The Omen Machine

The familiar with the jar, after pulling off the lid, held it out for her mistress. Cockroaches poured out over the sides of the jar and down over the familiar’s hands. They made a rattling sound as they fell by the hundreds onto the floor, scattering in every direction before vanishing down into the weave of sticks and branches. In a moment they had all disappeared.

Jit, unconcerned, dunked the thorn in the filthy water and swished it around. She pulled it up and saw that what ever had been stuck on it had come off. Satisfied, she returned her attention to Henrik.

She repeated the careful cleaning under the nails of the last two fingers and thumb on his left hand. She found more of the tiny treasure she was searching for under the nails of his fingers, but not his thumb. Out of the corner of his eye, Henrik saw a smile come to Bishop Arc’s tattooed lips both times the Hedge Maid came up with a little scrap of something on the point of the thorn. Each time, she swished the thorn in the stinking liquid in the jar, leaving what ever it was to disappear down into the murky water.

Jit dropped his left hand and moved on to his right. After dragging the thorn under his first finger she brought it up close to her face for a look. There was nothing there. She cast a brief, furtive look up at the bishop and then dragged the thorn under the nail again, but it didn’t produce anything the second time, either.

She moved to the next finger and did a more careful cleaning under Henrik’s nail. The thorn found nothing. She repeated the search, then when it was fruitless, moved on to his third finger. It, too, didn’t have what she wanted. She focused on the little finger, as if it were her last hope.

When the thorn came up without anything but dirt, her hands dropped into her lap.

The symbols all over him seemed to churn as the man leaned down a little. “What’s wrong?”

The Hedge Maid made a few short sounds from deep in her throat.

“Jit says that we have the flesh of the woman,” the familiar at her side said. She hesitated before finishing the translation. “But we do not have the flesh of the man.”

The bishop straightened in a way that caused all seven of the familiars to back up.

One of them was not quick enough.

He snatched her by the throat and yanked her close. It looked to be a reflex driven purely by emotion. She cried out, thrashing like a snake in a snare, but she could not escape his grip. It was clear that the bishop was in a blind rage. She clawed at his tattooed hands around her throat, but it did her no good.

“Tell your mistress that I am not pleased,” he said to the others.

Several of them urgently leaned in, speaking to the Hedge Maid in her strange language.

When the bishop pulled the familiar in his fist close to his face and glared into her eyes, she cried out with a shriek of terrible agony.

“Back to the grave with you,” he said through gritted teeth.

As Henrik watched in frozen shock, the familiar lost the bluish glow they all had. Wisps of smoke curled up from under the cowl over her head. The whole creature writhed and withered as if everything was being sucked out of her. The skin on her hands and arms darkened as it drew in around the bones and knuckles until they looked skeletal. The flesh of her face boiled and bubbled and burned to a dark, leathery mask. Blackened skin smoldered as it shrank tighter and tighter around the skull. The eyes sunk back into their sockets. The jaw slackened and lips shriveled back, exposing the familiar’s fangs.

Bishop Arc tossed the withered remains aside.

Seething with anger, he paced back toward the tunnel where he had entered. The candles went out around him as he moved, as if he were dragging a veil of darkness with him. He growled in frustration and rage.

Abruptly, he stopped and turned back. He stared at the Hedge Maid a moment, then marched back toward her. The candles behind him came back to life as he moved away from them.

“You at least have the flesh of the woman, right?” he asked Jit.

With her dark eyes fixed on him, she nodded and then took the jar from the trembling familiar beside her. She held it up a little as if to show him.

He stroked the knuckle of his first finger along his gaunt cheek.

“Change of plans,” he said in a voice like ice.

CHAPTER 55

As the Hedge Maid started out toward a shadowy opening at the back of the chamber, her familiars raced around the room, urgently pulling smaller jars from where they were stuck into the weave of the walls or picked up larger ones out of the diverse collections at the edges of the floor. The eyes of those people nearby encased in the walls, the ones who were still alive, watched in desolate agony.

Henrik wished he could help them, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even help himself.