I had deputized three new spies. The first two had each received a newly-crafted diamond Shard, allowing me to share their eyes.
One was based off a bird caught in the webs of the fisherman spiders, a lucky prize I wasted no time devouring and memorizing. It was a little hawk, a keen-eyed creature I altered for greater speed, as well as giving a secret weapon, a poison stinger tucked into its back talons. My skill in enhancing my creations had quietly grown.
Now, I had wings.
For the first time I soared above the city, occupying the same sphere as the clouds and the enormous skyships that drifted weightlessly beneath their lift-balloons, waiting for the right wind to depart for far-off lands.
Below, Caltern City was a knot of industry and houses all seeming to fight for space, pushing up against one another, a vast sea of smoke rising from a thousand hearths into an ember-scarred cloud of roiling black that lingered in the cold air of morning. I moved above them all, an all-seeing eye. The hawk's sharp senses could pick a single man out of crowd, could recognize him by the hunched, worried way he held his shoulders, his head ducked down to avoid his face being seen.
He had come from the Institute.
I knew precisely one thing about Olin Frampt's plans, which meant I had a single point where I could disrupt them. He needed skygrist.
And Trivelin knew enough about skygrist to fill a book. There was one seller in the city, a band of river traders - smugglers - known as the Tempest Canards.
Which meant a return to the Silent Market.
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My second deputy, I was less than pleased with. No, I was horrified to share its body, but I had no choice; I had recreated the mutant lamprey that Aurum had killed. It was the only decently-sized creature I could create that was amphibious, stealthy, versatile. Every second inhabiting its body was a moment I felt distinctly and grotesquely slimy, but I endured.
It lurked in the river, navigating between the hulls of the barges docked to sell their wares at market. The slimy coating of mucus on the lamprey's sinuous body let it slip through the water in silence.
We lurked under gangplanks as goods went from shore to ship, from ship to shore. The timber of the ships creaked in the water above us.
Occupying the lamprey’s mind meant being exposed to its ravenous hunger. Its eyes were weak, seeing the world only in terms of motion. And motion meant food. Everything around us was a tantalizing morsel, a drooling invitation to feast, and I could barely restrain the writhing slug-fish from rising out of the water to attack.
I waited for Argent to send the signal. She was stationed with Izzis and my final spy.
Trivelin. I had allowed him out of his cage on condition of helping me, and the man was, if anything, too eager to ingratiate himself to me. I could see the gold in his eyes when he talked of the business opportunities we had together.
Of the two spineless worms I had working for me, his constant flattery made him my favorite.
Altogether we closed in around the Tempest Canards’ little ship. The hawk had confirmed Olin’s servant was slipping down into the sewers, and it was only a matter of time now.
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Trivelin hummed a nervous song as he waited, standing in the same ragged clothes he’d worn on the day he’d been kidnapped.
He’d only had mushrooms to eat for days and every little foodstand in the market called to his rumbling belly. Oh, and what a belly it was. Over the last few years it had nearly outgrown the rest of him. With grumbles and protests it made clear who was in charge here, and all he could do was make promises of the fine restaurants, the silken whorehouses, that would welcome him in once he was a bonafide negotiator for a Dungeon Core.
Dreams of honeyed wine and glittering gold nearly distracted him from the mission at hand. Until the rat hidden under his cloak dug her little teeth into his neck. Startled out of his daydreams, cursing, he spotted his intended target moving towards the ship.
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It was time.
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As the servant set foot on the gangplank, I didn’t need to order the lamprey to move. I only had to cease holding it back. A long tendril whipped out of the water and coiled around his leg, pulling him down as he shrieked. He plunged into the water, casting off bubbles as his arms thrashed, and we sank our teeth into the meat of his calf. Blood hit our tongue in an explosion of savory, thick flavor, better than anything I’d known through the senses of my minions.
Above, the crew was panicking. Oars were jabbed into the water to give him something to grab hold of, but with our body curled around his leg in a crushing constriction he had no chance to pull himself up. Our weight and our teeth held him down.
