Chasing Sunlight

Jonathan stepped out into the camp of the strange reptilian folk that called the Verdant Expanse home. Overhead was a shield of stretched, stitched, and oiled hide spanning an area as wide as a city block, deflecting the wind and rain and ash of the volcano-fueled storm. The peculiar spectral illumination the caravaneers favored cast everything into an unreal light, painting everyone in colors that weren’t quite right.

Reds shifted to something more bloody, whites to corpselike lividity, and the dark colors of Jonathan’s suit turned charred and sooty, as if blackened by smoke. Pupils seemed to vanish under the colors of the light, save for Antomine’s white which defied the alteration. Yet that was the least disturbing effect, for the lanterns also removed a certain solidity from those under it, making them look nearly translucent and their edges uncertain.

The enormous sleds stood on the battered, denuded earth, houses in truth complete with windows, doors, roofs, and balconies. At rest, those doors and windows were thrown open, balconies turned into shopfronts. The camp became a small but bustling marketplace, rendered strange by the patrons being half-floating scaled folk moving in quick, short bursts. The long, luminous tails rippled and waved, dancing ribbons rising all the way to the hide ceiling.

Jonathan’s cane sank only slightly into the soil, compacted as it was by the weight of countless tons of pack-beast. His fellow humans huddled behind him, rendered child-like by the proportions of the surroundings. He waved them along, making his way toward the nearest sled-house and ignoring the caravaneers that occasionally swooped close overhead, though most of his party flinched. Antomine was a conspicuous exception, his broad-brimmed hat tilting up as he regarded the non-humans.

Strange as the surroundings were to human eyes, Jonathan had no trouble picking out his destination, and led the way to one particular sled that had prismatic flowers braided into the balconies, a dozen different shops packed into one building. The others could trade for whatever caught their eye, but he had a specific product in mind. While not as necessary as the strange compass he’d constructed, there were times when an altered state of mind could be very useful to grapple with more unusual locations.

“I would not advise approaching other sleds, but this one is friendly to outsiders,” Jonathan said, indicating the flowers with his cane. Eleanor and the airmen spread out along the indicated construction to look at the various goods, some of which were botanical and some of which were the contrivance of reptilian hands. Antomine stayed where he was, lips pursed as he regarded Jonathan.

“They don’t seem to be all that interested that we’re here. Even though we’re outsiders.” Antomine clasped his hands behind his back. “That seems unlikely. What’s the catch?”

“They likely aren’t interested,” Jonathan told him, the man and his two guard accompanying him as he began to circle around the side of the sled. “I doubt we’re the strangest thing they’ve seen this week — a caravan moves between destinations, after all. Nor are we much of a threat.” He pointed his cane at the massive, hulking form of the pack beasts at the edges of the hide rain-shield. “Any one of those could tear the Endeavor apart. Equally, they could tear anything that threatens the Endeavor apart, and I have found the caravaneers to be fairly polite.”

“Polite so far as we follow their rules,” Antomine said, not exactly a complaint. Jonathan expected he knew what particular point irritated the young man — the Inquisition’s remit was to keep humanity safe from that without, and he could hardly do so in another race’s territory. If anything, Antomine was being exceedingly generous in his tolerance for fraternization.

“I assure you, Mister Antomine, that I will not inflict any impossible requirements upon you,” Jonathan said, pausing in front of a particular caravaneer’s display where glimmering blooms of shocking fluorescence stood in pots. “There are indeed certain places where just to gain entrance would require prices none of us are willing to pay, but I have none of those places in our itinerary. Some encounters with the natives of these lands is inevitable, and better that it be controlled.”

“On that point I can agree,” Antomine said, eyeing the flowers with disfavor. Jonathan stepped forward and withdrew several short bars of iron from the satchel at his side, laying them out in front of the lightfooted lizard who deigned to notice him.

There followed a short conversation in whistles and clicks as Jonathan dickered with the caravaneer. He couldn’t use the flowers in their present form, but there would be plenty of time to dry and powder them before they might be necessary. At length he passed over several pounds of steel in exchange for two phosphorescent plants in wooden pots, nestling them in the crook of his arm as he waited for the others to finish their shopping. Antomine, of course, evinced no interest in the prospect, save for preventing anyone from bringing anything untoward aboard the ship.

