Disbanded (Serpentia) by Frances Pauli

Author:Frances Pauli [Pauli, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ottercorrect Literature Services
Published: 2019-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

When Kwirk roused me, the sky was still light. I heard his steps ascending and lifted my body well before his brown head poked into view.

“I believe they may have finished,” he squeaked. “Tuhmaak has gone to the shelf to rest and the yard is… Well, you can see it from my side.”

I followed him down the ramp and back up the other side. Despite the warmth of the day, my body was sluggish, fatigue counteracting the balm of the sun. The watch room where Kwirk had been posted smelled of rodent and dust. He moved directly to the front-facing wall and peered out, tail curling behind him like a miniature snake.

“Are they still out there?” I slithered to join him slowly and with tiny pains crimping at each curve of my body. “They’re done much sooner than I’d expected.”

“Look.” Kwirk’s ears lifted, round and fully upright for the first time since we’d arrived here. He waved a paw for me, and I tried to follow it with my eyes.

Below us, the yard had grown prickles. My spikes stood now, stabbed into the sandy earth for safe-keeping perhaps, or possibly as a joke. Either way that black stipple chilled me. I saw the needles of the dead fall, and I heard my friend calling to me in warning.

Behind you.

All of it, the beetle yard, the dream of Viir, and the spikes below us blended into an eerie tableau. It was as if those black branches had snared me, and now I was helpless to escape their influence.

“They’re ready for you now,” Kwirk said. “For your poky pyramid.”

“I thought you hated my design.” I stared at the rod sticking out of the ground. Tuhmaak had chiseled down one end of each into a deadly-fine point.

“I do,” Kwirk answered, “but the sooner you’re done with it, the sooner we can head for home.”

“Well.” I scanned the yard, but aside from my spikes, the open ground was empty. “At least we can agree on that much.”

With a final glance at the foliage, and a disappointed heart when I found no sign of Ghost, I turned back to the ramp. Kwirk wanted to run as much as the rest of them. It should have been enough to shake me back to reason. What if I was wrong about Ghost? What if he’d gone mad, killed the others, and then slunk off into the trees?

I shivered and considered revising my plan, giving up and turning our tails straight for home. The rough grit of the bolt-hole floor scratched at my belly. I coiled inside the room, waiting for Kwirk to descend so I could tell him I’d gotten it all wrong. So I could give in and abandon my outpost redesign, my Circlet convention, and my future. So I could go back to a room full of better architects and accept my fate.

“He is not.” Lohmeer’s voice rumbled from the hallway outside. He’d growled the statement, and dust rained from the bricks over my head. “He knows what he’s doing.

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