“What is it?” Pieter asked, wishing he hadn’t taken it.
“Quesh,” Kyp said.
The burning of the jug of quesh filled his mouth, throat, and then stomach with fire. It had been some time since he had had anything to drink. He felt some of his pain relenting to the pleasant fire in his body. “It has been some time.”
“You drink quesh?” Flynn asked, his mouth agape.
“I wasn’t alwasy an Emissary.” A gawky adolescent girl’s face appeared in his mind’s eye for a moment. He banished it with another drink. Can’t think of her, not with everything going on.
“Where did you come from?” Kyp asked.
“Kyp. Leave him alone,” Guy said. He took the bottle from Pieter, and to Pieter’s amusement, wiped the bottle’s mouth before taking another sip.
“I don't think you can ‘catch’ whatever you think is wrong with me,” Pieter said with a dry chuckle. He regretted it, but braced himself. He didn’t dare embrace the Void. He wasn’t sure how far Samuel and Tellish were from their current hiding spot. The steamjacks running around weren’t the real danger. If Samuel and Tellish were close, they would feel him, and he would be dead. Not to mention the two who had saved him would be dead as well.
“I am from Earth. Yourself?” Pieter asked.
“I was born there. But me mum took to the Osprey and I’ve been there since. Part of the crew and all,” Kyp said with a beaming smile.
“And, that is where he belongs,” Guy said. He gave Pieter a withering look. “We can help you a bit longer, but we do need to get back soon. Or the Osprey will take off without us.”
Pieter closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to feel out his aches. His ribs hurt, probably broken. His shoulder was a mass of pain, again probably broken. His stomach growled for some real food. “Have anything besides quesh?”
“The closest thing we have to food would be a day-old loaf of black bread,” Guy said, grabbing a thick, round loaf from the nearby shelf. “It cost me three coin too.”
“You’ll be reimbursed,” Pieter said. He reached for his own purse and realized he had left it on his ship. “Or you could come with me to my ship and be paid there.”
Guy gave Pieter a look of horror. “Follow you? I’d rather dance in the Pit!”
“Guy, he—”
“Kyp, look I’m part of the Osprey crew right?”
“Yeah,” Kyp said, looking at Flynn.
“Means we are family, right?”
“Yeah.”
Flynn cuffed Kyp in the back of the head. “Then, listen to your family. This guy is wrong and shouldn’t be followed or helped any more than is absolutely necessary.”
Pieter let out a soft sigh and looked at Guy. “Who?”
“What?” Guy asked, looking a bit startled by the question.
“Who was it that joined the Emissary?”
“No one,” Guy said. He took the bottle of quesh and took a long pull. “And even if I did know anyone, I’d never associate with them again after.”
Pieter shook his head and wasn’t sure how to move forward from here. “When was the last patrol?” Pieter asked.
“About an hour ago,” Kyp said.
Pieter pushed him into a sitting position, he had to risk something or he wouldn’t be able to move. He focused and pushed back the pain from his injuries and focused on feeding the small flame in his mind. He felt the connection between him and Kyp grow as he did so. The Void was right on the end of his perception, he could take hold of it when he wanted, yet he held off. He sought out as far as he could any feelings of those like Kyp and himself. It hurt his head and he felt a small trickle of blood start to ooze its way down his nostril to his lip.
“Sir, what is wrong? You’re bleeding.”
“I know, Kyp. Please, I need quiet.”
“OK.”
“Stop talking to him, Kyp. We need to get out of here,” Flynn said. Pieter heard him shift around in his chair and then get up and start to pace the room.
He ignored the other man for a moment and reached out to take the smallest thread of the Void in hand. This will take some time, yet I need to be able to walk without pain. He started to focus on his injuries, delving into them with the thread of the Void and started to mend the smaller breaks and cuts and bruises. The break in his clavicle was the worst. He felt his arm tingle when he probed the broken bone. He gritted his teeth from the pain that just delving into it caused.
