The doorways were bigger for a start, and looked like they’d been made more for creatures of Askavor’s size than mine; the outer walls were made up of large, dark-glassed window panes, providing a view of the surrounding community. If there had been anything alive working inside—or lying in wait—we would have been able to see it, but nothing moved behind the shadowed glass, and, nothing lay in wait in the dim interior beyond.
Mack and I went through the first entry with all the caution we’d have taken infiltrating a hostile building, and found our efforts had been wasted. We split up and worked opposite sides of the room, before working back to meet in the middle, but it made no difference. The packing tables and equipment stood idle, and did not look like they had been used in weeks. The storage rooms at the back of the building hummed, and contained nothing but boxes marked with symbols of fish.
I cracked a couple to be sure the contents lived up to the promise of the packaging. It was kinda disappointing to find that they did. The building was perfectly clear, and looked like it had been shut down for the day, in readiness for the following day’s work. The whole set-up sent chills over me, but there was nothing to show what had happened to the folk who were supposed to be running things.
Mack, Askavor, T’Kit and I moved from one end of the shed to the other, but. It was not until we went out through the back door, that we had a clue to the community’s fate.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked, turning right, just as Mack turned left and asked the same thing.
We moved forward to let T’Kit and Askavor follow us out, and we tried not to let what we’d found distract us from the surrounding buildings and nearby forest. I mean, looking at the piles? I had a pretty bad feeling that I knew exactly what they were, but my mind didn’t want to process things that way. When Askavor’s grief crashed through my head, I had no choice but to accept what I was seeing.
“Those are legs?”
“Yes,” T’Kit said, and we moved aside as Askavor brushed past and ran his long-clawed forehands over the contents of the stack.
After that first wave of grief, he’d tried to contain his emotion, but we could still hear the small sounds of denial he was making in our minds, and his sorrow was contagious. T’Kit flew up to a point where she could see over the buildings, and into the forest. I wanted to call her back, thinking she made a perfect target, but my ears caught the agitated thrum of a dozen wings, and I realized the vespis were communicating in ways other than thought—that more than T’Kit were hovering between the buildings and weavers’ webs.
“There were other piles?”
“Beneath every dwelling,” she replied, and I looked up.
One of the weaver homes hung above our heads.
“Lift me,” I said, even as Askavor leapt to the roof, and then onto a nearly invisible ladder of threads.
T’Kit did as I asked, and carried me to the dwelling’s entrance.
“Arach,” she said, just as I said the same thing.
“Cutter…” Mack spoke in my head, but his protest at being left behind was cut short by an exclamation of surprise as a second vespis flew over and lifted him into the air.
T’Kit set me down on the edge of the nest, and moved out of the way so that her colleague could deposit Mack beside me.
“Arach,” he agreed, catching a whiff of the air inside the dwelling.
I wondered how many exits each silk-spun home had, even as the strands of web vibrated against the ledge I was standing on.
“Oh, shit,” Mack said, and I had to agree.
Askavor was a boiling cloud of rage, his legs a blur as he raced towards us. I didn’t need Mack’s instruction as I hurried inside.
“Take point, Cutter. We can’t stop him. We can only clear the way.”
I didn’t need Askavor to have a face I could read. I knew we couldn’t stop him. Grief, outrage, and anger rolled off him in a palpable wave. Mack was right. We couldn’t stop him—it would be suicide to try—but we could at least try to help him find justice for his people.
“His family,” T’Kit informed us. “This was his village.”
And I wanted to know why the fuck they’d brought him.
“We were hoping there would be better news.”
“Did he have a… wife?”
“No, but he had a queen and many, many siblings.”
Well, fuck. Now, I understood why they’d handed me the armored vest and head gear, when I’d hit the flyer—and I was glad of it, now. I led the way through the entrance and into the corridor, beyond. It was light inside the dwelling, the walls filtering the sun into a warm, pearlescent gleam. I wondered exactly how the arach thought they’d be able to hide.
The weaver-wide hall led into a broad, open space in the center of the structure, and Mack and I advanced along it, side by side. We both paused at the opening to the central space, but we could not stop. Askavor was rolling through the entrance, and neither of us wanted him to flatten us on the way past. We slipped swiftly around the edges of the corridor, and along the outer walls, searching for movement or shadows on the ceiling, the upper walls, the floor, and the half dozen curving entrances leading out from the space.
As an ambush site, this was very, very bad—or very, very good, depending on your perspective. But the arach were black, and grey, the colors of space, and should have been easily seen. Askavor sailed out of the corridor behind us. He did not hesitate, did not pause, but leapt into the center of the open room, and struck out and down with his fangs, struck up with his
