The delegation lifts up out of the reeds, head and shoulders, this one this one this one and more of them. Spears and several guns, a raised knife or two. Alarums chanted in a triad, nasal and dronelike. It feels like five thousand of them but it’s only a dozen or so. Twice the number of the missionary party, anyway; or twice twice.
This isn’t a courtesy call. An adolescent Quadling waterboy lately serving the Thropp family—no, not Severin or Snapper, someone else—shouts in alarm. His bad luck to be nearest where the warriors emerge from the mist. He is felled with a thrown implement, maybe a slingshot stone. He sinks backward with surprising grace, crimson arcing over his chest as he drops, a blood rainbow. He dies elegant but anonymous.
The missionary party can raise no defense. Frex is missing. Even the famous ornamental shield is missing. Melena has bound herself in a boudoir wrap with a cord around the waist. She calls for her children as she lurches past Nanny, who has managed to get herself to her hands and knees. The Quadling guides raise their arms in the air and shout warnings to the marauders, though mildly. It’s a gesture both of “Stop, you villain!” and “No harm intended to you,” an ambivalent message of the sort that Quadlings tolerate better than most.
Boozy tries to haul Nanny to her feet. Severin pushes forward. He’s brave, you have to admit, with that incidental boy gurgling his last in the grass eighty feet away. But the assailants keep coming up. Not in a rush, as on a battle plain of old, but almost casually. Now thumping on a barrel drum slung on someone’s hip, to drive the warriors forward, to terrify the foreigners further.
Severin and Snapper wave their arms behind them, signaling to Melena, Nanny, Boozy, to anyone else in the party, that they should fall back, escape into the undergrowth. Even if the missionaries aren’t totally defenseless. Frex harbors a gun. But it’s locked in his minister’s chest along with other tools of the trade, the unguents, blessed stones, water, and sacred texts. Frex has the key. Frex has the key to everything. Frex is not here.
Something, then, something like this:
—What for, what can you want, these strange strangers that I guide are already breaking up camp, they’re moving. (This is Severin, his voice more high-pitched than usual, while trying to project sobriety and calm.)
—Clear off, we take what we need, save yourself. (The boss of the avengers, answering Severin.)
—You don’t touch them, you leave them alone.
—It’s that woman’s family who murdered Turtle Heart, our ambassador. Yes, that woman. The hysteric. Can you get her to shut up? We’d rather not kill her entirely but mercy, the noise.
—Maybe her family did it but she didn’t. She had nothing to do with whatever happened to your Turtle Heart.
—These people are the advance edge, the chisel point that splits the stone. It’s all too clear. This is our answer to the entrepreneurs: we will not yield. The overlords are coming for rubies, they are coming to rule. They will overset the waterlands. I’m not talking to you, you toady. Out, men, spread out, up to the bulrushes there and the water wheat over there, left and right.
The men run, separating themselves one from the other like players on a field, a pinching strategy. Melena whirls, for once without worrying whether she is spinning attractively or awkwardly. “The baby! And Elphie!” she cries. “Nanny, get Nessa!”
The men swoop close upon Melena, near enough to abduct her; her knees buckle but she manages to keep from crumpling to the ground. They surround her, crowd her, though don’t touch her. Nanny is at last on her feet. Her agility augmented by this crisis, she rushes at the marauders. She hammers at their shoulders with a pair of tweezers. A knitting needle from her apron pocket proves more useful for getting to Melena’s side. Boozy is keening and wringing her hands—perhaps a touch theatrically, it must be said. Severin and Snapper fall into hand-to-hand combat with the newcomers. Though the Quadling hired guides are, so far, being treated as lightly as possible.
Before long the rest of the missionary’s entourage, its straggling Quadling bearers and aides, has disappeared in the underbrush. Frex is missing. Elphie is missing. Nessa is presumably napping aloft in her bassinet. While Nanny, Melena, Snapper, and Severin are packed tightly, back to back, surrounded by a wreath of pointing spears.
Boozy returns to packing up her cookware. Suddenly she shows little interest in what’s happening in the middle of the camp. Spoons bundled with spoons, two knives wrapped in plantain leaves to help them keep their sharp opinions to themselves.