Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 56

The Hand in Fire

“UP!” THE EMPRESS YELLED to the doorkeeper and his staff. “Quickly, quickly. They mean to harm the hand!”

The doorkeeper, Mister Drummadian, was already coming to greet his Empress on the broad walkway, which was automatically moving into position. She stepped off the air and onto the walkway. He had wiped the grin of welcome off his face at the first glimpse of his Empress’s expression. Before he could even murmur a word of welcome she said: “Get your soldiers down there, Drummadian! Right now!”

“Yes, ma’am.” He yelled an order to the Captain of the Guard. “You heard the order, Flayshak!”

Captain Flayshak, a gargantuan skullier stitchling with a uniform that barely constrained his six-armed torso, was on the task.

“I did indeed, sir!”

He summoned three of his stitchlings to his side with a few sharp syllables in the old voice, and then simply plunged into the Elevation Beam with his fellow soldiers following behind.

“Who’s doing the attacking?” Drummadian asked.

“Insurgents! Radicals! Working to undermine the Throne! I want them alive, Drummadian. I want to take my time with them to get the truth.”

“I have every faith in Captain Flayshak, ma’am. He knows—”

There was a soft whoomp from the ground below, and a bloom of jaundiced light around the base of the hand.

“No, damn them!” the Empress shrieked. “I don’t lose him too!”

Drummadian didn’t understand what she meant by that, but he understood perfectly well the wisdom of silence. Besides, the Empress needed no further prompting from him to speak out. She seemed, to the doorkeeper’s respectful eyes, to be a woman on the edge of insanity. Though her head was directed so as to allow her to look down at the ground, her eyes darted everywhere rather than look at the sight below. But then given that she seemed to feel some affection for the hand on which she was so often perched, it was little wonder she avoided sight of it. Drummadian turned his head away, and didn’t even realize his Empress was demanding he act until her words began to slap him on the face like blows from a thorny stick.

“Bring the thing up!” she was screaming.

“Into the ship?” the doorkeeper said, plainly appalled at the notion.

“Yes! Of course into the ship! Quickly! Do you understand, you cretins! If he dies, so do you. You burn up the way he’s burning!”

“Oh, lady, no—”

“Then save him, you idiot!”

The doorkeeper became a blur of action, first slamming his fist against a large yellow alarm button, which caused panicking alarms to whoop throughout the vessel. Drummadian had very specific orders.

“All firefighters to the receiving bay. We have an emergency!” He then yelled down to Flayshak. “Extinguish the fires by any means possible, Flayshak! You hear me?”

Flayshak yelled something by way of reply, but it wasn’t audible over the sound of the crackling fire from below.

“BRING HIM UP!” the Empress again demanded. “Did you not hear my order, Mr. Drummadian?”

“I heard, m’lady,” the doorkeeper replied. “And your . . . the . . . he’s on his way up to you, m’lady.”

The engines of the Stormwalker were indeed already at their churning labors, empowering the Elevation Beam to lift the blazing hand up off the ground into the belly of the Stormwalker. Waves of stinking heat rose up off the hand as it threw itself around within the confines of the beam. Drummadian’s alarms had by now brought responses from all directions. Pumps had been primed, and numberless hoses directed at the massive burning form.

“Get the water flowing!” Drummadian yelled.

He’d no sooner spoken than the hoses bucked and spat, and foaming waters poured out of them. There was a tremendous hissing sound, and clouds of steam rose up from the Elevation Beam as the flames were dowsed. Once the hand was within the confines of the vessel, Doorkeeper Drummadian ordered the aperture closed and the beam shut off, which allowed the firefighters to concentrate their hoses on the hand with even greater force. The flames were quickly subdued. But the damage that had been done to the hand was horrendous. It was so weakened by the flames that it could barely stay upright on its fingertips. It tottered like a vast infant as the waters buffeted it.

“Enough!” Mater Motley yelled. “Do you hear me, Drummadian?”

“It’s done, m’lady,” the doorkeeper replied.

The hoses were shut off. The flow of water dwindled and died completely. Even without the water beating against it, the hand had difficulty standing upright. Its dead flesh blistered and in places burned away completely, leaving only blackened bone.

“Leave us,” the Old Mother said very quietly.

The doorkeeper was plainly uncomfortable with the notion of leaving his Empress in such unpredictable company.

“Perhaps if I just stayed at the door.”

“Out!” the Old Mother yelled. Then more quietly: “I won’t have it watched while it suffers. You understand?”

“Of course,” Drummadian replied. “Captain Flayshak, you and your men—”

“Understood, sir,” the Captain replied. At a nod from their Captain the firefighters departed. Flayshak waited at the door for the doorkeeper to join him, then they too left.

“I’ll make this quick,” Mater Motley said. “You’ve served me well. I’m sorry I failed to do the same. Be free.”

She walked around the hand, counterclockwise. The crude circle her feet drew on the ground unleashed a wave of black energy, which converged on the hand. It knew what work it had to do, and summarily did it.

“Go,” the Hag said.

The hand took the comfort it was granted. Its fingers folded up beneath it as it toppled sideways, collapsing in the filthy water. Pieces of burned matter broke off the thing, and struck the walls of the chamber. The hand twitched where it had fallen, and then the unnatural life force that owned it for so many centuries went out of it, and was gone.

The Empress did not linger to keep the company of the twice dead. She went directly to the bridge so that she could speed the vessel on its way to Scoriae. The enemies of her Empire were there, awaiting their executions.