‘Fascinating,’ said Vintage. She was trying to look everywhere at once, her eyes bright. ‘Is this some sort of central control room? The heart of the system?’
‘Whatever it is, it looks like Godwort has decided to see what’s underneath.’ Tor gestured from the far side, and Noon and Vintage joined him. He stood over a ragged hole in the greyish material, and it was clear that several of the lumps had been carefully prized away and put aside, forming a tunnel into the murk below, where a pinkish light glowed fitfully. Many of the tube-like appendages lay ragged and torn, blackening at the ends. Looking at it all made Noon feel strange – it was like staring at an open wound. And the smell of rotten flesh was stronger than ever.
‘Well,’ said Vintage, beaming at them both, ‘I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get down there.’
A green flower of fire blossomed to life between her hands. Wincing slightly against the pain in her shoulder, Agent Lin laid the fire gently on the dry sticks she had collected, and watched as it spread, eating and consuming and growing bigger. Green turned to orange, and she felt the heat push against her face. This was still hers. This was still hers to control. There was always that.
She was camped some distance from Esiah Godwort’s house, its red bricks just in sight. She and Gull had flown over it several times – had observed, from far away, the small figures of the fugitive Fell-Noon and her companions moving about its grounds. Of the owner, she had seen nothing, but it was well known, according to Pamoz the engineer at least, that Godwort was an eccentric recluse. The people she was looking for had headed into the compound behind the house some hours ago, and now she would wait. When they came out again – and they would, unless they were killed by the parasite spirits inside – she would kill them. As simple as that. She had rushed in before, too confident of her own efficiency. She had not taken into account the desperation of the girl, and that in itself was a ridiculous mistake. Had she forgotten already what it felt like to be that desperate? Or had she chosen to forget?
The problem with waiting, of course, was that it gave her too much time to think. To turn the Drowned One’s words over in her mind, for example. To imagine the loss of her son’s finger, to imagine the ways they would take it from him. How he might scream and cry.
When she had been a prisoner of the Winnowry, she had been wild and desperate enough to do anything. The need for the touch of another person was maddening after a while, and that had resulted in her boy, Keren. Not born of love, or affection, but a simple terrible need not to feel alone, just for a little while. It was incredible, the need for the sensation of skin against skin, and she had not been able to control it.
Sitting alone in the terrible landscape of Greenslick, Agent Lin summoned another ball of winnowfire and fed it to the flames already burning. And then another, of the exact same size and intensity. Control.
Keren had dark brown hair, like his father, and it had curled against his skin, so soft. She hadn’t believed such softness existed. His eyes, too, had been brown. He had been a warmth next to her chest, both better and deeper than the heat of the winnowfire, and they had let her keep him just long enough to name him. His fingers and toes had been tiny and perfect – but best not to think about that.
Fell-Noon would soon find out that there was no resisting the Winnowry. Just as she had.
Another ball of flame, identical in every way to the others, slid into the fire. Control. No more mistakes.
28
There was too much.
Vintage could barely move an inch without feeling the need to retrieve her notebooks and inks, to make quick sketches and observations. There was an extraordinary wealth of knowledge here, much more than she had expected – Godwort had made much deeper progress into the body of the Behemoth than he had reported, the old swine. There was too much, but every moment they were inside she was aware of the terrible danger they were in, and she had the distinct sense that her luck was now the thinnest piece of fragile ice, and they were edging out further and further over an abyss.
So as they climbed down into the ragged hole torn by Godwort’s men, she didn’t pause and make drawings, but held her breath, listening closely. She doubted even Tormalin – perhaps especially Tormalin – realised how much danger they were actually in.
Learn what you can and be quick, she told herself. Gather your clues, take them with you. We can come back. Do not test your luck. And on the back of that thought, as it was so often, was the memory of Nanthema. Did she die exploring a Behemoth, just like this, or did she tire of her human companion and find some new bit of Sarn to explore?
‘I don’t like that smell,’ said Noon. She was carrying Vintage’s travel lamp, its small yellow flame lighting the girl’s face more than the narrow tunnel. A curl of black hair had fallen from her cap to rest against her forehead.
‘Yes,’ agreed Tormalin. ‘It smells rather like you did when we found you in the Shroom Flats.’
‘Now then. It could simply be that Godwort’s men left some food supplies down here before they left,’ said Vintage. The greyish matter under her feet was springy, and faintly tacky. She kept expecting her boots to come away with a sucking noise. ‘It’s not necessarily something awful.’
‘Hmm,’ said Noon. Ahead of them, Tormalin stopped and raised his hand.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘It drops away sharply here.’
Vintage shuffled forward, keeping her centre of gravity low, and peered over the edge. They were hanging above what appeared to be an egg-shaped chamber, the smoothly curving walls formed of the greyish translucent blocks and lit with the dimly glowing nodules. There was a rope ladder next to them that ran all the way to the bottom, and there something sat, a shining something that was difficult to look at. It fluttered and pulsed with a sickly pink light, and for a frightening moment she thought it was a parasite spirit, but then she narrowed her eyes and saw that no, it was all sharp angles, and it was unmoving.
Reaching over, she tugged on the rope ladder. It was attached to a pair of wooden stakes that had been driven deeply into the yielding grey flesh.
‘I’d say that looks sturdy enough, wouldn’t you?’
Noon looked sick, the corners of her mouth turned down. Tormalin didn’t look much happier.
‘How much do you pay me again, Lady de Grazon?’
‘Enough to get your bony arse down there, my darling.’ Without waiting for an answer, Vintage took hold of the rope ladder and began to climb down, willing the thing not to fall to bits. She caught the look of exasperation on Tormalin’s face, and then he was lost to sight.