The plague of batrachian descendants scaled the walls with eerie, silent ease, tiny paws and suctioning fingers finding purchase on the rain-soaked walls. They entered in through open windows, through unguarded archways and unlocked doors, ran amok in swarming numbers until their screams—and demon's delighted shouts—echoed down the cavernous stone walls. The clever ones climbed into dark corners, pressed behind dressers and leered down balefully from the high ceilings, throats pulsing with amphibian patience, waiting for their opportunity. The stupid ones, upon breaching, made no attempt to hide neither themselves nor their intentions.
Dakota picked the lock to get into the first room, where the screams rang high and human. The door slammed and swung wildly behind us. Dark hair thrashed against cotton sheets soaked with the presence of a dozen swampy fiends. We could hardly see anything but a floundering arm and shoulder, marked by trail of tattooed periods. The creatures must've been stronger than they looked to hold her down so easily. Dot, ripped out from underneath the blanket she'd been sleeping in, had been pinned, jerking, twitching, never enough to break free.
As I rushed forward a soggy weight smacked down against my shoulder. Pain was a needlelike bite on my neck. Dakota was on her knees beside me, reaching through her mess of blonde hair to try and rip off a second scrabbling creature before it could stab her eye with a tiny blade.
Dot wheezed and shrieked. One of the creatures, sporting a bulging belly and of a larger size than the rest, gripped her gnashing jaw in one hand, its other pinching her nose, and pried Dot's mouth open.
My fingers sunk into the porous body at my throat. With a cry of pain I tore it off. Fragile, airy bones snapped underneath my hand with remarkably little resistance. Before I'd come within a foot of the bed, the bulging, pale belly of the creature heaved.
It bent its wide mouth over Dot's face and clogged her scream with a thick stream of jellied eggs.
We killed them all, whatever they were, one caudate creation after the next, moving from room to room in a fast sweep, gathering up the woman or women inside and heading to the next, until we'd stamped out the life of the last one. And then in that tight bedroom, pressed against dressers with one or two women like Dot caught in a cycle of dry-heaves and drinking, a silence came over us. It was all of us, back together like we'd been a few weeks ago. But we weren't scared this time, not truly. We had grown together in a way I couldn't rightly say. And apart from it raining frogs, they were protected for the time being. Maybe that was it. There's something about four walls and a roof, something about your own room, that pushed the darkness a little further away.
Most of the girls were armed; it'd made every room after Dot's an easier job. Not everyone was, however. It amazed me, the way some people can go through a literal hell like this and refuse to pick up a knife. For some of them, it was religious. Others had personal reasons they preferred not to disclose. Myself, I wasn't sure what to believe. There had to be something, to get us here, to do this to us.
And yet ...
I knew what a knife could do. I trusted the forged metal that I wiped clean on a proffered nightshirt.
Dakota pried back on lipless mouth with the edge of her boot. Tiny, needle-like teeth crowded the front of its mouth, a near perfect match for the scabbing red ring on my neck. "Wish I had one of these when I was piercing my ears," she said. I glanced over at her, curious. She tugged one currently unadorned lobe. "Gave myself an uneven job with a blunt needle after my daddy told me I had to wait 'til I was fifteen. Bled like hell, hurt even worse afterward."
Whatever somber spell had gripped us broke then. A few girls laughed. One of them started talking about when she'd gotten her ears pierced. We started to clean up, hauling creatures into the haul like this was the new normal, even as the sounds and screeches carried on down the halls. Those people, Chiro had told me over and over again until my ears hurt, weren't my responsibility. Bad etiquette, apparently, go after someone else's sex slaves. If I broke whatever code of conduct they'd established, it'd free up attacks on these women.
"You think Val's alright?" I asked Dakota after making sure everyone paired up for the evening and instructed everyone to check their rooms again before bed.
Dakota ran an ichor-tainted hand through her hair, streaking it green. She shrugged. "We'll find out."
And that was all it was, these days. Wait and see. Wait and worry. Wait for the last survivors to ride in from the Hunt. Wait for a mysterious ceremony. Wait for my wedding night.