A deep and earth-shaking roar interrupted the caravan’s activity, followed by the distinct sound of the zint artillery. Jonathan turned toward the sound, seeing nothing beyond the wall of pack-beasts, but the impact of something large shuddered through the trampled earth beneath his feet. Blood-chilling screams and savage growls echoed as, somewhere unseen, massive creatures battled. A reminder that, as quaint and cozy as the encampment seemed, it was surrounded by hungry and trackless jungle.

“You know, I think I’m going to skip out on hunting,” Eleanor said, sauntering up. Her pair of maids trailed her, both of them carrying intricately carved statuettes made of some deep blue wood. They merely depicted caravaneers, but they were adorned with chips of gleaming chitin and flecks of opalescent shell and were quite likely to fetch a pretty price at auction. “That sounds a little too big for comfort. Besides, I’m not really cut out for the wilderness.”

“As you prefer,” Jonathan said, as the furor outside the camp reached its peak, one last desperate wail leaving a sudden and shocking silence in its wake. “I expect nothing untoward, but when it comes to the Verdant Expanse I cannot be certain.”

“You can have it,” Eleanor said. “Take Antomine along. He’s got an adventurous streak.” Jonathan nodded, fingers tapping on his cane, but was not sure how Eleanor came by the insight. Though perhaps he had neglected his fellow travelers; with the sunlight blazing in his depths they seemed almost irrelevant, save for the purpose they served. Something to address in the future, as he had no wish for them to wind up aligned against him.

The rain stopped with an unexpected suddenness, whereupon Jonathan corralled the remaining members of the human contingent to return to the gondola. As they climbed in, so that Jonathan could prepare for the hunting expedition, some caravaneers hauled in the corpse of the beast that had drawn the Endeavor’s fire. It was an enormous, long-faced, shaggy-maned thing that rivaled the size of the pack-beasts, and promised thousands of pounds of raw meat.

“Surely there is enough there that we could purchase—” Antomine began, looking in the direction of the carcass. He was interrupted as every caravaneer in the camp descended suddenly upon the body in a flash of scale and tail. In a savage orgy of blood and jaws they tore into the still-warm corpse. Growls and snarls came from the otherwise-polite caravaneers as they fought over the choicest entrails.

“Ah,” Antomine said, looking faintly nauseated. “I withdraw that.”

“We will need to make our own kills,” Jonathan agreed. It was not an unfamiliar sight to him, yet still unsettling to have their hosts overtaken by such feral behavior. He kept it as a reminder that the caravaneers were not human, and the indifferent politeness they exhibited was but a thin veneer over something more ancient and ravenous, a hunger that could never be appeased.

Back aboard the Endeavor, he made the only concession he needed for the hunt — zint weaponry. They would be engaged in bloody work. Though he had come to the pistols and rifles later in his life than bladed weapons, he found himself with a liking for their deadly efficiency, even if their light was a mockery of what he pursued.

The detail assembled for the hunting expedition, though Jonathan had more faith in Montgomery, Antomine’s guards, and himself than most of other crew that had joined. They might be tough, but most of them didn’t have the hardness in the back of their eyes to show they could be relied upon. Crowded into the gondola, he could smell fear and excitement from some of them — though not from any of the Inquisition. They were as unflappable as ever.

By the time they reached the ground again the oiled hide had been pulled away, revealing an orange-red haze in the distance from lava diffusing through fog and mist. The caravaneers accompanying them touched the ground only casually and indifferently, long floating tails coiling in the air as the party breached the edge of the encampment. Two packbeasts lay like boulders on either side, but one of them tilted its head to watch them with an enormous, glinting eye.

Beyond the trampled boundary of the camp, ghostly lizard-light and zint-lanterns revealed a riotous overgrowth of fern and vine, fruit and flower. The smell of greenery was like running into a solid wall, fecund beyond imagining, with damp rich soil and hints of a distant river. The calls, shrieks, howls, and wails of animals unseen sounded all about them, and the men kept their rifles at the ready.

“Hunting in the Verdant Expanse is more a matter of setting yourself as bait and hoping you can deal with what comes after you,” Jonathan remarked to Antomine, pushing aside a fern with his cane to keep the thirsty hooks of its leaves from seeking his flesh. He kept his rifle in his other hand for, although he was confident in his ability to deal with whatever they might find, foolhardiness was rarely rewarded.

“Do you expect to find anything small enough?” Antomine asked, glancing back at the sled being hauled by four of the crew, upon which was piled ropes, knives, saws, bags of salt, and other such equipment for dealing with fresh kills. Already the bins there were being filled as Montgomery pointed out fruits and hanging pods that were edible. They’d likely be overflowing inside of ten minutes.

