SSCS 04: Installment 6 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 6 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…
Though death was an old, close friend to her by now, still this scene had her greatly unsettled. It shouldn’t have been so, but her skin shuddered away from the thought of touching any of these dead.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 6: 21.0923,22.0130
***
They emerged from the river in silence, the hush of the cool evening rising up in a fog around them, skin beading tight with the prickle of gooseflesh until their bundled clothes were fetched up and their wet nakedness swaddled.
San kept quiet watch as Lot retied the scarf over the tentacles of her hair, his eyes flicking back to her just in time to see the last, faint glimmer of bioluminescence wink out beneath the dull cloth. But now was not the time to mourn its passing. He tucked the dead hand beneath the threadbare flap of his jacket – not that those within seemed much likely to bother him about it, but you could never be sure, in any new place, what kind of knowledge was like to lead to mischief. It should have felt cold there, tucked close to his skin; the River had hardly been warm and Trawerlers cast little heat from themselves when they were living. It didn’t feel cold, though.
Lot, on the other hand, was still shivering, the playful light that had glinted in her eyes earlier that evening shuttered, and no place in her thoughts to see the crowded room they passed into and through, heading for the stairs. She kept remembering the moment when the Trawerler song had cut out, felt it down to the tips of her tentacled hair. And then that rushing heartbeat, rushing away. In the water it had been bewildering. Remembering it now, above the surface, it was like having the breath sucked out of her lungs. For a moment or moments, she could imagine the feeling, the Trawerlers simply coming apart.
At last, though, she lifted her head and realized that there was El in front of her, her child’s slender fingers cupping the side of her face while Lot sat tucked up tight beside Du, her shoulder to his back. His pipes were hissing out a strange melody now, and it took a disorientingly long moment to realize the counter harmony it was built on top of was her own long, low, shuddered keening, easier to feel than to hear, and for those who did hear it most wouldn’t recognize anything human in the voice. Still, it took hearing it herself before she could make herself stop, and then the look of too knowing concern in El’s eyes before she could pull herself up that inch needed to put a gap between herself and Du. Du’s arms were always open, but to everyone who came close enough, and she’d long ago found that didn’t well suit her own mind. She knew better than to lean on the half-djinn’s comforts more than absolutely needed.
“What did you find?” El asked, still rubbing her cheek, brow knitted up in a perfect imitation of a concerned child. Du’s music was easing back into something careless, softly bright in a way that brought back into sharper focus the iron tang of the room they rested in, the sour, humid scent of many people eating, and breathing, close together.
Looking past El, Lot could see San tucked up beside Ki on the far side of the low table. His face had returned to its regular shape, preternaturally young and one eye pulled down at the corner by a scar. It didn’t show, though, any of the fear that Lot had had bubbling up out of her, nothing beyond his posture set so close beside that of his lover. “I brought you back something, El” he said, when El looked over to him in question, and El’s eyes narrowed.
And then their leader felt it. You could see the silence of the River flood her too-young features as, now that she knew to look for it, the presence of the dead hand made itself known to her.
“Alright. Give me a minute,” she answered, a jerk of her small chin to make Lot scooch over, then settled down in her place. Back-to-back with the still-playing half-djinn, semi-shielded, El brought her bag of medicines and measures up onto her lap, opened it, and then opened another place inside of that.
Because for necromancy, one always needs the proper tools, most usually a very sharp knife.