Chapter 280: Payment on Delivery

James yanked the torch free of the bracket.

Its light had returned to plain yellow, a welcome change. He took the last steps two at a time, scrambled over the rubble with [Verdict] in his right fist, and moved on, Mary and Bonnet pounding after him.

He reached the top of the stairs and stopped on the swept flags, holding the torch high.

The summit stood intact.

The roots still split the flags in their places, and the cut vines lay slack across the edge, their sap dried hard, while the stars overhead looked perfectly ordinary, and the silence was such that he could hear pitch dripping from the torch.

The light fell across the slab, where Zephy lay slumped at its foot.

James wedged the torch into a fork of the roots, wiped [Verdict] on his coat, and put it away.

"Mark, you’ll hold the stairs."

The orders went over his shoulder

"Bonnet, plant yourself at her elbow and if so much as a leaf twitches, bawl."

Ahead of them, black, sticky blood dripped from the channels in the slab. The cornmeal cross had been scuffed into a smear, the salt had dried into a crust, and the basin stood empty and brown, while the hatchling skull, ribs, toes, tail, beak, and every drop of its dark ichor had disappeared.

Where such things went after this was not worth the curiosity.

While the merry band checked their wounds and raised the perimeter, James knelt beside the slab.

Zephy sat slumped against it, her head fallen to one shoulder and her hair tangled across her face. Shells and bones lay scattered in her lap, while her hands hung limp at her sides, crimson with blood up to the shoulders.

James drew [Verdict] halfway from its sheath, wiped the flat of the blade clean on his sleeve, and held it beneath her nose, pressing two fingers under her jaw.

The steel clouded with the faintest breath, cleared, then clouded again. A pulse crawled beneath his fingers, slow and weak, even when her skin felt as cold as wet clay.

He eased her upright against his raw forearm. The burn flared up and he swallowed it whole, then he bent close to her ear, his voice low.

"Come on, lass, give us a proper breath, not one of the wee thin sips."

He raised her chin, and the torchlight revealed down her throat.

It shifted beneath his fingertips.

Thin black veins appeared in the hollow of her throat and spread beneath her bronze skin, skirting like serpents beneath sand as they crossed her collarbone, ran over her shoulders, and wound down the inside of her arm toward the fist clenched in her lap.

Her knuckles turned white and the torch flame bent toward her.

James felt his thumb jump once against her pulse.

The black veins poured into her fist, disappearing like ink dropped into water. Her bronze skin returned to its usual color, and a black stone appeared between her fingers.

The object was about the size of his palm, black as pitch and carved in the form of a coiled serpent, its end toothed. It was the twin of the key he had left seated in the effigy beneath the swamp, though the teeth had a different pattern.

The thing pulsed once, slowly.

Her breath caught.

The last black thread slipped off her wrist. Her eyes parted open, amber and unfocused, then stopped on James.

"Who did we lose, capitaine? Tell me... tell me true."

The words scraped out of her painfully.

James put an arm behind her shoulders and brought a water flask to her lips.

He replied as lightly as he could manage. "Not a soul Zephy. Mark’s left a strip of her cheek behind, and Pike’s gone and mislaid his eyebrows, and that’s the whole of the butcher’s bill. I swear it on me mother’s grave."

Zephy shoulders sank and some laugh rose in her chest, only to end in a cough. She drank and let her head snuggled against him, heavy and warm now, a considerable improvement on the cold lump he’d been holding a moment before.

Her voice was thin and weak. "I heard you, chéri. Oh, I heard you. From far, far away, like hailing a ship from the bottom of the sea, mais yes. No one, in all my days, ever call me back like that."

James tipped the flask toward her lips again, embarrassed for once.

"I only called the once, lass, don’t go makin’ a sermon of it."

Her cold fingers walked across his hand and closed around his wrist, lightly.

"Once, oui, but once was plenty. It ring through me like a bell on sunrise."

She winced prettily, one eyebrow climbing.

"Mon Dieu, James, you got a voice built for opera. Have pity on a lady’s poor ears, cher."

"Ah, lass, that’s what you get for a surprise like that."

She pulled a clump of tangled hair from her face and peeled two fingers apart with a tacky little snap, regarding them with weary disgust. "Ah, mon Dieu, look at me. Sap in my hair, my good skirt ruined, and I stank of entrains. A lady shouldn’t be seen like this."

James snorted. "Och, away with that, you look grand. It’s me that’s the stench here, molasses and dead Frenchmen, and not a pleasant whiff of either."

Her thumb brushed across his wrist, and her voice dropped to a purr.

"Menteur. Ah, but you lie so sweet, chéri."

James took her other hand, the one cut by the shell, tore a strip from the linen shirt beneath [Discretion], and wrapped it firmly around her palm.

Zephy tried to stand, but her legs folded beneath her like wet canvas, so he lowered her back against the slab, tucked the torn cloth snug around her bandaged hand, and finally asked.

"Tell me true, lass. Was it worth the bleedin’?"

Her gaze drifted to the black jungle and back again, unfocused. "It took the egg, oui. The old one, it answered. I don’t remember how it ended, only the cry, wide and wide, and a door... a great door, shutting."

Zephy’s teeth began to chatter in the hush, but she pushed on. "It give its blessing, mon capitaine. The jungle is calm because of it, and no grotesquerie out there will touch us on the way out."

James looked toward the jungle.

Then some deep, theatrical sigh snapped inside his head. Whoever was responsible seemed thoroughly pleased with himself.

"Aye, aye, I imagined."

Zephy’s eyebrow rose slow, and James waved a hand away.

"Och, it’s nothing, lass. Just a wee draught in me head, pay it no mind."

Her fist unclenched, and the stone lay in her blood-slick palm, the torch flame leaning toward it.

"Take the stone, chéri. Take it quick, now, before it decides for itself where it wants to go."

James picked it up and laid his thumb across the carved scales.

It was warmer than skin, as though it had spent a long time against a living body. Its weight felt familiar in his hand, and the toothed end dug into his palm.

The stone beat half a beat behind his own pulse, then caught up with it. An echo traveled up his raw forearm, easing the burn without quite putting an end to it.

Beneath that sensation came an aching pull, homesickness, rain on a distant shore, the wait coming to an end.

And, stranger than either, the steady feeling that she had come and sat beside him.

"What a clingy wee beastie, barely woke, and already you’re hangin’ on like a limpet."

Zephy watched his expression, but made no remark. The pyramid remained silent, and the stone snuggled into his fist.

Then the shimmer appeared above the slab.

?? [QUEST PROGRESS — A DEBT OF CONSIDERABLE AGE]

Milestone Reached : Key Recovered

Reward : 100 Fate

Reward : Unique Equipment Enhancement

[Verdict] : The blade now cuts through supernatural defenses, sundering wards and striking true against beings beyond mortal steel.

[Counterargument] : Its bullets now pierce the veil between worlds, bringing supernatural foes within the reach of mortal fire.

[Discretion] : The coat now wards its wearer against supernatural forces, turning aside the very powers that once warranted the protection of a ancient feathered cloak.

Congratulations on recovering the key.

No upfront payment was warranted, since I never expected you to finish the work. Still, dispatching the spirit of the jungle strikes me as worth a bone from the table, so I have found one for you.

It is a small bone.

I would not want the reward going to your head, which the data suggests is quite full already. The old powers of this island blessed the whole lot of you, and I skimmed a little off the top for your equipment. You may thank me.

"Och, a bone? Well, that’s generous, I’ve gnawed on worse in me time."

Your balance stands at one hundred. The rest of the account remains on the table until the next key is in your hand. Sit nicely until then, and try not to chew the furniture.