by Jack Conner
Ark ark ark. More seals had gathered, and they laughed louder than before. The sound, as Avery shivered and chattered and swore, was growing exponentially on his nerves. If he hadn’t needed his shoes for warmth, he would have thrown one at the fat bastards. They weren’t bothered by the temperature. They were obscenely bloated, with rolls of boil-covered fat rippling down their gleaming bodies and serving as perfect insulation.
Before they could break Avery’s sanity, one of the creatures seemed to attract their attention. Newly come among them, it mewled fearfully, casting its gaze all about. Where had it come from? Avery couldn’t remember seeing it before. Slowly at first, but then more whole-heartedly, the rest of the seals shuffled off toward the newcomer, and it received several bites in greeting, but it was a large creature and able to handle the abuse—and more than able to dish some out.
Gradually, night fell, and Avery busied himself with watching the stars and moons. He knew the air was purified of the sea’s taint, but he was worried that, if the food processors were imperfect, than perhaps the air processors were, too. He wished desperately for a pollution pill, or, failing that, some well-processed food.
The dark clouds that were gathered above thickened, and darkened still more, and he knew rain would soon be upon him. Standing as best he could, he stuck the bones of the cage’s former occupant in the bars overhead, first removing the ragged shards already there, which wouldn’t be much use, then stripped off his jacket and arranged it into a little canopy. It wasn’t much, and he knew he might have to augment it with his shirt or pants later, but not yet. He wanted the warmth for a little longer.
Jellies drifted through air, some alone, some in schools. Many of them glowed, especially as night fell, and they mirrored the stars above, bright and ghostly. Some blazed with color, red and blue and neon green, and Avery enjoyed the show as they flew over the sea, tentacles dangling in the breeze. A few congregated near him, and he held a bone tightly in his hands, ready to shoo the things away if they came too close. They were beautiful, but they might very well see him as food, and even if they didn’t their venom was deadly. Of course, a jelly’s venom didn’t always merely sting. Sometimes there were more exotic consequences. People had been known to have visions, or turn color, or simply disappear. Scholars theorized that they had been transported into another dimension, possibly one contained within the jelly.
Suddenly, the creatures around Avery’s cage stirred and began to flit away, their glowing sacs blinking as if with alarm. Avery craned his head up as a shadow blotted out the stars—large and tentacled.
Took him long enough.
Duke Leshillibn flew down from the rocky spires of the island on his living jelly throne. It was too dark for Avery to see him at first, but then the scant lights of the prison illuminated him just a bit, and Avery tasted acid in his mouth. The duke did not look happy.
“Enjoying your stay?” Leshillibn asked, drawing his jelly to a stop just beyond Avery’s striking distance.
“Quite,” Avery said. He had been toying with his canopy, but now he quit and faced the man who would be emperor.
“It’s not the way I would treat my future father-in-law,” Duke Leshillibn said. “But you have forced it upon me. I do hope you see that.”
“Oh, I do. I do.”
Leshillibn regarded him coolly. “Just what were you doing, fooling around in that lock room?”
“Just taking inventory.”
“My people reported nothing amiss. Nothing missing.”
Because I hid my tracks well. It wouldn’t take them long, though, Avery knew. Sooner or later that certain canister would be opened and its contents would not match what should be in there. It would take a few days, he hoped. More than long enough. Even now Janx would be organizing things, making final preparations. Really, Avery didn’t know when it would happen. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious for.
“How long was I out?”
The Duke’s soft shoulders rose up, then deflated. “I wasn’t spying on you in your cage, my lord doctor, much as you might like to think I was. I don’t know when you woke up. I do know you were in a bad way when you were placed here, and I worried that you might expire. I was quite cross with my guards for having gone so hard on you. Quite cross.” He scowled, and Avery wondered if the sergeant in charge of those guards might be occupying a similar cage. “At any rate, you are here, and it amuses me to see you so.”
“How long will I remain?” Please, don’t let it be long. I’ll miss the breakout! That would be a bitter thing.
Duke Leshillibn smiled, his fat face bunching up. “I’m not inclined to let you out anytime soon, lord doctor. In fact, I’m not inclined to let you out at all.”
Avery’s mouth went dry. Lightning cracked above, and rain began to pound down. Duke Leshillibn chuckled and opened an umbrella over his head. A few drops hit Avery, and they burned; he huddled further beneath his canopy.
“You can’t mean to leave me in here forever.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You are nothing to me.”
“I thought I was your future father-in-law.”
The Duke drifted closer, just a bit. His eyes were greedy. “But are you? Are you, lord doctor?”
“I ... ” Avery remembered what Janx had said. Just say you’ll do it. Then Avery thought of the mystery party being alerted to their presence. He thought of this man taking Ani for his bride. He said nothing.
The Duke’s face darkened. “As I thought. Well, I’ll check up on you in a few days. You might be dead by then, of course. Or out of your mind. The rain ... well. Don’t make the mistake of drinking it. So many do. They think just because we don’t provide moisture, we encourage them to drink the stuff. Well, we do, of course. But the smart ones know to wait for morning and lick the dew off the bars. The condensation, though tainted, will see you through a few days, at least. I’ve even seen some prisoners try to make a filter using their clothes and the organs stolen from passing creatures in an effort to purify their urine. It might work, too. I haven’t analyzed it. And, of course, they can eat the creatures. They will be infected, of course, but it’s better than starving.”
