I stooped down to unzip the duffle, just as the crowd began a slow, rhythmic clapping.
“What the…” I sat up, and saw that everyone was looking at me.
One of the men up front, waved at me. I frowned, and flipped him a quick wave in response. He cleared his throat, and my bad feeling got worse. I looked over at him, and he signaled for me to come closer. With a sigh, I abandoned the duffle, and walked over to the edge of the stage.
“Can I help you?”
“You Cutter?”
“Yeah…” and he smiled, then said, “You gonna come up front and say something?”
I knew I was scowling, but he didn’t seem worried, he just kept on.
“We’ve been waiting to meet you for an hour.” He must have caught my look, because he added, “Didn’t they tell you?”
I shook my head, and his smile faded.
“Well, what did you think we were here for?”
“I thought there was someone else.”
The folk closest him glared at me, and I straightened up.
“I’m no-one special. Why would you all want to wait for me?”
And laughter rippled through the crowd.
The man who had called me over, hoisted himself up onto the stage.
“Because of what you did downstream.”
“I had a lot of help,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for Queen Tekravzary, I’d have done nothing.”
“But you took down an arach king!”
“Uh, no,” I told him, and the crowd gasped.
I looked out at them.
“I didn’t take down the king,” I said. “I didn’t even know he had been taken down. Whoever did that deserves a medal, because he was freaking huge!”
The man came closer, and I took a couple of steps away from him. Guy was way too big to be letting that close, and I had no idea if he knew how to fight. This whole situation felt like a set-up, and I wasn’t ready for a fight. I didn’t even have a blade on me; everything was still in the duffle.
And speaking of which…
I glanced over at the duffle, just in time to see a grey-skinned hand drag it off the stage. The wasp guards closest to it were down, and man I hoped they were only paralyzed. I didn’t want to be responsible for any more deaths.
I looked back at the people crowded in front of the stage. They seemed riveted by what I’d said, and that was bad, because I had no idea where the arach had gone. The guy who’d called me out came to stand beside me, and I startled away from him.
“What?” he said, finally registering that I was as jumpy as hell.
“There’s an arach,” I whispered, and he gave me a funny look.
“Not around here,” he said. “The vespis…”
His words trailed to nothing, as he registered the fallen bodies of the two vespis guards, and he sidled closer to me, lowering his voice to a murmur.
“What do we do?”
“You need to get the others out of here. Get them to the shuttle, or out into the middle of the field. Get someone to call for help.”
Which was when one of the two guards at the other end of the stage went down, and its partner lifted into the air. The dark bitter scent of vespis alarm filled the air, and the humans nearest the stage stumbled back. The man and I turned to look at the vespis who’d just taken flight—just in time to watch it come crashing back down to earth.
I grabbed him by the arm, and pushed him towards the front of the stage.
“Go!” I shouted. “Get them out of here! Go!”
And I picked up the nearest chair. It was time to go arach hunting.
“You want vengeance?” I called. “You come and take it, you cowardly, eight-legged freak!”
The settlers at the foot of the stage, scattered, their flight helped by the man who’d greeted me.
“Get to the shuttle!” he shouted, and I realized the shuttle was still there.
As in, still on the ground. As in, not gone… Like it had been waiting for something. An arach attack maybe?
It occurred to me that it was a set-up all right—and I’d been the bait.
Someone was going to get their butt kicked when this was over. I was going to find them and nail their asses to a wall. In the meantime, I had to find the arach, and hope Mack had meant it when he said he and the queen were on their way.
“Where the hell are you, you shit-for-brains, insect-gutted, fangless wonder?”
I figured these things might respond better to some species-specific insults. I just hoped I didn’t go too far, and insult the vespis as well. The arach still didn’t appear.
“What’s the matter? You afraid of a chitinless mammal with a chair, you larvae-sucking soft-skin?”
I turned slowly, trying to see where it had gone. The stage was only a meter off the ground. The damned spider couldn’t have too many places it could hide. I had to think of something that would make it really mad.
I let my gaze travel over the people fleeing towards the shuttle, and hoped the arach wasn’t among them. Until that moment, I’d forgotten they could shapeshift.
“Where the fuck are you?” I muttered, turning to face the side of the stage, I’d come up on. “You chicken-livered spit sack.”
Movement blurred the back of the stage, and I barely got the chair down between us. The thing had gone full spider on me, and those suckers moved fast. It hit me like a freight train, its anger and outrage, boiling into my head as the sharp dog-fur-and-cat’s-piss scent of spider filled my nostrils. I don’t know what I’d said, but it was really angry.
Oh, fuck. The chair wasn’t going to last forever.
The force of the arach’s charge pushed me back to the front of
