The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(94)

Two men stepped outside. One was very large with a shock of bright red hair. His companion was much shorter and thinner and ad no hair at all. Rurick took the chair on my right; Plešec sat down on my left.

“You will not run,” Rurick said.

I nodded. I would not run.

Chapter Thirty-Two: “Give It to Will Henry”

“Where is Warthrop?” he asked.

The question eased some of my terror. It meant the doctor was still alive. How long he—and I—would stay that way was the issue. For a brief moment I wondered how they had found me, and then I decided it was a pointless speculation. The how did not matter, and the why I already knew. Would it be if or when? That was the salient point.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

Something sharp pressed against my stomach. Plešec was leaning toward me, his right hand hidden beneath the tabletop. When he smiled, I noticed that one of his front teeth was missing.

“I could gut you right here,” Plešec said. “You think I won’t?”

“You are staying at this hotel?” Rurick asked.

“No. Yes.”

“I will explain rules to you now,” Rurick said patiently. “Rule one: tell truth. Rule two: speak only when spoken to. You know these rules, yes? You are child. All children know these rules.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good boy. Very polite boy too. I like that. Now we start again. Where is Warthrop?”

“He’s gone into town.”

“But he comes back—for you.”

“Yes. He will come back for me.”

“When does he come back?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

Rurick grunted. He looked at Plešec. Plešec nodded and put away his knife.

“We wait with you for him,” Rurick decided. “It is nice here in the shade. Nice breeze, no smell of dead fish.”

It was the best I could hope for in a nearly hopeless situation. Perhaps Rimbaud would wake up and come back downstairs. I thought about leaping from the table and hurdling the railing and chancing I could reach the quay without Rurick putting a bullet into the back of my head. I decided that chance was exceedingly slim. But if I didn’t run, if I did nothing and Rimbaud did not get up before the doctor returned, Warthrop was doomed.

Two doors. Behind one, the lady. Behind the other, the tiger. Which should he choose?

As I watched, a tern dove into the surf and emerged with a shiny fish twisting in its beak. I looked farther out and saw the edge of the world, the line between sea and sky.

It is part and parcel of the business, Will Henry. Eventually the luck runs out.

A gull shot from its sentry post on the shore, its shadow long and fleeting on the sun-burnished sand. I remembered the shadows of the carrion birds upon the bare rock at the center of the world.

There is nothing left when you reach the center of everything, just the pit of bones inside the innermost circle.

“What is it?” asked Rurick. “Why do you cry?”

“I’m not waiting for him,” I confessed. “He is waiting for me,” I lied.

This is the time of the dead. The time of the Dahkma-nashini.

In the fourteenth hour, on the second day of the week, a boy dies of cholera in his mother’s arms. Her tears are bitter; he is her only son.

His spirit hovers nearby, troubled by her tears. He calls to her, but she gives no answer.

She holds him until his body goes cold, and then she lays him down. She lays him down, for the time has come; the evil spirit approaches to take his body, and after that she will touch him no more.

The next Geh is begun. He is nasu now, unclean. It is time for the Nassesalars. It is the sixteenth hour of the second day.

“I do not understand,” said Rurick. “Why does he meet you up there?”

“That’s where he was meeting with Dr. Torrance.”

“Who is Dr. Torrance?”

“Dr. Warthrop’s friend. He’s helping us.”

“Helping you to do what?”

“Find a way to the island.”

“What island?”

“The island of the magnificum.”

He was struggling for breath. The way was steep; he was not used to the heat.

“For what are these pits?” he wondered aloud.

“To keep the town from flooding.”

The dry tanks were flooded with deep shadows; they appeared to have no bottom. If you fell into one, you might fall forever.

The corpse bearers take the boy and bathe him in Taro, the urine of the white bull. They dress him in a Sudreh-Kusti, the garments of the dead. Only his face is left exposed. He is nasu, unclean. The boy’s spirit watches them and does notunderstand. It does not remember that this was its body. The spirit is an infant again; it has no memory. It is now the sixth hour of the third day.

“How much farther?” Plešec asked.

“It’s just over that next rise,” I answered.

“You better not be lying to us.”

“This is the place,” I said.

“If you are lying to us, I will gut you. I will cut out your intestines and throw them down the mountain.”

“This is the place,” I said again.

It is the hour of the Geh-Sarna. The Dasturs pray the verses of the Avestan Mathras over the body, to strengthen his soul and help it along its journey. After the prayers the body is carried up and into the Dakhma, where it is laid upon the stone. It is now the twelfth hour of the third day.