At least the air must be clean, Avery thought. The Duke wouldn’t be out here otherwise.
“Thanks for the tips,” he said. “Don’t you think that when the Empress—the Empress-Regent, I mean—finds out that you’ve done this to a noble of Ghenisa she will be outraged?”
“Her outrage against me is nothing new. And if Ghenisa is angered against the Ysstral throne, that can only be good for one who opposes it.”
“You are a toad.”
“And you are an obstinate little pissant who would rather die horribly than be one of the most high-ranking people in an empire. You could be a great lord, my good doctor. I could make you Duke of Islyng! You would have a whole realm to rule, with only me and Anissa as your overlords.” His voice hardened. “It is that or die in this cage.”
“If it means not seeing you at family reunions, I’ll take the cage.”
The Duke’s face ticced. When he had mastered himself, he only said, “You are—”
He broke off and stared up at the prison. Avery glanced, too. A light had begun blinking from a guard tower, red and strident. Then another. Then, with shocking violence, alarms began to blare from the speakers posted all along the prison length.
“What is this?” the Duke said, turning baleful eyes on Avery. “You don’t have anything to do with this, do you?”
“Me?” I must have been asleep longer than I thought. Either that, or Janx was early.
The Duke shook his scepter at Avery. “If I find out this was you, I will go harder on you, lord doctor. If you think these cages are bad, there are cells beneath the prison ...”
Shots rang out.
“Damn it!”
The Duke wasted no more words on Avery but flew toward the upper reaches of the prison, cursing as he went. Avery could only smile. Go on, Janx, he thought. Good luck to
you. The big man would have to leave him here, he knew. It would pain the old whaler, but it was necessary, and Avery could not fault him for it. He only hoped Janx hurried it up. If they were caught, everything would be lost.
More shots sounded, and guards could be seen running down catwalks and across bridges. Bright lights flashed through the windows. Flames burned from them, red and gold. Avery smiled. Janx was really giving them hell. The plan called for Rolf to deliver him the stolen acids and for Janx to distribute the acids among his men, who would use it to eat through the bars of their cells, in the process liberating not only themselves but the other prisoners in with them. Then, amid the resulting riot, they would free still more, creating general chaos and violence, under cover of which the female members of their party could be sprung. Once together, they could all make a break for it.
It wasn’t long before the violence moved outside. Avery heard gunfire and screams, some shockingly close by. A tide of shapes rounded a bend of the ancient fortress and proceeded across the islets toward where Janx had indicated the docks would be. A smaller group branched off from the tide and seemed to be studying the building behind them.
They moved toward the cage dangling from the castle nearest them, shone a flashlight on its inhabitant, then moved on. Avery’s heart beat faster. He started to open his mouth to call to them, but his throat had constricted. He cleared it and shouted, however hoarsely. The shapes moved toward him, along the rocky coast, scattering a few seals.
“Doc, is that you?” said the largest of the figures.
“It’s me, Janx.”
The escapees shouted encouraging words to him, and one threw a rope up to his cage, which was about thirty feet off the ground. He scuttled back as a grappling hook snagged the bars, and while Janx held the rope steady below a smaller figure monkeyed up it toward Avery. When he made out Hildra’s outline, he realized tears were in his eyes.
She flashed a quick, barely visible grin. “Have you outta there in a second, bones.”
He saw how awkward it had been for her to climb up with one hand, and when she had difficulty rooting for her set of picks (what else could she be searching for?), he steadied her. She found them. With a twist and a flick, she heaved his cage door open.
“Behold!” she said, in her most theatrical voice. “Freedom!”
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it deeply, and allowed her to help him find the rope and position himself. They lowered themselves toward the rocks, where they were greeted heartily by Janx and Sheridan.
The admiral looked at him for a long moment, and when he grabbed her shoulders she seemed to shudder and pressed herself against him. Dear gods, Avery thought. Why her? Why have I given my heart to her?
They parted, and he said, “Thank you all, but you should never have come for me. You don’t have time to waste.”
“We ain’t lettin’ you off that easy,” Hildra said.
“Besides,” Sheridan said, “you’re critical to the plan.”
“Plans can be rewritten. Lives can’t.”
“Let’s get going,” Janx said, and moved off along the coast toward the distant lights of the rest of the party—the crewmembers of the Muirblaag, Avery knew. Already they were some distance away. Avery and the others followed.
Dark shapes grouped around them, laughing from rocky islets.
Janx had armed himself with a guard’s baton, and Sheridan had a revolver. Hildra brandished a knife and pressed another into Avery’s hands.
“What about Rolf?” he said. “Were you able to free him, too?” The old mutant was to have come away with them.
“He got sick,” Janx said. “Right after delivering the goods you two boosted.”
“Yes, he was looking rather poorly,” Avery sighed. “I suppose he got another dose of infection.”
