Jode smirked again, angling away from Sebastian so the boy wouldn't see. "Let's go," Jode said, sheathing its rapier. The Lucifer took Sebastian's arm with its good hand-the other sleeve was still half empty-and led him up the steps of the generating station.
If there were any booby-traps in the area, they didn't go off: Sebastian's nanite friends were on the job, deactivating trip-wires, defusing bombs. As the two reached the darkened entrance, Jode took a moment to look back at us all. The Lucifer's face was silently laughing.
Even before Sebastian and Jode disappeared into the station, the Caryatid was on the move: pulling a match from her pocket; striking it on the rusty metal guard rail; exerting her will to make the flame blossom as she hurried toward poor Pelinor. She could see there was no point just trying to scrape off the curds-Pelinor himself was raking his face with his fingers, but the curds had attached themselves as tight as lampreys. If Pelinor couldn't pluck them off, neither could the Caryatid… but fire might succeed where fingers failed.
Better to burn the man to blisters than let him suffocate in front of our eyes.
She reached Pelinor just as he toppled to his knees. Beneath the mask of curds, he was still making throaty noises; but they were growing more feeble and plaintive, no longer bellows but sobs. "Keep your head bent over," she said. "Lean forward so the stuff can't get down your throat."
I wanted to tell her the curds didn't just slide into his mouth by gravity-they crawled like hungry grubs wriggling toward his windpipe. Tilting Pelinor's head forward wouldn't stop them from climbing into his air passages. But this wasn't the time to distract the Caryatid with futile objections; she was concentrating hard on her match-flame, as if planting her entire consciousness into the tiny speck of fire. A moment later, the flame hopped off the match, touched down for an instant on Pelinor's shoulder, then plunged itself into the gelid morass on the man's face.
For a few seconds, I lost sight of the flame; its light dimmed and I heard a wet sizzle. The Caryatid made looping gestures with three fingers and muttered under her breath-one of the few times I'd ever seen her resort to actual abracadabra when commanding flame. The glow on Pelinor's face sputtered, then stabilized. More sizzling and hissing. A few curds fell burning to the roadway, spitting sparks as if they were comets. The choking in Pelinor's throat continued. An ugly gargle, its volume growing weaker.
The flame moved across Pelinor's face like the tip of a hot poker, selectively searing the largest patches of goo. The Caryatid had to crouch on hands and knees so she could see where to move the little fire… and even then, her control wasn't perfect. With a gush of smoke, Pelinor's mustache caught fire, blazing bright as it scorched the skin beneath. His lips blackened like charred wood; but neither he nor the Caryatid flinched.
Burned by the ignited mustache, more curds fell to the ground.
I'd been paying such close attention to Pelinor, I hadn't noticed Annah moving toward him. She appeared behind him now, kneeling to match his height and wrapping her arms around his stomach. Her gloved hands locked together at the level of his belt, then pulled in hard, scooping into his stomach: the OldTech maneuver to help choking victims, driving up into the diaphragm to force out air and clear the throat. I felt ashamed I hadn't thought to do it myself-inadequate Phil, still stupid in a crisis.
The push of wind up Pelinor's esophagus forced out a mouthful of maggoty white. I cringed as some of the spill fell on Annah, her arms still around Pelinor's stomach… but she was protected by her thick coat and gloves, the curds unable to reach her bare skin. I rushed to sweep the wet chunks away, brushing them off with my own gloves, wiping Pelinor's clothes too, then scraping myself free with a stone from the road. It seemed they couldn't lock onto our clothing-like leeches, they could attach themselves only to flesh.
Meanwhile, the Caryatid continued to singe off curds, raising a hideous stink of wet rot. She was doing her best to minimize damage to Pelinor's skin, but he was still a puckered red. Second-degree burns at least. His mustache was fully incinerated. The hair on his scalp had wizened to a crisp in a dozen places… and still the curds weren't gone. Gooey white oozed from Pelinor's nose and gleamed between his blistered lips-just like I'd seen on Rosalind.
Dead Rosalind.
Annah yanked up hard again, driving her joined hands into Pelinor's belly. More curds bulged out of his mouth; but they slithered back inside as soon as Annah released her squeeze. Again and again she went through the prescribed motion, scoop in, relax, scoop in, relax… but her very first compression had forced out as much gunk as she was going to get, and subsequent squeezes ejected no more. Pelinor's throat remained clogged-the blockage was too big to dislodge.
When Annah realized that, she let go of Pelinor and gestured at me. "You try." We traded positions and I jammed my hands into Pelinor's gut with every gram of strength I possessed. More curds squirted out of Pelinor's mouth… but not a titanic volley, just a coughing dribble. Not nearly enough to clear his windpipe.
I could picture a glistening mass of white clotted all the way down to his bronchial tubes. Each time I squeezed, the mass was pushed and the top part spilled into his mouth; but I couldn't crush in hard enough to push the whole squirming bulk out of his esophagus, and as soon as I let go, everything slid back down again.
"This isn't working," I said. "We have to think of something else."
"Get his mouth open," the Caryatid commanded.
Annah reached in to pull down Pelinor's jaw. Pelinor resisted, probably just out of instinct: by now, he couldn't have been thinking clearly. Beneath the flame-ravaged skin, his face had gone purple with suffocation; when I looked at the whites of his eyes, they were dotted with the same red petechiae pinpricks I'd seen on Rosalind's corpse. Tiny blood vessels burst by the exertion of trying to draw breath. Pelinor was straining so fiercely, I didn't think Annah could possibly get his mouth open-but a few seconds after she started to try, the rigidity slumped out of his body as he fell unconscious. Immediately, she flopped his jaw wide…
…and the Caryatid plunged the flame into his mouth.
The tiny ball of fire disappeared inside. From where I was kneeling, I couldn't see anything but a yellow-orange light shining out between his lips, the flame so bright it lit his cheeks from within. Smoke wisped out of his mouth and nose; I prayed it was only the ash of charred curds, but I was afraid some of the smoke came from Pelinor himself-his tongue and inner cheeks turning to cinder, maybe even the soft tissues of his throat. The Caryatid would be as cautious as possible, focusing the flame's heat only on the alien chunks that were filling Pelinor's air passages… but she was, after all, playing with fire, and it was Pelinor getting burned.
As the Caryatid worked, she talked in a voice I'd heard from time to time as I passed the door of her classroom. A teacher who reflexively explained everything she was doing, the way she'd talk students through a sorcery exercise. "I've started burning chunks of alien material in his mouth. The nuggets want to avoid the flame… they're crawling away from the heat… but after a few seconds' exposure, they stop moving and drop. Annah, could you sweep out the remains from the bottom of his mouth? Don't burn your glove on the flame. Good. Now"-she took a deep breath-"we'll start on the throat. Phil, I'll need you to squeeze his stomach. As tight as you can and don't let go. Do it."