Chapter 62 of 78 · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Chapter 62 — A squirrel with antlers

Book: The Butcher's Masquerade · Part: The Butchering · Previous: Chapter 61 — Marked for death · Next: Chapter 63 — Enchanted Hammer of Fast Forward · Floor: Floor 6 — The Hunting Grounds · Series: the series

Opening

“Carl!” Donut yelled from my shoulder.

Summary

The god's red star races away out of range. Dead hunters everywhere, spiders circling without targets; Li Na's spore-smoke drops the mushroom guards and Zhang stretches their timers to ten minutes. Chris grows up out of the dirt; Florin, blood on his crocodile face — 'That doesn't look good, mate' — and 'Florin, did you eat those guys?' Donut never took the potions: 'this was the Royal Court of Princess Donut. Not the Stupid Team of Stupid Dictator Carl and his Abused Slave Cat.' Elle, hovering over the church, saw it: a green magical boom that buffed her against fire and poison, five or six dryads pinwheeling blood, the smoke becoming a two-storey hedge with a red bud that opened on the last hunter — a crest, a race with no eyebrows that sometimes fights the faction wars — who swallowed the blood and bark, swelled inside his armour like potted meat on a cookfire and burst, and out came 'a deranged-looking squirrel with antlers', sponsored by Circe Took, a five-minute timer, gone like a rocket. 'You know that bug Carl gave gonorrhea to? Circe is her mom!' Mordecai wants the petals (Elle fetches them; the pollen he can get himself). Samantha steals a ring off a hunter's dead hand for when she has a body. Her Diwata: nobody likes her or him, always changing; one of Apito's brood but not a direct child, something about the Vinegar Bitch and Eileithyia; goddess of trees and squirrels who makes gods cranky by giving birth to ordinary new life — a shapeshifter who mates as a male and births as a female whatever she last 'naffed', a power meant only for the head of the Ascendency. Katia smells like Eileithyia. Carl and Katia see it: Diwata did not attack because she had five minutes to reach her daughter and cure the gonorrhea — and it must be Vrah who kills Carl or Vrah looks weak. 'Is she going to rip the head off her own mother?' 'She'd be giving birth to her own grandchildren!' Big Tina breaks from her mother and eats the sleeping mushroom guards. 'This game is really fucked up sometimes.' 'Sometimes?'

Characters

• Carl — Under the X, working out why the god ran.
• Princess Donut — The Royal Court, not a dictatorship; 'Circe is her mom!'
• Elle McGibbons — Eyewitness to the crest's transfiguration; buffed by the god's smoke.
• Samantha — Lore on Diwata, the Vinegar Bitch and Eileithyia; a stolen ring.
• Diwata — Antlered squirrel, shapeshifting mother of ordinary life; gone to her daughter.
• Circe Took — Sponsor of the god; Vrah's mother.
• Vrah — Cured, presumably; 'It has to be Vrah.'
• Katia Grim — Smells of Eileithyia; reads the god's logic.
• Li Na — Puts the guards to sleep.
• Li Jun and Zhang — Ten-minute timers.
• Florin — Donut: 'Florin, did you eat those guys?'
• Big Tina — Eats the guards.
• Imani — Catches the doll head.

Locations

• The Selva — A church become a hedge; a mushroom-guarded town.

Motifs

• The gods — Diwata's birth-power and the pantheon's disgust; the Ascendency's prerogative.
• The hunters — The crest; a hunter's sacrifice as a summoning vessel.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Petals and pollen for Mordecai.