Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters (15 page)

She answered his question with one of her own. “Why are you after it?”

I could not guess what Dabir was thinking, for his expression was unreadable. Likely he debated how much to reveal. In the end, he apparently decided upon frank disclosure.

“The monster’s been harassing merchants of the caliphate for the last two months, all along the main sea route between Basra and India. It followed two or three of them for long hours, and a half dozen others have disappeared entirely.”

“And so your caliph sent you to hunt it?”

“Yes,” Dabir agreed. We had actually left under orders of the vizier, who dispatched us whenever some strange issue vexed the caliphate. He did this in part to please the caliph and, for reasons too complex to relate here, in partial hope that we would fail to return.

She lifted her fine goblet to ruby lips and took a dainty sip before returning it to the table. “So how did you attack it?”

Dabir then related how we had gone out in one of the fastest of the caliph’s ships, with a trained regiment of spearmen, and told her how the barbed spears were tied to weighted drogues, which he hoped would drag against the beast’s weight and tire it.

“Alas, the monster proved even larger than I had been told.” Dabir smiled wryly. “And I’d hoped there had been some exaggeration. We pierced it with at least a dozen spears before it destroyed our ship. It was so enraged that it set upon the men amongst the wreckage. It was swimming after our boat until Captain Asim plunged a spear through its right eye.”

He omitted the following moment where I tumbled backwards and struck my head against an oarlock.

She considered me without any great interest as Dabir spoke on.

“The creature thrashed about in the water before diving deep. We thought it would rise up and chew our boat to splinters, but never returned.”

The woman tapped the side of her goblet. “I had hoped you had something more clever.”

“I do,” Dabir said.

Her eyes snapped up to him once more, but neither spoke. There was nothing to be heard by the creak of the ship upon the waves and the ever present metal clanging.

“What is your plan, scholar?”

“First I wish you to tell me why the serpent hunts you.”

She stopped in the very midst of taking a breath. Her delicate nostrils flared. “How did you deduce that?”

“The only common feature of the ships the serpent harassed,” Dabir said, “were high stern decks. Like your own. Then was the evident concern when we told you we’d encountered it. You know and fear it.”

At that moment Dewei announced himself with a knock and was granted permission to enter. He came to stand behind Lady Xin, reporting quietly in Chin to her ear.

“How are our men?” Dabir asked. “Do you have a doctor aboard to look at our cook?”

“We have bandaged him,” Dewei said, looking self-satisfied.

Lady Xin shot him a disapproving look. “They have, of course, been well tended. Scholar, you are astute. The monster does hunt me. I have been cursed by a sorceress who desires my secrets. If she cannot have them, she would sink my ship. Thus must I remain upon the move.”

“Why haven’t you simply left the ocean?” Dabir asked.

She spread her hands. “The
Black Lotus
is my life’s work!” Her voice rose indignantly. “Now tell me. What is your plan? Is there some way to defeat the serpent?”

“Its efficacy depends in part upon your stores. Lovely as your skin is,” he said, “there is no missing the stains upon your fingertips. You speak of your life’s work, I assume there is alchemy involved?”

“You are entirely too clever,” she told him coolly. There was admiration in her voice, yes, but there was no missing the threat there besides.

“I’ve spent much time around alchemists,” Dabir said easily, then offered a slight smile. It might have disarmed some other woman.

“As to your plan,” she pressed.

“As to our fate,” Dabir countered. “If I share this plan with you, I want food and water set within our boat, and to be set free upon it with my comrades.”

“Done,” she said easily. “You do not want transport to Basra itself?”

Dabir shook his head, and I knew not why, lest he wanted away from the ship as soon as possible. He looked over to me, but I could offer no reassurance. I did not trust her, yet perhaps she was eager enough for the information that she would honor her word. What other hope did we have?

He must have decided the same. “The matter is simple. The monster eats.” Dabir’s voice grew grim, for he had seen it chase down sailors from our crew. “We entice it to eat something that will kill it.”

The woman leaned forward intently. “You mean to poison it.”

“Aye. I do not know your stores, but I see you have apricots and peaches. Their pits, if ground, will produce a fine poison. So too is cinnabar poison, and likely you have arsenic and other potent powders known only to Chinese alchemists.”

She touched her necklace with one long nail. “I would be loath to part with my cinnabar. I have a priceless collection.”

“How much do you value your life?” Dabir asked her.

The Lady ignored this question. “How do you judge how much of any of these substances to give the creature? We had many pits, I’m certain, when first we took on stores–“ here her eyes flickered to the dried fruit “—but the cooks may have been pitching them overboard since.”

“Hazard all your poisons at once,” Dabir advised. “I am certain I smelled sulfur mixed in with the steam when we boarded. Such would not kill the creature, but it certainly wouldn’t aid its health. “

Dewei broke in, scoffing, “How do you propose to entice the serpent to consume foul smelling substances? Ask it to hold still while we pour them down its throat?”

Dabir answered him as though his question had been phrased politely. “Fill a watertight barrel with all the most potent poisons in the ship. Smear it with the flesh and blood of some of your fowl.”

“And suppose something else eats the lure?” Dewei demanded. “There are sharks in these waters.”

“That’s the most dangerous part,” Dabir agreed. “Are you willing to risk much for your freedom?” He looked down the table at Lady Xin. “If the monster tracks you, all you need do is slow, and wait for its arrival.”

Dewei made a rude noise.

“Silence,” the woman told him, then studied Dabir. “Your plan has greater merit than any I’ve yet heard. It will be expensive… but having the thing dead will be worth any price. Very well. Dewei,” She spoke to him in Chinese and he listened, nodding. He considered us with a frown, then a smile, then his expression cleared.