“I’m sure our escorts would be happy to take anything we couldn’t carry,” Jonathan said, glancing over to where one of the caravaneers’ tails was visible as a long rippling glow just outside the circle of lantern-light. Antomine shuddered.

Despite Jonathan’s warnings, they navigated through the thick undergrowth for nearly half an hour with only minor inconveniences. A spider half the size of a man descended from a tree above, aiming not for any of the crew but for the bin filled with luscious fruit. Some long, slinky thing with a sleek black pelt ran circles around Montgomery and Antomine both for several minutes, but the only casualty was a belt buckle from one of the airmen that it carried off into the darkness clutched in one of its paws. A few bloodsucking pests the size of man’s head buzzed the group and were summarily sliced from the air.

It was only once they had gotten well away from the camp that something substantial appeared out of the dark. The caravaneers whistled warning, and Jonathan had everyone’s rifles up and ready when a fifteen-foot-tall mass of vivid orange muscle burst from between two oversized bushes. It had half a dozen feline eyes on a long equine snout full of razor teeth and its six limbs churned as it aimed itself directly at Jonathan, where he stood in the lead.

The volley of zint bolts hammered into the grotesque head, burning holes in the jaw and the skull. Only one out of every ten actually hit – and most of those from Antomine’s guards – but combined they sent the beast toppling with a groan before it came within twenty feet of Jonathan. If anything it seemed anticlimactic, as airmen leapt forward to string the beast up to field-prepare it, though the ship’s cook seemed baffled by the bizarre internal anatomy of the thing. He was still dissecting cuts when one of the caravaneers flitted over to Jonathan.

“A red river runs this way,” it said matter-of-factly, and Jonathan whipped about to yell at the assembled gawkers.

“Grab everything and head that way!” Jonathan pointed up a moderate slope with his cane before following his own advice and hurrying uphill.

“Snap to it!” Montgomery said sharply, and airmen grabbed the sled and hastily hauled everything away from the kill site. The blind flight was dangerous, but less so than the sudden flood of lava that swept through the gully they’d been in before, moving faster than water and hitting them with a hammer of furnace heat.

Leaves scorched and wilted, runners of fire ran up bark, and plants were crushed and burned under the molten rock. Yet at the same time, creepers and barren trees that had seemed nearly dead awoke, twisting and writhing and plunging roots into the scorching river. Veins of fire bloomed inside of strange plants as a second jungle awoke, one that fed on rivers of red instead of blue.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Jonathan said, squinting past the roiling waves of heat that reeked of sulfur and ash. “But it’s a marvelous opportunity, so long as you don’t mind a few blisters.” The airmen were beginning to sweat and Montgomery was looking a trifle damp from the heat. Antimony’s pale face had reddened, but his guards seemed unaffected — though it was impossible to tell under their armor.

The fast-flowing lava actually splashed and spit here and there, sending deadly globs to smolder and smoke where they landed on greenery and loam. Jonathan shielded his face as he gripped his cane by the base, reaching out with the handle to hook a swollen, incendiary fruit from a recently-revived tree. A jerk plucked it from its stem and he caught it, juggling it to hold with his sleeve where the cloth steamed from the touch.

“And what use are such things?” Antomine didn’t seem much impressed, but he stepped forward against the wall of scorching air to reach for his own fruit — only to find it fading and pulling away from his grasp. He frowned and stepped back, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead.

“For eating, of course,” Jonathan said, carefully carrying his burden to the sled. “Mister Montgomery, if we can gather enough of these we can take the Bitter Pass rather than going around Widow’s Peak.”

“Oh? Hmm.” Montgomery said, clearly considering the option. Few humans had been so far east, but there were writing and accounts, and Jonathan had both to detail the challenges they would face, as well as the maps to guide them to or around such dangers. Without some form of unnatural vitality, it was foolhardy to brave the Bitter Pass, lest people set themselves aflame to ward off the cold.

“Mister Heights!” Antomine barked. “I will not have you contaminating men with such alien things.” He grabbed a quailing fruit from the branch and held it up, where it hissed and shrank from his touch. “Look at this! Whatever benefits this may have are rendered irrelevant next to its antipathy to good and honest light. Some encounters may be inevitable on this expedition of ours, but I will not brook imperiling lives and souls for the sake of expediency.” He hurled the fruit he had plucked into the lava by way of emphasis. “There will be no use of this poison while I am here.”