His head broke briefly above the rushing surface of the river and he screamed. An oar bashed against our slippery, streamlined skull, and again, the crew of the Canard jabbing at us from above.
The commotion was attracting the guards now, I saw through Argent’s eyes. It was time for the rest of our plan to go into action.
Argent wore a little harness Trivelin had rigged for her, a bit of rope made from woven mushroom roots that yoked around her midsection and tied her to a large glass jar. Izzis held the other end up as they both slipped out of Trivelin’s robes and splashed into the water, paddling around the Canards’ ship to reach the far side while everybody was focused on the lamprey, fighting to get its prey out of the water.
Somebody else plunged in alongside us, a pirate with braided hair and a knife clutched in his hand. He slashed our back open, bile-colored blood spilling out as pain flashed through our primitive mind. We lashed at him with our tail, striking him back, and again with our tendrils, whipcrack blows ripping shallow tears down his face and breaking his nose.
An oar slammed into our head again, and without our tail coiled around the man’s leg we had no way to hold on. Our teeth ripped through the meat of his calf and we were pushed free with a chunk of him still in our jaws.
A crossbow bolt scythed through the water nearby. The archer dropped to his knees to crank the bolt back, nocking another shot.
We were running out of time.
Above, Argent was climbing up the side of the ship, Izzis’ wings fighting furiously to lift the jar from below as the ropes strained at her back, her little claws finding minute cracks in the woodwork to cling to.
I needed to keep the crowd distracted for a moment more. We turned on the man who had dived in to help, chasing him as he swept his arms in wide strokes and darted for the shore. We coiled through the water like a corkscrew of oily flesh, lunging down to catch his hand as it swept backwards on the tail end of a stroke- a snap of jaws, the gnashing and ripping of a hundred teeth, and three of his fingers were gone.
His screams roiled the water into a great spew of bubbles and he twisted, lashing out with his dagger. The skin of our head was cleaved open and we curled into a circle that snapped open into a kick of the tail, landing against his good hand, knocking the dagger loose. As he dove for it - every movement in slow motion within the cool enveloping waters - we latched on to the back of his neck.
It was a cruel thing to do. We didn’t hesitate.
Our slimy body wrapped around and around his chest, and above, the crowd gasped. The archer had finished loading his crossbow and he hesitated, finding no clear shot. Our teeth sunk deeper and deeper as our coils began to squeeze his ribcage to the point of hearing his bones creak.
Argent had crawled over the edge of the boat’s railings, and the goal was in sight. The dirt-filled jars of carefully-packed skygrist lay in a crate among the ship’s goods. Our own decoy was being lowered down painstakingly by Izzis, his wings straining under the weight.
The captain clapped the archer on the shoulder, whispering a word into his ear. The man nodded, lifted the bow to line his eye over the nocked bolt, and fired.
Pain lanced through our entire body as the shot stabbed through our midsection, puncturing our oiled skin and piercing into the man below us. Our blood was a bright slick of greasy yellow in the waters, mingling to a sickly brown with the scarlet blood of our victim. More and more spilled up as man and fish sank to the bottom of the river.
I felt the lamprey dying, darkness closing in from the edges of our vision.
I felt Argent’s triumph as she pushed the decoy jar into place, fighting to lift another out of the crate to make the count even. Together she and Izzis dumped the spare over the side and dived down themselves.
The crowd was lingering at the edge of the water, bloodlust seething as they watched the two intertwined bodies of man and monster drift lifelessly above the muddy riverbed. The servant was weeping as he was pulled onto the deck of the Canards’ little barge, his leg useless and lame beneath him, clutching his coinpurse to make sure it was still there.
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Trivelin whistled his little song, waiting. He stuck his leg out towards the water so Argent and Izzis could crawl up as they hauled themselves out of the water. The feeling of a wet rat and a homunculus slipping up your pant leg was unpleasant, sure.
But he’d still take it over any other part of the plan.
On the way out, he pulled a spare coin he’d hidden from his shoe and bought a skewer of roasted pigeon, feeding the two under his cloak nibbles. Life was good.