"Good thing we weren't no slower," I said and gave the lantern to Mr. von Heber.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Get a boat," I said and sat down to take off my boots and socks and coat and waistcoat. I got my knife out of my boot while I was at it, because I wasn't in a mood to do Phoskis no favors, particularly not favors that involved me holding my breath while I tried to untie a knot underwater in the dark.
"You can swim?"
"Yeah." Keeper made me learn. She was frightened to death of the Sim—most people in the Lower City are, and most of them can't swim a stroke. She knew a guy who knew how to swim, and every summer she'd drag all of us that had hit our first septad down into the Arcane, where there was another flooded vault—this one had belonged to a chandler's warehouse—and her friend Michin taught us how to swim.
So I ain't afraid of the Sim. I don't like it, though. The smell of it—that nasty, metallic smell like a dead foundry—gets basically painted onto anything it touches. And it's fucking cold. But there was no way back from here. The door up top was locked, and Phoskis wouldn't open it no matter how hard we pounded. He didn't give refunds.
I plunged in, swam out to the nearest boat, cut the rope. I braced my feet against the wall, pushed off, and started towing the boat back to where Bernard and Mr. von Heber were waiting.
That's when something grabbed my ankle.
"SHIT!" I said and got a mouthful of water as it pulled me under. I had my knife. I was just starting to double over, to hack down into the murk and pray I hit it instead of my own damn foot—and it let go.
I thrashed back up—I ain't no graceful swimmer, even when I ain't in a panic—gasping for air. I made it back to the steps in about a half a second, and never mind the fucking boat.
"What the hell?" said Bernard.
"The Kalliphorne. That fat fuck let out the Kalliphorne."
After a moment, Mr. von Heber said, "And what, pray tell, is a…did you say 'Kalliphorne'?"
"Take a look at my ankle."
Bernard bent down with the lantern. The Kalliphorne's handprint was clear as daylight, red marks already starting to swell and turn purple. And where its fingers had met, just above the knob of my anklebone, you could see where its claws had torn my skin. And it hadn't even been trying. "Powers," said Bernard.
"I ain't never seen it. Nobody does and lives to talk about it. It lives down here, and Phoskis lets it out to eat people he don't like. It's why he's got a whatchamacallit."
"Monopoly," Mr. von Heber said. "We have to go back."
"Can't. Door's locked."
"Then we have to go on," Bernard said. "It'll get us for sure if we just sit here."
"Yeah. Fuck." The boat had floated close enough that I didn't actually have to swim for it, just waded down three steps and leaned out—and then lashed back up so fast I damn near tripped myself.
Then I sat down and put my socks on and shoved my feet back into my boots before my ankle could puff up any further. While I got the rest 0f my clothes on, Bernard got Mr. von Heber and all our stuff in the boat. Then he got in, and I got in. I took the stern, since I knew where we were going and they didn't. I used one of the oars to give us a shove off the steps, and then handed them both forward to Bernard. He started rowing.
"Is it going to attack?" Mr. von Heber asked from the bow.
"Fucked if I know," I said. I thought about it and added, "If it was hungry, I'd be dead."
"How comforting. Is it frightened of anything? Fire? Sunlight? Silver?"
"Not that I ever heard. Phoskis feeds it." Mostly his whores when he was done with them, but I didn't think Mr. von Heber would want to know that.
Somebody, a long time ago, had painted marks on the pillars to show the way. I followed them. The only sound was the splash of Bernard's oars. We didn't say nothing. I was watching the water for anything that looked like trouble, but I wasn't even sure I'd recognize trouble if I saw it. And from the stories I'd heard, it was more likely the Kalliphorne would just come straight up through the bottom of the damn boat.
But nothing happened and nothing happened, and I was beginning to think, even though I knew better, that maybe we were going to get out okay, that it had gotten bored and gone off to kill something else. Then a voice said, "I smelling magic."
It wasn't a person. I mean, it was speaking Marathine and everything, but there were too many teeth in the words and the sound of it was more like a cat crying than anything else. I can't explain it no better than that.
The voice was too high-pitched and too low-pitched at once, and it just Sounded
wrong.
