“First note,” she grunted, setting the scalpel aside, “she’s made out of jerked meat.”
“Subject displays remarkable resilience of flesh,” Dreadaeleon muttered, scribbling.
“Now what the hell was wrong with what I said?” Asper snapped.
He blinked. “It . . . uh . . .”
“Oh, good. Write that down instead.” She glowered at him for a moment before turning it to the opened corpse. “There’s so much muscle here.” Her incisions were less than precise as she cut through the sinew. “Organs appear intact and normal, if slightly enlarged.” She prodded about the creature’s innards with the scalpel. “No sign of rotting. Intestine is shorter than that of a human’s.”
“Carnivorous,” Bralston observed. “All of this suggests a predatory bent.”
“Possibly,” Asper said, nodding sagely, “that conclusion would be supported by their teeth and the fact that they’ve tried to kill us several times already. Of course they’re predatory, you half-wit.”
Dreadaeleon swallowed hard, looking wide-eyed to the Librarian. Bralston’s face remained a dark, expressionless mask. He nodded as easy as he might have if she had asked if he had wanted tea. Preferable to a gesture that preceded incineration, but the boy couldn’t help but be baffled at his superior’s seeming obliviousness to the priestess’s attitude.
“Continue, then,” he said.
Asper, too, seemed taken aback by this. Though her disbelief lasted only as long as it took her to pick up the bonesaw.
“Her ribcage is . . . thick,” she said, applying the serrated edge to the bone. After three grinding saws, she took the tool in both hands. “Really thick. This is like cutting metal.”
“It can’t be that hard,” Dreadaeleon said. “I’ve seen Gariath break their bones before.”
“Really?” Asper said without looking up. “A hulking, four-hundred pound monstrosity can break metal? I feel as though your intellect may be wasted on simply taking notes.”
At that, Dreadaeleon did more than merely cringe. “Look, I don’t know what I did to upset you, but—”
“Continue, please,” Bralston interrupted. His words were directed at Asper, though his glare he affixed to Dreadaeleon.
“But I—” the boy began to protest.
“Continue.”
“Fine,” the word was muttered both by Asper and Dreadaeleon at the same time.
It took a few more moments of sickening sawing sounds before Asper finally removed the bonesaw, more than a few teeth broken off its blade. Dreadaeleon did not consider himself a squeamish man; having cooked people alive with his hands and a word tended to preclude such a thing. Yet there was something about this necropsy, of the many he had witnessed, that made him uneasy.
The priestess’s hands were soaked and glistening a dark red. She hadn’t requested any gloves and snapped at him when he had suggested it. She used only a damp cloth to clean up, and barely at that. When she mopped her brow, red stains were left behind and she continued, heedless, as she plucked up the pliers.
Of course, he thought, perhaps it weren’t the operation that made him cringe so much as the operator. He had never seen her like this, never heard her like this. Her pendant, the phoenix of her patron god Talanas, was missing from her throat; a rare sight grown more common of late.
What happened to you on that ship?
And he might have asked, if he weren’t silenced by the deafening crack of a ribcage being split apart.
“Huh,” she said, brows lofting in curiosity. “That’s interesting.” She reached inside, prodding something within the corpse with her scalpel.
“What is it?” Bralston said.
“This thing has two hearts.”
Dreadaeleon’s face screwed up. “That’s impossible.”
“You’re right, I’m lying about that.” She rolled her eyes. “Come up and see for yourself.”
It was more a dare than anything else, if her tone was any indication, and Dreadaeleon half considered not taking it. But he rejected that; he couldn’t back down in front of her. Perhaps she was challenging him, personally. Perhaps whatever plagued her now, he could fix. She knew that, and he knew that he couldn’t do that if he backed down.
So he rose and he walked over to the corpse and he instantly regretted doing so.
The dead netherling met his gaze, her white eyes still filled with hate so long after being dragged lifeless out of the ocean. He swallowed hard as he looked down to the creature’s open ribcage. Amidst the mass of thick veins and—Asper hadn’t been lying—muscle everywhere, he saw the organs: a large, fist-shaped muscle and a smaller, less developed one hanging beside it.
“So . . .” He furrowed his brow, trying to force himself not to look away. “What does that mean?”
