The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,158

Locke’s in that cask!”

Bug fumbled within his tunic, drew out a globe, and shook it. By the sudden flare of added white light Jean could clearly see the outline of the bobbing black cask. He judged the distance between himself and it, came to a decision, and reached for one of his hatchets with his free hand.

“Bug,” he yelled, “don’t try to get through the sides. Attack the flat top of the cask!”

“How?”

“Stay right where you are.” Jean leaned to his right, clinging to the rafter with his left arm. He raised the hatchet in his right hand, whispered a single “please” to whatever gods were listening, and let fly. The hatchet struck, quivering, in the dark wood of the cask; Bug flinched back, then splashed through the water to pry at the weapon.

Jean began sliding his bulk along the rafter, but more dark motion in the corner of his eye brought him up short. He peered down into the shadows on his left. Something was moving across the surface of one of the other waterways in the damned maze. Several somethings—black scuttling shapes the size of dogs. Their bristling legs spread wide when they slipped just beneath the surface of the dark water, then drew in to propel them up and over stone just as easily…

“Fuck me,” he muttered. “Fuck me, that’s not possible.”

Salt devils, despite their horrific size and aspect, were timid creatures. The huge spiders crouched in crevices on the rocky coasts to the southwest of Camorr, preying on fish and gulls, occasionally falling prey to sharks or devilfish if they ventured too far from shore. Sailors flung stones and arrows at them with superstitious dread.

Only a fool would approach one, with their fangs the length of a grown man’s fingers and their venom, which might not always bring death but could make a man fervently pray for it. Yet salt devils were quite content to flee from humans; they were ambush hunters, solitary, incapable of tolerating one another at close quarters. Jean had scared himself witless in his early years reading the observations of scholars and naturalists concerning the creatures.

Yet here was an entire pack of the damn things, leg to leg like hounds, scrabbling across stone and water alike toward Bug and the cask.

“Bug,” Jean screamed. “Bug!”

2

BUG HAD heard even less of the goings-on upstairs than Jean, yet when the cask had splashed down into darkness, he’d realized immediately that it hadn’t been dropped down idly. Having placed himself directly over the canal that flowed from the waterfall, he’d simply let himself drop the fifteen feet down into the rushing water.

He’d tucked his legs and hit like a catapult stone, ass-first. Although his head had plunged under with the momentum of his drop, he quickly found that he could plant his feet; the canal was only about four feet deep.

Now, with Jean’s hatchet gripped in one hand, he chopped frantically at the flat barrel-top before him. He’d set his own light-glass on the stone walkway beside the canal, as there was enough working light coming from Jean’s beneath the surface of the water.

“Bug,” the big man yelled, his voice suddenly loud with real alarm. “Bug!”

The boy turned to his right and caught a glimpse of what was moving out of the far shadows toward him. A shudder of pure revulsion passed up and down his spine, and he looked around frantically to make sure the threat was approaching from only one direction.

“Bug, get out of the water! Get up on the stones!”

“What about Locke?”

“He doesn’t want to come out of that cask right this fucking second,” Jean hollered. “Trust me!”

As Bug scrambled up out of the rippling, alchemically lit water, the cask began once again bobbing toward the south end of the building, where the canal exited to gods knew where. Too desperate to think clearly about his own safety, Jean scrambled out along the crossbeam, feet sliding in the muck of the ages, and ran in the direction of the waterfall with his arms windmilling crazily for balance. A few seconds later he arrested his forward momentum by wrapping his arms around a vertical beam; his feet slipped briefly out from beneath him, but he clung tightly to his perch. His mad dash had brought him to a point beside the waterfall; now he flung himself forward into the air, carefully drawing his legs into his chest. He hit the water with a splash as great as that caused by the cask and bumped