Separating, the whaler said, “Naw, we made it back alright. First thing we did was make sure to get on the sentry crew to make sure you didn’t get shot by accident.” He tipped his head at Layanna. “Blondie.”
“It’s good to see you again,” she said.
Hildra spat. “Looks like you’ve got some new friends.”
“Losg Coleel, meet Hilda and Janx,” Avery said. “Hildra and Janx, Losg Coleel, holder of the monopoly of ghost flower nectar merchandising.”
One of the rebels spoke into a radio, apparently asking for permission to bring the group inside. It was granted, and a detachment of the sentries escorted them into the temple through a side entrance, then to the wing the rebels operated out of. General Vursk was off leading the attack on a bank controlled by Octung—that was the source of the fighting they’d seen; the general was trying to separate Octung from its stolen money and thereby force them out sooner—and the group was obliged to wait for awhile. Avery, Janx, Hildra and Layanna became reacquainted, and Coleel spoke with them, then was given a room to lie down in and food to eat. He seemed weary, and Avery didn’t blame him. He himself was exhausted. Virine was tossed into a windowless room and a guard placed on his cell.
Avery and Layanna ate and rested, and eventually Vursk returned. After he had met with some of his officers, he summoned Avery’s group, including Coleel, into his office, and they all hunched around his desk.
“I’m glad to see you survived,” the general told Avery and Layanna. “Your friends were convinced that you had, but I wasn’t so sure. They tried to get me to send another team out after you. Sadly, I needed all the men for the strike.”
“Did the soldiers you sent with us return?” Avery asked.
Vursk frowned. “Some of them. Lisam and a dozen others made it back, with Janx and Hildra here, but the rest fell during the ambush, including Major Nezine.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It seems that’s how I lost the previous team, as well.”
“Yes,” Layanna said. “We still don’t know why the Octunggen wanted to capture me.”
“If that’s what they were doin’,” added Hildra, never one to allow Layanna any airs.
“They may’ve been tryin’ to find out what we knew about him,” Janx said, hiking a blackened thumb at Coleel.
Attention turned to the merchant, who shifted uncomfortably. “I’m grateful for being allowed sanctuary,” he said to Vursk. Off the general’s nod, he said, “I’ve been living on the run for too long. I’m only sorry my men weren’t able to make it here with me.”
“We’re not done running, I’m afraid,” Vursk said. “We move camp every few days. But for your help in repelling the Starfish—”
“What?”
“—we will give you what asylum we can. The good news is that we won the battle today. We deprived the occupiers of a major source of their ill-gotten funds and now have those funds to spend on ousting them. It’s only a matter of time now.”
“Starfish,” Coleel said. Suddenly he seemed like a man who knew he should have bargained harder.
“What I want to know is, was it worth it?” Janx said. “What about it, Losg—you know where we can get our hands on some of that nectar?”
Coleel sucked in a breath. It was time to earn his keep, and he obviously knew it. “As I’ve told Ms. Layanna and Dr. Avery, my stores of the nectar in the city have all been sold and consumed.”
“But …” said Avery, leading. When Coleel didn’t volunteer anything further, he added, “You said you could get more …”
“No. I said you could get more.”
Avery frowned. He was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. “What exactly do you mean, Losg?” He spoke slowly, as if afraid of the answer.
Coleel eyed the maps piled on Vursk’s desk. Rising, he rifled through them, selected one and unrolled it. The others looked at each other and, slowly, moved in, hesitant and watchful. Like Avery, they all seemed afraid of what the merchant was about to reveal. Avery could hear movement in the halls, and singing from somewhere downstairs, but it all seemed very distant to him, very remote, as if he and the others were on a different world, a sphere of silence and dread.
Coleel wasted no time in dropping the bomb. His large finger stabbed a point on the map. It was a region of the Crothegra Jungle on the other side of the Soinis Mountains from Ezzez. “That’s the Gomingdon,” he said. “A strange and spooky area of the Crothegra. Lots of weird shit there, and many source elements for alchemical compounds. The ghost flower is one of them. Different merchants have different deals with the villages on the periphery of the Gomingdon, and the villagers gather the source elements in various ways. I have deals with three of the villages. The closest is Sevu, here. If I give you a contract with my seal on it, and I never go anywhere without it, they’ll agree to work with you.”
They stared at him. A long, slow beat passed, during which Avery could only hear the thudding of his heart. Gone were the footsteps outside and the singing below. There was only the thumpthump, thumpthump in his chest.
Typically, Hildra was the first to speak: “You want us to go into the Atomic Jungle?”
“It’s where the flower grows,” Coleel said. “The only way to get more of the nectar is to journey to the villages that extract the substance for me and get them to harvest more for you.”
“A village,” Janx said, and rubbed his jaw. His eyes looked far away. “In the Crothegra …”
“I knew it,” Hildra said. “I just fucking knew it. Well, fuck me, I’m not going in there. Fuck that all to fucking shit.”
Layanna bent closer to study the map. “And you say the flower only grows in this one region, the Gomingdon?”
Coleel nodded. With the coming of day, his tattoos had faded, and he looked like an ordinary man, if rumpled and tired. “The locals won’t go into the Gomingdon but only live on its periphery—they have to if they want the contracts. There are many superstitions about the place.”
Hildra slapped her forehead. “Not only do you want us to go into the Atomic Fucking Jungle, you want us to go to a haunted part of it? Oh, man. Oh, man, this is so fucking fucked. You can all suck my balls.”
Avery felt a bead of sweat burn his eyes. The world spun about him, and, feeling suddenly unsteady, he took a seat.
“You all right, Doc?” Janx said.
Shakily, Avery nodded. He could find nothing to say. This was a complication he hadn’t prepared for, and all of a sudden the task seemed too much for him.
“Shit,” said Vursk, as if something had just occurred to him.
“What is it?” said Hildra. She had stuck a cigarette between her lips and had been about to light it, but now she paused. “Something worse?”
“The roads going into the mountains from this side are completely overgrown and impassable.”
