The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (53 page)

A boat came speeding out from the breakwater cavity. Daxin
felt a pinch on the right side of his chest. Everything started to drift
sideways and go fuzzy. He felt around, plucked something out of his chest, and
looked down to see a yellow-plumed dart with an empty liquid barrel. He knew
then that he needed to get back up onto the dock. He was about to pass out, and
if he passed out down here, he was apt to roll into the water and drown.

Flinging his bags over his shoulder, he leapt up and caught hold
of the dock. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the boat’s occupants, veiled in
shadow as they were. He began to pull himself up, but there was another sting
from behind, this time at kidney level. He swung sideways and hooked his foot
onto the edge. Almost there. The first thing he was going to do when he’d
gotten up, he decided, was to kill the bastards in that boat, whoever they were.
His gun was clean, loaded and ready. A pair of well-placed shots would do the
trick. Then his sight clouded and washed out of him like a mouthful of spoiled
milk, and he fell.

CHAPTER 47

Eh-Calai Phylecta

Artolo the Nuck took Lizneth wading through the surf outside
Gris-Mirahz. They hugged the cave wall until they reached a secluded section of
beach, where a driftwood dugout canoe lay in the sand, upturned and hidden. It
was a narrow thing of grayed wood with a shallow draft, accompanied by a
scratched plastic paddle from the old world. Together they righted the canoe
and set it at the water’s edge.

Lizneth had spent the past few days with Zhigdain and the
others, resting and talking about what they’d do next. The air was warm in
Gris-Mirahz, but the sea breeze was strong, and you could sleep outside with
only the cave roof high above you just as comfortably as you could sleep inside
one of the hovels. With her friends around her, Lizneth could drift off to
sleep each night without worrying that she was in danger, or that someone would
come to steal from them while they slept.

The villagers put them to work right away, and they worked
hard; plucking snails off the rocks, digging in the sand for clams and
shovelcrabs, poaching seagulls, gathering seaweed, and hauling nets for fish in
the shallows. Whenever they weren’t harvesting food from the sea’s plentiful
bounty, they found that there were plenty of other tasks that needed to be done
to keep the village running smoothly. Despite the questionable nature of its
residents, Gris-Mirahz offered a sense of community that Lizneth hadn’t felt
since she left Tanley. It was a place where
zhehn
treated each other more
like family than any of them were used to, and it put them all at ease.

From what Lizneth gathered during their discussions, it
seemed that her group of former rowing slaves would be going their own separate
ways when the time came. Fane was from a village far to the north called Palokk,
so he wanted to find work aboard one of the trading ships to earn his way across
to the northern shores of the Omnekh, plus a little extra if he could manage
it. Bresh had little in the way of family to go back to, so she said she would
stay in Gris-Mirahz. Zhigdain thought it best that they all leave since there
was still the threat of a visit from Qeddiker, but Bresh refused him, saying
she would die before she became a slave again. Zhigdain himself meant to stay
only long enough to decide which
ikzhe
village at this end of the Omnekh
to make his home. Dozhie had been away from home for so long that her
cuzhehn
were all grown up by now. Her mate was dead, so she said she would go wherever
Zhigdain went.

Artolo had joined Lizneth to hunt and fish almost every day
while he wasn’t on one of his excursions into the blind-world, and they’d formed
a plan for how they were going to find and capture their
eh-calai
for
Jakrizah. Artolo would come back from the blind-world with cuts and scrapes and
bruises on his body, but whenever Lizneth asked him about his activities, he
would brush her questions aside and change the subject. They spoke of many
things as they walked along the beach, or sat for long hours in the shelter of
some abandoned hut on the edge of the village. The plan they had worked out was
a good one, but Lizneth was a bundle of nerves this morning nonetheless.

“Have you ever been in a flat-bottom boat before?” Artolo
asked, as they slid the narrow canoe toward the water.

Lizneth shook her head.

“Okay then. It’s very simple, just remember to stay low.
These things are stable as long as you don’t lean them too far. Why don’t you get
in first and have a seat, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Lizneth tossed her bundle into the boat, then stepped in and
sat on one of the smooth plank benches while Artolo shoved off. She’d brought
the spare dagger Artolo had given her, a set of manacles, a pair of waterskins,
and some dried fish and bread wrapped in a faded white cloth. There was also a
flat leather pouch full of Jakrizah’s elixirs, along with some other
instruments that Artolo knew more about than Lizneth did. He was wearing a vest
that made him look like one of the fisherfolk back home, outfitted with various
pockets and other trappings for use in the task at hand.

