Page 67 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
The Hunt was intended to be non-lethal. But Mai was a daughter of Kiken Island, and to her, every threat felt like a mortal one. She had no compunction about harming a crew of ruthless slavers.
No sign of them yet. But she could not be sure how long she’d lain on that beach, asleep. They would be arriving soon.
She checked the tension of her catapults again, secured a few knots. Then she inspected the route she planned to take if her hilltop fortress was overrun—a narrow, clammy slit between two great slabs of rock, too small a space for anyone larger than herself to squeeze through. For once, she blessed her short, skinny body.
Easing through the crack, she found a damp hollow beyond, overshadowed by a rock ledge. It was almost a cave. And within its gloom, Mai saw the thing that could be her salvation.
In fact, she narrowly avoided stepping on it.
In all her studies of plants and animals, she’d learned to recognize the signs of toxicity. And the splotchy, variegated, brightly colored skin of the pods she was looking at bore every earmark of poison. They were almost like mushrooms, with their cushion-like shape.
Mai was down to her chemise and pants, with no other fabric left, so she ripped off a generous portion of one pant leg, dipped it in water from her waterskin, and tied it across her nose and mouth before attempting to pluck one of the pods. It broke open with a hiss of greenish smoke and floating spores, and she darted back, remaining in the narrow passage until the smoke dissipated and the spores settled.
Even more gently this time, she worked a pod free, carried it through the crack back to her fortified space. She laid it on one of the paths, right where an oncoming hunter might step on it. Over and over she repeated the process—delicately disengaging, carrying, and placing one pod at a time, until she had littered the access routes to the hilltop with the poisonous objects. She had no idea what effect they would have on the hunters, and she was eager to observe it.
She was used to working alone for hours in the shed at the back of The Three Cherries’ gardens. So despite the awareness of impending attack buzzing along her nerves, Mai hummed as she finished the task.
And then she waited.
At the first distant scuffle and half-stifled yelp, Mai’s entire body lit up like a firework.
No more plans and schemes—they were actually here. Hunters, coming to catch her.
She knew all about the fight-or-flight response in animals, the reaction of prey to predator. She’d sensed it herself, whenever she looked down from the sea-wall of Kiken Island and saw the toothy maws of the rabid mermaids churning in the surf.
And she had felt a stronger primal terror when the two drunken sailors had pawed at her on the pier.
But she had never felt that trapped, panicked, reactive violence so deeply as now, with the hushed voices of the hunters in her ears. She had to reassure herself, over and over, that they would not kill her or harm her. They merely wanted to catch her and bring her back to the city.
Not easy prey, she told herself.Not to be underestimated.
More shouts from below, in the forest at the base of the hill. A cry of “Cut me down!” and Mai grinned. She could not see what was happening, but she delighted in imagining it—someone dangling from a tree, their leg caught in one of her snares.
But her joy was shortlived. One of the hunters was already approaching, clambering up the pebbled slope. She recognized him from her visit to Feral’s ship—a scruffy, sandy-haired fellow with heavily tattooed skin.
She stepped back, aimed one of her makeshift slingshot-catapults, and sent a rock soaring through the air. It struck his knee, and he bellowed with pain and charged up the slope, much faster than she’d expected.
Desperate, Mai snatched another rock and pulled the sapling back again. The rock flew over the man’s head and struck another sailor who was coming up behind him. His roar of pain propelled the sandy-haired man to run even faster, glee in his eyes as he reached the peak of the hill.
His boot crushed one of the poison pods.
Instantly a cloud of spores bloomed, borne upward on green smoke. The hunter inhaled sharply and stepped back—too late. He began to choke, bending over, clawing at his throat. The second hunter sidestepped around him, intent on getting to Mai—but he stepped on another pod and began to gag, eyes bulging.
Mai shrank back, watching foam bubble at the corners of the men’s mouths. They slumped to the ground, jerking and twitching.
A scream rose in her throat, but she clamped her lips shut and would not let it out.
Had she killed them?
Would Flay and his crew be penalized because of it?
A third hunter was approaching now, trailing broken threads and bits of vine, looking hot and furious. When he saw his two collapsed comrades, he backed off and started up to the hilltop by a different route. Mai stepped over to that path and pushed against the rocks she had piled there, sending them bouncing down the slope into the man’s way. He avoided most of them, but one tripped him up. As he fell, two more struck him in the face and the belly. She hit him with another stone from a catapult, just for good measure, and he went still.
How many hunters were there in each party? She felt sure Flay had mentioned the number at some point. Five or six? Seven?
Cries from another path warned her that more hunters were coming up that side. When she ran over to look, she saw a female hunter writhing and foaming in a cloud of spores, with two others hanging back, horrified, their hands clamped over their mouths.
Six in total, so far. Three either dead or passed out from the poison, one bruised from the rockfall, and two more hesitating, waiting for the cloud of spores to clear.
