The Crawfish directed a pleasant, if slightly goofy, smile at her. “Lemon’s actually my name; you don’t have to bother with this crustacean nonsense. Your father’s the one in Roosing Oolvaya, isn’t that it? It’s possible we might have crossed paths back in -”
“Something’s happening,” Jurtan said suddenly.
Wroclaw, inspecting the apartment yet again, concluded that all was in readiness. They were as prepared as they could be. The snares, the deadfall on the stairs, the acids in the cupola, the pails of bubbling oil kept at a boil each on its own hotplate or burner, the mannequins dressed in Shaa’s spare clothing positioned to draw the first round of fire or the first slashing attack of anyone who achieved the unlikely result of actually making it into the flat, Haddo and Karlini’s polychromatic spell-tangles hovering close to hand, their trigger-releases at the ready, and so forth and so on. Wroclaw had uncovered a cache of martial materiel crammed precariously in a rear closet and had handed around the spoils; even Haddo had made a war helmet disappear somehow into the darkness of his hood. Wroclaw had a mace dangling by its thong from his belt. He didn’t expect to use the thing, but why not? If nothing else it was picturesque.
And Dortonn? Well, Dortonn was still surprisingly active for someone who looked the way he did. Even his pronouncements on the imminence of his demise and the extremity of his suffering had begun to seem rather beside the point; window dressing, so to speak, while the business of the store within continued to roll along with scarcely a waver. For all his incantation and contortions and glaring out into space, though, he had thus far shown no evidence of success in whatever-it-was he was hoping to accomplish.
Haddo scuttled past again, muttering as usual under his breath. “My friend,” said Wroclaw, “you seem unusually preoccupied with birds this evening. Would you like me to prepare for you a snack? Dr. Shaa’s larder is well -”
Haddo broke off and craned his red eyespots upward. “Help of lots you are,” he spat sarcastically. “Forget you wings of chickens yours, even fried. Your seagulls, bah! Of use nothing for seagulls are.”
Wroclaw shrugged. “Who among us can choose our legacy?” As was the case for so many of the not-quite-humans, Wroclaw’s gene pool was quite small, and inbreeding had not particularly helped things. He had always considered his family’s rapport with seagulls and other waterfowl to be evidence that the laws of natural selection had a sense of humor. “They don’t like to go out past sundown,” Wroclaw added, “or I would have asked them to come over here anyway. There are bound to be good pickings on hand before long.”
“Pickings of carrion will be,” grumbled Haddo. “Carrion have your friends not the taste. Smarter than that are they. Even gull of Karlini coop has flown.”
It was true. The seagull that had been trailing Karlini for reasons which remained its own had refused to enter Shaa’s building with the rest of them. Wroclaw could still feel it lurking around, but damned if he could tell what it was up to. The bird was having its fun, that much was clear, swooping silently out of the trees to make the occasional dive on some unsuspecting Hand and letting loose at the last second with one of its special raise-the-dead screeches, leaving the fellow making futile hacks at the air, cursing violently against the apparition from hell and trying to decide if he was really having a heart attack or not. Then the gull would mount back into the sky and loiter about, giving every impression of waiting for someone or something. Come to think of it, was Haddo protesting a bit too much? “Haddo,” said Wroclaw, “are you up to something?”
“Fah,” said Haddo, with another furtive upward glance. “Small birds, tiny birds, fah! Of use only big birds are. Trapped are we. Only help now can I - up with Karlini now is what?”
Karlini had crept back from the window and was beckoning them closer. “We have a new plan,” he hissed.
“No tricks,” they had demanded; indeed, what an interesting, if implausible, world that would be. No, this would be tricky enough even without gratuitous shenanigans. Keep it simple and hope for the luxury of no unintended surprises; that was the plan.
One option had been to stage a mock firefight for any observing spies. It would have been too difficult to coordinate convincingly, though, especially considering that causing actual casualties to either side would have scotched their shaky deal immediately. Another option would have had the Hand fighting illusions, only to discover after the fact that their quarry had slipped away. Alternatively, Chas V’Halila could have proclaimed his success in offensive thaumaturgy, Karlini and the others could have feigned paralysis, and the Hand could have mopped them up and carted them away only to have them spring to life unexpectedly and give their “captors” the slip. There were the options of surrender against overwhelming odds, of an announcement to the troops by Gadol that they had read the address wrong and had just discovered themselves to be besieging the wrong location, and of a feigned message of recall arriving unexpectedly from their employer; and the much flashier one of the staged demolition of Shaa’s building, with his associates hiding in the basement.
These options all had drawbacks, though, either of logistics or plausibility or excess hazard. They could come at the problem from the other side and forge ahead under the Scapula’s own rules, dashing the consequences of discovered treachery and relying on momentum to carry them past any counterstrokes. Shaa had also floated the possibility of smoking out his brother’s hypothesized spies through an appropriate subterfuge. The leaders of the Hand, though, displaying their preference for the blow direct, had refused Shaa’s offer to supply them with a stratagem suitable for the occasion. With the prospect of their collaboration crashing imminently on the rocks, then, for lack of a mutually agreeable first step, the unexpected had inserted itself, as the unexpected in so timely a manner often did.
The unexpected announced itself with a sudden disruption in the trees just in front of Shaa’s address: a cracking of branches, a lashing of leaves, and a rapid series of thuds and oof!s and wails, followed by a rain of thrashing men falling first from that tree, then the next - the men of the Hand, waiting with grappling irons and crossbows at the ready for the signal to storm the building from above. At the same time a large gray shape passed overhead above the trees, silently but for a ruffle of air, showing the suggestion of long feathers on its underside and wide gliding wings spanning the street. “Gods damn you,” snarled Gadol, “a trick!”; and with a powerful move he drew his knife and turned to plunge it as he had promised into Shaa’s neck.
Shaa was scarcely waiting for him, however. Perhaps later they could discuss the sarcastic hand of fate; perhaps later he would discuss this particular trick with its instigator, as well, as soon as he discovered who that person was. Not Karlini, probably, since he had been able to get a message through to the Great one to hold tight while he tried to work out a deal; possibly that fellow Dortonn, who had been acting the nihilist well enough to show even Max a new turn or two; but taking into account his growing suspicion of what - or whom - was carrying on up there in the foliage, and how they had arrived on site, Haddo was clearly the leading candidate for the appropriate recipient of wrath. A powerful bloodcurdling battle cry that sounded like the roar of some savage cat of the savannas with the ululating trumpet of an enraged elephant tacked on at the end echoed from the trees as Shaa, cloaked by the refraction spell he had kept ready in case of the need for a quick escape, bent himself double and slid himself forcefully toward Chas V’Halila.