like a tearing sheet and staggered beneath a gust of wind. Over her shoulder she
glimpsed the last shards of the bubble whirling away on the storm.
The wind swept through the kitchen, upheaving the table so that Snapper Jo had
to leap aside. Gilla picked up a trashbasket and flung it at one of the thralls,
upended another over the serpents, saw the fiend recover and start toward her,
and snatched up her broom. Another of the soul-thralls lurched forward. Her
swing connected with its head and knocked it bleeding into Snapper Jo’s arms.
Gilla steadied herself and cocked the broom for another swing, but the fiend’s
eyes were fixed on the trickle of red that crossed the thrall’s skin. Bony
fingers tightened and the body began to struggle. The Snapper’s thin lips
writhed back from his razor teeth.
“Fresh meat,” he said thickly, and then, oblivious to the tumult around him,
bent to feed.
Before anything else could come at her, Gilla kicked over the rest of the
trashbaskets, launched herself through the door and slammed it behind her, and
scrambled, panting, across a soggy wilderness of weeds. Before her loomed the
rain-dark walls of the warehouses, and beyond them, the bridge, over the river,
to home.
Lalo bent, shivering, grasped the end of the timber, and nodded to Wedemir.
Together they hefted it, and staggered forward to the edge of the river where a
Stepson, four burly men from the 3rd Commando, and a couple of scrawny youths
from Zip’s collection of toughs were trying to build a bulwark. It was a motley