Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel (15 page)

But that meant Wert and Oluth and everyone he actually knew was going to die horribly. He’d hoped to save them, to give them a better life, but instead his mere existence as a template had doomed them irrevocably to misery.

And they were so close. Toel’s kitchen would win, and the skraws would be rewarded with a healthier life. Then let the worms become Argonians, and the skraws live out their remaining years decently.

So he did what he had to do. He carefully killed them all, took them back up the Fringe Gyre, and threw them over the edge, where their tiny figures became smoke and then nothing.

It was the morning before the day of the banquet when Toel came to her, his eyes icy with fury. He wore a shirt and pair of breeches that appeared to be made of sharkskin, or something similar. He placed garments like them on her table.

“Put those on. You’re going with us.”

“Chef?”

“I have good information that the sump feed from our midden is going to be sabotaged again,” he said. “Soon.”

“But that’s okay,” she said. “That won’t affect the meal, at this point.”

“It’s not that,” Toel shouted. “I’ve simply had enough of this.
Someone is going to die for this presumption, and I’m going to be there to see it. And so are you.”

Mere-Glim drifted nearly still amid twenty-foot-long strands of slackweed, watching the party approaching the maw where the midden was supposed to empty into the sump. They weren’t skraws, and swam even more clumsily. They were armed with long, wicked-looking spears, and there were six of them.

He waited until they had passed into darkness, then followed behind them into the dark fissure, trying to decide what he could do.

He hoped the armed figures would make some noise his comrades would hear, but they moved pretty quietly and altogether without talking.

They stopped to examine the tertiary sphincter, already closed, and then swam to the side, toward the maintenance tunnels. These were narrow, flattened tubes that worked around the big valve into the last of the seven chambers that waste from the middens passed through. It was dark with sludge, but not nearly as thick as it should have been. They produced some sort of underwater lanterns, and the beams stabbed through the murk, revealing a wide-eyed Wert holding a nutrient injector.

“You there,” a man’s voice said. “What are you doing?”

Wert’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment.

“Just checking the muscle, sir,” he said. “These have been seizing up lately.”

“Yes, they have,” the man said. His companions were positioning themselves in a hemisphere around Wert. “I wonder why you have a nutrient injector. Those are used by farmers, on the Fringe Gyre. To my knowledge they have no purpose in the sump.”

“Well, it fell, I guess—from up there,” Wert attempted lamely. “I was wondering what it was.”

“Don’t lie to me!” the man exploded. “Unbelievable! Phmer has turned the skraws against me! No wonder!”

“Phmer?” Wert said, puzzled.

“Not just the skraws,” another said. “The nutrient injector—they must have help from the Fringe Gyre.”

“Well,” the man said. “We’ll see about all of that. If the skraws and the farmers are involved, the lords will have to take notice.” He poked his spear toward Wert. “You’ll tell us everything, skraw.”

“It’s just me,” Wert said. “No one else is involved. Just me.”

“I doubt that. But we’ll be sure before it’s over. I’ll find everything in that little mind of yours.”

Glim was convinced the man was telling the truth. That meant trouble not only for the skraws, but for Fhena.

The first man probably never knew he was there before Glim’s claws sheared through his neck. The second had only time for a short shriek. The third—the man doing most of the talking—he was quick. He managed to get his spear up fast enough to cut a gash along Glim’s belly before Glim grabbed the shaft and slammed his thorny crest into the man’s face, the man then gurgling and drifting toward the bottom.

Glim spun in time to avoid another spear, this one wielded by a red-skinned woman with horns. They were all so clumsy, so slow. He dodged the tip and disemboweled her. A merish-looking woman was thrashing about with the injector in her back, and Cilinil appeared from somewhere and wrapped her long legs and arms around another, while Wert drove one of the spears through that one’s neck.

Glim felt a humming in his veins he’d never known, a terrible, black joy that made it hard to think.

The fellow he had butted was coming back. Glim swam down, caught him by the hair, and pulled him up to eye level.

“Incredible,” the man said weakly. “Do you know who I am? Have you no idea what you’ve done?”

“None,” Glim snarled.

