The Scar - China Mieville [147]
She removed the sweat-damp sheet that covered her and stood. The air was still warm, even in these dark hours. She picked up Silas’ package from below her pillow, pulled aside the curtain, and walked slow and quiet through the room where Tanner lay wrapped in shadows on his pallet. When she reached the wooden door she leaned her head against it and felt its grain on her skin.
Bellis was afraid.
She peered very carefully through the window and saw a cactus-man guard wandering through the deserted square, from doorway to doorway, checking them idly, moving on. He was some way from her, and she thought she could open the door and run without him seeing or hearing her.
And then?
Bellis could see nothing in the sky. There was no threatening whine, no voracious insectile woman with claw-hands and jutting mouth, hungry for her blood. She put her hand on the bolt and waited—waited to hear or see one of the she-anophelii, for confirmation, so that she could avoid her (easier to hide if you know where it is), and she thought about that leather-and-bone sack she had seen that morning, which had once been a man. She froze, her hand like wire on the door.
“What you doing?”
The words came in a hard whisper from behind her. Bellis spun, her hands gripping her shift. Tanner had sat up and was staring at her from within his dark alcove.
She moved a little, and he stood. She saw the odd encumbrances of tentacles spill from his midriff. He faced her, his stance tense and suspicious. He looked as if he was about to attack her. And yet he whispered, and something in that reassured her.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. He stood in the entranceway to hear her, and his face was as hard and untrusting as she had ever seen it. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered. “I just . . . I had to . . .” And her inventiveness fled her: she did not know what she would say she had had to do. Her words dried up.
“What are you doing?” he said. Slow and angry and curious, he spoke to her in Ragamoll.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and shook her head. “I felt . . .” She held her breath and looked at him again, her eyes steady.
“Can’t open that bolt,” he said.
He was looking at the package in her hands, and with an effort, Bellis did not try to hide it or move her fingers nervously, but kept it in plain view as if it was nothing important.
“What is it, call of nature? Was that what it was? You’ll have to use the pot, lady. You can’t be shamed of things like that here. You saw what happened to William.”
She straightened then and nodded, keeping her face immobile, and walked back to where her bed lay. “Sleep better, won’t you,” said Tanner Sack behind her, and settled himself slowly. At the curtain between the rooms, Bellis turned briefly to look at him. He sat up, obviously waiting and listening, and setting her teeth she pulled the curtain to.
For a few moments there was silence. Then Tanner heard the sound of a tiny little spray, a few grudging drops, and he grinned humorlessly into his sheet. A few feet from him, separated by the curtain, Bellis stood up from the chamberpot, her face set and furious.
Through her humiliated anger, she grasped at something. Began to shape a hope, an idea.
The next day was the Armadans’ last full day on the island.
The scientists put together their reams of paper and their sketches, talking and laughing like children. Even the taciturn Tintinnabulum and his companions seemed buoyed up. All around Bellis schedules and plans were taking shape, and it seemed like the avanc was caught in all but fact.
The Lover flitted into the discussions and out again, a heavy smile on her, her new cut red and shining. Only Uther Doul was impassive—Uther Doul and Bellis herself. Their eyes met, across the room. Motionless, the only still points in the bustling hall, they shared a moment of some superior feeling akin to scorn.
All day, the anophelii came and went, their sedate, monkish manner shaken. They were very sorry to see the newcomers go, realizing they were soon to be bereft of the sudden influx of theories and