ARC: The Corpse-Rat King (22 page)

“No!” He pushed himself back from the trestle, knocking his stool to the sand and standing, shivering, under the shocked gazes of Bomthe and the king. The dancer worked a shrug into her movements, a little dip of her shoulders that said “Whatever. Your loss, pal,” and slithered over to the first of the sailors laying on their mats. Bomthe raised his eyebrows.

“A problem, Mister Helles?”

“No. No, I…” Marius wiped a hand across his eyes.

“Not your type, sir?” Marius heard the insinuation in Bomthe’s tone, saw the smile. “Shall I call Figgis?”

“No, that’s not… to hell with you.” Marius swung way and stalked out of the circle of light, into the dark at the edge of the village. He stopped once he was around the corner of a hut and leaned his head against the rough dirt wall. Only then did he let out the breath he had been holding.

“Gods damn it,” he breathed. “What the hell is
wrong
with me? Why am I even breathing?”

He straightened himself, took several more. “Just get through this,” he muttered. “Just get through this and get back. Get it sorted.” He nodded his agreement to the small voice at the back of his mind that was whispering all the things he would do once he got through this and got back. Yes, make it all right. Yes, take her away. Yes, even that. Even settle down. He stepped back towards the feast, his composure restored, ready to make his apologies and see out the rest of the evening, then stopped just outside the row of torches stuck in the sand. Bomthe and the King were standing, deep in conversation with the girl whose dancing had sent Marius into his reverie. She nodded, and Bomthe passed her something which she quickly tucked into the waistband of the tiny grass skirt she was now wearing. The King waved his fingers and she left them, ducking between two torches a few feet from Marius. She turned when she saw him lurking in the shadows and smiled, coming towards him with one arm held out as if to take his hand.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Marius said, taking a step backwards. “It’s not that you’re not… desirable. It’s just that, well… I’m sort of…”

She laughed, and lunged forward, quickly grabbing his hand and gripping it with a strength that belied her tiny frame. She smiled in a way that was far too lascivious to be mistaken, and let go his hand, patting him gently on his undying erection, then stepping past him, away from the raucous party.

“But… I…” Marius glanced back into the light, saw Bomthe and the King staring at the shadows in which he stood, and pursed his lips. He felt his face crease in anger.

“All right,” he said. “All right.” One more thing to make right when he got back. Just one more wouldn’t hurt.

The girl laughed, and skipped away along one of the myriad sandy paths that criss-crossed the edges of the village, leading into the hinterlands of the archipelago. Marius watched her rounded buttocks as they bounced away from him, and a feral grin split his lips.

“I will,” he said, and took up the chase.

SIXTEEN

The island sand was a curse, sent to torment Marius by a vengeful and sadistic God. It shifted underfoot with every step, twisting Marius’ passage so that every inch of forward movement was a victory won against the odds. By the time he reached the top of the hill it was as if he had chosen the longest route on purpose. The native girl waited with one hand on her hip, a smile that was part sex, part derision, clear in the dark. Marius cursed under his breath and redoubled his effort. The sand fought him with a million fingers, until he stumbled and landed face first at her feet. At any other time he’d be happy with that position, but for once, he took no pleasure in the view.

“You’re doing this deliberately,” he said, and found confirmation in her laugh.

She tossed her head, indicating a random pile of branches and leaves at the edge of the track, bunched against the base of a giant tree. Marius stared at it until, slowly, he began to make out some order amongst the detritus. If he assumed that gap to be a door, and those smaller gaps as windows…

“Your hut?”

She nodded , and moved towards it. This time, Marius did take a moment to admire the view, before climbing to his feet and tottering after her. A heat haze hovered around the hut, a living thing that Marius could see shimmering in the falling dark. Ignoring the burning in his calves, and refusing to question why he should even feel such a burning in the first place, he clenched his jaw, and stalked towards the opening that now yawned wide amongst the leaves, awaiting his entrance. The girl slid inside. Marius paused at the opening, letting the stink of sweat, foreign skin, and thick cooking odours assail him. When he was sure he could enter without gagging, he covered his mouth and nose with one gloved hand and stuck his head inside.