Bernard and Mr. von Heber were both looking around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. I pointed—couldn't've said nothing, not even if they'd paid me, the way my mouth had all turned to cotton—and they turned that way, and Mr. von Heber conjured up a witchlight, a blue globe about as big as my fist.
I don't think it would've looked better in real light. It was hanging on to one of the pillars, about three septad-feet from our boat, this black thing like a shadow only half out of the water. It had long, tangled weedy hair Its eyes caught the light and flung it back—like a cat's again, only they weren't set in no cat's head. It was kind of like a person's head, except for the angle of the nose and the fucking horrible teeth. I could see the way it was gripping the pillar, its claws flexing into the stone like a cat's do into a tree. Kethe, it could have taken my foot off and not even noticed.
After a moment, Mr. von Heber took a deep breath and said, "It is I you smell."
It showed more of its teeth. I wondered if it thought it was smiling. "The Fat One wishing you all dead—most the young foxlike one."
It paused. I said, "That ain't news."
The Kalliphorne looked at us, tilting its head like a cat does just before it pounces. "Trade."
Mr. von Heber said, "What did you have in mind?"
"Not wishing to be eaten, you?"
"No, we would rather not be eaten."
I think it laughed. I can't think of nothing else that weird, ratchety, hissing noise could have been. Then it was serious again, like snuffing a candle. "My mate. Husband." It pronounced the word slowly and real careful, like me trying to get one of Zephyr's words right. "He being sick."
Me and Bernard goggled at each other like frogs.
But Mr. von Heber sounded almost happy. "What kind of illness?"
She hissed. "Sick from magic. Magic curing, nothing else. You curing, I not eating. You going away in silly little boat. Everything okay."
"And if I cannot cure him?"
She bared her teeth again, and this time it wasn't no smile. "I eating young foxlike one. Not eating magic one. Terrible bad luck."
"I don't see that we have any choice," Mr. von Heber said to me and Bernard.
"You could just chuck me overboard," I said.
"No," he said—just like that, flat as a paving stone. Then he called to the Kalliphorne, "We accept your bargain."
She said, "Okay. Following now," and slid off the pillar. Bernard started rowing, and I swung the rudder to follow her.
Bernard didn't have to row for long. The Kalliphorne's den was maybe six septad-feet from where she'd stopped us. I don't know what it was originally,, just like I don't know what the cellars of St. Kirban were for, but now it was a shelf of rock sticking out into the water. I wondered how far down it was to the cellar floor.
The boat got closer, and I could see the pits in the floor, a straight row of them about a foot back from the water's edge. I looked up and could just see the glint of metal—the caps on the teeth of the portcullis that, phoskis said, kept the Kalliphorne from eating his customers. I'd seen the wheel that ran it, in the same half-level basement that housed the furnace. I'd never touched it—Phoskis wouldn't stand for other people near that wheel—but I'd seen him use it, and I knew how light the balance was. Even a fat old man like Phoskis could crank the gate up in the time it took someone to come down the cellar stairs. I hoped someday soon he'd give himself a heart attack doing it.
The Kalliphorne didn't so much as give the portcullis a glance, like it wasn't there. I was getting spooked worse and worse, and I had to ask: "Lady? What if the, um, fat one drops his gate while we're… ?"
She made her ratchety, hissing noise again, so I guess she thought I was funny. "Worrying about the Fat One's toy, you?"
"A little," I said. The boat chunked against the ledge.
"Not being. Okay."
After a second, I realized that was all I was going to get. "Oh. Um. Thanks."
She gripped the ledge and hauled herself out of the water. Below the hips, she stopped looking human at all. She had a tail, long and thick and finished with trailing fins, like a burgher's goldfish. As she moved, saw that her hair grew from a kind of crest that started halfway back on her skull and didn't stop until a good handspan past her hips. She rocked up on one hip and turned to look at the boat, and I saw that while she didn't exactly have tits, she had six nipples. Cat-fish, I thought and had to cough to keep from giggling. Yeah, since you ask, I was Spooked bad.
"All coming," she said. It wasn't a question, not even close.
