“I shall work for a little longer.”
“Very well, but when you rest, please do so here. You shouldn’t leave the house without a guard to accompany you.”
Meadows grunted an acknowledgement.
Mademoiselle Clattersmash’s head turned slowly to face us. “Come with me,” she said, in an oddly hollow voice. “I have something to show you. It will clarify matters.”
She pushed past us and left the room. We followed her to the front door, puzzled.
As we stepped back out of the house and into the square, I snapped at the sentries, “Stand to attention! Stop slouching like that! Draw your weapons and keep them in your hands. Be ready to defend the house.”
One grumbled an unintelligible response, slid his sword from its scabbard, and reluctantly straightened up. The other didn’t move.
Kata and her three companions were chatting happily, their mood a striking contrast to the sense of oppression caused by the carmine sky, the impenetrable shadows, and the swirling fog.
Clattersmash ignored the Servants, crossed the square, and entered one of the roads that led out of it. Clarissa and I trailed behind.
“Is this really necessary, Mademoiselle?” my friend asked. “Where are you taking us?”
“To a place where you’ll find the answer,” came the cryptic reply.
“The answer to what question?”
There was no response. She moved on.
We ran after her, turned a corner, and proceeded along a residential street, then, a few minutes later, entered a dingy passage. We rounded another corner, and another, until we were deep in the maze of narrow alleys that criss-crossed behind the city’s main thoroughfares.
Finally, Clattersmash stopped beneath a leaning tenement building and turned until her crow mask was pointing straight at us. Its tip was shaking. Tremors were running up and down the Yatsill’s body.
“You—” she began. “You must—must—must—”
Her head suddenly jerked backward. She screamed. Her hands flew up to the front of her jacket and the sharp fingers dug into the material and ripped it open. The jacket, and the waistcoat and blouse beneath, were torn asunder. She clutched at her mask and yanked it away. Her vertical mouth was spread wide, the inner beak gaping.
“My name is Mademoiselle Crockery Clattersmash!” she screeched. “And I am taken!”
Clarissa backed away, bumping into me. I pushed her aside and drew my sword.
The front seam of Clattersmash’s body cracked open as if being pushed apart from within. A knot of red, suckered tentacles swelled out from the widening gap. Her face sank into the hood-like shell of her head.
“Clarissa! Run!” I shouted.
Clattersmash collapsed onto the cobbles and a repulsive tangle of thrashing limbs bulged out of her. The carapace of her arms and legs turned semi-transparent as the inner flesh withdrew, sliding out, wet and glistening. A sickening thing of squirming appendages and pulsating organs rose from the wrecked Yatsill.
“I must feed,” it said, in guttural, bubbling Koluwaian. A dripping limb extended and pointed over my shoulder. “Then I must take that one to Phenadoor.”
I risked a quick glance back and saw Clarissa pressed against the side of the alley, her hand covering her mouth.
“I told you to run!” I yelled. “Get out of here!”
The Blood God—for, undoubtedly, that’s what the monster was—lunged forward, lashing out at me. Automatically, my blade went up and sliced through tentacles.
As it had before, my training guided my movements, but from the moment I engaged with the creature I knew that something was wrong. I had to kill it, that was plain, but I couldn’t. As it hit out at me again and again, my sword met and removed its limbs, yet I was incapable of striking a fatal blow. Disgust welled up within me; a hatred of the violence I was forced to do; a surge of utter abhorrence, not at the monster that faced me but at the one I’d become if I killed it.
My feelings weren’t real. I realised it immediately. As I ducked and dodged the thrashing appendages, carving at them with my blade, it was absolutely clear to me—for the first time—that my interior battle wasn’t interior at all. Since my arrival in New Yatsillat, my emotions had been manipulated from without. Something was preventing my natural recovery from the lingering shock and fear I’d felt at discovering Polly Nichols’ corpse and was, instead, accentuating and perverting the memory.
Of course I wasn’t Jack the Ripper! The very notion was patently absurd!
Smacking across my face, a limb ripped the flesh of my cheek and a squirming length of muscle slapped down onto my shoulder, curling over my back and around my waist. It ripped my jacket and shirt away and suckers latched on to my skin. I felt spines pierce my flesh. Instantly, as venom was injected, the strength drained out of me and I dropped to my knees.
Dimly, I saw that the Blood God possessed a skeletal structure. The front of it was exposed. I raised my sword and pressed its point against the creature. All I had to do was thrust the blade home.
Do it! Do it!
My arm shook, my vision blurred, Polly Nichols rose up and looked down at me, her intestines looping to the ground, the gashes in her throat mouthing the words,
I do not even consider you a man!
Shame and humiliation flooded through me.
The fatal blow was paralysed.
I raised my head and screamed my frustration and terror.
The tentacle suddenly loosened and slipped from me. I fell sideways. At the periphery of my vision, I saw Clarissa clinging to the back of the creature, plunging her dagger into it again and again. The thing flopped to the ground, flailed wildly for a moment, and lay still. My friend rolled off it and stood, swaying, her eyes glazed.
I struggled to my feet. “Clarissa!”
She staggered forward. I caught her as she buckled but hadn’t the strength to hold her. We both went down in a heap.
A minute or so went by, and we lay breathing heavily before pushing ourselves upright to regard the fallen thing.
“It’s all right,” I said huskily. “You killed it.”
She picked a strip of my shredded clothing from the ground and used it to wipe her dagger blade. Sheathing the weapon, she said, “Poor Mademoiselle Clattersmash.”
I shivered. “I don’t know what’s happening here, Clarissa, but we’re right in the middle of it. I’ve been used to weaken the Yatsill, and a powerful influence has kept me in a state of emotional confusion, accentuating my natural timidity and fears. Look—” I turned and pointed at the gutted corpse of the Yatsill.
