I dipped my abdomen into the pink pool, and felt the gentle burn engulf that gash the roach’s spines had torn open. The wound did not close, but the crawling stopped. I brushed tarsi wrapped in cloth along my chitin, wiping off the few spores which had settled on me. Closer examination showed they were already putting down roots, and when wiped you saw that some had bit into the chitin.
It was just a few spores, and I was bathing in the cleansing pink fluid of the shrine. The liquid tingled and burnt, and that enough secured my peace of mind.
At least, where infection was concerned. But more abstractly — what was wrong with this roach? The noble roaches were docile, subservient beings. They knew to keep out of your way in town, and most of them stuck to the farms.
I’d overheard the whispers of — something out in the woods mangling travelers, snatching children, growing mala.
Had I found the cause? Or had I found another effect?
I stood from the pool, and gathered my clothes as I stepped out. Bandages were wrapped around my dried abdomen (vesperbanes were always prepared!) and I curled it up so that it made a u-shape behind me, resting on my metathorax.
Beside my belongings — spaced apart, to show it didn’t belong — there lay the now sheathed blade of the lost ranger of Udgrov. I stood there regarding it for a long moment, then gingerly knelt to pick it up.
The desire spoke to me, urging that I strap it to my back and stride back into town like the hero I was. And the buts spoke in grounded counterpoint: Remember what the mentors said — what if there were some magic that would smite me if I stole it? Remember your morals — would a vesperbane hero steal a blade from an abandoned shrine? And remember your sense —
If I walked back into town brandishing the lost one’s blade, why wouldn’t the percipients believe I stole it? Me being heir to the lost ranger didn’t exist outside my own fantasies and it was a stupid risk and they’d never believe me.
I returned the blade to its place on the altar, guarded by the statues of the spirits of life.
The time I’d spent fighting, cleaning and brooding stole most of the evening. The writhing sky was red in the east.
I needed to get back. There wasn’t a risk stupider than walking the woods at night.
Outside the shrine was the corpse of the wild roach. I had killed it, vanquished it. Surely there’d be some reward from that, paid by the town watch? Or even the coordinators themselves?
Imagine dragging that roach back to town — it was my first kill, what respect would I command for being the first one in prevesper training to slay a beast? Maybe the shops would be willing to let a real hero inside. Maybe…
Except, the percipients would realize I wasn’t on any of the exit sheets. Nobody at the gate had seen me leave. There wasn’t a safe excuse for that, not when what might be an anomaly was involved.
And so it’s settled, those reasonable, grounded parts of myself concluded. The logical path is to hide it. Slip back inside the walls, and fall onto your bed knowing in your core that you did good.
Mother had never wanted the percipients to get a good look at me. Telling anyone about this would be like doing a whole dance to summon their piercing gaze and attention.
(Years removed, I like to imagine the fires of my mind had crackled at the thought, blazed rebellion. But perhaps it was too early to say…)
What if there were other feral roaches out there? Spores exist to spread. I cast a worried glance across the shrine clearing. What if they’re taking root right now, and the shrine’s now cursed and tainted? I shook myself.
The whispers of danger in the woods weren’t for nothing. I would be keeping me safe with silence, but I would damn others to face the roaches. And if they didn’t have my luck — my skill? If this did spread, and they had to face down more than one roach?
I drew in a breath, and then reached down to pick up the roach. I paused pensive for another uncertain moment, and then stiffly made the sacrifice, wrapping my old shawl, the ranger’s gift, around spore-encrusted corpse, to keep the spores from spreading further.
I took a deep breath, and starting carrying it back to Udgrov. My choice had been clear as soon as I realized what was at stake. Why?
Vesperbanes saved people.
I stood atop a hill and glanced down at the road to Udgrov, the paved stone that took you up to the gate. A spider-drawn cart was ambling up it now, and two robed mantises lead it. Their light purple robes were bright and glistening like silk. The thickly-furred spider was of the largest, most temperamental breed. And the cart? The conclusion you leapt straight to was that these were merchants. It was a once a month thing to see a merchant — once in a good month. But why was the cart so small? It didn’t make sense to travel all the way to Udgrov with so few goods.
Strides in front of them, the road widened in anticipation of the gate. A squad of six watchmants sat around it, four sitting, and two milling around. They had wooden clubs hanging by their sides, and one had a bow.
Atop the wall — tall as three mantises — another squad patrolled in two opposed loops. Two of those carried spears in their raptorials, and slowed to stare at the approaching carriage.
It was routine and methodical, the check. While two watch-mantids walked up to the cart to examine the singular chest, the two travelers approached a roped off circle. In the center a hairy, clawed foot perched on a stone dias, and it stopped at the ankle. It was preserved, mummified and skeletal, and rimed with dried spit, piss, shit, thrown food or waste paper, and even some crumpled scales of exuviae.
The travelers had robes thick like they came from somewhere colder, and they were covered antennae to cerci in the way only syndics or deep merchants could afford to be. If I wore robes that concealing, you would assumed I was covering up pustules or fruiting bodies. But these travelers? You assumed they wanted protection from the world’s afflictions.
Stiffly did the travelers stand before the foot, and spit at the foot. The guards nodded, and allowed them return to lead their cart into the gate, already opened. The travelers disappeared past the gate.
Now a brown mantid — wingless, as seen from glimpses beneath their fluttering cloak — was trotting up the road, rushed and shaking, seemingly unassociated with the merchants. I hadn’t seen anyone coming up the road earlier — had they hid behind a tree?
He — male, as guessed from his short, lithe figure and fluffy antennae — sped on past the circle with the dirtied claw, and seemed to hasten, trying to slip under the closing gate. But a guard leapt in front of them, and halted the male with all the might of her thick arms. The guard lady was a head taller than the male.
Her feet hardly even shifted, holding the him back.
Even at this remove, I could hear him clucking his palps and trying to articulate some excuse in his abdomen. But the guard dragged him before the foul claw, before which he stood shaking. They gripped his head and thrust it up to look at the claw. And still the wingless made no action but to stare.
Time stretched on like that, like a rope tugged, drawing taut.
The guards released him, and he fell. No longer held up, the wingless knelt, still staring at the claw. An guard’s antennae recoiled back in disgust, while the other unhooked their club.
(It was a test, a filter. To pass, one simply had to spit or make some other show of disrespect toward the vesperbat foot. It was a simple test for bat-fever; those so possessed could not bring themselves to profane even an image of their idols.)
A midleg nudged and then pulled the wingless out of their kneel to splay out on the grass, and the two guards held him down with mesotarsi. One guard pointed at something on the thorax. The other nodded.
The club went up, and then swung down like thunder.
You heard the crack and the splatter echo back from the woods, like an approval. The brown limbs were still twitching.
By the wall, a mantis in the blue robes of a percipient scratched something down on her wasp-parch. A plain-clothed guard was awaking and unlatching the hungry centipedes.
I stared at what once was the male mantis, brown like me, wingless like me.
As the centipede began to eat, I walked away.
Snuggly Serials 