“It could be one of many possibilities,” Bralston suggested. “Perhaps it was something specific needed for wherever they come from. Past necropsies of creatures from harsh environments have revealed special adaptations.”
“Perhaps,” Asper said, “or perhaps she’s just a mass of ugly muscle and hate so big that she needed a second heart, like I assumed in the beginning.”
“Funny,” Dreadaeleon said.
“What is?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I would have thought you’d enjoy this.” He looked up at her and saw her blank expression. He coughed, offering a weak smile. “I mean, you always showed an interest in physiology. It’s something that your church teaches you, right? When we were beginning, when we first met up with Lenk, he would always have us, you and I that is, cut up whatever animal we killed to see if we could get anything edible. Remember?”
She stared at him flatly.
“A necessity of being adventurers out of work, of course,” he said, “but you and I would always spend time investigating the carcass, detailing everything. It was our thing, you know? We were the ones that cut it up. We were the ones that catalogued it. If our findings before didn’t get us noticed, I’m sure this—” he gestured to the netherling, “—would. So . . .” He shrugged. “I guess maybe I just thought of this as old times. Better times.”
When he looked back at her, her expression was no longer blank. Something stirred behind her gaze. He felt his pulse race.
Steady, old man, he cautioned himself. She might break down any moment now. She’s going to break down and fall weeping into your arms and you’ll hold her tightly and find out what plagues her. I hope Bralston knows to leave the room. Any moment now. What is that in her eyes, anyway? Better know so you can be prepared. Sorrow? Pain? Desire?
“You,” she whispered harshly, “stupid little roach.”
Possibly not desire.
“What?” he asked.
“Those were your better times for us? Up to my elbows in fat and blood while you scribbled away notes on livers and kidneys? That’s what you think of when you think of us?”
“I was just—”
“You were just being freakish and weird, as usual,” she snarled. “Is there anything about you that doesn’t make one’s skin crawl?”
He reeled as if struck. He hadn’t quite expected that. Nor did he really expect to say what he said next.
“Yes,” he said calmly, “I’ve been told my ability to keep silent around the ignorant and mentally deficient is quite admirable.”
“I find that hard to believe, as I’ve never actually seen you be silent.”
“No? Well, let me refresh your memory.” His voice was sharp and cold, like a blade. “Whenever you’ve prayed to deities that don’t exist, whenever you’ve blamed something on the will of your gods that you could have helped, whenever you’ve prattled on about heavens and morals and all this other garbage you don’t actually believe for any reason other than to convince your toddler-with-fever-delirium-equivalent brain that you’re in any way superior to any of the people you choose to share company with,” he spat the last words, “I’ve. Said. Nothing.”
And so, too, did she say nothing.
No threats. No retorts. No tears. She turned around, calmly walked past Bralston and left the hut, hands smeared with blood, brow smeared with blood, leaving a room full of silence.
Bralston stared at the door before looking back to Dreadaeleon.
“You disappoint me, concomitant,” he said simply.
“Good,” Dreadaeleon spat back. “I’ll start a running tally. By the end of the day, I hope to have everyone dumber than me loathing me. I’ll throw a party to celebrate it.”
“One might call your intelligence into question, acting the way you do.”
“One might, if one were a lack-witted imbecile. You saw the way she was talking to me, talking to you.”
“I did.”
“And you said nothing.”
“Possibly because my experience with women extends past necropsies,” Bralston said smoothly. “Concomitant, your ire is understandable, but not an excuse for losing your temper. A member of the Venarium is, above all else, in control of his abilities and himself.”
Dreadaeleon flashed a black, humorless smile at the man. “You are just hilarious.”
“And why is that?”
Dreadaeleon replied by holding up his hand. Three breaths. The tremors set in. Bralston nodded. Dreadaeleon did not relent, even when the tremors became worse and the electric sparks began building on his fingers. Bralston glared at him.
“That’s enough.”
“No, it isn’t.”
The tremor encompassed his entire arm, electricity crackling and spitting before loosing itself in an erratic web of lightning that raked against the wall of the hut where Bralston had once been. The Librarian, having sidestepped neatly, regarded the wall smoldering with flames. He drew in a sharp breath and exhaled, a white cloud of frost smothering the flames beneath it.