He set the healing to work to mend the worst of it, then cut the thread and sealed it off from the rest of the Void. It wasn't a great job, barely a decent job, yet the pain was receding and the little bit of painkiller that the body released was doing its job as well. “We need to get ready to move, and fast,” Pieter said.
“With the way you were dragged in here, I doubt that can happen,” Flynn said.
“Where is here anyway?” Pieter asked, looking around at the small hovel.
“It’s a place a mate of mine had,” Flynn said, looking away at the walls. “Some of the crew of the Osprey use it now and then for a place to sleep it off. We were lucky no one—”
As if on cue, the door opened and a scaly Ganymite walked in, holding a brown parcel. “My friends, no, my family, it is good to see you all again.” He moved inside, his mechanical eye turning to look at Pieter who was in the shadows on the back of the hovel and not seen until the Ganymite fully entered. “I have brought food to—”
He stopped when he looked at Pieter. “Friends, we should get out of here, that man is sick.”
“I am not sick,” Pieter said, then he started to cough from the healing. It was close to his lungs and he felt the sealed-off delving and healing were causing his lungs to grow irritated. He tried to stop it, yet it was too late to stop the Ganymite. He was turning to grab the hovel door, his mouth opening to shout out something.
Pieter tried to reach out to stop the man, yet he was too weak to do anything. He then looked at Kyp, who shot forward, grabbed the scaly near-human by the arm, and dragged him down. “Gherland, we are hiding. If they find him and us together, we are all dead.”
“Gherland doesn’t want to die. Doesn’t want family to die.”
“Then, calm down and let us think for a moment,” Pieter said. He was already wiggling towards the parcel of food Gherland had brought.
Gherland tried to resist and pushed at Kyp. “No, no creature. I deny you food bond. No, no, no!”
“Shut him up, or we are all dead,” Pieter hissed, hooking the parcel with his good arm and bringing it to him. He knew that the Ganymite would have to respect him as soon as he pushed even a morsel of food down his throat. Though it was greasy and the strange meat was wrapped in something that was supposed to pass for bacon, Pieter took a swallow of the stuff and looked at Gherland. The scaly near-human stopped struggling and looked at Pieter with rage.
“You and I are now bound by family,” Pieter said.
“For the next day, yes,” Gherland said, his eye spinning as he spoke. “I hate the Emissaries, they are—”
“Yes, what was done to your home was something awful. And five hundred years ago,” Pieter said.
“What is he talking about, sir?” Kyp asked.
Gherland pulled away and stood up, pressing his hands to his robes to smooth them out. “The Embassy didn't care for our religion. They thought we were a barbarian race that worshipped idols. So, they come, they make food pact. And then, then they decimate our world.”
“You destroyed their homes?” Kyp asked.
“No, we decimated. We took away one-tenth of their population. We took away their cleric caste.”
“Why?” Flynn asked, his lip turned into a sneer.
“The leader of the Embassy at the time was someone we thought we could trust. Turned out, he was controlled by his own Rift. And he was killed soon after that was done.”
“It was five hundred years ago,” Kyp said. “How can there still be bad blood?”
Pieter s
hrugged his shoulders. It didn’t make him want to black out any more, which was a good sign. “You take away a people’s ability to pray, they tend to remember.”
Kyp looked confused. “I thought the Embassy was a place of healing and protection?”
“For some, yes,” Gherland said. “For my people, they are a harbinger of death and evil.”
Pieter gave Gherland a small bow. “I can’t apologies for something I had no part of. I am sorry for what my order did five hundred years ago. But, we don’t have time for this right now. We must leave. And move before the steamjacks come back to look for us.”
Pieter pushed himself to his feet and moved his shoulder. It hurt badly. Yet the pain didn't knock him to the ground. “Alright, we need to move before…”
He heard the thud-thud-thud of the steamjacks looking for him again. They were coming closer, and it sounded like they were opening the doors of the nearby homes and hovels. Pieter looked at Flynn, Gherland, and Kyp. There was nothing he could do about the Ganymite and the other human, but Kyp he felt he could trust. “Kyp. We need to leave. Without your friends. They will—”
“No. They are part of the Osprey and therefore coming with us,” Kyp said.