“I am giving you and your man access to my chemical stores, scholar,” Lady Xin told us. “Dewei will accompany you. A barrel will be provided. It should not take long to prepare this little trap,” she went on, “so I will order the ship to slow now. Dewei?”

Her man opened the door and gestured for us to precede him.

The woman did not rise to bid us farewell, nor offer any word of parting.

The sky was shot with stars, obscured by strands of cloud hung upon the sky like tattered banners. Truly, only in the deep desert and upon the sea can one gaze upon the heavens in their greatest majesty. Staring into that immensity I held the brief fancy that I was in danger of falling up into the darkness.

Dewei guided us through a forest of those strange sliding pipes and then we descended after him into a long cramped narrow underdeck, small enough that I was forced to duck my head. The clanking was most loud, though I could likewise imagine I heard the pounding of my own heart. No matter the woman’s assurances, I did not trust her.

Finally Dewei opened a door to starboard and, still smirking, gestured within.

I stepped through into a chamber of horrors.

The scent of blood permeated the place. Dozens of men lay on pallets thrown over low tables, still as death, dim light shining down on glazed eyes in slackened faces. A sickly green object was fastened about the chest of each man, and attached to each was a snaking, jerking tendril that led off towards a clanking metal contraption alive with spinning wheels.

Those upon the pallets came from many lands: Chin, India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and others I could not name. Most were dressed as sailors.
All but the nearest, our comrades, were emaciated, and even Ghassan, the cook, and the helmsman were paling. Three burly crewman were advancing around the tables toward me, bludgeons in hand.

“You shared your plan,” Dewei crowed. “Now all the captain needs is your blood!”

He stood still in the hallway, with Dabir, at whom he had pointed a sword.

You may wonder how it was I survived such a moment, but it was simpler than you think. If Dewei wished to assault us and win he should not have stopped to gloat.

I’d grown used to carrying a curved sword in part because it was one of the few things left to me from my father, may peace be his. But I prized them also because a skilled wielder may draw and strike at once.

The men with bludgeons were close, and my sword was but half drawn when the first rushed me. He took an elbow to the mouth as my sword came clear. He staggered into a table and both he and the insensate man upon it tumbled to the deck.

My next assailant, a man of Indian extraction instinctively warded my strike by throwing up his hands and discovered too late how finely I hone my sword, for I sheared both limbs off below the wrists. He sank screaming to his knees as blood fountained from the stumps.

Behind, Dewei cursed and shouted to his followers, who seemed reluctant to close upon me. Thus he ignored Dabir and ducked through the doorway, stabbing at my flank.

I sidestepped, slipping a little on the bloody deck, so that my return strike crossed not through his chest but his lantern, which splintered, spraying hot oil across his shirt, which flared up an instant later.

Dewei dropped the flaming remnant of his lantern to the floor, along with his sword, to beat at his shirt. Dewei did not end his life on fire, for Dabir’s push set the man into my sword edge.

This was enough for the third sailor, for he ran toward the darkness forward, screaming alarm. Tongues of flame, meanwhile, licked eagerly across the deck.

I called out to Ghassan, our first mate, and his eyes flickered feebly.

“What is this?” I asked Dabir.

He answered in disgust. “Sorcery.”

“Why does it always have to be sorcery?” I asked as I stepped to Ghassan. “Isn’t a giant sea serpent enough of a problem?” I cut the line that led to Ghassan’s chest. Blood flowed briefly from the connection and then the line fell away, like a withered vine.

I helped Ghassan to stand.

Dabir, meanwhile, roused the helmsman, though he was even more groggy than the first mate. The cook couldn’t be wakened at all, which meant I had to carry the fat man over one shoulder.

Fast as we moved, the fire moved faster, and that space quickly filled with smoke and crackling red flames. We heard the patter of feet on the decks overhead, and some out in the
corridor beyond, and we knew we had no more time, even had it seemed possible to save the wretched souls stretched on tables all around us.

Dabir had stolen glances toward that clanking bronze machine. “Dabir!” I cried. “We’ve got to get to the deck, and our boat!”

“We’ll need water,” he said distractedly, but led us toward a door in the stern.

It was wedged tight until I kicked it thrice. When it yielded before me we saw that we’d arrived at another cabin with yet another clanking machine, fed by a larger glowing sorcerous line, likely funneled from the one attached to the bleeding men. Further, this machine stretched from deck to rafter.

Had we been upon an exploratory outing I’m sure this cabin would have been of great interest, but we were desperate for an exit. Apart from the door I’d just kicked open there was but one egress, a gangway leading up.

I left Ghassan holding the dead weight of the cook, snatched a lantern from Dabir, and ran up the passageway to the hatch.

Praise Allah, the portal was unlocked. I threw it open and found myself in an immense stern cabin. Great windows looked out upon the ocean behind us, where the moonlight cast a wavering silver pillar.

In most ships the stern galley is given over to the captain’s quarters, and here was no exception, for I’d emerged within a nest of feminine luxury, replete with cushions and shelves filled with carven statues and scrolls. Also there were more of those painted silk images hung against the bulkheads.

But none of this held my attention for any time, for my eyes fell full upon the large glass pyramid anchored to the deck in the cabin’s center. Its frame was fashioned with delicately intertwining creatures of the sea, masterwork that would have astonished me had I not been revolted by the contents of the pyramid itself.

It held strange green fluid that only partially managed to obscure an immense pulsating, bulbous, black organ of some kind.

I stared a moment longer than I should have, until I heard footfalls without the cabin. I shouted for Dabir and the others to hurry, then raced to the cabin door and barred it with a wooden crossbeam. Just in time, too, for someone was soon hammering upon the thing with a fist and shouting in Chinese.