Chapter 29 Please Mind the Gap

The ribbon came free.

Jin jumped onto a barrel beneath it and caught the boy by the back of his shirt.

The pull nearly took them both.

His free hand closed on the awning's wooden strut. It bent. The boy kicked against Jin's chest, sobbing so hard he couldn't draw a proper breath.

“Don't climb me,” Jin gasped. “Terrible ladder.”

Below, Dessa stood on the overturned cart beside the barrel.

“Three!” she shouted.

The tiltjaw's mouth began to close.

“Now!”

Gravity dropped back beneath them.

Jin let go of the strut and fell toward Dessa. She caught the boy, turning with the weight, while Jin hit the cart on his hip and rolled into the lane.

He lay there for one breath.

Then a small silver mouth opened beside his head.

The sprat from the broken stall had found them.

“Not you again.”

Its pull dragged grit into his eyes. Jin clamped both hands around the rear half of its body, keeping the teeth away from his face.

His knife was still in his belt, where he'd tucked it to catch the boy.

No free hand.

“Kessa!”

Her arrow struck the creature behind its gill.

It convulsed in his grip, then dissolved.

Jin wiped his eyes with the least filthy part of his sleeve.

Calder had taken the boy from Dessa and pushed him through a low window into the back room of a bakery. A woman inside caught him and pulled him tight against her apron.

“Stay there,” Calder said. “Please. Just stay there.”

Jin rolled onto his knees.

The fourth sprat hit the end of the lane.

This one had come around through the shop's back door, dragging a string of overturned baskets behind it. Its mouth opened. A cabbage hit Jin between the shoulders.

He turned toward it.

The adult's next pulse took hold.

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Both Jin and the little fish slid toward the river.

He drove his knife down through one long fin and pinned it against the lane's wooden drain cover.

The sprat thrashed. The cover lifted.

Jin kicked the edge beneath a projecting stone and leaned his weight onto the hilt.

For a moment they traveled together, fish, man and increasingly expensive piece of street furniture.

Then the adult closed its mouth.

The drain cover dropped.

Jin ripped the knife free, caught the sprat against the boards with his knee and cut behind the jaw.

The silver body loosened.

He put one into Strength, two into Agility and two into Endurance.

Jin got up before anything else could fall on him.

Four sprats. All gone.

The thing on the quay remained.

They reached the end of the lane together. The festival square beyond it had become a slope in a world that kept changing its mind.

Three town hunters stood behind a stone fountain, firing between the pulses. Their bolts struck the creature's broad fins or sailed harmlessly into the open mouth.

One man caught Jin's sleeve as they passed.

“Keep people off the quay. We're holding the head this way.”

He turned back before Jin could answer and shouted at his partner to aim wider.

Dessa watched the next bolt vanish between the teeth.

“Stop feeding it!”

“Then get me a flank!” the hunter shouted back.

His partner vaulted the remains of a stall and ran low along the edge of the square. The third hunter covered him with two quick shots, timing both for the closing mouth.

One bolt sank into the fin.

The runner reached the creature's side.

A whisker bent toward him.

The head followed it. The mouth opened across his path, and the man's boots left the ground.

He caught a railing with both hands. The third hunter seized his belt and hauled him backward as a cooking pot struck the wood beside his head.

The man behind the fountain kept firing until both were clear.

Dessa's grin had gone.

“It reads the flank before we get there,” she said.

Jin watched the whisker fold back against the jaw.

She nodded, already moving.

Jin followed her behind the fountain.

“You know them?”

“I married their potter.”

“What?”

“My husband. Jory. Makes their bowls.” She caught a rolling festival plate with her boot and nudged it out of the lane. “I'd like him to keep having customers.”

Kessa crouched beside them, counting the rhythm with her fingers.

Five. Three.

The creature's whiskers spread as its mouth opened. Two angled toward the hunters. The great head followed, dragging a trough through the paving with its lower jaw.

The fountain shuddered.

Jin saw the whiskers move again, six pale ropes feeling along the edge of the cone.

“Those aim it?”

“Help it,” Dessa said. “Don't get caught in them.”

One whisker swept the front row of stalls. A wooden sign rose, swung into the creature's mouth and snapped in half.

Jin looked at the knife in his hand.

He stared at the window.

Then at the monster.

Then back at the window.

Dessa glanced at him.

“You've got an idea, haven't you?”

Jin took a breath.

“I'm opening a salon.”