Pieter could tell there was no way to dissuade the youth from his course of action. He reached out to try and touch the youth’s mind, when the door slammed open. He turned to see Gherland running out of the hovel and shouting something. “He is here! The diseased Emissary is here!” Pieter saw the Ganymite running towards the steamjacks who turned to see him, both raised their arms and flipped up their hands.
“Get down,” Pieter shouted. He didn’t have a choice. He grabbed Kyp, embraced the Void and grabbed Flynn with it and pulled them both to the floor. He cocooned them in a shield as the steamjacks opened fire. Though the shield, Pieter, Kyp and Flynn could hear the quick rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of slug throws ripping into Gherland. Pieter heard the continuous fire raking across the hovel. He pressed down with the Void, feeling the floorboards give way more and more until the three of then fell down into what he thought were the sewers.
When he hit the fetid water, the shield shattered. Pieter stood up, pulling up Kyp and Flynn with the waning power of the Void before he closed it off. “Go.”
“Where?” Flynn asked.
Pieter pointed down one tunnel. “That way.”
Pieter and the others found their way through the sewers, covered in muck and sludge. Kyp found a small skiff that led to the Skyquay. They got some strange looks from the operator. Pieter touched the operator’s mind, allowing the three of them up. On the way up, Flynn looked at Pieter. “I think you need to tell us what in the Pit is going on!”
Pieter took a long deep sigh. “You are right. We have a few minutes alone.” He settled back and told them what had happened, how he had discovered the slug creatures, the deaths of all the people of the Five Families, and the escape from the manor house with Tellish chasing after him. “And that was when I stumbled into the inn where I was helped by Kyp and you.” He looked at Flynn with a sidelong look.
The two were silent for a moment, looking at each other and then back to Pieter. Flynn opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Kyp said, “And you need to escape the planet?”
“Yes,” Pieter said.
“Then, come with us,” Kyp said.
“You can’t be serious,” Flynn said.
“He has to,” Kyp said.
“No, he is not coming to the Osprey. We need to get away from here. Leave him to his ship. He said he has one here.”
“You two have already helped more than I could have hoped for,” Pieter said. He then turned to look at Kyp. “Though I think you should come with me. You have potential.”
“What do you mean?” Kyp asked.
“You have a great amount of potential. You have the same gift I do. You could be trained to be an Emissary one day.”
“There is no way he is going to do that,” Flynn said. He held up his hand to stop Kyp or Pieter from speaking. “I know I am a ‘mere human’ and not one of you Emissaries. Yet, as long as I live and breathe, Kyp here ain’t going nowhere near the Embassy for anything.”
Pieter sighed. He then detected something in the air. Something that he had sensed far too often in the past twenty-four hours. At that moment, he heard Kyp say, “Why is the Osprey off its mooring lines?”
Pieter looked up to see a schooner-class æthership listing to one side. The mooring lines were cut, and it was drifting away. The skiff would pull up parallel to the ship in a few moments, and that was when Pieter realized the smell of blood was coming from the ship. He tried to pull at Kyp’s hand, yet he saw that the youth and even Flynn could tell something was very wrong.
The skiff heaved to not far from the Skyquay, but there wasn’t a soul there. Pieter didn't want to look at the Osprey, yet he heard a heartbreaking cry come from Kyp and Flynn. He turned to see a scene from a charnel house.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Toth licked at Sarena’s face. The rough tongue reminded her, yet again, of how Toth’s species was similar to cats. She then felt him rake his claw the on side of her cheek. Not enough to break skin, but enough to cause some pain.
“What was the for?” She cried out and wished she hadn’t. Her body felt as though it had gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxer.
“You again compare me to these felines. I think—”
“Shut up. I’m sorry.” She then pushed herself up and regretted it immediately. A wooden spar had jammed itself into her left shoulder. Movement wasn't something she wanted.