“Are you in there?” he called, frowning at the uncertainty in his voice. Where else could she be? Marius decided he didn’t want to know the answer. A chuckle rose from the darkness, startling him. He had heard similar sounds before. Animals caught in traps, recognising their fate as he walked toward them out of the bush, preparing for one last fight before death.

“Stay outside if the dark frightens you so,” a voice said in perfect Scorbish. “Otherwise, come in and stop wasting my night.”

Marius scowled in a flash of embarrassment. He ducked his head, counted to three, and stepped inside before pausing, nerves alive to the thought of attack. Slowly, details emerged from the murk. Marius gasped, stumbling forward in astonishment.

From the outside, the hovel was no larger than the types of shelter street children build from whatever refuse they can liberate from the back of fish stalls and printing houses in the bigger cities, and not quite as well constructed. Two adults of Marius’ size would have grown far more intimate than polite society would accept just by squeezing themselves into the same space, a prospect Marius had found appealing and repulsive in equal measure. Now that he was inside, Marius didn’t know whether to be disappointed or terrified that such an outcome was so unlikely – this was no dirt-covered hole dug out between roots. It was a room. A proper room. Not large, not by the standards of normal rooms, but still, it was considerably larger than the bundle of branches that formed its outer walls. And it had walls, real walls, wattle and daub structures that reached up to a thatched roof overhead.

“How…?”

Again the laugh sounded out. Marius took another step forward, then another, until he stood in the centre of the hut. Slowly he turned in a complete circle, taking in his surroundings.

Captain Bomthe had complained, often enough that Marius could recite it verbatim as he lay on his cot listening to the man on the deck above, of the incessant thefts visited upon the
Minerva
by the natives. In the three days they had been at anchor, enough supplies were lost that they would barely be replaced by the gains made from their stopover. Proof of their losses crowded the space around Marius: countless items, small and large, worthless and valuable, piled one upon the other with no thought for order, fragility, or purpose. Marius completed his circle, cataloguing the contents with practiced, mathematical precision: urns; coats; bags of flour; boxes overflowing with beads, brooches, and rings; even three of the new arbalests being trialled by the King of Scorby’s personal guard; all lay heaped together like haphazard spoils of war, spreading out from the walls in an ankle-thick carpet. Whilst the new King paraded his gewgaws down upon the sand, a small fortune had bypassed his gaze on the way up to this hovel.

“It will all be gone by the time you return to your boat, dead man,” the voice cackled, as if reading his mind. “Do not bother yourself with such trifles. You have something for me?” A dark lump in the far corner stirred, and unfolded from between the piles of refuse. Two stick-like arms emerged from either side of a bundle of rags, dragging the mass into the centre of the room.

Disturbed air flowed over Marius, and despite the deadness of his sense of smell he gagged. The pile of rags scuttled forward like an angry insect, the sharpness of its movement making him stumble backwards until his shoulders hit the wall. The hut shook from the impact. Marius threw his arms out, absurdly afraid of burial underneath whatever constituted the outer surface of the roof. The creature reared up, gripping the material of his jacket, using the leverage to pull itself upwards until it stood on hind legs, pinning him against its dry, fetid body. Slowly, like some sort of predatory tortoise, a vague approximation of a head emerged. Marius tried to speak, to offer some protest, but his voice has deserted him – the beast was an old woman, old beyond belief. If the scarring of her wrinkled face could be counted an accurate witness, then there were rock formations at the base of fissures inside the Ageless Mountains that had fewer candles on their birthday cake. What Marius had taken to be an animal’s pelt was a thin blanket, which did nothing to lessen its filthy, bestial nature. A hand, more claw than flesh, waved about in short pecks, indicating a spot in the dirt by his feet.

Marius had never believed in witchcraft. Not really, at least, as much as an upbringing in a household with two Neopagan parents and an Old Godsman grandmother would allow. He had known too many wizards, and been a conjuror too many times himself, to count magic as anything more than a combination of herbalism, sleight of hand, and a need for money. But this was different, somehow. Marius was used to hungry conmen trying to ingratiate themselves with their chosen sucker. There was something wrong when a witch was properly creepy.

