Proud and glorious wall? Clay scowled at the crude palisade encompassing the so-called lovely cannibal village. The Ferals had skewered bodies on the pointed tips and used blood to paint vulgar murals on its surface.
Moog was confused as well. “Torcs? Those are—”
“Beautiful, are they not?” Gregor shot the wizard a conspiratorial wink. “I only wish Dane could see how they shine. Alas, my poor brother was born blind, and so it is left to me to describe in detail the splendour of our surroundings.”
Dane smiled his awful smile, lifting one hand to the iron slave collar at his throat. “It feels beautiful,” he said.
“It is!” his brother agreed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was crafted by the druins themselves.”
Clay wouldn’t have been surprised if it was stolen from the neck of a dead ox. He didn’t say so, though. And neither did Moog.
“You might be right,” said the wizard. He wore a crooked smile, and Clay caught the glint of moisture in the old man’s eyes. “Indeed, I think you are. Druin forged, no doubt.”
Dane’s smile widened even further, and Gregor offered Moog a gracious nod.
They waited, and while they did a trio of Ferals went by, each dragging a net crammed with the bodies of those Ganelon and the others (but mostly Ganelon) had slain in the forest earlier. For a brief moment Clay assumed the fallen hunters were to be given a proper burial, but then he remembered where he was. A few nearby villagers looked on hungrily, apparently fine with the idea of eating tomorrow those whom they had called friends today. He practically saw them salivate when the corpse of Dook was hauled into the village.
Gregor described the morbid procession to his brother as it went by. “The brave hunters have returned!” he said. “And oh, what bounty! Dane, I wish you could see. There are spotted deer, and a great white stag whose antlers are so big they scrape furrows in the earth beneath him. They have five—no, six—braces of grouse, and a few fat turkeys. Oh, and here come the pheasants! I hope you’re not sick of pheasant, Dane!”
“Never!” cried Dane.
Gregor went on long after the hunters were gone, recounting a pageant so detailed and exotic that Clay almost closed his eyes himself so that he could listen without being betrayed by his sight. Instead, he watched Dane’s broken face light up with wonder, and felt a warmth in his heart, the kind that crept up on you during the first stirring notes of a song and then nestled in your lap like a purring cat.
That Gregor put such effort into describing for his brother a world that was so much more appealing than the one in which they actually lived … It was a gift, Clay decided. A profound and extraordinary blessing bestowed upon one whom the world had effectively cursed.
It was damned noble was what it was.
A short time later Teresa emerged from the chieftain’s tent and scuffed his way over. “CHIEF SEE YOU NOW,” he declared, holding up three fingers. “ONLY TWO INSIDE.”
Gabriel cocked his head. “Two? Or three?”
“TWO,” said Teresa, brandishing the same three fingers.
“I don’t …” Gabe shook his head. “Never mind. Clay, Moog, with me.”
The elder raised no objections at all when the three of them followed him across the track.
The chieftain’s tent was shaped like a cone, the skin of gods-knew-what stretched over a frame of tall wooden poles. There was a steady stream of smoke issuing from a hole at its peak, and when they stepped inside the dim interior it was thick with a haze that smelled oddly familiar.
Glancing down, Clay found himself standing on a fleshy mat with the word Welcome etched out in the common tongue. “I …” he began, before a cry from Moog cut him short.
“Kit!”
The ghoul, whom Clay had forgot about entirely until this moment, was standing just inside the door, flanked by a pair of Feral guardsmen. He was still dressed in that bedsheet robe, and had accessorised with a red silk scarf to conceal the grisly wound in his throat.
“Gentleman, hello. I apologise for leaving the ship unattended, but our hosts were rather insistent I accompany them here.”
“The ship is gone,” Gabe told him. “Burned.”
Kit frowned, but before he could respond the wizard stepped up and embraced him. “I thought you were dead!”
“I am dead,” muttered the ghoul as Teresa offered them each a bowl. The contents looked deceptively like wine. Clay looked warily at his while Kit took a tentative sip.
“It’s blood,” he warned them.
“Human?” Moog asked.
Clay fixed him with an incredulous glare. “Does it matter?”
The wizard frowned into his bowl without answering.
“COME!” shouted Teresa, beckoning them farther inside the tent. There was a fire pit in the centre; several skulls stuffed with what smelled like Taino’s curative weed were nestled among the smouldering coals. Smoke poured from their empty sockets, clouding the tent. Across the pit, Clay saw the Boneface chieftain lying on a bed of black furs. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but a huge naked woman had definitely not been it.
Clay shuddered to imagine how much flesh a person had to consume to grow so large. Her entire body was painted white, so that her massive limbs looked like pale sausages drawn to bursting at her wrists and ankles. Her breasts were sagging pillows on her chest, and her flabby chin rested on a shelf of other, flabbier chins. She wore a headdress that looked like a scaffolding of tiny bones; her black hair coiled through it like vines on a garden trellis. One of her beefy arms cradled a painted red skull, lacquered to a gleam, while the other rested in the lap of a servant, who was kneading the palm of the chieftain’s hand.
“Gods of Grandual,” Moog gasped. “Her fingers.”
Looking closer, Clay saw that her fingers were black and shriveled, like wood reduced to char after a fire. His mind recoiled in horror, and it was an effort not to give voice to the word that echoed like a curse in his head.
Rot.
She wasn’t sick, then, as the others had claimed. She was dead. It was only a matter of time. Moog, Clay saw, was transfixed by the infected fingers, like a man matching the gaze of an ancient nemesis.
The elder knelt and murmured quiet words in the chieftain’s ear. She said nothing in reply, but handed him the lacquered skull. Teresa scuttled closer to the fire. He pried open the crown and packed it with sticky brown clumps of mudweed before placing the skull among the others on the bed of glowing coals. When it started to smoke he snatched it up and returned to the chieftain. She palmed it with a pudgy hand and held the skull’s face to hers, inhaling the vapour trickling from its grinning mouth.
Afterward she sagged into her furs, exhaling smoke in a long, languid stream before saying something too quiet to hear.
Teresa addressed the three of them from his knees. “CHIEF GLAD YOU COME. HAS WANT TO TRADE.”
“Trade what?” asked Gabriel.
“THIS ONE,” said the elder, pointing at Kit. “IS DEAD MAN. BAD FLESH. NO CAN EAT.”
The ghoul self-consciously fingered the red silk scarf at his throat. “That’s true. I would taste dreadful.”
“WANT TRADE FOR ANOTHER,” Teresa announced. “ONE FOR ONE.”
Gabe scowled. “You want to trade us Kit in exchange for … someone else?”
Teresa nodded. “TRADE FOR WING WOMAN, YES.”
“They want Sabbatha,” Clay said.
“Larkspur,” Gabe corrected. “Fine by me.” Teresa beamed and began relating the good news to the chieftain.
Moog tore his gaze from the chieftain’s afflicted fingers. “What? We can’t just give them Sabbatha!”
“Who is Sabbatha?” Kit inquired.
“Why not?” Gabriel turned on the wizard. “She’s not one of us. She tried to kill us, remember?”
“Yeah, but—”
“But she’s changed? Well what if she changes back?”
“I feel like I’m missing something,” muttered Kit.
“She might not change back.” Moog sounded as though he were trying to convince himself as much as Gabriel. “Taino said she might stay this way forever.”
“Or she could snap back tomorrow,” Gabe countered. “Anyway, I don’t see what choice we have, Moog. It’s her or the zombie.”