"Give us a minute," Bernard said.
It took some doing, getting all three of us out of the boat without nobody having to take another plunge into the water. The Kalliphorne watched. At least she didn't laugh. When we were out, and me and Bernard had heaved the boat up so it wouldn't go floating off without us , the Kalliphorne said, "Come now."
She dragged herself along the floor—her shoulders and arms were like a blacksmith's. If you looked at her wrong, it was like looking at a baby not quite old enough to crawl, and I was chewing on the insides of my mouth to keep the giggles from getting out.
She kept craning her neck up and back to look at Mr. von Heber and finally she said, "Not walking, you?"
The canes were back laying in the boat. Mr. von Heber didn't say nothing for a minute, then said, "Like your husband, I have been made ill by magic. Crippled."
She hissed. I guess it might have been sympathy, but I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe it was just that it would've made it even worse luck to eat him. And I wondered how you got yourself crippled by magic and how bad you had to piss off a hocus for it to be worth their while.
The Kalliphorne and her husband had made their den in an old storeroom. It still smelled just a little like cedar chips, under the smell of dead things and water and a weird scent, sort of sharp and smoky and green, like sage, that I was guessing was the monsters themselves. The Kalliphorne's husband was in a kind of nest of water-stained quilts and ragged blankets. He looked just like her, the same dark, greenish skin, the crest of hair, the eyes and teeth and claws, and the tail—which was whipping around like a snake in a death agony. Me and Bernard stopped where we were, half the room away from him.
"Being
very
sick," said the Kalliphorne, and you couldn't miss the worry in her voice.
"Saints and powers," Mr. von Heber said under his breath. Then he said, "Put me down, Bernard." I
could see by Bernard's face that it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but he did it, leaving Mr. von Heber face-to-face with the Kalliphorne.
Mr. von Heber glanced sideways, and I can't think that thrashing tail looked any nicer from where he was. "I'll need someone to help hold him down."
"I'll do it," I said.
Bernard said, "Do you suppose your fat friend has a way to get down here?"
Me and the Kalliphorne looked at each other.
"Dunno," I said.
"He not coming before," she said, but she didn't sound no more sure about it than I did.
"Then I think I'll keep an eye out." Bernard went back over to the doorway and settled in.
The Kalliphorne crawled over by her husband and caught his hands. cue was talking to him, in this language that sounded like a teakettle come to the boil, and after a little, I could see the tail calming down. And her husband hissed back at her.
"He willing," she said over her shoulder. "Not biting. Coming now, you."
"You still want me?" I asked Mr. von Heber. And that was me
not
thinking about what it would be like to get bit by something with teeth like that.
"I may," he said, making his own way over to the Kalliphorne's husband. "Without knowing what's wrong with him, I don't know what I may have to do to cure him."
"Okay." I went over and crouched down by the Kalliphorne and took a look at her husband. He was maybe a little smaller than her, but not enough to be helpful or anything. I just had to hope the stuff I knew for making guys bigger than me lay quiet would work on him. The bony armor they had across their foreheads and down their noses made it really hard to read their faces. About all I could tell was that he was looking at me. I said, "I, um… If it gets bad and I got to hold him still, I ain't sure I can do it so as it don't hurt. Can you tell him I'm sorry now? Just in case?"
"Okay," she said and hissed at her husband. He looked at her while she was talking, then looked back at me and nodded.
"Okay," I said. Fuck, I thought.
Mr. von Heber came up on the other side. He bowed politely to the Kalliphorne's husband, and said to her, "I need to know his symptoms."
The Kalliphorne tilted her head, same way somebody with eyebrows would've raised them. Mr. von Heber said, "The signs of his illness."
"Yes," she said. "Symptoms. He being very hot." Mr. von Heber's hands were moving over her husband's body, testing pulse and temperature and Kethe knows what else. "But also very cold. Needing many blankets." And where the fuck was she getting blankets from? Did Phoskis give them to her? Trying to picture that was enough to make my head hurt. "Sicking up food. Drinking much water. Sometimes sicking that, too. Cramping bad. Being very sick. You fixing?"