Heavy boots sounded down the hall. The Walrus, stomach bare, shoulders soaked in streaking blood and gore, smiled like a bearded madman. "Drink it in, lassie," he said, flexing an arm. Dakota's face scrunched in disgust.
"No thanks," she said, and in short order returned to lining up amphibian bodies.
The Walrus, still grinning, let out a wild yell. Oh, was he feeling alive tonight! I let the old warrior have his moment, wondering what kind of a thing he'd turned into out in the storm, and then he'd calmed enough for me to ask about the creatures.
"Plague of Lephians on yer household," he grunted. "It's doing, I'd wager. Can't set its feet inside these walls, but there's no stopping minions. Pregnant one probably climbed over in the rains, spawned the rest in the springs. Breed like mad, and with the Hunt going on, plenty of quiet down below. Now that I think about it," he said, pausing as a sudden thought struck him. "Lord Sparrow had gone down there few weeks ago. Haven't seen him since. And a few servants, too...Anyway, you likely stumbled on them a bit ahead of schedule. Ain't bright enough to wait 'til they're full grown. Mostly infants out there."
I glanced from the stack of prone bodies, some drooling eggs, and told him about Dot and the others.
"Ah," he said, frowning. "Ain't sure about that. Folks are usually getting killed, dragged away into the bottom of ponds to feed the offspring after they've sprouted legs; first meal, you know? Might have a bit of a bellyache, but the ladies should recover in time. Eggs don't last in a living person, though I wouldn't stake my life on that claim."
"Everyone's checking their spaces. I'd advise you do it yourself, Lady Wilson."
"Will there be more?"
"Always another fish in the sea, Lady Wilson," the Walrus said. He nodded at the pile. "Say, if you ain't using those for anything, those legs cook up real nice in a ...."
It wasn't for another half hour that I managed to excuse myself and head up to my room. Shail was content to scavenge around the girls, Val was missing, Dakota and the Walrus were deep in conversation about something neither of them would let me listen in on, and the rest had settled in for the time being. Not that I'd truly call them relaxed; you couldn't ever do that around here. You just didn't know what was coming next.
But I knew what awful thing awaited me in the tower tonight, and I was dreading him. I took the steps to my room slowly, let my feet cool against the water-stained stone, dragging myself along until I'd gotten into the hall and—
Chiro sat on the floor beside my door, grey eyes focused on the stained ceiling. There was a tiny box on his lap. He got to his feet as I fiddled around in my pocket for the key, leaving the box for the time being. "Lady Wilson," he said, head dipping in cordial greeting.
He wasn't smiling, but somehow in my face the muscles found a way to flash him a fleeting grin. "Gonna help me, aren't you?"
"Heard about the Lephians. I'm sorry I wasn't there to help." And from the look on his face, okay, no, the balled fist was a better hint, he might've been just the tiiiinest bit pissed that he'd been in the hot springs just moments before the attack and hadn't noticed a damn thing wrong.
"It's fine. Got it under control," I said, brushing past him to open the door. With one glance down the quiet hall, I waved him in. He crossed the threshold quietly, eyes uplifted, scanning the high shadows for trouble. "You know," I told him, pacing slowly forward, knife clutched in hand, "I'm surprised you didn't break in. Little conspicuous, loitering out in the halls like this is some kind of college dorm for mutants."
"I'm not a barbarian," Chiro said, mellow voice distracted now. He pointed to a set of drying prints, toed marks moving up over the wall, around the bed and back down behind my desk before they either dried up or disappeared.
A room can have different levels of quiet. No room at any time is ever truly silent. But there are different volumes to it, and my bedroom, with the balcony wide open and the floor partially flooded with blown water, was the muffled kind of quiet that brought out goosebumps. My damp curtains smacked dully against the wall, blown back by the endless sheets of rain. There were vibrations in the walls, I could feel the rattle as my fingers fell upon my desk and I eased out the chair and looked beneath.
Nothing.
