The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [95]
Hornblower said, “Great power of the sky, I am hungry and they won’t feed me. If I grow tired, I know you will not let me sleep. I understand nothing about your sisters, or anything else you’ve said. Kill me, Anu, set me free. Everything we believed was under the clouds is real! Set me free! I see that now, so set me free!”
The power said, I would very much like to kill you but I can’t afford to do so. I need you. I’m relying on you. Time is running out—
There was a last, quick burst of pain, then the voice was gone, leaving hornblower tingling, able to stand.
He continued on, miserable.
Here were more black-faced children, looking away as he passed.
Now someone screamed up ahead, and hornblower felt the ground move, though not like a true branch in the winds: this was a sudden lurch, accompanied by a low rumble that trembled up through the structures all around.
He turned the corner to see a group of huts aflame. Greater heat hit him with the force of a blow. Conflagration erupted from high windows as he watched, illuminating adjacent structures. The red had intensified. On the branch before the fire, a group of men cheered. They held lanterns, weapons.
Other men lay prone on the ground.
Flames ripped the clouds.
The fecund needed only to move its tail gently to stay away from the banks.
“Who were those men? Were they officers of the palatinate?”
Most of the fecund’s face was underwater; she could not readily respond, nor did she seem to want to. Octavia patted the creature on the neck, to reassure them both. The monster’s skin peeled, trailing off in the water.
“What do you see, monster? What’s going on? Why won’t you tell me?”
The idea that Octavia’s dream, spat onto the cotton batten, was responsible for what was happening to the fecund, and to the city, was impossible to ignore. Not always babies are born, the fecund had said. Was melancholy truly a poison, to achieve this state of uncertainty and decay in Nowy Solum?
Across the water, glimpses of flames leapt above the clay rooftops, painting them orange and hues of claret. As perspective changed with the fecund’s shifting position, Octavia became certain that the source of the growing fire was Hangman’s Alley or somewhere very close. Kholic haunts. She felt the pit in her stomach opening wider and wider. Yonder, something awful transpired.
Clouds over the burning area glowed with a light of their own.
She tried to use her knees to guide the fecund inland, rocking gently, and, to her surprise, after several quick convulsions that shook the monster to her core, they did begin to move shoreward. More powerful contractions contrived to squeeze the fecund’s ribs. When the monster was able to touch the rocky bottom of the River Crane, she lifted her head clear from the water and shook it from side to side like a dog, shedding sludge and what looked like more skin, though it was too dark to be certain. Her nostrils worked, sniffing the night air. Shit slid from her neck and sides, and shit slid from Octavia’s legs as they cleared the water.
The fecund, in the shallows, seemed lower to the ground, smaller than when they had entered the river—much smaller than when she’d been in her cell. Her belly was flaccid, emptied; Octavia felt an abysmal sense of dread. She did not want to ask about the pregnancy.
Several boats were tied to the pier at Talbot Lane Bridge. They emerged between two of them. Water, thick with flotsam, sloshed lazily against the hulls. Up the rocks and the embankment, another pair of astonished kholics gaped as Octavia and the fecund passed, heading silently into the streets.
When the chatelaine grew tired of peering out the window, seeing nothing