunctory enquiries after the health of her daughter grew more uncertain.
She was ‘travelling in the Frankish territories’, itself a matter for comment, for she went unchaperoned in the company of a troublesome Israeline doctor and rumour already crept about declaring that she had eloped.
No, Hana did not know when she was to return.
No, Hana had not received any letter.
No, Hana was not in possession of an address at which she might write to her daughter, either.
These troubling admissions married to the need to order a brood-hen and took Hana through the streets toward the School of Non Occult Sciences.
She was required, now, to exchange her slippers for ugly, heavy boots before leaving her rooms, and found that they changed her stride while in the business of protecting her toes from becoming too numb to walk. The only manner of movement now open to her was to either shuffle like an old woman bowed by the troubles of the world, to which Hana refused to be brought, or to stride like some Captain in the attempt of impressing his General, to which her hips refused to be brought.
Her compromise made her ill-tempered, but at least did not make her look so very much like a madwoman as some of the other walkers she passed in the snow, with their fur-lined hoods pulled tight up over their heads and their fingers blue and numb about their baskets.
The errand boys ran with great haste even on the least pressing of business, the better to keep their poor-shod feet from freezing, and one near barrelled Hana over in his desire to be off the snow-slippery street.
The canal path, never her first choice of passage, was now barred in whole by a small group of men in black-dyed coats, some armed with great iron hooks upon wooden poles longer than they. The steam of their breath rose from them as if they were a herd of horses.
“Path’s closed, Goodwife,” said one, as she approached. “Take the city way.”
“What has happened?” she asked, sure t
hat many must have asked the same by this hour. Indeed, the red-cheeked man with his ice-fair beard bore the set of one who is well-used to replying on a matter and has devised for himself a script to follow.
“Drowning,” said the warden, his gloved hands about his pole as if frozen to it. “Takes time to get ‘em out of the water what with them getting froze into it.” He waited for her to ask the logical next question, and when Hana did not he continued with his script without regard for cue. “Don’t know who yet. Maybe just some poor beggar. Got out on the ice, we reckon, ice broke, fell in, drowned, froze back over. Nasty way to go.”
Thanking him with grace and wishing them all good health, Hana thought: as if there were such a thing as a kind death.
At the door to the School of Non-Occult Sciences, Gull had set up a brazier quite against the regulation of the university buildings, and warmed himself at it with a look of defiance as students came and went with envying stares. He had a nose as red as a holly-berry in the cold, and his eyes drowsed open instead of darting through the crowd.
“Hup, no visitors,” Gull said, as Hana placed her foot upon the doorstep in test of his watchfulness. “Not even you, Goodwife.”
“Would you be so good as to send word to Ethan Erikson,” Hana said. She wished in that moment for a bearskin muff in which to warm her fingers: the gloves in which they were housed were quite inadequate against the cold, beautiful though they were. Rabbit leather was pliant and soft, but thin as paper when faced with Albion-of-the-Britons and its snowbound winter.
“Who?”
“The Dean,” Hana sighed, unable for the moment to wrap her impatience in good manners or flirtation. “Please you, send word to his rooms. I would speak with him, today.”
Gull made a face of some duration and when he had done with the screwing-up of his features into a series of ugly pictures he hawked phlegm in his throat and rattled it for longer than Hana felt anatomy, never mind etiquette, should allow.
At last he said, “His chest’s buggered, e’s home with it.” Gull sniffed in demonstration of what a winter malady might inflict upon even the hardiest of porters, and added with an air of conspiracy, “Not bloody surprising, is it, with his stalkin’ about with his skin to the wind every season.”
Hana was forced to concede that, of all those of her acquaintance most like to afflict himself with a chest malady as a result of his own actions, the Dean of the School of Non-Occult Sciences must find himself not only a strong contender but most like the very pinnacle of the list. His disregard for the forces of the weather and his inappropriate dress were sure to lie at the root of his disordered chest.
She thanked Gull for his kindness, and asked, “And what of Odo Berensen? Irenbend – I know not of his other names, I am told he has none – and Gooddaughter Charlomagne?”
“Here, when’s your bloody daughter coming back?” Gull cried, ignoring her question for the moment in a rush of indignant air. “She’s been gone half the term o’ studies.”
“That,” Hana said with much restraint, “is why I would speak with them. I know not, Goodman Gull, when or where my daughter returns, and it troubles me. Will you not give me leave to seek her partners in the school?”
Gull shrugged and thrust his hands over the brazier. “Won’t do no good,” he said, seeming oblivious to the impossibility of this statement or at the least its incompatibility with what he meant to say. “They don’t know no more than you do. We’re all in the dark, Goodwife al-Fihri. No one has a bloody clue what’s befallen her or that bastard Doctor—”
“Thank you,” Hana said again, with haste. “You are most helpful—”
“—Just a great big pile of snotty letters from Albion Locomotive Force wantin’ to know when she’s going to give them the new thing-a-whatsit,” Gull finished, refusing to be derailed.
The bird-dealer, or rather the bird-dealer who dealt in brood hens, lay to the far side of the Book Warren, and Hana was glad of the diversion from the weather this provided.
