SSCS 04: Installment 23 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 23 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…
Better to wait until there were fewer people, though. Du had drifted away so swiftly, the half-djinn light flaring so bright behind the blacks of his pupils, that San had felt the pinch that came with a reflexive mimicry moving too swiftly. Du would fight the blood pull, possibly viciously. Possibly indiscriminately. It might take Ki and El together to bind him back into himself.
So San waited, drifting toward some back hallway where the crowd thinned almost to nothing, where the stairs turned downward, and the lights were not lit. There was something with Du up ahead, but they were almost alone.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 23: 23.1016
***
Within shadows that were not shadows, that were merely the meeting place of one stone-walled path flowing into another, where flesh flowed by ceaselessly and did not tarry, pooling elsewhere, and chance wisdoms could practically be plucked from the air, a lone (never alone) shard of the Chiton Horde whispered and watched as one bit of flesh (bit of sustenance, bit of home) sidled closer, lured and alluring and well worth being distracted from the gathering of fresh wisdoms.
The shard shifted a bit deeper into its not-shadow, tucked the ragged edges of gleaming, black carapaces deeper into pockets and folds and the edges of the wall so that the host stood nearly bare and seeming bland, nearly invisible, standing along the edges of things, a wall and columns and long gallery that was nearly as good as shadow. The lure of home was singing along the edges of the crowd that never stopped, never paused, here, and it had snagged on something lovely, something loved. Here was a bit of flesh that could be better than the usual host, better than goods. The lure stronger in this flesh, was singing both ways, and instinctively the Chiton Horde sang stronger, pulling on the other shards that were nearby, that had slipped into the edges of this Assembly so ripe for the gathering of good wisdoms as long as the shards kept clever and quiet and mostly still.
But this (home) was a bit of flesh well-worth singing out for, reaching out for, watch it stepping closer. It had dark eyes that flickered with dark flame, and a hunger that sang like to like with the Horde’s own impulses, a hunger wrapped around and through a magic that would taste sweetest wrapped around and through the joining edges of the Horde, the chiton-black carapaces trembling to touch. So sweet the shard almost stepped away from its place of not shadow. Greedy for goods coming willingly, goods the Horde need not barter for for the flesh was nearly home already. But the shadows (even not-shadows) were the safest and always would be—no matter what the Bartering One thought he promised—and the instincts of centuries, pressed chiton-close within the host’s pockets and folds, held the shard still. Waiting. Singing. Calling.
This one would be a much better Strength than the Bartering One had offered so far. This home-flesh might carry the Horde far, to even better nesting, to better magics and better Home. And the want was there inside it, too, flickering the flames in its eyes, shuddering over the surface of its flesh still too bare of chiton. It wanted home. And it was almost close enough to touch. Almost close.
CLOSER.
But then a sudden knife of silence. A sudden pain, as the song of the lure stopped, snapped back hard.
And centuries of memorized instinct boiled the black-chiton carapaces to the surface, the shard drawing hard on its host’s own magic to cast dazzle and fade and forget and to run away swift, black carapaces pulling the host along in a swarm of stone-wall-colored glimpses. Back to the Horde and the meeting place. Back to hiding. The cast-knife of Silence was an enemy it must not meet, not alone (never alone) and exposed and small.
***
When Ki’s magic came down hard on Du, binding him still, blocking the song of the thing that would have fed his hunger, the half-djinn turned with a snarl. As he did, San stepped to the side to let Ki to step closer. And El hurried forward, too, slipping through a knot of passing strangers to stand guard against one of her wayward own, to battle him back to himself and out of the treacherous, long-abstained past.
And Lot looked back when a frission of something, longing, brushed softly, sweetly, against the tips of her tentacled hair. Like a breeze of half-forgotten memories, it pulled her to a stop, then into one step and then another toward a something that waited for her on the far side of the Assembly courtyard. Which one was the dead Queen was forgotten. Which was the mission she’d bound herself to as Last Seeker was forgotten. It was easy to slip through the crowd. It was easy to reach out and touch a memory, and slip away.