“Sit,” the old woman commanded. Marius lowered himself, imitating her cross-legged hunch. Halfway down he realised what he was doing and coughed. Great, he thought. Now I look
and
sound like her. The crone crooked a finger, beckoning him closer. Unable to choose between myriad misgivings, Marius complied.

“What does a dead man want with me?” she asked, her breath washing over Marius like the plague. Ignoring the burning sensation at the back of his eyes, Marius replied.

“Well, actually, I was following…”

The crone chuckled, and Marius stopped, aware of how ludicrous his unformed desire had been. Even alive, he’d have needed gold of some description to bed a woman such as the one he followed. In fact, only Keth had ever… he stopped that line of thought before it could progress.

“You have gold?” the witch asked, her voice suddenly sharp. Marius blinked in surprise.

“How did you know I…?”

“Ishga would not bring you unless you had something to trade. And I do not want your clothes.” She laughed again, a low, dirty sound that turned Marius’ lips downward in prudish disapproval. “Well? What have you got for me?”

Marius reached into his jerkin and removed the two wedding rings he had lifted in Borgho City. He held them out on his palm.

“Are these enough?”

She viewed them with a curt “tch”, and he lapsed into an embarrassed silence. This woman was nearly an animal. And here he was, a man of the world: sophisticated, educated – well, knowledgeable, at any rate – at home in any city in the civilized world, holding out trinkets like a child hoping for approval. He almost closed his hand and removed the offering. He couldn’t say why he didn’t.

“Well, what does she normally charge?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. The old woman tilted her head and glared out of the corners of her eyes at him, and he realised with sudden certainty that this transaction was no longer about buying the sex of an island stranger. There was something deeper being bargained for, and he was momentarily too afraid to continue the transaction. Before he could act on his fear, however, the old lady pointed an unreasonably long nail, and speared the rings, holding them up to her eye.

“What’s wrong with them?”

Marius stammered, and half-rose before finding his composure. Good God, he thought, what is wrong with me? This is simple market negotiation, nothing more. You’re acting like a naughty grandchild. The normal course, under these circumstances, was to imagine your adversary naked. It had the effect of removing the silver from their words, revealing them as the same sweaty, greedy lump of flesh as the rest of us. Imagining this woman naked was the last thing Marius wanted. He sniffed, and gathered his wits.

“Nothing,” he said, deepening his voice and speaking slower. An old trick: control the pace of the conversation, increase the gravitas of your words. “I inherited them from an aunt, a spinster who died before she had the chance to wear them in commitment to a man.”

“Hmm.” The crone lifted them from his hand, cupped them in her palm, and closed her eyes. “An interesting man, your aunt. The beard suits him. Not easy, affording a suit on a butcher’s wages.” She opened her eyes, look straight at Marius. “She turned him down, when he could not present her with a ring. A lonely, broken man, your poor aunt.”

The rings disappeared into her rags and she leaned forward, until their faces were separated by less than a foot. Her smoke-yellowed eyes captured his with a glare so piercing he glanced away in case she read something he didn’t want revealed.

“Why are you here, dead man?”

“I…” Marius peered around the hut and wondered why himself, just for a moment. “The girl, the one that brought me here…”

She laughed at that, a raw cackle that took an eternity to dissolve into coughing. She hawked, and spat a gob of phlegm past his ear.

“Been that long, has it, boy? Can’t get a girl from the village, not looking like you. Maybe even
they
have taste, eh?” She sniggered, and Marius felt the life leave his face. “No, it is not that. You know that yourself. If you had simply wanted her, you could have rolled her on the sand. You allowed yourself to be led here. Your soul recognises the purpose, even if your mind does not.”

Marius closed his eyes and let her words sink into his skin. Finally, “No, you’re right. Not that.” His shoulders slumped. He had hoped to get through this without admitting his fear aloud. It seemed he had no choice. Whatever this old woman was, she knew his mind better than he did. No hope of escape, then, without the penalty of disclosure.