The canoe wobbled as Artolo hoisted his feet out of the water
and splashed aboard, and Lizneth lost her stomach for a moment. She gulped the
sensation down and pushed away her memories of being aboard the
Halcyon
,
clamping her hands to the gunwales as Artolo began to paddle them toward the
big galley’s dim shape in the distance.

A line of rocks formed a natural breakwater that sheltered
their advance. Artolo guided the canoe with an expert’s grace, skirting the
rocks like a length of thread through a set of massive black fangs. Schools of
silverfins and glowfish darted about in the shallows. Lizneth cringed when a
lurking rock slipped by them, inches from the canoe’s hull. She’d only just
seen it beneath them, but Artolo had known it was there.

“There are only a few body parts Jakrizah needs,” he was
saying, his eyes sharp ahead. “Most of them can be found in the abdomen.”

“I thought you said the
eh-calai
needed to be alive,”
Lizneth said.

“Never said that. Mama Jak keeps them alive if she can, but
she isn’t thorough about it. She’s not very fond of humans, as you might have
noticed. When we can’t bring them back whole, we settle for pieces. I should
remind you not to use your dagger, if it comes to that. The venom spoils the blood.”
Artolo’s voice was monotone, his focus on the terrain ahead.

Everyone I meet plays me for a fool
, Lizneth thought.
Or
is it my fault this time for not asking the right questions?
She had known
there was the likelihood that she would have to kill again, but the thought
haunted her all the same. She hoped it would be easier to slay another
eh-calai
than one of her own kind. This was about getting home, and she’d do what she
needed to do. With Artolo at the helm, navigating the tiny boat with an expert
hand as he’d done countless times before, she began to doubt why she needed to
be here at all. “Why do you need me for this when you could do it just as well
by yourself?” she asked.

“You’ve never tried to shackle an unwilling victim, have you?”

“I’ve been the unwilling victim being shackled, and it didn’t
take much.”

“What about dragging a body over rocks, or lifting a creature
the size of a human into a boat the size of this one? You’re here because this
is a two-
zhe
job. It’s more than a two-
zhe
job, but there won’t
be room for more than two of us in this boat once we’re hauling around a
full-grown human. And Mama Jak already explained why you’re perfect for this,
so don’t you go losing your nerve.”

Lizneth felt her lower lip quiver, and bit back her
self-pity. She remembered the feel of the ropes rubbing and pinching at her
wrists when Curznack’s crew had pinned her down and tossed her into the hold;
the sensation of breathlessness while the drawstrings were tight around her
throat. She’d never abducted anyone before, but she knew more than most what it
was like, and so did Artolo, she didn’t doubt. It was hard not to draw
comparisons between what they were doing and where they’d both been. But she
thought better of arguing any further.
This is about getting home
, she
told herself again.
Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it
.

The
Halcyon
’s remains were a pitiful sight; whatever
pride the ship had borne had departed with its seaworthiness. It sat askance,
its hull emblazoned with smoke stains and scorch marks. Shouldered to rest in
the seabed, the ship’s slanted masts were wavering over the docks like unstable
roof trusses.
Calaihn
and
ikzhehn
came and went along the pier,
but the galley remained largely ignored as they approached.

“I want to take a look aboard that ship,” Artolo said when
they were close enough to see the shore.

“Have a great time. No tail of mine’s ever touching that
thing again,” Lizneth said, shivering. The morning air had grown warmer as they
neared the port, but the Omnekh’s spray and the sight of the
Halcyon
both chilled her.

“Look there,” said Artolo.

A lone
eh-calai
was seated amidst the pylons, perched
atop the rocks with his arms hanging over his knees. They were too far off yet
to see much, so Artolo paddled closer, keeping the boat out of sight.

The
eh-calai
looked worn and tired. He was thin, not
muscular like the bronze-fleshed
calai
;
his whole head was
shaven, the skin of his face ruddy and sand-lashed. Clothed in worn leather
beneath a shoulder strap bearing a string of red cylinders, there was a gun at
his side and a blade across his back.

“He’s perfect,” Artolo said.

Lizneth hissed at him for silence. “He isn’t chained. Is he a
slave? I don’t think he’s a slave.”

