Sword and Song by Kate Story

Author:Kate Story [Story, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77148-442-8
Publisher: ChiZine Publications
Published: 2018-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Five

Indeterminate Broken Things

The great wave floods the coliseum in a matter of minutes. The sounds of panic, terror, the roar of the water, fill Ophelia’s whole body. Another tsunami, Ophelia thinks; it must be another, even bigger tsunami.

“Pim, listen. Is there some way to the top?”

Water swirls and eddies, people scream. The lower part of the arena is completely submerged. Some of those on the higher levels try to help, flinging scarves and robes out across the water, dragging people up to safety.

But Pim sags against Ophelia, her eyes rolling back into her head. Ugly, dun-coloured water floats and swirls in the rising eddies.

Pim is so tall, a dead weight, all arms and legs, sliding away no matter how hard Ophelia tries to hold her. Ophelia looks up at the black-robed women; they are huddled in a knot. The Gor stands, holding the white-robed woman in his arms.

“Help us!” Ophelia calls.

The Gor turns his face toward her; he’s heard her. He pushes through the black-robed women, springing up onto the stone balustrade of their balcony, holding the white-robed woman as if she is a bundle of feathers. The Virgos cry out in dismay; some pluck at him. But he leaps again, down to Ophelia and Pim. He jumps the two or three metres that separate the boxes like it is nothing. He lands next to Ophelia, so close that the air of his jump brushes her hair. His hooves make a clopping noise on the stone. The woman in his arms barely stirs.

“Something is wrong with Pim.” A smell comes off him: musky, maybe a bit animal, but something else, too, not unpleasant. He is standing so close. He smells like a man, Ophelia thinks. Whatever that means. Why is she thinking like this while the ocean rises, her only friend lies unconscious, and she’s in a horrible nightmare version of her beloved Antilia? What is this feeling passing through her stomach and thighs?

Cold sucks at her toes. Ophelia suppresses a scream; the water has reached their level.

“Can you get us out of here?” She makes her voice hard and business-like.

The Gor looks up at the top of the wall. “We should go up there.” His voice is deep and resonant. “First I must take care of the Mender. Then I will come back for you.”

He turns and flexes his thighs to leap, then pauses.

He shoots Ophelia a look. It is a merry look, full of suggestion, and she feels heat rising in her cheeks.

Then, like the goat he partly is, he turns and leaps lightly from balcony to balcony, to the top of the coliseum wall. He places the Mender on the floor of the topmost balcony the way you would lay a baby in a cradle.

The Virgos wail.

Again the cold sucks at Ophelia, halfway up to her knees now. She won’t, won’t scream like a girl. But the water is rising and she can’t hold Pim up for much longer. . . .

And then he’s there. He picks Pim’s lanky body up like she’s nothing and leaps again to the top.

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