SSCS 04: Installment 29 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 29 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
(And the character list is here.)
Previously…
“My mistress breathed this morning.” A quiet wail, the Salt Queen’s Avatar, her Emmissary and keeper of, of all things, her Breath, showed himself convincingly pale, and shaking. “You cannot tell me she did not. You did not know her. You did not see her, before today. Did you? What monsters have you brought amongst us?” A muted, accusing glare next, stabbed toward the Gull Queen. Though, for her part, she did not flinch away from it. (Perhaps the Iron Queen might have, she who’d housed these Last-Seekers, the Lazarine, the night before. But no one was looking in her direction.)
“Take them to the cells,” the Gull Queen said instead. “A separate one for each. And two more made ready—for their companions, as soon as they, too, are recovered.”
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 29: 24.0416
***
Somewhere, some little ways across the City of Bridges, San cautiously descended a tight, silver-filigree, spiral staircase tucked between tall, narrow buildings.
As he did, the strange scent, of dust and weird, fizzing magics, rose up around him. And the air grew cool, but not cold. And it grew dry, not the damp chill San had expected descending closer to the river, descending far enough down there was surely river water, somewhere, lapping high and all around. It was simply dark, and calmly cool, and dry, with a tang of dust drifting like a strange echo in the darkness ahead.
And then there was a flicker of light, faint and ethereal and blue. And then darkness again.
Sound from the street above filtered down, but the space here was silent. Almost. Almost there was a sound like breathing, coming from somewhere ahead. San hesitated to step into that pure forward darkness, but then remembered the last time he’d followed Lot down into the river, and lifted a hand. Slowly, remembering the trick of it, he picked out faint points of luminesce, shifting the cells of his skin to match what he’d seen Lot do before, dotting them to outline each of his fingertips, and then the ridge of his palm, so that, finally, a faint light shone forth from his hand. It showed a small, round, steel-pinned room, the floor littered with old, scattered detritus—faded lemon leaves, fishbones, paper—and an open hatchway leading on.
The scent of Lot lead forward, mixed up and surrounded by the scents that were skittering and fizzing and dry. San stared for a long time at that hatchway. His magics were small compared to the others. It would probably be better, for now, simply to wait, not risk himself to whatever waited through that hatchway.
But then someone else stepped through it.
Despite the light shining forth from his hand, this person seemed to step directly out of the darkness, silent as a ghost passing through walls rather than a person walking through hallways. They came so silently, and suddenly, and softly, that they were already just one pace away and holding their hands out in a strange, mute greeting before San even realized what he was seeing. So sudden he thought his heart ought to jerk in cold startlement, but yet it didn’t.
They were black as night. Not black like El’s current body, with her beautiful, young child’s skin that shone like burnished coal, soft and warm and alive across her brow, upon her cheek. This was a blackness that held shadows and obscured this person’s form, that was almost crawling. Only the person’s eyes shone bright within the shifting darkness where their head should be, and then, faint and small, the flash of their teeth as they spoke. “San -sweet-,” they said, “We know where it is hidden. -stone-flesh- The Heart. Come into the nest, and we will bargain -offer- -keep-.” They turned without waiting for a reply, and the blackness of their form slipped into the darkness beyond the hatchway.
And, strangely, San did not hesitate to follow them.
As he moved down the passage lit only by the glow of his hand, he realized he could almost taste the footsteps he was following in. But not with his tongue, or with scents. Rather, there was a buzzing…taste of them rattling, warm and quiet, beneath his breast bone. And as he went further, it grew, so that by buzzing taste he knew there were more of them, hanging back in the darkness or waiting ahead. Three. Four. Perhaps another much farther away. And Lot. The touch-taste of her flooded so strongly and suddenly through San’s bones that he felt himself staring at her long moments before he realized that he was, with his eyes, staring at her.
She lay supine on the floor of a small chamber at the end of the passageway, nested upon and wrapped or covered in something like rags, and something like the shifting night-blackness of the figure who’d greeted him. But the lights, like constellations across her skin, shone through, made her clearly visible as soon as San’s eyes were willing to see her. Head propped up slightly, she was staring back at him.
“San.” Her lips didn’t move, were wrapped with something. It was one of the other, nigh-invisible figures in the chamber that spoke. Still, that buzzing taste of her told San that Lot was the one who was speaking to him now. Or almost. The next words belied that certainty. “This flesh holds so much magic. So many wisdoms. But it is trying to die. We have wisdoms to Bargain/trade. Help us.”