The Book Warren, too, gave shelter from the snow and for this reason more than the treasures it held, Hana suspected, it was busy with custom. Hana passed through this strange foodless feast of knowledge and steam with measured footsteps, turning this way and that to avoid standing on anyone’s foot or receiving anyone’s shoulder in her face. She soon came through to the northern corner of the square, slipping through the gateway.
When she came at last to the bird-dealer’s shop front, it was decked still with the empty cages signifying the wares within to those not fortunate enough to read.
The door was shut tight against the cold, but as Hana peered through the window a green-clad hand waved her in with impatient sweeps. A mouth almost devoid of teeth shaped words she could not discern but guessed to be: ‘we are still open, the door isn’t locked’.
Sure enough, with a shove from her shoulder that was neither great in dignity nor in the feminine art of delicacy, the door came open and spilled her into the cramped and stinking environs of a bird-breeding room.
Hana leaned upon the door at once, for the shop was hot with braziers and the birds within it sure not accustomed to the chill of Albion winter.
“Morning,” said the near-toothless bird-dealer, though it was long after noon. “Chilled yer finches, have you?”
“I have not,” Hana said, with some defence in her manner.
“Mph. Everyone else this week has,” said the bird-dealer.
After some examination Hana was still not sure if this seller of chirping seed-eaters was to be addressed as Goodman or Goodwife and gave up her manners in favour of sealing her mouth shut.
“Dropping their poor little sparrows like flies, too,” said the bird-dealer. “It’s winter every year, I tell ‘em, you never learn, you folk. Winter every year, the birds don’t get no better at sitting it out, keep ‘em warm, I tell ‘em. Do they listen? Do they buggery.”
“I come for a brood hen,” Hana said, hoping to stem the tide of the speech before it grew to drown them both, and filled with a desire to step out of the hot, bird-scented shop before the stench overwhelmed her mind.
“Oh, a winter layer? See, you have it backwards, then, you’re keeping them too warm, now, that’s a rare one,” the bird-dealer said, with an appreciative chuckle that Hana found she could not force herself to share.
“I require a brood hen,” Hana repeated, though she was sure the bird-dealer had heard her. “The others peck on this hen and she will not last the term.”
“O,” said the bird-dealer, looking at Hana with bird-like eyes, small and dark and bright-shining. “Well now. That’s not a good omen. You know, I’m no ornithomancer but I see plenty, don’t I, working here. That’s not a good omen at all, pecking on your layer. That’s a death omen, that is.”
Of course it is, Hana thought, though she held her peace, the hen is going to die.
Aloud she said with a respectful nod in deference to the knowledge of the bird-dealer, “Would I be better to discard this clutch and acquire no brood hen?”
As she had thought, the bird-dealer was in his or her or its heart a shopkeeper above all other professions, and the haste with which the reply came was as ugly as the face of avarice revealed was ever.
“Oh no, no, never throw out the baby and the bathwater at once, no,” the bird-dealer cried, throwing up their hands as if Hana were this very minute in the act of discarding the clutch. “No, no. The hen is not long for this world but your clutch may yet be a strong one, let me look, let me look. There’s a fine broody goldcrest come on, and a chaffinch here, she’s nesting pebbles, the poor love—”
As the bird-dealer prattled on, a mush-tongued fountain of words given loose shape by toothless gums, Hana’s gaze and attention drifted to the thick-glassed windows. They were double-set in their frame the better to keep in the warmth, a most cunning artifice.
Beyond them lay the street, splitting into two, and among the hungry and lean students and bundled goodwives she saw a familiar fac
e, guarded from the cold with a thick hood.
It was an instant, but he caught her eye as if he had been looking for it. Hana saw him twitch the very corner of a smile, and turn to the woman beside him to speak. Hana gave back her attention to the bird-dealer, who had pulled from the great screeching wall of tiny cages a brace.
The door of the shop came open, admitting a terrible gust of cold wind and setting the whole wall of caged birds into a noisy frenzy.
It brought also a bear-skin muff and the attendant body of Radigis of Yeavering.
“Goodwife,” Radigis said, with a stiff bow, “I have sought you these past hours. Shop-keeper, I beg you, give up your customer for one moment.”
The bird-dealer looked confused, but Hana nodded and said, “I shall take the chaffinch, if you shall give me a moment to speak,” and the bird-dealer rose as if operated by string from above, and made for the far door of the little room.
“Have you heard of the drowning?” Radigis asked without pause, taking her elbow, as soon as the bird-dealer had gone from the room.
“I passed the wardens on my way here,” Hana said, watching his face for some clue.
“Saw you the corpse?”
“Only the wardens,” Hana said, waiting still.
He was in some excitement, his eyes gleaming; in another she might have deemed this a ghoulish fascination and given it only the thought of distaste, but to Radigis there must be some greater purpose.
“They had no knowledge of whom they meant to retrieve,” she added.
“News from the canal bank as swift as the wings of a hawk,” Radigis muttered. He turned his back to the window as if some passer-by might somehow steal the secret from his lips should they see his face. He shielded her face from view by this same, natural-seeming manoeuvre. “It is thought – no, known – to be our indolent friend’s bad back, and the drowning thought a matter of design.”