Book of Iron by Elizabeth Bear Page B

out of the mud and plunged the second set of fangs into his neck.
    He flailed, a hand coming up to grab at the snake’s midsection, but it was already gone—whipping itself end over end to somersault into the darkness like a hurled stick. Bijou had a moment to observe the thin trickles of black ichor that oozed from the bites—something that had not happened when the bullet passed through him—before he turned away to face Salamander over Maledysaunte’s convulsing body and Kaulas’s back.
    Kaulas, Bijou realized, wasn’t just holding Maledysaunte down. His hands were inside her waistcoat, rummaging.
    Bijou might not be an expert in assessing the emotional states of demigods, but she knew Kaulas. He was looking for a talisman, whatever might hold the secret to Maledysaunte’s immortality.
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bijou spat. “In the middle of a battle? Kaulas! ”
    She shouted that last as a warning, but the guardian wasn’t looking at the necromancers. His gaze was fixed on Salamander. One hand was raised to his throat; ichor slipped between his fingers and trickled down his arm, dripping from the point of his elbow to the floor.
    The hammer rang again. Bijou thought the blows were falling farther apart. Dr. Liebelos was tiring. Prince Salih was lying somewhere in the cavern, possibly broken and bleeding. But he’d proven that without the guardian, they could physically intervene with Dr. Liebelos.
    “Riordan,” she said to the bard beside her. “Get the hammer.”
    He asked no questions, just stumbling away up the slight incline to the anvil. The mud dragged at his bad foot.
    Across the cavern, Salamander shouted, “Natural weapons!”
    Of course. The snake’s teeth hurt him. Bullets did not. Fists and feet, then—
    Bijou leaned back and kicked the guardian right in the small of the back. Behind her, sounds of struggle rose as the hammering ceased. Salamander bent down, scooped up a rock, and hurled it at the guardian.
    Maledysaunte’s hands came up and grasped Kaulas’s fumbling wrists. “Off me, you whoreson sorcerer!”
    He didn’t move fast enough to suit her. She twisted against him, using her hips to throw him off—and directly into the path of the guardian as he leaped toward Salamander. Maledysaunte dragged herself up, a terrible figure in her mud-soaked clothing, lurching toward the anvil.
    “Can’t beat the guardian,” she snarled, falling in the mud up the hill. “Got to remove his reason for fighting.”
    Whatever his other failings, Kaulas reacted to his unexpected impact with the guardian by latching on—and lashing out with feet and fists. Bijou fully expected him to go flying in a moment, as the prince had.
    “Mother!” Salamander cried, racing after Maledysaunte. But Maledysaunte was already at the top of the incline, where Riordan had Dr. Liebelos by the wrist. She twisted to get away from him.
    Natural weapons , thought Bijou, as Ambrosias reared up out of the muck and sank its pincers into the guardian’s neck, below the base of the skull.
    The shearing bite would have paralyzed a human; on the guardian, it only succeeded in connecting because his arms were encumbered by Kaulas. The guardian hurled the necromancer off into the mud, where he crumpled.
    Prince Salih came limping out of the darkness, one arm dangling limply, his face a demon’s mask of blood and mud. With his good hand, he leveled a pistol at the guardian.
    The guardian reached over his head to grab the articulated centipede. Ambrosias dangled from his fist, rattling like a string of beads.
    “No!” Bijou shouted, crouching to scoop up a rock as big as her fist. She wound her arm back—
    The guardian stopped. His fingers opened. He dropped the bone and jewel centipede in the thrashed and slimy soil.
    Bijou followed the line of her gaze.
    Maledysaunte and Riordan stood beside the empty anvil, the hammer slack in Maledysaunte’s hand. Dr. Liebelos was a huddle at their feet. Salamander had stopped