“All the better. No slave masters to come looking for him. He’s
all alone; nobody will know he’s missing until we’re back in Gris-Mirahz. Here,
keep the boat steady.” Artolo handed the paddle to Lizneth and began rummaging
through the supplies they’d brought.

The
eh-calai
’s eyes darted in their direction,
scanning the hollow where their canoe lay waiting in the shadows. It seemed
he’d heard them, even over the sound of the tide.

Lizneth tried to hold the boat in place by clinging to a
nearby rock, but the rock was black and wet, and the water’s surface was undulating
beneath them. She could see the bottom, so she drove the old plastic paddle
into the seabed for stability.

Artolo opened Jakrizah’s flat leather pouch and tinkered with
the implements inside: tiny cylinders of gleaming metal; an assortment of
stoppered vials and vaccine bottles of clouded glass; small tubes for drawing
liquid; and puffs of brightly-colored feather. From this array he performed his
careful admixture, glancing over his shoulder twice more to observe the
eh-calai
at rest below the docks before making his final selection.

Despite Lizneth’s best efforts to hold the boat still, a
passing wave rollicked them and sent one of the glass bottles rolling across
the floor.

“Keep it steady,” Artolo said. The warm smiles he’d given her
before had gone as sour and rotten as overripe fruit.

His work done, Artolo drew a thin metal pipe from where it
was strapped to his back. His eyes followed the surface of the water from where
he stood to the flat rock where the
eh-calai
sat. The human’s attention now
seemed to be on the waves.

“
Beh dyagth
,” Artolo cursed in a harsh whisper. “We’re
too far away. Take us closer.”

Stunned and feeling inadequate, Lizneth shoved off the rock, but
she forgot to pull the paddle from its stand in the sea floor. She lost her
grip and scrambled to catch it before it sank. After a bit of noisy splashing,
she discovered that the paddle had been designed to float. She looked up at
Artolo self-consciously, and was surprised to see him stifling a playful smile.

“Oh, you—” she began, but he shushed her with a soft chitter
and tilted his head toward the docks.

She began to paddle, finding the boat’s trim smooth despite
her awkward handling.

“Build some speed,” Artolo said. “Don’t try to stop when we
hit the edge; take us right into the open. I’ll hit him on the move.” He
thumbed one of the metal cylinders, with its bright puff of feather, into the
near end of his metal tube.

Lizneth increased the depth and length of her strokes,
swapping the paddle from side to side, as she’d seen Artolo do. It was a
different motion than rowing on the galley, but her arms had grown stronger in
her time aboard the
Halcyon
all the same.

Artolo assumed a wide stance and propped one foot on the bow,
holding his pipe in front of him with the tip pointed at the floor of the boat.
The boat picked up speed as they neared the opening in the rock, where the
light from torches and the outside world shone over the port and cut away the
shadow that was keeping them hidden until they got there.

“Good, good,” Artolo whispered back to her. “Faster, now.”

They were skimming along at a solid clip when they emerged.
Artolo breathed in and raised the pipe, bringing it to his lips. The
eh-calai
saw them and started, but Artolo found his mark soon after. He heaved, sending
the dart home with a
pfuh-thunk
that was barely audible above the waves.
Artolo plucked out another cylinder and thumbed it into the tube.

Sure enough, Lizneth saw the puff of bright yellow feather in
the
eh-calai
’s chest, waving in the breeze like a toxic lapel pin. The
eh-calai
yanked the dart free and tossed it aside, then hopped to his feet and snatched
up his things with a quickness. He seemed to be favoring his ankle, but even
with his bag slung over his shoulder, the
eh-calai
jumped high enough to
pull himself halfway up onto the dock before Artolo got the second shot away.

This time, the bright yellow plume blossomed from the
eh-calai
’s
lower back. He was swinging his leg up onto the dock when he faltered. His
elbows buckled, and the tension went out of him. He ricocheted off the long
flat rock where he’d been sitting, then crashed into the waves, his bag
tumbling in after him.

“Got him,” Artolo said, slapping the deck with an excited
tail. “Take us over there.”

They were already moving so fast that all Lizneth had to do
was drag the paddle to pull them alongside the sinking body. Together they
hauled the unconscious
eh-calai
aboard and fastened the manacles around
his ankles.

Artolo retrieved the
eh-calai
’s sodden bags from the
water and breathed an accomplished sigh. “That was some fine seamanship,
scearib
,”
he said. “Couldn’t have done it without you. Jakrizah’s going to be happy with
this one.” That warm smile of his was back, broader than ever.