“A momentary failing of ethics.”
“Just so.”
“Expedience winning its war with duty.”
“So would we argue, yes-”
“A defense based on the weakness of nature belongs to untutored children and dogs that bite, Captain. You and your cohorts are all adults and if you relinquished your honour then fierce punishment is righteous and deserves a vast audience, a mob, if you will, expressing their most civilized glee over the cruel misery of your fate.”
Her mouth hung open for a moment longer, then she reached for her sword and swiftly clasped the belt onto her pleasantly curved hips. “You’re one to talk.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Temptation and dogs that bite and all that. Damn you, I can barely walk. Do you imagine I take kindly to rape? I even tried for my knife but you twisted my wrist-”
“It is well known that Bloodwine-even in minute traces on my lips, or in my mouth-will effect a complimentary lust in the victim. Rape ceased as a relevant notion-”
“Doesn’t matter when it ceased being whatever, Bauchelain! It’s not like I consented, is it? Now for Hood’s sake get your armour on-the weight just might hold you down-so I can start thinking straight-and don’t worry, I won’t cut your throat until we’re out of all this.”
“I did apologize,” Bauchelain said. “Impulses beyond my control-”
“Better you grabbed your manservant-”
“Since I am not inclined that way I would have murdered him, Captain.”
“We’re not done with this.”
“I dearly hope we are.”
She marched to the door and flung it open, then paused at the threshold. “Wizard, can we kill this lich?”
Bauchelain shrugged.
“Oh, would that I could kill you right now.”
He shrugged again.
As soon as the cabin latch dropped back down and the thump of the captain’s boots hurried away, Bauchelain turned in time to see Korbal Broach stride out from a suddenly blurry back wall.
“Silly woman,” the eunuch said in his reedy voice, heading towards his trunk. “Could she know the true absence of sexual pleasure-”
“Silly? Not at all. From shock to shame to indignation. She is right to feel offended, at me and at her own eager response. I am now considering a scholarly treatise on the ethical context of Bloodwine. Member emboldened by chemical means, desire like a flood, overwhelming all higher functions, this is a recipe for procreative and indeed non-procreative mayhem. It is a great relief to my sensibilities to know how rare Bloodwine is. Imagine a ready supply, available to all humans the world over. Why, they’d be dancing in the streets brimming with false pride and worse, egregious smugness. As for the women, why, pursued endlessly by men they would swiftly lose their organization al talents, thus plunging civilisation into a hedonistic headlong collapse of swollen proportions-rather, sizeable proportions-oh, never mind. Clearly, I will need to edit with caution and diligence.”
Korbal Broach knelt in front of his trunk and flipped back the lid. Wards dispersed with minute breaking sounds, as of glass tinkling.
Bauchelain frowned down at his friend’s broad back. “Humbling, the way you do that.”
“Ah!” cried Korbal Broach as he leaned forward and stared down at his seething, slurping, burbling creation. “Life!”
“Is it hungry?”
“Oh yes, hungry, yes.”
“Alas,” observed Bauchelain, coming up to stand beside his companion and looking down at the monstrosity throbbing in its gloomy cave, a score of beady eyes glittering up at him, “would that it could do more than heave incrementally in pursuit of prey. Why, a snail could flee it with nary shortness of breath and-”
“No more,” sighed Korbal Broach. “Pleasant past-time. I harvested all the rats on board, yes?”
“So you did, and I wondered at that.”
“Child is now propelled by a flurry of feet.”
Bauchelain’s brows rose. “You have melded rat appendages to your offspring?”
“Feet, limbs, jaws, eyes and spines and tails, yes. Child now has many, many mouths. Sharp teeth. A snivel of noses, a perk of ears, a slither of tails.”
“Nonetheless, who would condescend to being gnawed to death?”
“Child will grow, clasping all to itself and so become more agile, larger, ever more hungry.”
“I see. Is there a limit to its girth, then?”
Korbal Broach looked up and smiled.
“I see,” Bauchelain said again. “Is it your intent to set your child in pursuit of the lich? Into the warrens?”
“Hunt,” the eunuch said, nodding. “My child, freed to hunt!” He licked his thick lips.
“This will delight the crew.”
“For a time,” and Korbal Broach giggled.
“Well, I shall leave you to it, then, whilst I set out to find my sword-for the time when your child flushes our unwelcome guest.”
But Korbal Broach was already mumbling rituals of sorcery, lost in his own, no doubt pleasant, world.
Emancipor Reese opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the horrid, desiccated visage of an ancient, toothless, nearly skinless woman.
“Aunt Nupsy?”
From somewhere nearby a thin voice cackled, then said in a rasping tone, “I have you now, demon. Slit your throat. Cut out your tongue. Twist your nose. Pluck your brows. Oh, pain delivered to start tears in your eyes and blood everywhere else! Agony and nerves afire! Who’s Aunt Nupsy?”
Emancipor set his hand against the dead face hovering in front of him and pushed the corpse away. It toppled to one side, folding in a clatter against a wicker wall.
“I’ll get you for that! See this knife? An engagement with your navel! Hard about and cut your sheets, snip at the wrists and over the side-all hands on deck! Husbands are a waste of time so don’t even think it! I bet she hated you.”
Bruises, knobby bumps on the brow, gritty blood on the tongue, maybe a bruised rib or three, throbbing nose. Emancipor Reese tried to recall what had happened, tried to figure out where he was. Darkness above, a faint ethereal glow from the grey-haired corpse, swaying, creaking sounds on all sides, the moan of the wind. And someone talking. He twisted round onto one elbow.
A scrawny wide-eyed child huddled against a curved wicker wall, clutching a knife in her small, chapped hands. “Don’t hurt me,” she said in a mousy squeak. Then added, in that wise rasp he’d heard earlier, “She’s not for you, oh no, demon! My teeth will leap at your throat! One by one! See that knife in my daughter‘s hands? It has drunk the life from a thousand foes!”
There was a rope tied round one of his ankles, the skin beneath terribly abraded. All his joints ached, leading him to a certain theory of what had occurred. “I’m in the damned crow’s nest. They strung me up, the bastards.” He squinted across at the girl. “You’re Bena Younger.”
She flinched back.
“Easy there, I won’t be hurtin’ you. I’m Emancipor Reese-”
“Mancy the Luckless.”
“Some things a man can’t live down, no matter how lucky he is.”
A cackle. “Lucky?”
“Gainfully employed, aye. Secure income, civil masters-why, my wife must be dancing on the mound in our backyard, back in Lamentable Moll. My children worm-free at last and with clean, evenly waxed teeth and all the other modern conveniences. Aye, my ill-luck is long past, as dead as most of the people I knew back then. Why-”
