“Where’s Nurse Bell?” the Padre asked.
“Your djamirrii is safe. Do not forget she carries hidden about her the sacred salve that will be your salvation and the liquor that might be this One’s. This One has sent for her.”
Chandar led the way along an inclined passage, taking them up into the further reaches of the edifice. Streams of chatts went about on unknown business: scentirrii and dhuyumirrii, mostly, with the odd workers and urmen. Two tassel-robed dhuyumirrii approached from the other direction. One bumped into the Padre, and a small vial dropped to the floor in the collision. It shattered and oozed oil.
“I’m terribly sorry,” the Padre said, almost as a reflex. “Here, let me–”
He looked around, but they had slipped away.
Chandar let out a long, low, wet hiss.
The Padre, wheeled round to see several worker chatts step out of the passage shadows, blocking their way. “What’s going on?”
“Sirigar is trying to prevent our appearance before the Shura,” wheezed Chandar.
“I thought I was marked with Khungarr scent, I thought you said they couldn’t harm me.”
“Normally, no,” said Chandar, eyeing the workers. “But the scent can be masked. A stronger chemical decree can negate it.”
The shattered vial. One smell being used to hide another, thought the Padre.
The workers began to circle, their long mandibles snapping together rhythmically.
“It is how this One became crippled, when Sirigar once before thought this One a threat to its plans,” said Chandar as they watched the worker chatts advance,
Chandar hissed, expelling its euphoric benediction in the hope of stalling the workers. It failed.
Several workers leapt upon it, barrelling it into the ground. The Padre thought he heard a carapace crack.
Another lunged at him. He had done a little boxing in his youth, and now he put up his fists for the first time in years. He swung a right uppercut under the guard of its open mandibles, connecting with the soft mouthparts. They mashed satisfactorily under his knuckles. The chatt stumbled backwards, its mandibles slicing empty air.
“Hah!” cried the Padre.
His initial spark of triumph was soon doused as another chatt sprang at him. The Padre was thrown off balance and the pair crashed to the ground. It crouched over him, its splayed long-fingered hands pressing down on his chest.
“Dear God in heaven preserve me!”
Its smooth facial plate was vacant of any expression. Mucus dripped from its mouthparts onto his face as it opened its mandibles and placed them either side of his head. As the pressure on his temples began to increase, the Padre screwed his eyes shut and prayed.
Without warning, the crushing pressure eased and the weight from his chest lifted. It was a moment before he dared open his eyes. His attacker was crouched motionless before him. The others likewise had abandoned their attack and were sunk low in submission, their mandibles open, their antennae waving gently, rhythmically, in unison.
The Padre heard a woman’s cry.
Nurse Bell. Dear God, no. They’ll take her as well. He wouldn’t let that happen.
“Padre!”
“Bell, run!” he called out. “Run! Run!”
He scrambled back away from the now-motionless chatts until he was against the wall of the chamber.
Chandar lay against the other side, its head slumped on its chest plate, its mouth palps hanging limply, bubbles frothing through them as it breathed. A thick bluish fluid oozed from wounds in its soft abdomen, where one of its vestigial limbs had been ripped off. Its claw lay discarded on the floor nearby.
The Padre and Chandar exchanged weary, pained glances, each alive, but neither knowing how.
Rhengar entered the chamber, and several spear-carrying Scentirrii filed out either side of it.
“You. So it’s come to this, has it?” said the Padre with bitter recrimination. “Assassination?”
Rhengar regarded him blankly. “Yes.”
Breathing heavily, the Padre braced himself, glaring at the chatts’ general with outright defiance. He’d given these creatures the benefit of the doubt. But now he realised he’d let his Christian nature be swayed by these soulless things – for how could they be anything else on this world?
“Come to finish the job, have you?” he said brusquely. “Then do it, but spare Bell. She’s just a nurse. You know ‘nurse’?”
Rhengar crouched by the shard of vial on the floor, waving his antennae over the fading evaporated spill.
“The musk of the Sanfradar, a predator. It breaks into edifices to devour the young. The workers reacted instinctively. They thought you were a danger. They would have torn you to pieces.”
Dazed, the Padre leant against the chamber wall until the place stopped spinning, the chatt workers’ confusion now his. “Then why didn’t they? What stopped them?”
“I did, apparently,” said Nurse Bell, stepping from the safety of the passage shadows into the chamber, a shy smile of embarrassment on her face.
“You did? But how?”
She strode over to him. “Padre, you’re hurt.”
He obliged by bowing his head and smiled apologetically. “I think I banged my head again. I’m all right.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said, gently examining his head. “Nothing’s got through your skull yet.” She looked him in the eyes. “Has it?”
The Padre met her gaze. “I’m fine,” he said.
Rhengar gave orders to the remaining four scentirrii, who stood guard round the chamber while Nurse Bell went over and knelt to examine the injured chatt.
“Is it safe?” it asked, the words coming in pained gasps as it struggled to regurgitate enough air for speech.
She continued to examine his abdomen. “It’s safe,” she said. “But you’re not.” She turned to Rhengar. “We must get Chandar somewhere I can treat its wounds.”
Rhengar stooped to pick up the wounded chatt and directed them down a maze of side passages that eventually led to a chamber. It left two of the scentirrii outside as guards; the others it dismissed. It set Chandar down and looked at Nurse Bell.
“Chandar must speak before the Shura soon, if you wish to save your clan.”
She wasn’t going to be bullied. She didn’t even look up from her examination of Chandar’s abdominal wounds as she spoke. “I’ll do what I can. I’m not promising any more.”
She bound Chandar’s wound where his vestigial limb had been, winding the silk bandage around his abdomen. She was able to disguise most of the bandage with Chandar’s own ceremonial silk shoulder throw, as she wrapped its excess around its abdomen.
“There,” she said, sitting back on her heels.
“It is done?” asked Chandar.
“Yes, for the moment, so long as you don’t exert yourself.”
The Padre, who had been watching her work, finally spoke. “You said it was you that saved us.”
“I’m rather afraid it might have been,” she said with an apologetic shrug as she got to her feet. “The Khungarrii Queen gifted me with some sort of royal jelly, anointing me with her own scent. From what I gather, it’s rather like getting the keys to the city.”
“An anointed urman,” said Rhengar. “This One cannot recall such a thing. However, the royal odour is unmistakable. Every Khungarrii knows it. But we must keep it secret a while longer.”
“Why?”
“It strengthens this One’s position, but only if this One can successfully couple it with this One’s argument,” croaked Chandar as it struggled to its feet. It held out an expectant hand towards Bell. “Do you have it?”
She nodded and fished in her haversack, bringing out the small stone amphora holding the sacred scent she had brought with her from the camp. Chandar took it with reverence. Edith pulled out another small jar. “Lieutenant Everson told me to give you this when it was time. I think it is. It’s petrol fruit liquor.”