“Fuck, I hurt,” she said, hissing through the pain. She pushed herself to her feet and looked around. “Where are we?” She looked around. The ruins of the skiff were a handful of yards from them. She was on a small spit of land, mostly dirt. Her clothes were damp and clung to her. Sarena was miserableness incarnate.
“Close. Benny is very close. In fact—”
There was a strange thrumming that came from the sky above. Serena looked up to see what at first was a thick cigar-ovoid-shaped object in the sky. Looking closer, she saw the thick roots and pointed prow of Benny resolve itself as it moved closer. It was her Ilvan treeship. She felt elation sweep over her as the brown Ilvan lowered itself using a tech she didn’t fully understand. It was her friend who helped her, that was the main thing. She let out a whoop, and her body was wracked with pain. She could see the object grow more detailed, the sweeping lines of the inner hull, the ring around the section of Benny that had been removed so he could fly out into the aether, the strangely beautiful flared end that was an engine.
You need to get on Benny. You have internal injuries.
“I’m shocked, Toth of the Lasha. Thanks for telling me such a thing.”
Toth glared at her. “Leave the sarcasm to me, human.”
The Ilvan lowered more and more, until it was a scant hundred feet from the ground. She knew Benny hadn’t wanted to touch down at all, hating the strangeness of the trees here. Then, a thick braided rope of vines and roots descended. Toth wasted no time in climbing up the rope.
“Coming?”
“Kinda hard with one arm, Toth,” she said, glancing at the length of the skiff’s spar lodged in her shoulder.
Before she finished speaking, the rope’s end curled around her, and she felt herself being pulled up into Benny. The first thing that she sensed was the smell. No longer the sulphurous smell that permeated the planet, this was something to do with wood worms and their shit. The smell of loam and water and softness filled her nose as she was pulled closer and closer. She let out a cry of pleasure when Benny’s floor closed up and she could walk. She fell to the floor and kissed it. “Benny I missed you.”
“He missed you too,” Toth said. “Almost as much as he missed me.”
She ignored Toth and then felt the shooting pain of the spar in her shoulder again. She started to walk towards the infirmary area when the floor pitched at a strange angle. Serena blinked, and she
was on the floor, pain flowing and ebbing from her arm. “What, what is going on?”
Toth was in front of her moments later. “You fell. Probably the blood loss. Come along human, if you wish to live.”
Serena started to crawl after Toth, unable to do more than move like a babe. The crawling did her arm little good, and the pain caused her to stop and cry, not moving at all.
“Really, child. Can’t you—”
“Listen, you filthy bag of fleas! I am in a great deal of pain here. Could you perhaps do something nice for once in your miserable little life and help!”
She felt something light touch her face when she screamed. She looked around and saw tendrils of limbs and vines reaching out from the walls and start to wrap around her limbs and head. All of it glowing with a soft pearly white light. She tried to shout out, “Benny, stop, I’m—”
But before she could finish, the tendrils wrapped around her mouth, blocking her air. She tried to scream, yet she couldn’t. She tried to struggle or to move a limb. Each one was held by a force that made it impossible for her to budge an inch. She then felt something warm and heady fill her nose and caused her body to feel warm and tingle all over. She tried to stay awake, yet the only thing that happened was she blacked out.
CHAPTER NINE
He looked down at the younger man, the pain and rage boiled off him. Pieter sensed, even felt, the tug of the Rift even from where he stood. He closed his own hands into fists to focus and push back the sweet cloying desire of the Rift in himself. He needed to calm himself or the Rift would pull harder on him and Kyp.
Calmness and stillness. Anger is a part of me, but I will not let it overtake me. Passion has its place. The small mantra helped to push back the worst of the pull. He reached down to the young Kyp. “Kyp, calm yourself.”
“They are dead! Everyone I knew. Everything I knew is gone. And you want me to keep calm?”
Pieter pulled back, the rage and anger in Kyp was pulling the youth’s Rift closer to the surface. There was a dim red haze that started to surround the youth. Pieter knew he had to do something, but it hurt him to do it. Pieter pulled back and struck Kyp in the face. “Yes, your friends are gone. But you are alive. Live to fight another day.”
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