Bernard didn't like none of it, and the look he was giving me said he knew who to blame. "You're the boss," he said, sullen as an overloaded mule.
"Yes," said Mr. von Heber, "I am. Mildmay, if you can find a suitable place for us to disembark, I think you should."
"Fine," said Bernard.
"Okay," I said.
There wasn't nothing real "suitable" anywhere in the marshes, so I just nicked the next piece of bank that looked like it was more or less solid and swung the rudder. The boat dug its nose into the mud like it was looking for something, so it turned out to be a good thing we wanted to ditch it, because we would've had a fuck of a time getting it free again.
Bernard made real heavy weather of getting Mr. von Heber out of the boat, and the packs out of the boat, and how were we going to carry all this shit halfway to Vusantine. And finally Mr. von Heber said, "The longer you stand there complaining, the farther your boots are going to sink into the mud, and the more likely you are to lose one. At which point, I assure you, I will start laughing and probably not stop."
Bernard gave him a look like black tar and said to me, "You'd better help carry."
"Sure," I said, and he loaded me down with as much as he thought he could get away with. But he had to carry Mr. von Heber—no way could he use his canes on stuff like this—so I actually figure I didn't come off too bad.
Now, you've got to understand, I've always hated the St. Grandin swamp. St. Grandin is this guy who got harrowed to death, and I don't know if it's his swamp because he got harrowed out there, or because it's the sort of land nobody can use a harrow on, or some other reason, but it suits anyway. You can't build nothing in the swamp—every once in a while Somebody comes up with some wild idea about drainage and shit like that, but People just laugh at them—and I think half the plants that grow there are Poisonous. The trees are these nasty swoony kind of things and the wood ain't good for nothing. And people dump things there that they don t want nobody finding. You know, like bodies. And there's been ghouls in the swamp since at least the days of King Mark Ophidius, and nobody's ever figured out what to do about them, neither. All them great necromancers, like Bathsheba Dunning and Fortinbras Allison and Loël Fairweather, and they never did nothing about the ghouls in the St. Grandin Swamp. And the Mirador now just says as how they're folktales, and three ain't no ghouls, and ain't them suckers in the Lower City a bunch of superstitious flats?
No ghouls my ass.
I'd been hearing stories about the St. Grandin Swamp since I was old enough to pay attention, and if I tried to tell you I wasn't the least little bit nervous when we started away from the boat, I'd be a liar. Truth is, I was scared half to death. Most of what I knew about dealing with ghouls was what Keeper said: stay the fuck away from them. I'd picked up little bits and pieces of stuff from Lollymeg and Zephyr and the crazy guy in the Arcane who made his living scavenging in the swamp, but mostly I did what Keeper said. I wondered how much Mr. von Heber knew about ghouls, but I didn't feel like making a noise loud enough to find out.
We headed for Alchemic, me and Bernard picking our way as best we could, and nobody saying nothing. I was listening so hard I was giving myself a headache—half for ghouls and half for gators, 'cause you don't want to fuck around with them, neither, although mostly they don't go after people on land along of how mostly it don't work. Pretty soon—like within a septad-foot—me and Bernard were muddy up to the knee, and by the time the sun said it was the septad-day, we were all three of us covered in mud from head to toe, mostly because of this one bad patch where Bernard had got snarled up in some kind of bramble and taken this tremendous header, him and Mr. von Heber both. It had taken a really loud quarter hour to get them both free again, and I was worried about what might've heard us. But Bernard had been so scared he might have hurt Mr. von Heber that he forgot he was pissed off at him, and I guess that was something.
At the septad-day, we stopped and rested. We didn't have no food, but Mr. von Heber had this little spell he could do to make the water okay, and he even got it to work, although it took him four tries, and I could see what he meant about the Mirador's fucked-up magic fucking him up. But it did work in the end, so at least we didn't have to be thirsty on top of everything else.
When we went on, I started really hearing things, not just listening so hard everything sounded bad. When you actually hear something, you know the difference. I was walking ahead of Bernard, because I knew where Alchemic was and more or less how to get us there, but I started walking slower and slower, trying to pinpoint where the thing was that I heard, and Bernard caught up to me.
