As she watched, an elongated shape made of purple light rose shimmering from the waterlogged wreck, turning gracefully in the air as it sailed slowly from one side to the other. She missed Tormalin and his easy, cocksure confidence, and she even missed the strange forceful presence of the fell-witch Noon. But she could not have brought them to this particular wreck.
‘I’ve put them through enough,’ she said to the empty beach, to her half-eaten dinner. ‘And they’ve already paid for my curiosity.’ The guilt of leaving them was a heavy weight in her stomach.
Except that wasn’t all of it, she well knew. The truth was that what this Behemoth might contain was much too personal, much too raw, to ever let anyone else see. Vintage stood up. It was a warm, balmy day but the breeze coming in off the Kerakus Sea was chilly. The scorching on her cheeks had finally healed, and the skin there felt tougher than it had before.
‘Time to find out, either way,’ she said aloud. ‘Nanthema, if you’re in there, I will be there soon, my darling.’
Kicking sand over the embers of her fire, Vintage slipped on her small pack – she would be travelling light today, no sample jars and no notebooks – and fastened her crossbow to her belt next to a newly sharpened hunting knife she’d bought in the seaside town. The boat was not easy to push into the sea, and she got a good soaking before she clambered into it, but the woman who’d sold it to her promised that once it was in the water it would be a dream to handle, and that much seemed to be true. Gathering up the oars, she leaned into the work with a grimace. Her back complained, but she could ignore that. It would complain all the more tomorrow.
‘If I’m still alive, of course.’
The small boat bobbed and lurched, sunlight dancing across the water in blinding shards. The shattered Behemoth remains loomed closer, and she periodically reminded herself to keep an eye on the water as she went. The woman who had sold her the boat had told her that once they had tried to mark the areas where the Behemoth shards lurked just below the surface. A small party had come out here with specially made floats and chains, but three of their number had been turned inside out by parasite spirits and they hadn’t tried again. Now people simply kept away from the bay entirely – it was easier that way. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
As if she had summoned it, Vintage spotted a twisted point of oily-looking metal poking just above the waves ahead of her. Squinting so hard that she was sure she would get a headache, she steered the little boat away from it; as she went, she got a brief impression of the enormous piece of broken Behemoth hidden just below.
‘I am a bloody fool,’ she said, a touch breathlessly.
Ahead, the main section towered above her, cave-like and littered with shredded sections of what she now knew to be springy material that made up their corridors and walls. Now that she was closer, she could see thick wads of seaweed clinging to the places where the metal touched the water, as well as sweeping colonies of barnacles and mussels. Giant crabs too – she saw their furtive sideways movements as they skittered into the dark. There was, she mused, a lot of food out here for someone willing to chance it, but no crab was tasty enough to risk having your innards exposed by a parasite spirit. Soon the Behemoth wreckage closed over her head, and the bright breezy day was lost to a shadowy quiet. It smelled strongly of salt here, and the other, unnameable smell she had come to associate with Jure’lia places.
‘Here we go.’
Bringing the boat up as close as she could, she tied it up to a twisted piece of metal. Ten feet above her was a section like honeycomb, sheared in half by the violence of the impact; she was looking at the exposed ends of several passageways. They would be her way in, if she could get up there. Working quickly, all too aware that a parasite spirit could appear at any moment, Vintage slipped an augmented crossbow bolt from her pocket and fetched the length of rope from her pack. Tying one end to the bolt, she then fixed it firmly into the crossbow, and aimed it above her, trying to spot a good place to try. She only had five of these special bolts, each one tipped with an extra layer of steel.
It took three attempts before she got a bite she trusted, and then she was wriggling her way up the line, swearing violently under her breath and cursing her own stupidity, all the while hoping that a parasite spirit wasn’t oozing out of the dark towards her. When she got her fingers hooked over the edge of the closest platform, she hauled herself up and over, and crouched where she was, listening and watching.
‘Let’s hope it stays this quiet.’
Satisfied that she wasn’t in immediate danger, she began to move. From below she could hear the crash and slosh of seawater against the broken hull, and far, far above, the cries of seagulls. The sound cheered her a little. Reaching inside her pack she retrieved and lit her travelling lamp. Its small, warm glow blossomed into life, and she grimaced at the walls of the passageway. The Behemoths were made of the most resilient material she had ever seen, but so many years in the water had taken its toll; moss and mould were in evidence here, and the place had a terrible, dying smell to it. Summoning what she remembered of the structure of Godwort’s Behemoth, she walked down the passageway, boots echoing on the damp floor. All too quickly, her light was the only light.
‘Nanthema,’ she said to the walls streaked with mould and the encroaching darkness. ‘I remember the first time I saw you, my darling.’ Her voice was a whisper, keeping her company. ‘I had never seen an Eboran before. I had never even seen anyone wearing spectacles before.’ She found herself grinning reluctantly at the girl she had been. ‘And there you were, larger than life in our drawing room, dazzling and frightening my father with your questions and your knowledge. You were a painting come to life. A figure from mythology walking around and eating our good cheese.’
The passageway curved and split. There was no way to know for sure where she was going, so she went left, deciding to trust her instincts.
‘Soon it was me bothering you with questions, and you, I think, were glad to find someone finally interested in the ghosts in the vine forest. Nanthema, our time together was so short.’ She took a slow breath. ‘I do hope I am not about to trip over your skeleton in the dark. That would be dreadful. Unless I’m right about where you are . . .’