Montgomery looked uncomfortable, and the airmen were clearly hesitant about the idea of imbibing anything that might give the Inquisition pause. Jonathan glared at Antomine in cold fury at being stymied, his fingers tightening on the cane. James and John moved up unobtrusively, ready to support their master. The tense moment stretched until it was unceremoniously interrupted by the smashing and crashing of another beast stumbling upon their party, scorched orange fur still smoking as evidence of what had driven it there.

Men scrambled for their rifles, and Jonathan took out his frustrations by using his cane as a club, the four-legged and half-feathered creature having made the injudicious decision to come within arm’s length in its lunge. The flat face crunched under the impact of the cane’s handle, forcing it back with a gurgling screech. Zint bolts sizzled into it a moment later, boring holes in the thick muscled hide and eliciting an awful, gurgling series of vocalizations.

Jonathan stepped forward and, venting his outrage, put it out of its misery by punching the blunt end of his cane up through the bottom of its jaw and into its brain. It crumpled to the ground and he took several steps back to get out of the way, resting the entirely clean and pristine end of the cane on the ground as he tapped his fingers on the crook. Airmen moved in to check that it was truly dead as he stared at it, suppressing his fury at being thwarted in favor of cold calculation.

Murdering Antomine in front of the crew would certainly not make them trust Jonathan any, and Antomine’s words had already had their effect. Montgomery’s opinion was poisoned against the fruits and the shortcut they would permit, and the only way to use them would be to force them on the captain and crew. Something that would ultimately result in a far worse consequence than a mere delay, albeit one of several days. He exercised command over his faculties and smoothed his expression to something more neutral before turning back to the party.

“I admit it may not be worth the risk for most,” he conceded. “More prosaic supplies will have to hold us.” He looked straight at Antomine, daring him to comment any further on their disagreement. Antomine declined, merely nodding agreement with Jonathan’s comment and directing his guards to help with dismantling their newest kill.

Even that was not without its interruptions, though several of the beasts that loomed up into the zint-light turned and fled before they could be taken down. One that did attack, a hooved and antlered titan rendered in lurid green, melted into some caustic slime upon death that corroded a pit in the ground. A reminder that even the most ordinary-seeming of things in the Verdant Expanse were twisted by whatever strange energy rendered it fecund beyond imagining.

Once the meat from the kill joined the rest on the sled, now piled high and requiring more men to tow it, they began circling back to the direction of the camp. While they had not been cut off by the river of lava, retracing their steps was effectively impossible — any path they had cleared was long regrown, and even the great titans of the forest that rose around them could shuffle along in a peripatetic meander. Between the caravaneer outriders and Montgomery’s finely-honed sense of direction, there was no chance of getting lost, but a less prepared party might well find itself hopelessly misplaced in the rampant greenery. Even simply reversing course resulted in encountering landmarks they certainly had not seen on the way out.

A caravaneer whistled softly in warning a moment before the canopy receded ahead of them in a long, stretched moment, vanishing from above of its own accord. A soft gray illumination rose from the ground like mist and revealed a burnished bronze minaret sprouting from the sudden clearing like some strange plant. The singular tower was peculiarly pristine, unblemished by vegetation or heat or time, yet projected from the ground as if half-buried. A shallow spiral wrapped from where it emerged from the soil up to the top where arches revealed a cracked clay bell hanging from the top of the spire.

Jonathan halted, throwing up a hand as he eyed the ruin. The Verdant Expanse was the grave of any number of civilizations, most of which even he had only the faintest inklings about. The small spiraled tower and its attendant bell corresponded to nothing he was familiar with, the very lack of decorations a style of its own. A perfect circle of untrod soil surrounded it, with no plants or rock to spoil the black loam, and that alone was alarming.

He turned to say something to Antomine and Montgomery but found, though his mouth could make movements and air left his lungs, he could not speak. Antomine’s face twisted in confusion and he attempted to reply but his words, too, were snatched away before they could form. With each failed utterance an aura of palpable menace grew outward from the minaret, the clay bell rocking, beginning to silently toll.

In the short time that their backs had been turned, the jungle had somehow vanished in the luminous gray mists that surrounded them. The airmen reacted with mute dismay, gesticulating as their failed words fed the menace of the spiral tower and the silent bell. Jonathan found himself unimpressed by such a simple trick and exchanged looks with Antomine. Instead, Jonathan mimed linking arms and gestured at the rest of the men, and Antomine nodded.