"What is it?" Mr. von Heber said, quiet-like.
"Dunno," I said. "I hear something, but I ain't sure—"
And then I was sure, and I wished I wasn't.
The thing about ghouls is, they're fast. They ain't like the Walking read in stories, where the hero can
always outrun 'em even if he can't do thing else. You can't outrun a ghoul.
It came barreling at us out of nowhere, and my reflexes sent me one and Bernard's sent him the other, and it missed us both. I don't know if it had been male or female when it was alive. It was smallish, and a kind of blackish red all over. The only thing I really remember is its eyes. They were the color of blood, and they were angry. Oh, and the teeth. I'd like to forget the teeth, but I don't suppose I ever will.
It made this horrible kind of yowling sound when it figured out we'd both dodged, and it swung round. And then it just stood, looking at me, then looking at Bernard and Mr. von Heber, then looking back at me. That's why I remember the eyes so good, the way its head came round and those eyes were glaring at me like pure distilled bottled hate. It wasn't just hungry. It was pissed off that it was dead and we were still alive.
The only knife I had was the butterfly knife I kept in my boot, and right then it seemed about as much good as a toothpick. But if Bernard was going to get his sword out without getting his arm bitten in half, he needed a distraction, and that had to be me, because there was no way I could kill that thing with a butterfly knife. And, I mean, there wasn't nobody else.
"You gotta cut its head off," I said, not looking at Bernard because I didn't dare take my eyes off the ghoul. Its head was swinging faster now, like it was trying to make up its mind.
"I hear you," said Bernard.
"Okay," I said, and came up out of my crouch with my knife ready.
And even then I was very damn nearly too slow. It seemed like the fucking thing was moving before I was, and my knife came up straight into its stomach—which if it had been anything normal, would've been the end of the argument right there. But the ghoul just yowled again and tried to get its teeth into my throat. I couldn't swear that there was anything going on in my head at all, but if there was, it ran, oh, Kethe, don't let it bite me. Ghouls got the filthiest mouths this side of cottonmouths, and anything it bit I knew for a fact I was going to lose. I got my other hand under its chin and pushed straight back, with my fingers tucked down against my palm so it couldn't bite
them
, and it yowled and spat, and its fingers were sinking into my shoulders like I was made of butter. I would've broke its neck, except it wouldn't've done me no good. The ghoul wouldn't care.
And then Bernard said, "Let go!"
I wasted about half a second hoping that he knew what he was doing then let go of the ghoul's head. It was already aiming for my throat again when Bernard's sword came around in a flat sweep and buried itself in the ghoul's neck. The ghoul shrieked, and its head fell over to its left shoulder—Bernard had got through about half the stuff in its neck, including spine—and this black gunk that wasn't really very much like blood started spurting everywhere. Bernard was cursing steadily, and the ghoul was still trying to figure out how to bite me—and it hadn't let go of me neither.
"The angle's bad," Bernard shouted over the noise the ghoul was making.
"Fuck," I said. But I saw what he meant. To take its head off now was going to take a chop straight down, and he didn't have no way to get no power behind it from here. I had this horrible flash of a thought of me standing there while Bernard sawed the thing's head off like it was a loaf of bread, and then I did the only thing I could think to do. I dropped to my knees, figuring either it would go down with me and Bernard could get his angle, or it'd let go of me and then we'd all be better off.
Ghouls are fast, but they ain't bright. It still wanted my throat and hadn't figured out yet that it couldn't
get there. It bent its knees right along with me, and its head lolled forward, the teeth still snapping and grinding, trying to get close enough to bite me.
I didn't like him none, but Bernard did know what he was doing. We'd barely touched the ground when his sword came crashing down like a judgment, went through the rest of the ghoul's neck and buried itself somewhere around the collarbone. The head fell forward off the body. I lurched back, but the hands were still clamped down on my shoulders, and the body came with me, and I fell over.
