Avery agreed that it was. The Azad Islands had been under an Octunggen blockade when he and the others had activated the Device two months ago and had nearly been on the point of surrendering. Here and there buildings still bore cracks and holes due to the shelling, but most of the damage had been repaired in the time since the blockade had mysteriously broken up; mysterious to the Azadi, anyway. Avery and the others in his group knew why, of course, as they’d been the cause of it. Most of the Octunggen’s otherworldly weapons had stopped working when Avery and the others had fired the Device, and thus Octung’s whole offensive had collapsed.
Scattered monuments to the dead stood around Ethali, flowers, pictures and wax dolls strewn before them. As Avery watched, a group of mourners dressed in blue prayed at the feet of a statue of a man, woman and child, a whole family, symbolizing those lost. The Azad Islands were a Ghenisan protectorate, but their culture was very un-Ghenisan. Over half were infected (as indeed were the woman and child depicted in the statue), which made sense as the islands had been settled long before the processors that cleansed seafood and purified the air had even been dreamt of. Accordingly mutants hooted and squelched and chittered to all sides, some with scales of a thousand hues, some shelled, some boasting the skin of a puffer fish or the hide of shark or the texture of a starfish.
Just months ago, Avery would have felt intimidated and out of place in the midst of such an alien gathering, and in a way he still did—he didn’t really consider himself one of them; the infected were still to be looked down on, pitied and despised, part of him couldn’t help but think—but, like it or not, he was one of them. He’d eaten diseased food from the Atomic Sea and bore the wine-colored striations across part of his face and torso to show for it—not particularly elaborate mutations by the standards on display here, but enough to forever brand him a freak in Ghenisa, the land he had grown up in, a land which prided itself, among other things, on its safely processed seafood and robust fishing industry.
Ani jumped and squealed at every new mutation, and several times Avery had to pry her away from a certain infected person lest she offend the party with her requests for him or her or it to do something—squirt ink, snap a pincer, change color. “You can’t even change color!” she’d scolded Avery earlier, as if this were a fault that should be corrected immediately.
Before he could stop her, she ran forward again, this time to intercept an obese woman covered in anemone-like stalks of vibrant yellow and orange that waved and jostled as if the woman were underwater.
“Ooo, can I touch? Are you poisonous?” Ani said, marveling at the rippling tendrils.
The woman laughed. “My husband wishes,” she said. Like all those born in the Azad Islands she was relatively short and darker-skinned than Ghenisans tended to be, but she spoke Ghenisan well. “Go ahead, cutie. Touch.”
Without hesitation, Ani buried her hand in waving yellow tendrils (Avery cringed) and squealed happily.
“Can I squeeze one?” she said.
Avery sighed, but he felt a deep and abiding love wash over him. He’d only had Ani back for two months—two months after four years of never thinking he’d see her again, after having mourned for her, for the gods’ sakes—and he still wasn’t over it. He didn’t think he ever would be.
Layanna must have seen his expression, as he felt a pressure on his hand and looked sideways to see her smiling. The contact surprised him; they weren’t particularly physical these days.
Avery sweated in the heat as the group moved on. The sailors and whalers from the Verignun bought goods or wandered off to amuse themselves as seamen will when in port, but Avery and his group weren’t allowed to wander. Captain Greggory didn’t want any of them out of his or his men’s sight, except for Janx, whom as a veteran sailor—and a famous one—he was willing to give some leeway; and Hildra, of course: she was considered Janx’s woman and could go where he did. But the captain didn’t trust Avery or Layanna. If it weren’t for the fact that the whalers were going to Ghenisa, the destination of Avery’s group, Avery would never have consented to travel with them.
The sights and sounds of the bazaar were certainly arresting, but Avery couldn’t help notice other details, mainly all the refugees from the continents of Urslin and Consur. Dressed in rags, they clustered by the thousands in alleys and side streets, squatting over sewer grates on narrow pitted sidewalks holding hats or sacks, or posing provocatively (if not a little sadly and pathetically, some so skinny Avery could see the bones clearly pressing against thin, unhealthy skin) hoping to attract a john. Many who must have arrived healthy and with some coin, enough to purchase the trip here, were now infected and starving. They and their families had fled the mainland when it had seemed so certain that the armies of Octung would descend any day—as they had in countless places—only to wind up here months later penniless and vagabond, turned into thieves, beggars and whores, unable in many cases to afford processed seafood and having to resort to the kind that could kill or cause mutation. Now these proud Ghenisans, as a majority of them appeared to be, who had looked down on mutants in their own land, found themselves the unwanted pariahs shivering in the gutter.