“They took him off to the infirmary,” Janx said. “Haven’t seen him since. Word is that he’s too far gone this time. He’s not coming back.”
The dark, laughing shapes moved in closer. Their laughs were ominous and cruel. One sleek form lunged toward Sheridan. She blew its brains out. The others drew back, but not far. Avery suddenly realized his group was quite a distance from the main party. They were all alone. In the background, the sounds of alarms, gunfire and flames were only getting louder, but it was very quiet out here. There was only the sound of waves on rocks, the labored breaths of the group and the laughter of the things around them.
Another seal flew at them. Janx whacked it with his baton, once, then twice. Bleeding, it drew back, but not far.
“Move faster,” Sheridan said.
The seals grew thicker about them, and the four had to navigate their way through the islets toward the distant docks—it was either that or go a much longer way around, hugging the coastline, which would have also taken them too near the various guard stations—threading their way through an ever-increasing number of seals. The creatures massed on the rocky points all around, lurking in twisted little caves and thrusting their heads up from foaming, crackling pools. Ark ark ark.
Hairs lifted on the back of Avery’s neck. I never would have believed I would be terrified of seals.
A dark shape struck toward him, down from one of the little peaks. Avery was too slow to stop it, but Hildra’s knife stabbed it under its right eye. It shrieked and withdrew, bleeding. It didn’t go far. Its pain only seemed to enrage the other seals more. Another slunk forward, and a bolt of lightning (whether flashing upward or downward Avery didn’t see) illuminated its strangely flat face. In that bolt of lightning, Avery saw not only its face, but the faces of several others grouped on the ridge above it jockeying for position, and what he saw there chilled him to the bone.
No, he thought. Surely it can’t be.
The lightning faded, and the seal closed in, just a dark shape once more. Sheridan’s gun flashed, and it fell away.
More came at them, not one at a time now but half a dozen at once, and for a frenzied few moments the four fired and slashed and beat at the creatures, breaking bone and puncturing flesh, and though the surviving attackers floundered away, more, a great deal more, pressed closer in.
“There!” Sheridan said, pointing toward a narrow defile, a tiny canyon in the jagged rock of the islet they were on, just high enough for a person to pass through without being seen. The four ran into it, making for the distant lights of the docks. The larger party couldn’t be seen from here, but Avery knew they had probably reached the docks already.
The faces of the seals rose in his mind’s eye, crowding it. Surely I saw them wrong. Surely I’m mistaken.
Laughing and on fire with bloodlust, the fat, nasty creatures slithered after the four, only one able to pass down the channel at a time, which is why Sheridan had chosen it. More tried to flank them, going onto the ridges, but the group moved fast and few were able to catch them. When they did, they were quickly dealt with. Sheridan had fired all her bullets, but she used the butt of her pistol effectively as a club.
A seal snapped at Avery’s ankles. He kicked it away. Damn my knee. If not for that, he wouldn’t be last and someone better qualified would be able to deal with the tide of angry seal-flesh at their backs.
Snap! Another heavy pair of jaws nearly severed the flesh in back of his foot. He hopped forward. A seal, impatient to get to him, clambered over the creature that had just bit at him and dove toward him, its blubbery body sliding/rasping on the rough stone of the islet. It barreled into him, and he tripped and would have gone sprawling, but Sheridan, just ahead of him, steadied him and turned back to hurl a rock at the animal’s nose. It barked in pain and fell back. Another replaced it.
More and more seals crowned the ridges, some sliding down on the group, laughing and chomping. Janx stove in one’s head with his baton and the group had to awkwardly scramble over its body on their way.
Another fell on Hildra, pinning her to the ground. She stabbed it in the neck and it floundered horrifically, grinding her into the rough stone even as i
t died. Avery and Sheridan flipped it off her while Janx fended off more creatures, and then they were up and running again. Hildra moved with a limp, but she swore with healthy vigor.
There were too many of the creatures. Far too many. Avery feared there was no way he and the others could make it to the docks.
Just as he was beginning to despair, a particularly large seal commanded a tiny ridge before them, silhouetted against the stars. The animal dominated their horizon, bloated and awful, and Avery thought it was the newcomer that had drawn the others’ attention earlier. Something that looked like an anemone sprouted from its neck, and one of its flippers was more tentacle than anything else.
Surely it can’t be, Avery thought. I must be imagining—
A blast of lightning struck, illuminating its face, and all doubt vanished from Avery’s mind.
No, he thought. No!
They passed beneath the creature and ran on, while with a howl it launched itself into the channel, blocking the way, and drove at the seals that were attacking the group. Avery could hear the chomps and the screams even after he put some distance between himself and the violence.
The seals, their route impeded and themselves attacked, gave up pursuit, and Avery and his comrades passed over the islets toward the docks with no more trouble, at least not from the seals, though the rocks proved slippery and the miasma exuded by the sea was making Avery dizzy. Eventually the four crossed back onto the mainland and found the gates of the dock yard open. Crewmen from the Muirblaag had set upon the few prison workers here, forcing them into flight. Several bodies lay twisted on the ground.