Brynd tried to sense whether or not Frater Mercury wished to communicate with those around him, but whatever went on in the man’s head now remained private. He seemed to recognize the Mourning Wasps. He touched their skulls with great respect and for the first time Brynd saw him appear like an ordinary human. His profound presence fell away: instead this could have been a man greeting his own dog at the end of a hard day’s graft. Even Artemisia seemed surprised at Frater Mercury’s gestures.
He gradually turned his attention away from them.
It will be, Frater Mercury said to Brynd, a great honour to travel with these creatures. Where were they found?
‘I believe they were excavated and brought to life on an island further up the Archipelago.’
For a moment Brynd felt as if Frater Mercury was not going to continue with his suicide mission; he felt his heart thumping in his chest as he waited for further communication.
I remember these the first time around, many ages ago, Frater Mercury said.
Brynd stared at the two halves of his face, waiting. He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask them. How this figure could have lived so long was beyond Brynd’s comprehension — but then there were a lot of things he did not understand.
Artemisia stepped between them. ‘We must go now. The weather is in our favour.’
So it must be, Frater Mercury said, much less intense than ever before.
There was a dripping sound coming from somewhere. Wherever he was, the place was utterly dark. The ground was moving softly. . no, not the ground. They were somewhere else entirely. A boat, on water, drifting. . Fulcrom sat up and felt a stiffness in his chest, but that soon faded. He then felt nothing at all.
Lan was beside him. Sweet Lan, lying there peacefully. Fulcrom tried to remain as logical as possible, and examined her: there was a hole in her uniform where the sword had penetrated, but other than that she looked exactly as he remembered. Well, not exactly — her skin was far paler than before, almost giving off a glow in this darkness. He checked his own body, and he, too, had a sword wound in his chest, right above his heart. He checked optimistically for any sign of his tail, which had been cut off by Urtica’s men in Villjamur, but it was not there.
Bugger.
All around them was water, but the boat — a small vessel — was drifting in one direction, that much he could be sure of. Lan stirred and a few moments later she rose up to see what Fulcrom was describing. He explained to her what happened with Malum.
‘I can just about remember, though it’s a bit hazy. I wasn’t unconscious, but I was really, really dazed at the time.’
‘He kept good to his word.’
‘What?’
‘Malum. Once I clicked he was going to kill us, I had no choice but to persuade him to kill us in an appropriate manner and not burn our bodies.’
‘We’re dead then?’ Lan asked.
‘Or undead. I’m not so sure how to label the dead, now we’re one of them.’
‘Why did you do that? Didn’t you want our souls to go on to other realms?’
‘It would’ve meant we would be apart. I didn’t want that. It was — if you could believe it — a selfish gesture of love. I just wanted to be with you. Is that so bad?’
‘No, not at all,’ Lan replied. ‘Eternity together is certainly more meaningful than flowers.’ At least her sense of humour had followed her down here. . ‘So Malum hasn’t burned us, and our physical bodies are probably somewhere in the harbour in Villiren?’
‘Something like that. I can’t be sure, though.’
They both moved in close together, and regarded the distance where lights were flickering along a shoreline. There were spires there, glistening, and as they approached they could see people on the shoreline, one or two of them waving. The boat, through no control of Fulcrom, turned in the waters and began drifting in that direction. The water was black, the sky a phenomenally dark grey. There were no stars to be found, and clearly no sun, but it looked very much unlike the city of the dead under Villjamur. Just how many of these cities of the dead existed, Fulcrom had no idea. All he felt now was a continuation of that release from when he was killed, and an overwhelming sense of calm.
‘So where next, then?’ Lan asked.
‘Who knows? Wherever this boat takes us, I guess,’ Fulcrom replied. ‘Somewhere deep under Villiren. It doesn’t matter — we can probably handle anything now.’
In the cages, Brynd remained tense as the dragons lurched through the air. This transportation was far more erratic than the previous methods, but it seemed a trivial thing to be concerned about.
He held his helmet in his hands and examined the visor, staring at his own pale reflection. For a moment he felt the usual images of his past flicker into his mind, but then he began to empty his emotions once again. Dwelling on such things would mean his concentration would slip and he’d end up getting killed. His own Mourning Wasp — one of two in this cage — seemed to have been befriended by Frater Mercury, who slumped alongside it in the darkness of the cage, apparently communicating with it. Artemisia was attending to her own creature, a much smaller, red dragon barely any bigger than the Mourning Wasps.
Brynd felt remarkably isolated in the cage. He turned to Sergeant Tiendi, and even she seemed to be struggling in the violent flight of these dragons.
‘Is this what you hoped for, when you joined us?’ Brynd asked. She had only just become a Night Guard before the war in Villiren.
‘No, sir. It’s far better than that. We get to fly these wasps into an almost certain death situation.’
Brynd grunted a laugh.
‘Have you any idea what to expect?’ she asked.
Brynd kept staring at his reflection. ‘I told some of the others earlier to wipe their minds of expectations, because what we’ll probably see could be beyond comprehension or as quotidian as the place we’ve just left. It’s a civilian vessel, so I understand, but we’ve already seen the kind of evil it houses.’
Tiendi nodded, but remained resolute. ‘I’ll keep thinking in simple terms: we’re just deploying a bomb. Or, at least, a bomber who wants to kill himself.’ She indicated Frater Mercury. ‘What will his explosives do, precisely? They look no bigger than the kind of thing a cultist might use, but at that size it wouldn’t produce much, surely?’
Brynd glanced again at the small metallic devices strapped to Frater Mercury’s waist and chest. ‘I doubt they’ll be explosives in the conventional manner. He’s a person of incredible ability. No doubt he’ll be able to kill himself in the appropriate manner when the time comes.’
There was a small explosion somewhere nearby. The cage shuddered as the dragon plunged slightly, and Brynd gripped the rails while Artemisia pressed her hands against the roof for stability.
‘It is to be expected, commander,’ she called over, waving him back down to his seat. ‘These creatures are quicker. They have greater awareness. We will be quite safe.’
‘What’s going on?’ Brynd demanded.
‘We are being fired at, that is all.’
‘Are the decoys ahead of us?’
‘They are ahead and behind, and all around us. Our main strike force lies in the middle of the formation.’
‘How long now?’
‘A quarter of one hour at the most.’
Brynd put on his helmet and watched Tiendi do the same. They pulled their visors down and mounted the Mourning Wasps. Frater Mercury shuffled humbly underneath Brynd’s wasp, and he watched in amazement as two of the wasp’s legs suddenly scooped him up and secured him in place. Brynd placed his hands on the back of the wasp in a way he might do with a horse, and though it seemed absurd he felt it was necessary to ensure the creature felt some affinity with him.