A sharp bang resounded behind me. I turned. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my nightstand toppled. Chiro wrung the Lephian's neck and as I congratulated him on the kill (these things were rapidly approaching Zubat in Mt. Moon levels of annoyance), a second one flashed out from beneath the bed. I lunged across the floor for it before it could sink its teeth into his ankle, and then, at least for now, the room was cleared.
"I'd check again before bed," Chiro said a few minutes later, when I was using one of the rags from Shail's bed aka spare mattress to mop up the floor a bit. The crag cat shook off any blanket I tried to put on him, but he rather enjoyed sitting on them. And to keep him off mine, I'd gotten him his own special set of rags, which he'd licked and sucked and shredded in a matter of days.
Swinging the Lephians by their gangling legs, Chiro walked out into the rain and dropped the corpses off the balcony. He leaned over the rail to watch them fall, head tilted with a feline curiosity.
But he wasn't a cat, I reminded myself. Not really. Not anymore.
"Someone's gonna have to clean that," I said, frowning as he stepped inside and shut out the weather.
He looked back at me, grey eyes somehow bright against the flat color of his shirt. "And now they don't have to carry it all the way down."
I moved around to my dresser, after the bed, my favorite piece of furniture. It made me feel human, made me feel collected, and gathered and a little less like some auctioned piece of meat. Trying not to focus on the man behind me, I rummaged around for something conservative to where to my meeting with the King. Whatever showed the least amount of skin would do. I didn't like those skeletal, wrinkled hands on my body, nor the slick tongue against my throat.
"Why are you in my room?" I asked him finally, picking up first one scarf, one of the gifts I'd received from women I didn't know around the palace, and then another. Which would I let the King's touch contaminate?
"I've been to see the King."
I turned. "You what?"
"Don't go to him tonight."
"You shouldn't have talked to him."
"I'm not made of glass."
"You are now."
Chiro retrieved the box from the hall, then sat his wet ass down on the end of my bed. On purpose, I suspected, and frowned.
"So, you're obviously still breathing," I said sharply, masking the relief in my voice. I didn't have to see him tonight. One more night. A few extra hours of time to come up with a solution. I reached instead for a dry, warm robe and made Chiro turn around and close his eyes while I changed. "Why hasn't he tried to kill you?"
"Doesn't know he can. He thinks I'm playing some kind of game, letting you win the Hunt."
"Are you?"
"As far as the King's concerned, you're a pretty little mouse that thinks all my purring means I'm just happy to see you. You don't understand what I want from you."
Another kind of quiet filled the room, something warm and electric. My eyes found the polished rungs of the dresser. Maybe I needed a few more layers, after all.
There was a soft wooden sound as he set on the floor beside him what sounded like the tiny box. "Tea leaves," he explained, sensing the pause in my thoughts.
"From Colleen?"
"Didn't think you'd go, so I had her bring me some."
I squirmed out of my pants. My pocket squelched. I started to reach inside, remembered what was in there, and threw it across the room. Knotting my robe, I picked the pants up, tossed them onto the balcony and made sure to lock it tight so Shail wouldn't get out there.
Chiro watched me with a puzzled look on his face. "What was that about?"
"Eyes," I said. "I thought those things were the King's spies." Not that the Marrow Witch was any better of an option.
He laughed. "And you were going to bring him eyes?"
I plopped down near the head of the bed, just so I could throw a pillow at him. He deflected it easy enough, and I was left with a scowl. "To show him I mean business. I've gotta be some real kind of mean or he won't believe a thing I say. Shut up, okay? I can be scary. Anyway, what'd you tell him?"
He raised an eyebrow, leaned close as if this were a true secret, damp shirt creasing with the movement of hidden muscle. "That I'm yours until released."
In that moment I caught myself wondering, really wondering. What did he want? I looked away. "What else?"
Chiro leaned back. "I'm not your pet."
"So you came just to tell me not to see the King tonight?"
"And the tea," he added smoothly.
"And that's it?"
"Well," he said, fingers drumming contemplatively in the quiet. "Since your evening opened up, I was wondering if you'd like to play cards."