The tricks of mist and radiance meant nothing to eyes that had seen a light so true as sunlight, though he had no desire to be around once that bell reached its peak. The prickling sense of danger grew, pressing down with palpable force and making it difficult to move as everyone clasped forearms or held onto the sled. Jonathan himself took one of the sled leads, and the only caravaneer who had been caught in the clearing descended to land atop it. Antomine gave it a baleful look; their native guides should have stopped them from stumbling on such a landmark.

All the men worked in concert, hauling themselves and their sleds away from the dire minaret, the pressure growing with each step. The bottom of the sled bit into the earth, and several of the airmen struggled to stay upright. Others like Montgomery seemed to have no troubles, hauling their stricken fellows forward one step at a time. All the sound leeched out of the world, the scrape of sled on soil, the sigh of the wind, then the sounds of breath and heartbeat were stolen away.

Antomine’s white-pupiled eyes glowed as he fought against the inimical and unnatural influence of the place, pushing out a small bubble of sound as they moved forward, step by deliberate step. In response the oppressive silence sharpened to a hunger, actively clutching at them, tugging at clothes and ropes, grabbing onto the sled. The sole flaming fruit Jonathan had harvested tumbled from where it rested atop the bins, its fire flickering and dying as it rolled inward toward the tower.

One unfortunate soul fell to his knees, but James – or perhaps it was John – scooped him up, the faceless armor expressionless as always. Jonathan fixed his gaze on the jungle’s edge, far closer than it seemed if one could tell directions, and hauled the sled as his boots dug into the untouched soil. The hungry silence tried to pull them back, avaricious and angry, but Jonathan’s will was steel and his soul was sunlight. No malicious spirit was enough to entrap him.

He hauled all and sundry past the mists with one last convulsive jerk, and the entire edifice evaporated as if it were made of nothing more substantial than the vapor which had surrounded them. The tower and its clearing were gone, zint-lamps finding only the same vibrant vegetation as stretched in every other direction. Jonathan turned to scowl at the lizard that had hitched a ride while Montgomery counted heads, making sure they had all made it out.

“Why were we not warned of such a hazard?” He demanded of their guide, contorting his throat around the whistles and clicks. “Have we not been adequate guests?”

“It was not foreseen,” the caravaneer admitted, blinking its oversized eyes once. “Perhaps there is one among you who is on such a taboo path that it would attract the workings of the ancients.” It stared at him closely, then at Antomine, though Jonathan could not tell what it was thinking by the inexpressive face. “Such aspirations are forbidden here,” it concluded. “You will have to leave.”

“Only once we have what we need,” Jonathan said, lips pressed tight as he stared challengingly at the reptile. There was an edge to his gaze, the sunlight deep in his soul that brooked no disagreement. Despite the caravaneer’s larger size, it looked away first, and Jonathan shook his head in disgust before surveying the party.

Everyone was still alive, if somewhat shaken. The only casualty, if it could be called that, was the man who had collapsed before they had escaped the minaret grounds. His sound seemed to have been stolen away permanently, for no word nor shout nor clap of hands produced anything audible. Antomine took the distraught man aside as they made their way back, moving at a crawl to avoid stumbling over any other antiquities.

Jonathan distrusted the caravaneers’ explanation, but was forced to concede to himself it was possible either he or Antomine could have stirred something by their very presence. He still didn’t know what the Illuminated King’s real interest in sunlight was, or why the Explorer’s Society had been so set against it. Perhaps some forgotten artifice resonated with the memory he carried with him, or perhaps Antomine’s own fragment of the Illuminated King’s secret was objectionable.

Twice on the return Jonathan called a halt, stuck by the sensation of some unnamable evil stalking them from beyond the ring of zint-light, though nothing emerged. The shadows of leaves and branches took on suggestive forms, of reaching claws and rending jaws and other, more enigmatic threats that required putting the offending obstacles to the torch, oily flames licking into the air. Yet at the end of the hour they returned to encampment no worse for the wear, save for the fraying of some nerves.

Stepping past the line of immense pack-beasts, they immediately found a volatile tension. The gondola had been ripped off the vine that ran up to the Endeavor and several airmen were standing about it with guns, not to mention Eleanor and her maids. Several caravanners stood motionless but for their slowly drifting tails, staring down the human contingent.

“What did those idiots do?” Montgomery growled, long strides taking him toward the gondola, heedless of the standoff. Antomine followed without hesitation, and Jonathan glanced back at the sled before deciding it could keep. He very much doubted that whatever was going on could be resolved without translation.

