SSCS 04: Installment 17 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 17 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…
The black river water swirled them up, flecks and pieces of black chiton flashing within the ripples of moonlight, tiny, white moons of hosts’ eyes closed away as the Horde felt and smelt its way through the waters beneath the city, the swiftest way to travel back to anchorage. Once it (they all) felt a strange throbbing pulsing up from the depths beneath a massive stone pilon, but the shard-hosts could not swim deep, and so the Chiton Horde passed on, eventually flowed out of the water again at a slime-soaked quay-step hidden from the moonlight by a great warehouse squatting above. This also was no good place for nesting (waiting, growing), too many bringers coming in and out when they thought the Horde did not see them, too many non-wisdoms cluttering the tastes in the air. But the first of the goods were to be brought here (offerings), and so the Horde spread itself out, one shard for each corner of the warehouse, and settled itself (shifting, stillness, watching) to wait.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 17: 22.1226
***
Ki of no-longer-any-homeland, priest of AkunSoohn, and Second of the Breathbound Lazarine, was everywhere all over pale as moonlight; abroad, they did not blend in easily amongst shadows. Within the mist-cloaked streets of the city Kolssidir, however, the City of Bridges, that almost didn’t matter. Here they were a ghost ghosting their way through the fog and the narrow stone lanes, and what mattered much more than going unseen was whether they could follow the quarry they’d gone after, the one with a silver binding thread embedded in his hand that tied him—so it seemed—to the Moth-Queen’s Seeress.
It would have been more pleasant to trail him in company, though. But the man they followed had parted from his companion almost as soon as the pair had descended from the Moth Queen’s garden grotto. Which meant that San and Ki had parted as well, barely a half-breath after joining into each other’s company for this particular hunt. As the two Lazarine had met and then parted, the changeling had trailed a feather-light touch across Ki’s wrist that Ki now both smiled and shivered to remember, how they’d glanced down at the touch to see the back of San’s hand, briefly dappled, as though with stars.
But though the night was full black now, there were no stars to be seen down here on the city’s fog-wrapped streets. There was just the passing scent of their quarry, and the soundlessness of noiseless footsteps.
And then a sound like a knife in Ki’s mind, drawing them to a sudden halt to stand perfectly still. The binding threads had never given off a sense of sound before, either from the dead hand, or the leashing thread they’d glimpsed in the grotto. And yet…and yet somehow the association was there, and Ki grew wary. Neither Moth Queen nor her Seeress self would be out on these streets at this time, but what else would call to the binding thread in her spy’s hand? …unless here and now was Ki’s true quarry? Was that binding thread under the control of another? Some other who might also be behind what had happened to the Trawerlers deep in the River below?
That sound again. Perhaps Ki had misguessed themself. Perhaps this was something else. But still they hesitated to move. The fog was all around thick and blinding, only the scent of their quarry still lingering strong here to suggest the one they followed was still only just a bit ahead. And there was another scent, too—river water lapping against moss-slicked stones riding on a faint draft. There was a short stairway leading down to the water very near to here, perhaps very close to where Ki’s quarry had stopped.
But then…a short breath of near-soundless laughter, and Ki melted aside as the Moth Queen’s spy they followed strode back this way, and with the companion he’d parted from earlier once again at his side. There was something off about the companion’s gait, or…her scent? But her presence meant San should also be nearby and would be able to provide further details. Ki made to follow the pair once they’d passed by, but almost in the same moment San was there beside them, his hand once again on their wrist, and only the close wash of his scent that they knew so well preventing a sudden, violent startle. That and also the blooming warmth in Ki’s pocket where they’d stored the blood-marker the two had exchanged earlier, glowing warm now with rejoined proximity to its pair.
“Back this way,” San whispered in Ki’s ear, and drew them away from the quarry, back into the fog and along the street the two spies had just come from. “If it’s still there, El will want to know what you can sense of it.”
‘It’ wasn’t very far. As Ki had guessed, there was a stone stair leading down to the River, but San hurried past it and onward, along and across the street to another downward stair, almost identical to the first but set close to a long jetty. San’s steps slowed as the two Lazarine drew closer, and he didn’t need to caution Ki to move silently. But even through the fog, and the dark of the night, and the dark of the descending steps, Ki began to see a flicker of…dappled starlight.
There, sprawled on the jetty as though in lazy repose, lower half dangling down into the stairwell, was a lone Trawerler. It was gently lit by its own light, faint dapples that spread down its long, long limbs to the tips of its many jointed, articulate fingers; faint whirls that circled the tentacled seeming-hair that spread out and down from its head and face in a beautiful, glowing mane. Seeing it, Ki became aware of a faint sound just beyond the edges of their hearing, something thrumming and twining, something that should have been song but…wasn’t.
Even as they stopped a good ten paces away, the Trawerler lifted its head, somewhat slowly, weary, and gazed around at them. Its expression was remote and strange, but that faint whirling and dappling like starlight glowed suddenly brighter as though in invitation. And the sound from before, like a knife, cut through Ki’s mind once more.
“Is it?” San whispered, holding close to Ki’s side.
And Ki whispered back, “Oh yes.” The knife sound had gone again from their mind just as quickly as it had come. The figure before them remained wreathed in night and fog and splendor. “It’s quite dead.”