Bernard had to break the thing's fingers, one by one, to get me free of it, and I had these black and purple bruises that lasted a decad and a half. We were both covered in its black, swampy blood before I could stand up. again, and when he kicked the body over on its back, we saw that the ghoul's head had buried its teeth in its own thigh.
"Kethe," I said and just about sat down again without meaning
to.
"You all right?" Bernard said.
"Yeah. Sure. I mean, it's just that… that was aiming for me."
Bernard cussed up one side and down the other in Norvenan, then said, "Thanks for drawing it off."
"Thanks for taking its head off."
"Are there likely to be more of them?" said Mr. von Heber.
"Fuck," I said, "I don't know."
"Well, they must not hunt in packs, or more of them would've shown up by now," he said, and Bernard went over to start collecting their stuff.
I picked up the things I'd dropped, including my knife. It was still the only knife I had, even if it was covered in black gunk I didn't even want to think about. I cleaned it off as best I could before I closed it, and stuck it back in my boot.
And then we went on—mud and mosquitoes and every once in a while we'd hit a clear patch and I'd look back and there'd be this nasty gray smudge over the Mirador and I knew they hadn't got the fires out yet. But we didn't have to fight off no more ghouls. Maybe they saw what happened to the first one. Or maybe there were better pickings somewhere else. The Road of Chalcedony—and once I'd remembered this I couldn't stop thinking about it, even though I was trying to—for part of its length it runs along a causeway through the eastern edge of the St. Grandin Swamp, and if I was a ghoul and I was hungry, that's sure where I'd be.
We made it to Alchemic about the tenth hour of the day. The Long Time Coming was full up with people out of Mélusine. "No room," Jeanne-Phalange said. But she recognized me—people do, I can't help it, it's the fucking scar—and said, "You want work?"
"What kind of work?"
"Ricko in the bar—" She jerked her head sideways at the wall where somebody a long time ago had knocked a doorway between the hotel and its next-door neighbor, The Mule's Daughter. "He's run off his feet, and Lev the bouncer's gone haring off to the city to see if his boyfriend's okay. You wanted to do him a favor, I imagine he'd find you and your friends a place to sleep."
"Thanks, Jeanne-Phalange," I said, and we went next door, where the bartender fell on us like long-lost
cousins. I can tend bar okay, and Bernard admitted as how he'd done his share of bouncing, and there was this kind of pause, and I could see Ricko thinking that Mr. von Heber wasn't no use to him and could maybe be used to bargain us down, and I said in a hurry, He can tell fortunes."
"Fortune-telling, huh?" Ricko said, giving Mr. von Heber the hairy eyeball. "What kind?"
"No magic," I said. "Just cards."
"Oh, cards are okay. And, powers, anything to keep the fuckers quiet. Lemme see if I got a place you can lay up."
He went into the back, and Mr. von Heber said, not nicely, "Mildmay."
"What?"
"You know perfectly well—"
"You don't
got
to use magic, do you? And you said you did it for money sometimes."
"It's not that," he started, but Ricko came back, and he never did explain what'd set him off. I could guess, though. He never liked things that weren't his idea first.
Felix
We come to the courier station hours after sunset, and it is only by the indefatigable efforts of the lieutenant that we find it at all. He sometimes has the head of a hunting hound; more and more often as the shadows lengthen and Thaddeus and Vicky begin a snarling, acrimonious interchange that is not even an argument, merely a festering growl, I cannot see him at all. The world is disappearing, piece by piece; the darkness has closed in around me long before the sun sets.
The courier station is full of shadows; some of them move.
I find a chair as close to the hearth as I can get. The heat and the light help—or at least I can pretend they help—and I am not in anyone's way. I hope that they will leave me alone.
But I cannot have that. I have never had that.
"Felix!" It is Thaddeus's voice. I wish I could pretend not to hear him, but I turn. The raven-headed monster is beckoning to me, and I still remember that that is Thaddeus, that the raven's glittering black eyes and the storm cloud of red and purple surrounding it are only my madness.
I get up, leave the fire. I can see the darkness winding around me like silk ribbons, streaming and flapping in a wind that is not there.