“I am Chef Toel. Do you understand? Now let me go.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” Glim said.

“No?” Toel’s eyes suddenly glowed a strange silver color and the water started to hiss with bubbles.

“Xhuth!” Glim gasped as agony coursed up his arms. The muscles clenched uncontrollably and his fingers lost their grip. Toel came toward him, snarling, and his remaining companion was coming from the side, quickly. Wert and Cilinil were much too far away to help.

It was almost over before Annaïg realized what was happening, that it was Glim attacking them. She struck toward him as he confronted Toel.

She saw the water around Toel stir, and Glim was suddenly thrashing, choking with pain. Toel steadied himself in the water, and the familiar look of self-satisfaction on his face was suddenly more than she could bear, much more. As she approached, his lips curled up and he started to say something, but something he saw stopped him.

What he saw was her.

She felt the blade snick out from her arm, and she acted on instinct, slashing clumsily with the invisible knife. Toel managed to get his arm in the way, and the blade sliced cleanly through the joint of his elbow. She felt a terrific shock, and her lungs stopped working. All she could see was his face.

“I was wrong about you,” Toel gasped. Then his features seemed to blur into light and dark arabesques that made no sort of sense.

She came to herself again in Glim’s arms. They were still underwater. The two skraws were looking on in shock at Toel’s body, which besides missing a forearm, was now mostly decapitated.

“Glim,” she murmured.

“I didn’t know who you were,” he said. “I might have killed you. What the kaoc’ are you doing down here?”

“He made me come,” she said. “He was furious—wanted to set an example, or something.”

She looked back at the destroyed body. “Oh Stendarr, Glim, what did I do? I’ve never—”

“Neither have I,” he said.

She felt flimsy, like wet paper. She could see the dead bodies, the dark blood swirling in the water, more black than red, like chocolate.

But none of it seemed real. She had just been talking to Toel. She had kissed him!

“What do we do?” Wert sputtered. “You killed a chef! That’s almost as bad as killing a lord!”

No, no, Annaïg thought. No one is dead. It’s a mistake. You weren’t supposed to be here …

“The first thing,” Glim said, “is we clean up.”

That sank in a little. Yes, they had to do that, didn’t they? What a mess.

“But he’s going to be missed,” Wert went on. “They’ll send more divers to look for him.”

“Right,” Glim said. “That’s why we’re going to fix it so they don’t find him. Or any of them.”

“How can we do that? Even if we cut them up and put them in a midden, a sniffer could find them.”

“Don’t worry,” Glim said confidently. “I know what to do. They won’t be found.”

“Then they’ll start interrogating us.”

“The four of us are the only ones who know what happened,” Glim said.

“What do you mean by that?” Cilinil asked, swimming away a bit.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Glim said. “That’s not what I’m getting at.”

Something suddenly fit together inside Annaïg’s head.

“Listen to me,” she said. “Just listen. No one knows the skraws are involved, right? Each kitchen will think the other killed Toel. We don’t need to get rid of the bodies—they need to be found. But they need to be found hidden in Phmer’s midden. Everything here—and I mean everything—must be cleaned up. I can make a scrub that will scour this place as if we were never here. Then you can make it look like Toel was killed trying to invade Phmer’s kitchen, you understand?”

Glim’s membranes filmed his eyes and then drew open again.

“Did you—” he began, then stopped.

But he didn’t have to finish. She knew what he was thinking.

“No, Glim,” she said. “I didn’t plan this. It never occurred to me to—you know. But if we play this right, it can work. For all of us.”

“They’ll suspect you,” Glim said. “The only survivor.”

“Everyone who knows I came down here is right here,” she replied. “When Toel can’t be found, I’ll be as surprised as anyone as to where he went in the first place.”

Glim seemed to sort that for a moment before nodding.

“If you think it will work.”

“It’s a gamble,” she admitted. “We could be found out. We could die horribly. But that was probably going to happen anyway, right?”

“I suppose so,” Glim agreed.

“Well, then,” Annaïg said. “Let’s go do what’s needed, and try to live until tomorrow.”

And so they began doing that.