In that instant, everything was as it had been in my Yarkeen vision.
“That is exactly what I saw in the Valley of Reflections.” I gazed into my companion’s yellow eyes. “How deeply have I been manipulated?”
She took a deep breath, released it slowly, and gave a slight shrug. “I don’t know, Aiden. Let’s get back to the house.”
I sheathed my sword and looked down at myself. My clothes were hanging in tatters and I was covered from head to foot in gore, some of it my own. The Blood God had lacerated the right side of my chest, my back, and both my arms. Round sucker marks dotted my skin.
“I feel numb, but when the venom wears off, this is going to hurt.”
We began to retrace our steps but hadn’t got very far before my legs started to give way. Clarissa stepped in and lent me physical support.
The fog had become so impenetrable we could see only a few feet in front of us, and when we finally reached Dissonance Square, the figures standing in it were all but obscured. We approached and discovered them to be Father Clutterfuss, Kata, and two of the three Koluwaians we’d seen with her earlier. The third was on the ground at their feet. He was dead.
Clarissa left my side and squatted beside the body. After a brief examination, she said, “Drained of blood. There are sucker marks all over him.”
Kata nodded. “He has been released.”
“Father Spreadflower Meadows was taken,” Clutterfuss said. He pointed at the corpse. “The Blood God fed.”
I rounded on Kata. “Is this what it means to be released?”
She nodded. “It is how we are sent to Koluwai.”
“This man hasn’t been sent anywhere, Kata! He’s been killed!”
“His body is gone, but his spirit will be reborn on your world.”
I, who had once been a priest, snorted disdainfully. “Absurd!”
“Where are the sentries?” Clarissa asked.
Clutterfuss answered, “They chased after the Blood God. It will try to enter Phenadoor, as they always do after first releasing a Servant. Perhaps it will be stopped at the wall.”
“Mademoiselle Clattersmash has also been taken,” Clarissa said. “And you, Father? How do you feel?”
“I am quite well, thank you.”
“Let me see your hands, please.”
The Yatsill held out his arms. His long fingers were moving slowly but steadily, without the trembling and jerking that had been so noticeable in his colleagues.
“Good,” Clarissa said. “Will you come inside and help me to dress Aiden’s wounds?”
“Of course.”
I ordered Kata to follow us.
“But I’m waiting to be released,” she said.
“I’ll not have you killed,” I responded angrily. “Get inside, at once!”
Our housekeeper reluctantly followed us in. The shell of Father Meadows was lying on the vestibule floor.
Clarissa said, “Kata, clean up as best you can. We’ll arrange to have the body removed as soon as possible.” She steered me through into the laboratory. Clutterfuss entered and closed the door behind us. They sat me on a bench and started to clean my wounds. I looked at my hand. My missing little finger was already half-grown back.
“Father,” I said, “Miss Stark and I have been on Ptallaya for some time now. Why did no one tell us that the Blood Gods invade through the Yatsills’ bodies?”
“Only through the Aristocrats,” he corrected. “We do not speak of the Blood Gods when the Saviour’s Eyes are open.”
“Why not?”
“To speak their name is to give them presence.”
“As ever,” Clarissa muttered, “superstitions and traditions bar the way to truth.”
I winced as she dabbed lotion on my wounds. “Do you think there’s another world orbiting the suns?” I asked her. “Is that where those horrible creatures come from?”
“Ptallaya doesn’t orbit, Aiden. If it did, all three suns would periodically be visible at the same time, and I’m quite certain that never happens. Am I right, Father?”
Clutterfuss answered, “The Eyes of the Saviour and the Heart of Blood are eternally opposed.”
“In which case, this planet must hang revolving between the twin suns on one side and the red on the other. As for whether there’s another world out there, it’s a possibility, I suppose.” She looked over my shoulder. “What is it, Father?”
The Yatsill, while cleaning the cuts on my back, had given a small exclamation.
“This,” he said. “It was beneath Mr. Fleischer’s skin.”
Clarissa reached past my head. When she pulled her hand back, I saw she was holding a very small object. She examined it. “It appears to be a seed of some sort.”
“Iriputiz cut me all over and pushed seeds into the incisions,” I told her. “They burned like the fires of Hell.”
“And when we awoke on Ptallaya, your symptoms were gone. We might have the answer. This seed could contain the cure for
kichyomachyoma
.”
“Then let us get back to work,” Clutterfuss urged.
Having treated my injuries, my companions returned to their chemical apparatus. I told them I’d take care of the corpse in the vestibule, which I did by the simple expedient of dragging it outside and leaving it in a corner of the square. With the city in crisis, there seemed no other choice. Certainly, I was unlikely to find Workers possessed of enough wherewithal to take it away. Besides, I was unwilling to go off in search of any. I hadn’t forgotten that the thing that burst out of Mademoiselle Clattersmash had pointed at Clarissa and said, “I must take that one to Phenadoor.”
The Blood Gods wanted my companion.
Some little while later, my presentiment was proven correct. I’d closed and locked all the window shutters and had just locked Kata in her room—she’d been persistently attempting to sneak out of the house—when something thumped at the front door. I crossed to it and shouted, “Who’s there?” The portal rattled as the thumping was repeated. I drew my sword, reached out, pulled the door open, and was confronted by a Blood God. “I have already fed,” it gurgled in the language of the islanders. “I will not harm you. Do not attack. Let us be civilised.”
“Very well. What do you want?”
“I sense the presence here of one I must take to Phenadoor for examination. Please, stand aside.”
I levelled my weapon at the beast. “Who wants to examine her?”
The thing’s eyes swivelled toward my blade. “I do not know.”
“Then who told you to come for her?”
“I am newly emerged. Something communicates with me but I do not know what it is, only that I must obey it in order to secure good status in my society.”