He came up sputtering, second hatchet already in hand. Bug was crouched on the stone lip beside the canal, waving his alchemical globe at the spiders. Jean saw that the salt devils were about fifteen feet away from the boy, across the water and moving more warily, but still approaching. Their carapaces were mottled black and gray; their multiple eyes the color of deepest night, starred with eerie reflections of Bug’s light. Their hairy pedipalps waved in the air before their faces, and their hard black fangs twitched.
Four of the damn things. Jean heaved his bulk up out of the canal on Bug’s side, spitting water. He fancied that he saw some of those inhuman black eyes turn to regard him.
“Jean,” Bug moaned. “Jean, those things look pissed off.”
“It’s not natural,” said Jean as he ran to Bug’s side; the boy tossed him his other hatchet and he caught it in the air. The spiders had closed to ten feet, just across the water; he and Bug seemed hemmed in by thirty-two unblinking black eyes, thirty-two twitching legs with jagged dark hairs. “Not natural at all; salt devils don’t act like this.”
“Oh, good.” Bug held the alchemical globe out at arm’s length as though he could conceal himself entirely behind it. “You discuss it with them.”
“I’m sure we can communicate. I speak fluent hatchet.”
No sooner were these words out of Jean’s mouth than the spiders moved in eerie unison, forward into the water with four splashes. The cask had now drifted a few feet to Jean and Bug’s right; one black shape actually passed beneath it. Multiple black legs speared upward out of the water, flailing for purchase; Bug cried out in mingled disgust and horror. Jean lunged forward, striking out with each hatchet in rapid downward strokes. Two spider limbs opened with stomach-turning cracking noises, spurting dark blue blood. Jean leapt backward.
The two uninjured spiders pulled themselves up out of the water a few seconds ahead of their wounded brethren and rushed Jean, their barbed feet rasping against the wet stone blocks beneath them. Realizing he would be dangerously overbalanced if he attempted to swing on both at once, Jean opted for a more disgusting plan of action.
The Wicked Sister in his right hand arced downward viciously, splitting the rightmost salt devil’s head between its symmetrical rows of black eyes. Its legs spasmed in its death reflex, and Bug actually dropped his alchemical globe, so quickly did he leap backward. Jean used the momentum of his right-hand swing to raise his left leg up off the ground; the left-hand spider reared up with its fangs spread just as he brought his boot heel down on what he supposed was its face. Its eyes cracked like jellied fruit, and Jean shoved downward with all his might, feeling as though he was stomping on a sack of wet leathers.
Warm blood soaked his boot as he pulled it free, and now the wounded spiders were scuttling up right behind their fallen counterparts, hissing and clicking in anger.
One shoved its way in front of the other and lunged at Jean, legs wide, head up to bare its curving fangs. Jean brought both the Sisters down in a hammer blow, blade sides reversed, smashing the spider’s head down into the wet stones and stopping it in its tracks. Ichor spurted; Jean felt it spattering his neck and forehead, and did his best to ignore it.
One damn monster left. Incensed at the delay they’d caused him, Jean bellowed and leapt into the air. Arms spread, he landed with both of his feet in the middle of the last creature’s carapace. It exploded wetly beneath him, folding the flailing legs up at an unnatural angle. They beat their last few pulses of life against his legs as he ground in his heels, growling.
“Gah!” cried Bug, who’d gotten a good soaking from something blue and previously circulating through a salt devil; Jean didn’t waste a second in tossing the boy one of his gore-soaked Sisters before jumping down into the water once again. The cask had floated about ten feet farther south; Jean splashed frantically toward it and secured it with his left hand. Then he began to piston his right arm up and down, hacking at the wood of the barrel’s cover with his hatchet.
“Bug,” he cried, “kindly make sure there aren’t any more of those damn things creeping up on us!”
There was a splash behind Jean as Bug hopped back into the waterway. A few seconds later the boy came up beside the cask and steadied it with his own thin arms. “None that I can see, Jean. Hurry.”
“I am”-crack, crack, crack-“fucking hurrying.” His hatchet blade bit through the wood at last; horse urine poured out into the water and Bug gagged. Working furiously, Jean widened the hole, then managed to pry off the end of the cask entirely. A wave of the foul yellow-slick stuff swept out across his chest. Tossing his hatchet away without a further thought, he reached inside and tugged out the motionless body of Locke Lamora.
Jean checked him frantically for cuts, slashes, or raised purple welts; his neck seemed to be quite intact.
Jean heaved Locke rather ungently up onto the stone walkway beside the dead spiders, some parts of which were still twitching, then pushed himself up out of the water to crouch beside Locke. He wrenched off Locke’s mantle and cloak; Bug appeared at his side just in time to yank them away and toss them in the water. Jean tore open Locke’s gray vest and began thumping on his chest.
“Bug,” he gasped. “Bug! Get up here and push his legs in for me. His warm humors are all snuffed out. Let’s get a rhythm going and maybe we can rekindle them. Gods, if he lives I swear I’ll get ten books on physik and memorize every single one.”
Bug clambered out of the water and began pumping Locke’s legs, moving them in and out one at a time, while Jean alternately pressed on Locke’s stomach, pounded on his chest, and slapped him on the cheeks. “Come on, gods damn it,” Jean muttered. “Be stubborn, you skinny little-”
Locke’s back arched convulsively, and harsh wet coughing noises exploded out of his throat; his hands scrabbled weakly at the stone, and he rolled over onto his left side. Jean sat back and sighed with relief, oblivious to the puddle of spider blood he’d settled into.
Locke vomited into the water, retched and shuddered, then vomited again. Bug knelt beside him, steadying him by the shoulders. For several minutes, Locke lay there shaking, breathing heavily and coughing.
“Oh, gods,” he said at last in a small hoarse voice. “Oh, gods. My eyes. I can barely see. Is that water?”
“Yes, running water.” Jean reached over and took one of Locke’s arms.
“Then get me in there. Thirteen gods, get this foulness off me.”
Locke rolled into the canal with a splash before Jean or Bug could even move to assist him; he dunked his head beneath the dark stream several times, then began tearing off his remaining clothes, until he was wearing nothing but a white undertunic and his gray breeches.
“Better?” asked Jean.
“I suppose I must be.” Locke retched again. “My eyes sting, my nose and throat burn, my chest hurts, I’ve got a pounding black headache the size of Therim Pel, I got slapped around by the entire Barsavi family, I’m covered in horse piss, and it looks like the Gray King just did something pretty clever at our expense.” He set his head against the edge of the stone pathway and coughed a few more times. When he raised his head again, he noticed the spider carcasses for the first time and jerked backward. “Ugh. Gods. Looks like there’s things I’ve missed, too.”
“Salt devils,” said Jean. “A whole pack of them, working together. They came on looking for a fight. Suicidal, like.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Locke.
“One thing could explain it,” Jean replied.
“A conspiracy of the gods,” Locke muttered. “Oh. Sorcery.”
“Yes, that bloody Bondsmage. If he can tame a scorpion hawk, he could-”
“But what if it’s just this place?” interrupted Bug. “You’ve heard the stories.”