Chapter 14 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 14 — The gauntlet run

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: Havana · Previous: Chapter 13 — Milk and potatoes · Next: Chapter 15 — The Thorn Room · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

“Here’s the plan,” I said to Paz, Anton, and Sister Ines as they stared, open-mouthed up a

Summary

The plan: a beachball stun bomb rolled at the ghommids, a run down the road Asojano has cleared to the temple, guard Paz while he fixes the shrine, flag a ghommid if lucky — and a contingency, since Mordecai shares Sister Ines's worry about a stronger god. Li Na's team shopped the Desperado's middle floor: a 30,000-gold case of Troll Smoke Mantles, four of them and a stun grenade making a thirty-second mass stun for the undead; six small smoke missiles and six single-target anti-undead missiles built into a suit of heavy, unenchanted, break-apart armour on Bomo — two shoulder six-packs, daggers, a Battletech look he loves from playing Armored Core, sad only that he has no big gun. Donut wants Katia back to be the armour instead. Night: the ghommids glow cerulean and wail like injured animals; Paz alone is Terrified and rooted; Sister Ines cures him twice and the terror returns a third time, so Bomo carries him — after he unequips a breastplate that makes him impossibly heavy, revealing a skinny man with a smudged Jesus on his back and magically self-supporting armoured trousers. Asojano stands in the fog like Moses. Missiles arc; a six-legged fox and a fish thing; the Daughter fed again, black this time; Donut sings through the Golden Throat — Limbered, +50% dexterity — and loses it on the second verse ('Carl loves a lady with really nice titties'), muted for five minutes for not holding a tune. Anton faceplants on a hidden curb. A donkey-headed ghommid takes the Daughter's Kiss and does not die: its head snaps off like pottery and a ten-foot striped snake pours out of the neck while tentacles sprout from the body — a splitter, fast, immune to the smoke, higher level. Terrified himself (Crybaby! — 'We do not reward people who soil themselves in public'), Carl holds a flag point-first and lets it impale itself: T'Ghee Card, Rare, Skylar Spinach, Two-Thirds of an Enraged Ghommid Splitter, level 66, constitution 90 and rising with each split, Iced, Dodge, Terrifier (Donut: 'And that's a really stupid name'). Inside La Iglesia de los Olvidados — moss, mould, moonlight through the roof, seven shrines against seven walls — Asojano dances round his rubble and a softball of frozen fire appears, the Sun of Reawakening ('If you have a stick and some hotdogs'). Paz, dazed: 'Why didn’t you use ‘kitty?’' 'You're a good singer.' Then the first shrine Carl approaches, a shattered anvil, glows red hot: a quest from Ogun — repair his shrine, not Asojano's, or be smitten. 'I told you not to worship a false god.' Kill the orisha, then; Anton picks up the first piece of the anvil, and the music starts.

Characters

• Carl — Bomb-maker, armourer, flag-holder; Terrified without fear.
• Bomo — A walking mech with twelve missiles, carrying a Santero.
• Princess Donut — Limbered, then muted for a bad rhyme.
• Paz Lo — Terrified and rooted; skinny under the plate; a quest from his god.
• Anton Lopez — A hidden curb; 'Fuck me'; the first anvil piece.
• Sister Ines — Cures Paz twice, the terror back a third time; saves Carl from the snake; 'I told you'
• Asojano — Parts the ghommids; a dance; the Sun of Reawakening.
• Mordecai — A contingency; never heard of the Sun.

Locations

• The Colón cemetery — A gauntlet by night to La Iglesia de los Olvidados, an octagon of seven broken shrines.

Motifs

• Explosives — Troll Smoke Mantles; a stun bomb the size of a beachball; missiles on a cretin.
• T'Ghee totems — Skylar Spinach, a rare splitter that grows each time it dies.
• The Scavenger's Daughter — The Daughter's Kiss that took a head off and made two monsters.
• The gods — Two gods' shrines in one temple; a smite if the wrong one is mended.
• Donut's songs — Limbered by verse one; muted by verse two.