Avery’s heart went out to them. If Ani had been alive a year ago, when things had looked most dire, he might well have sold his soul to get her off the mainland, get her somewhere safe and far away from the marching legions of the Lightning Crown. How many Anis were out there now, scared and hungry, possibly diseased from unprocessed seafood, having to submit to any indignity just to survive another day?
Not only the refugees looked dismal, Avery noted with worry. There were a large number of islanders who appeared unaccountably grim, when by all rights they should be rejoicing—Octung had been defeated; its armies were in retreat!—and Avery at first attributed it to the influx of foreigners and the burden they’d put on the city, but slowly he realized what he was seeing were expressions not of stress but fear. It made no sense until Avery noticed a huddle of Azadi reading a newspaper together, gasping and looking ill. Avery (who neither spoke nor read Azadi) bought a paper and asked Captain Greggory to read the main article, which boasted an alarmingly large headline.
“Shit,” said Captain Greggory, and his voice sounded ominous. “One of the Gyrgin Islands vanished last night.”
Avery swayed. The ship had stopped off at another chain of islands a couple of weeks ago, where they’d heard report of a neighboring island’s entire population and civilization disappearing the previous night. The island had been wiped out—razed and made waste—by some awful force, and there had been no survivors to report what had done it. Rumors ran that other islands had vanished far to the north and south, but these had not been confirmed. Avery knew of only one other island that had been similarly hit for sure.
“Any survivors?” Avery asked.
“None,” Greggory said. “It says they—or It—came at night like before. Caught everyone asleep.” People had began referring to the phenomenon by a number of names, such as It, Them, the Thing and, simply, the Horror. “Says it’s estimated that more’n three hundred thousand died.”
The whalers muttered amongst themselves. “What is It?” one said. “Some new mutation, maybe?”
“A secret Octunggen strike team, more like. Some new weapon.”
“Whatever It is, could come here next.”
“Nonsense,” Greggory said. “The Gyrgins are a thousand leagues from here. Whatever did this isn’t anywhere close. Come on.”
Avery suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Steadying himself, he traded a dark look with Layanna. When the group moved on, he whispered, “It’s them, it must be. The R’loth.”
“Yes,” she said, almost reluctant. “I think so.”
“This is it. It’s really started. I wasn’t sure before, but, after three confirmed islands gone, I am now. Sheridan was right.”
“Don’t say that. We don’t know anything yet. Maybe she wasn’t.”
He knew she desperately wanted to believe that—he did, too, for that matter—but he also knew she was wrong. Everyone wanted to believe it was over, all over, Octung defeated and the world saved. It was time to return home, get the charges against them cleared and begin the next phase of their lives, which would surely consist of basking in the adulation of an entire planet and living as heroes to the end of their days. It was a nice thought, Avery could not argue, but it was wrong. Terribly, tragically wrong. It was coming: the nameless, formless doom he’d been dreading ever since that fateful day on the sea when they’d activated the Device, the doom created by the R’loth in retaliation for that very act. He opened his mouth to say something along these lines when suddenly sounds rang out, bugles and drums.
“What’s this?” Layanna said.
An official-seeming voice thundered over the festive market clamor, issuing through loudspeakers, and the vendors only casually glanced up before returning to business. Most buyers kept browsing, but some gravitated toward the new sounds, looking expectant. They’d known whatever was about to happen was about to, and Avery realized by their body language that some had just been killing time until it started. Strange ports, strange rituals.
Not seeming to share his unease—about this, at least—the whalers ambled toward the activity, taking their charges with them. Avery suddenly wished they were all armed, not just the captain, and that with only a revolver.
“What is it, Papa?” Ani asked. “What’s going on?”
“I ...” As a father, he knew he was supposed to have all the answers, but sometimes he just didn’t. “I guess we’ll find out.”
He noticed Layanna scanning the alleys and balconies again. He looked, then wished he hadn’t. The watchers were still there, and they were studying the visitors more intently than ever—or at least one of them.
“It’s you they’re watching,” he told Layanna.
“Yes. And there’s something else ...”
“They’re all ngvandi. I see it, too.”
Most mutants were like him, recognizably human but with some aquatic element, fins or pincers or gills or bioluminescence—in some individuals the aquatic elements were even dominant—but in the ones he thought of as ngvandi, they were wholly piscine or brachial or cephalopod-like or what-have-you. Stingray men or lobster women, salamander girls and squid boys. Completely alien and other, as Muirblaag had been. And like the great fish-man, they had probably been born into it.
These watching Azadi were mostly piscine, but of remarkably different types. They boasted scales of scarlet or viridian, fuscia or turquoise. Bulging fish eyes glared at the group over gaping, sharp-toothed mouths, and webbed hands, some ending in claws, twitched at their sides.
“Who are they?” Avery asked, hearing the tension in his voice.
