Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 42iii

Grifford went forward as his sister slowly lifted one leg, then the other, over the sill and stepped into the bright blue light beyond. Her Engineer friend was standing in front of the open door, but as he went to push by her, she stumbled clumsily forward, out of his way.

As she stepped through the door, she looked to her right, over Tahlia's shoulder, and her hand clamped itself over her mouth, her eyes widening in fear. Grifford looked around the door's edge to see what had scared the wretched girl.

A body lay on the floor a short distance down the tunnel. It was on its back with its feet towards them, but he could not see the man's face because it was blocked from view by the huge ponderousness of his belly. A belly with the uniform of a fortress clerk stretched tightly across it.

"Jerrus!" his sister hissed as she crawled up to him in a half crouch.

Grifford drew his sword, and followed after her, but the Engineer girl stayed frozen at the open door.

"Why is he laid out on a carpet?" she said, alarm making her voice shrill.

Tahlia knelt beside the clerk's feet.

"It is not a carpet!" she whispered, reaching out a hand to touch whatever it was that covered the floor from one side of the corridor to the other. It looked purple in the strange blue light.

"What is it?" asked the Engineer.

Grifford knew. He had noticed a smell when he had entered the tunnels, and now he realised why it was recognisable. It was the smell of the abattoir-shed at the Enclosures. A smell he associated with death and fresh killed meat, and...

"Blood!" said Tahlia lifting her hand to show him her fingers. He could see that the stuff coating their tips had not dried, but was thick and glutinous. "It's cold." 

Grifford went to stand beside the clerk's feet, while Tahlia crept alongside their owner's vast bulk, her dress trailing along the bloody floor. She knelt by his head, which was tilted back so that his beard, with scraps of cake crumbs caught in it, jutted towards the ceiling. His eyes were wide with pain and fear.

"He was always so jolly," she said, in an uncharacteristically sad voice.

"What happed to him?" asked Dak.

"Somebody killed him," said Grifford, who was still staring at the clerk's dead face.

"Something killed him," said Tahlia. She pulled his beard away from his neck, and in the harsh blue light of the corridor it was easy to see the four small wounds in his neck, clear against the whiteness of his skin. "And you remember what Master Hepskil said about the poison on its blades?"

"What?" said Grifford, trying to remember.

"About how it stops a wound from healing, so that its victim dies no matter what."

Grifford looked down at Jerrus, and now he could see the rent in the man's side, the material of his tunic around the wound still glossy with blood.

"What are you talking about?" asked Dak.

Tahlia looked up at the sound of her voice.

"The nadidge did this."

The girl gave another strangled gasp.

Grifford edged along the side of the corpse, and crouched down beside the clerk's head, opposite his sister, the slaughter shed smell thick in his nostrils.

"Well, sister. Do you still want to go looking for whoever has taken our brother?"

"Yes. Why? Are you scared?"