At the same time some screaming part of her was telling her – It’s a giant clam. What’s the worst it could do? Except . . . She’d always dismissed those cultists who fervently attributed divinity to their shelly masters. Standing in the presence of this creature now . . . there was something about it.
The Unspeakable Aklu’s arms flurried through a complex sequence of postures and Kris felt a rumble through the soles of her feet, resounding back from the walls to her body without ever reaching her ears. Only in retrospect did she realize that Aklu was being conversational.
The Hiver started into motion, making an elaborate leg like a dancer, then straightening up. Kris noticed that they had two faces – one smiling gold mask facing them, and one with a downturned mouth facing away, a mask of tragedy. Then their half-dozen golden arms adopted a series of elegant poses and their bell-like voice rang out:
‘So step the sanctified within our halls, who walked with eyeless tread the hidden glade. Peruse them. Linger on each page of theirs – and verdict give on how they have transgressed.’
The only operative word in all of that was transgressed as far as Kris was concerned. She froze, ready to fight, as Heremon came forward with some kind of device pointed right at them. For a wild moment she considered the ultimate sacrilege – leaping up on that couch with her knife, threatening oyster suppers for everyone, unless they let her and Rollo out. But what Heremon was holding didn’t look like a gun. The symbiont woman shook her head slightly in her direction, a cue for her to be silent? Then the Hiver adopted a new posture with their many arms – briefly mirrored by their floating master – before gesticulating again.
‘Sweet tones of innocence attend for these, the masters of the carrion bird, have not defiled the sanctuaries of God, nor placed a hand on that which is forbidden.’ The Hiver’s beautiful voice rang out against the cracked and filthy walls, and a dozen armed thugs and murderers listened raptly as though it all made perfect sense.
Then Rollo nudged her, none too gently. Kris had absolutely no idea what mad etiquette held sway here but she cleared her throat.
‘We are but poor supplicants to The Unspeakable Aklu. We are the, yes, the masters of the carrion bird. The crew of the Vulture God, the ones that recovered the Oumaru—’
Aklu’s arms semaphored and she stopped. Speaking over the Unspeakable was probably a faux pas of epic proportions. The gilded Hiver adopted another sequence of ritualistic poses, pirouetting to again show them their frowning tragedic face.
‘Our ark, our rightful casket, treasure fleet of all our dreams, explain how you, a nithing, with desecrating tread defiled our joy . . .’
Which sounded bad, however you sliced it. Kris shared a look with Rollo, then described their brief involvement with the Oumaru. It was a Broken Harvest ship? That hadn’t been in the brief, but it wasn’t as though most gangs made things easy for Hugh law enforcement by putting their criminal identities on the owner’s manifest.
When she described the wrecked Oumaru’s appearance, Aklu moved again and she let her account slow. The Hiver melodiously asked her to repeat it, and then again, in more detail. And again until Kris just about ran out of ways to say the same thing.
‘It had been peeled. We’ve all seen how it was, from the war . . . Melted and reformed, made into a sculpture as they do. You know what I mean.’
‘How sour false witness falls upon the ear,’ the Hiver remarked. Then abruptly Heremon did have a gun and it was pressed to Kris’s temple. Three of the thugs tackled Rollo to the ground in a struggling heap and, in the distraction, Kris whipped out her knife and slashed Heremon’s throat. Before her eyes, the shallow cut healed up. Heremon didn’t seem to be remotely bothered, her gun-hand steady.
Rollo was hollering furiously, and with a herculean effort he dragged his whole tangle of aggressors half a metre closer to the couch. ‘I just want my ship!’ he was howling. ‘My ship, you fucking barnacle! You killed my people. You stole my ship.’
Kris felt all possible chance of salvaging the situation falling out of the world’s ass, as the saying went. She met Heremon’s gaze past the glint of her knife, still at the Tothiat’s throat, and saw only unfriendly disinterest. For her, exploding Kris’s head with a bullet would be a mildly disagreeable task – akin to scraping something off her sandal.
Kris felt it was all over. They weren’t leaving here alive. But Aklu must have had something more to say, because the Hiver chimed, ‘Compounding sin with sin, bad faith with faith. To stand before th’unspoken throne and claim a right to hold the ark of the divine!’