One of the lizards made a quick movement toward Montgomery when he passed by, and John – or perhaps it was James – cracked its reaching forepaw with his baton. The caravaneer hissed, and Jonathan stepped forward with a sharp whistle. Incipient violence suffused the air, waiting to erupt at the slightest provocation.

“I appeal to the camp; what has brought upon this disagreement?” Jonathan asked in clicks and whistles, planting his cane on the ground as he came to a stop in front of the Gondola. He nodded to Eleanor, then to Sarah and Marie, all of whom were wound tense and ready to act.

“They want to take Martin,” Eleanor said tersely, one hand waving at the gondola. Behind her, Montgomery was getting a similar story from one of the airmen.

“The human has stolen,” one of the caravaneers said with a vindictive whistle. “Violated the guesting agreements and sacrificed their rights to their flesh.”

“Allow me to inquire of my own accord,” Jonathan said, not bothering to ask if the accusation was true. A false accusation would put the accuser in the precise situation as the accused — at the sharp end of reptilian jaws. He beckoned to Antomine, glad for once to have the services of an Inquisitor.

“They say that Martin stole something,” Jonathan told him, pointing his cane in the direction of the gondola. “I absolutely need to know if that’s true, in any aspect.”

“Yes,” Antomine said, and strode confidently over to question the man. Eleanor frowned after him.

“Can anything be done?” She asked. “If he did — we can’t just let them take him.”

“Unless you wish to fight all of that…” Jonathan began, making a circle with his finger to indicate the towering reptilian beasts keeping out the rest of the jungle. “Though perhaps there is a chance.” He had not seen any reason to press on the caravaneers’ failure before, but it was the only thing he had to mitigate such a trespass.

“Mister Martin seems to be possessed of a profoundly lacking intellect,” Antomine said upon his return, only moments later. “He believed that he could spirit off this statuette and none would be the wiser.” The young Inquisitor proffered the item in question, which seemed to be made of some pale blue amber, translucent and shimmering in the ghost-light of the caravaneers’ tails.

“He must have been one of the crew we hired on at Danby’s,” Jonathan said, not believing that Montgomery would have flown with someone of such poor judgement if he knew the man’s character.

“That doesn’t make him any less worthy of our empathy,” Antomine replied, perhaps not liking Jonathan’s tone.

“As you say,” Jonathan said, not entirely indifferent to the airman’s plight, but not sympathetic enough to risk anything of value either. They had been warned of the consequences of theft, even if airmen tended to have a rather loose interpretation of ownership when in foreign ports. He took the statuette and turned to one of the waiting caravaneers, the one who had answered his question, tossing the pilfered item back.

“I am aware of the penalties for theft within a caravan,” Jonathan said, as the lizard caught the effigy with a sharp snap of its forepaw. “So I do not ask for clemency. Rather, I will bargain one failure against another. Our guides led us directly into an entrapping ruin, with no warning, and it was only through our own efforts that we escaped.” He didn’t mention the caravaneer that had been rescued with them. To the lizard’s way of thinking there was no credit in that, only a penalty if their party had left the creature behind.

“One of you is carrying forbidden desires,” the reptile replied, whistles and clicks conveying how absolutely untenable that was.

“Which does not absolve you of your duties as hosts and guards,” Jonathan thumped his cane on the ground in emphasis. “We are owed our default of flesh for that failure of services rendered in good faith. But I will trade you debts, so yours can be held in abeyance for a later time.” Until after the guards in question were dead, for example.

“Agreed,” the reptile said after a moment’s consideration. “But the scales are not balanced. We still require a pound of flesh.”

“Very well,” Jonathan said grimly, and turned to Antomine. “Bring him out. He will live, but he will not be happy.”

“Very well,” Antomine said, equally solemn, and returned to the gondola. His guards practically dragged the man out, a ratty-looking specimen that Jonathan certainly wouldn’t have hired, but perhaps the offerings at Danby’s Point had been limited.

“Consider yourself lucky,” Jonathan told the airman, removing a length of cord from his pocket, where he’d stowed it after tying down canvas on the sleds. “You’re going to live.” Then he whistled to the reptile.

“What—” Martin gawked at Jonathan, then there was a flash of scale and jaws and the airman stared dumbly at the stump of his wrist where his hand had been. Jonathan wrapped the cord around the arm and pulled it tight to tourniquet the wound, before shoving the shocked man back toward Antomine.

“Come on,” he said, mood sour, ignoring the shocked looks of the others. “Let us retrieve our sleds and be on our way.”