But the woman was standing right in front of her. She took up the bowl not spat in and said, ‘This one will do me fine, love, and wine if you have it.’
Feloovil watched the woman sway her way back to the bar. Now that’s what a good daughter should be like. Except for the evil eyes, of course. But then, at least evil implies some kind of intelligence. Ah, Felittle, it’s all your father’s fault, may his bones rot.
Smiling, she carried the other bowl to Wormlick.
Whuffine sat back down in his chair, listening to the wind start its moan outside. Beneath lowered lids he studied the hunched lizard cat in the cage. ‘So you ran to the old cave, did you? Made a mess of your cosy life in the tavern and had to get out quick.’ He shook his head. ‘But that cave ain’t yours no more,’ he told the creature. ‘It’s mine, for my stores. Not even consecrated any more, since I made a point of breaking the idols and scattering the offerings into the sea. It’s … what’s the word? Desecrated.’
The cat glared at him in the manner of all cats, its scaly tail twitching like a tentacle.
‘So I set the trap,’ he continued, ‘knowing you’d be back sooner or later. Now here you are,’ he finished with a sigh, ‘the ninth. The last of you.’
Red hissed at him.
‘Enough of that, Hurl. Your witching nights are done with, now. For good. You was killing too many locals, not to mention their livestock. It couldn’t go on. I’m a patient man, a tolerant man, even, and minding my own business is my business. But you went and got greedy.’ He shook his head. ‘Now it’s the cliff for you, Witch.’
He rose, pulling on his fox-fur hat and collecting up his walking stick and then, in one hand, the chains looped through the bars of the cage. Kicking open the door, he dragged the cage outside, and onto the cliff trail that climbed to the lesser of the two promontories. The light was fading but the air had grown wild and he could hear the frenzy of the waves as they pounded the rocks down and to his right.
As the cage scraped and growled its way up the trail in Whuffine’s wake, Hurl lunged against the sides, spat and bounced and cracked its head; its limbs shot out between the iron bars and slashed at Whuffine, but the chains were long and he remained beyond the lizard cat’s reach.
He was breathing hard by the time he reached the half-floor of tiles that marked the summit of the promontory – the other half had tumbled down to the broken shore below a century back, maybe more, and nothing else remained of the temple that had once commanded this grisly view. But he remembered that ghastly edifice, and the way it crouched like an ape, its gnarled face peering across the bay’s surly waters to Wurms Keep. He doubted even Hood knew the name of the temple’s long-forgotten god or goddess.
The windswept floor of worn tiles bore the faded, tessellated image of something demonic, its horror peculiarly blunted by the seemingly laughing cherubs half-hanging out of its fanged mouth. Miserable faith for a miserable place: it was hardly surprising how those two meshed with such perfection, and could make nightmares out of what could have been simple lives. He suspected that bad weather was the cause of most evil in the world. Gods just showed up to give a face to the foul madness. People had the need for such things, he knew, the poor fools.
He dragged the cage round until it balanced precariously on the cliff’s edge. Dropping the chains and keeping his distance, Whuffine walked out to look down at the thrashing chaos of the rocks and spume below. ‘Your sisters and brothers are waiting down there,’ he said to the cat. ‘Or at least their bones are. I never liked shapeshifters, you know, and D’ivers are the worst of them all. But I would’ve tolerated you, darling. I would have. So it’s just too bad you got to end like this.’
The lizard cat wailed.
‘I know,’ he said, nodding, ‘you’ve barely the wits left to even know who you was. Not my problem, of course, but I think it makes this something of a mercy, at least for the witch, if not for the brainless cat.’ He looked down at the caged creature. ‘So long, Hurl.’
He went round until the cage was between him and the cliff edge, and then jumped forward and gave it a hard kick.
The cat howled.
Chains whipping across the tiles, the cage slipped from sight and plunged to the rocks far below.
Whuffine stepped closer to the edge and peered down in time to see it strike. In the instant before the mangled cage slid down beneath the waves, he saw that its door was swinging wildly. There was a flash of motion, weasel-like, and then nothing. ‘Ah,’ murmured Whuffine. ‘Shit.’
Glancing up, he saw a huge, battered ship lunging into the bay, appearing so suddenly he would have sworn it had been conjured by the storm itself. Racing past the cut, it churned through the swells and, with a terrible sound that reached Whuffine atop the cliff, the hull drove into the sand. Waves exploded over its stern. The masts snapped and on their red billowing sails lifted into the air as the gale sought to carry everything into the sky. A moment later, amidst whipping lines, the rigging fell like a crimson shroud into the foaming seas.
Upon the canted deck, figures were swarming.
Whuffine sighed. ‘What a busy day.’ Picking up his walking stick, he set out on the trail, down to meet these newcomers.
Gust Hubb sat on a rock, hands over his bandaged ears as he rocked back and forth. He made low moaning sounds that the wind answered with glee.
Heck scowled at the man for a moment longer and then turned to look up at the keep. ‘I don’t like the looks of that place,’ he said. ‘And somehow, Gust, now it’s just you and me, I’m thinking the farther away we are from those necromancers – and Mancy the Luckless – the safer we’ll be.’
‘They owe uth!’ Gust said, looking up, his working eye wild with the whites showing all around. ‘They owe me a healing! Ath leatht that! Look at me, Heck! Lithen to me! I want my tongue whole athain! It wath all their faulth!’
The wind was fierce and bitterly cold. Rain filled with sea spray was spitting into their faces: proof to Heck’s mind that the world didn’t think too much of them, and didn’t give a Hood’s heel about justice and making things right. It was all one long slog up some damned storm-whipped trail to some damned tower with some damned light shining and offering the false promise of warm salvation. That was life, wasn’t it? As pointless as praying. As meaningless as dying when dying was all there was, somewhere up ahead, maybe closer than anyone’d like, but then, wasn’t it always closer than anyone’d like, no matter when that was? Well, it felt close enough right now, and if Gust was aching and moaning and too gimpy to finish this cursed climb, why, Heck wouldn’t complain too much, and might even secretly confess – to someone, but no one nearby – that it was a whisker’s trim from death where they were right now, and one step up the wrong way would see their bodies cold and lifeless before the dawn.
No, he wasn’t sorry Gust was all done in, the poor man. Taking those necromancers aboard in Lamentable Moll had been the worst decision in Sater’s life, and the captain had paid for it with that life, and now the Suncurl was a gnawed, burnt and chewed-up wreck, a sad end for the only ship to ever mate with a dhenrabi. Some things, it has to be said, just aren’t worth seeing close up, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter.
‘Whereth Birdth?’ Gust asked.
‘Probably rolling in the furs with that sheriff,’ Heck said, and just saying those words out loud made him feel suicidal. ‘She’s a love no man can hold on to,’ he said morosely. ‘It’s my curse – maybe yours, too, Gust, the way she was eyeing that split tongue of yours – to love the wrong woman.’