The Isle of Blood

“I don’t think I should comment on that, except to say I am a loyal servant of Her Majesty the queen.” He raised his voice: “God save the queen!”

“When you are finished with him,” Awaale said to Warthrop, “I would like to kill him.”

“Well, aren’t you a bloodthirsty African! Wherever did you find him, Pellinore? Did you kidnap him from a pirate ship?”

“How did you know I was a pirate?” demanded Awaale.

“Enough, Awaale,” Warthrop said. “It’s best not to parlay with the devil, if you can avoid it.”

“That’s the trick, yes,” agreed Kearns cheerfully. “Avoiding it.”

“Where is it, Kearns?” growled the monstrumologist. “Where is the magnificum?”

John Kearns took his time in answering. My eyes had adjusted to the dark; still, I could see only the barest outline of the man, a shade of lighter gray against the black backdrop of the mountain. The voice issuing from that shadow was a low thrum, like the sound of a fly’s wings beating the air.

“Where is the magnificum? It is right above you. It is right beside you. It is behind you and before you. It is in that space one ten-thousandth of an inch outside your range of vision. Look no farther than the length of your nose and you’ll find it, Pellinore.”

Beside me the doctor huffed in frustration. I could feel his body tense, as if at any moment he might launch himself at Kearns and choke the life out of him. The whimpering child cradled in his arms probably saved Kearns.

“I don’t have the stomach for this, Jack. I have suffered too much to suffer your riddles, too.”

“And not just you, I’d guess! I saw little Willy’s hand. Curiosity got the better of him, hmmm?”

Warthrop ignored the jibe and snarled, “Where is the magnificum?”

“You really want to see it? All right, I’ll take you to it. Not now, though. His children are about at night, and they are very protective of him, as my Russian friends discovered and you probably already know.”

He asked for some water, and then emptied Warthrop’s canteen. He announced he was ravenously hungry, and then tore into our provisions, cramming food into his mouth as fast as he could pluck it from the bag.

“Been hunting that one for days,” he said around a mouthful of hardtack. “All the way from Moomi. They exile the infected ones, you know—throw them out of the caves to fend for themselves, but I was waiting for the beast to take full hold of her—much better sport that way. The females are much harder than the males. The males come at you head-on, no stealth or subtlety about them, but the females are very clever. They’ll lure you into dead-end traps, lead you round in circles, sit statue-still for hours to ambush you. I’ll take a male as big and strong as Awaale here over a rotter like her

any day.”

“You knew we were here,” Warthrop said. It was not a question.

“Saw your light. Knew you took her in. Didn’t know quite what to do; thought you’d take care of her yourself, Warthrop. Why didn’t you?”

The doctor looked down at the infant against his chest. The child had fallen asleep, its fat lips wrapped around its tiny thumb.

“You’ll have to do it, you know,” Kearns said.

The monstrumologist looked up. “What?”

“Kill it.”

“It has not been infected.”

“Impossible.”

“I’ve examined it.”

“It’s been sucking on its mother’s teat. How could it not be infected?”

Warthrop chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “It has no symptoms,” he argued stubbornly. I wondered who he was trying to convince, Kearns or himself.

“Well, do what you like, then. Let it starve out here.”

“We’ll bring it with us.”

“I thought we were going to see the magnificum.”

The doctor was rocking the child gently as it slept. “Awaale will remain here to watch him,” he decided.

“I will?” asked Awaale.

“And when the tyke gets hungry, he’ll stick its little mouth on his big black nipple?”

“Where is the nearest settlement?”

“With living people in it? Probably the caves over in Hoq.”

“He will deliver the child to Hoq, then.”

“For what? It’s been exposed; they’ll just kill it. Should do it now and save you and them all the time and trouble.”

“I can’t kill it,” the doctor said. “I won’t kill it.”

Warthrop instinctively pulled the child closer to his chest and changed the subject. “What happened to your Russian friends?”

“The same thing that happened to the girl out there—that happens to anyone who touches the rot of stars. It started out well enough. Mating season had just begun, and the casualties were limited; the sultan had it quite under control, contained to a couple remote villages. They isolate the plague, you see, rather like a smallpox outbreak, and let it burn itself out. Sidorov and company traced the nexus to the birthing grounds, deep in the belly of the mountains, and then one of the fools got strung up by his vanity. He literally put his foot in it—stepped in a fresh puddle of the pwdre ser—and then insisted on cleaning his boots! The rot burned through the entire company after that. I barely escaped. Been hunted—and hunting—ever since.”

“And Sidorov?”