“I had to take a little blood to quiet him.” The inhumu had settled on our masthead, from which he grinned down at me like a very devil.
When I did not reply, he added, “You have a most attractive young woman.”
Looking up at him, it struck me that he was a devil in sober fact, that all the legends of devils found their origins in him and in the vile race he represented. “Yes,” I said, glancing at Seawrack, who had left the shelter of the foredeck. “You’re right. She certainly is.”
“A valuable possession.”
“Not mine,” I told him. “Not now and not ever.”
Seawrack herself said, “But he belongs to me.” She joined me at the foot of the mast, and linked her arm in mine. “The Mother gave him to me. What of it?”
“Nothing at all, if we’re friends. I don’t prey upon my friends, or pry into their affairs. It’s not our way. Dare I ask where you two are going?”
I said, “No.”
Seawrack’s arm tightened. “You told that other boat.”
“But I’m not going to tell him. I’m not even going to ask why he wants to know.”
As I returned Sinew’s knife to its sheath, I pointed to the chest. “There’s a slug gun in there. I’m going to get it out. If you’re still up there when I do, I’m going to kill you. You can fight or run. It’s up to you.”
I opened the chest without taking my eyes off him, and he flew as I reached into it. For a few seconds a great, silent bat fluttered against the stars before disappearing into the blackness between them.
“That was a…” Seawrack hesitated. “I don’t remember the names, but you told me about them and I wasn’t sure they were real.”
“An inhumu. He was male, I believe, so inhumu. Females are inhuma. Their race is the inhumi. Those words come from another town, because we didn’t know they existed in Viron and had no name for them but ’devil.’ Anyway ’the inhumi’ is what everybody here calls them.”
She had dropped to her knees next to Babbie. “He’s sick, isn’t he?”
“He’s lost blood. He needs rest and a great deal of water. That’s a shame because we haven’t got much, but if he doesn’t get it he’s likely to die. He may die anyway.”
“They drink blood. You said that. We have-we had worms that did, too. But you could pull them off, and some fish liked them.”
“We call those leeches.” I was collecting Babbie’s pan and a bottle of water.
“He wasn’t like that.”
“No,” I agreed, “they’re not. Do you know of anything they are like?”
She shook her head.
I knelt beside her and poured water into the pan, then held it so Babbie could drink from it, which he did slowly but thirstily, drinking and drinking, and snuffling into the water as if he would never stop.
“He’s very strong,” Seawrack said. “He was. I’ve-you know. Played with him. He was strong, and he has those big teeth. The inhumi must be strong too.”
“I suppose they are. Certainly they’d have to be strong, very strong indeed, to fly. But they are light, too, and soft, which lets them reshape themselves the way they do. People say that a strong man can throw one to the ground and kill it in most cases. I’d guess that this one clung to Babbie’s back where he couldn’t reach it until it had weakened him-but I’ve never fought one myself.”
“Will it come back?”
I shrugged, and went forward to fetch an old sail with which I hoped to keep Babbie warm. While I was tucking it around him, Seawrack said, “Couldn’t another one come, too?”
“It’s possible,” I told her. “I’ve heard that they almost always return to houses where they have fed. I’m not sure it’s true, however. Even if it is, an animal on a boat may not count. They generally leave animals alone.”
“Your slug gun. Aren’t you going to get it?”
I did, and loaded it. At home, I had grown accustomed to locking my needier away when the twins were small; plainly, I was not at home anymore. “We built our house on Lizard Island very solidly for fear of the inhumi,” I told Seawrack. “Double-log walls and heavy, solid doors. Very small shuttered windows with iron bars across them. It’s not possible for you and me to protect this sloop like that, but the better prepared we are for them, the less likely it will be that we’ll have to put our preparations to use.”
She nodded solemnly. “Show me how to use your gun.”
“You can’t. It takes two hands to control the recoil and cycle the action. A needier is what you need, but I gave mine to Sinew, so we haven’t got one. I can give you his knife if you want it.”
“Your son’s?” She backed away. “I won’t take it. You love it too much.”
“Then get some sleep,” I told her. “I’ll stand guard, and in a couple of hours you can relieve me.”
She edged past me to stroke Babbie’s massive head. “He’s still cold. He’s shaking.”
“There are a few other things,” I said; I meant the blanket and another old sail with which we sometimes covered ourselves. “I can get them, but I don’t know how much good they’ll do.”
“We could put him between us.”
