Transcript from The Book of Lost Voices:

  Those little ones...they’re a whole ‘nother batch of bullshit.

  The big ones’ll eat you, there’s no question, but they make it quick. Chomp, and then it’s light’s out.

  This thing...it got Katrine. Ripped her apart, then played with her insides. It didn’t even eat her, it...it hunted us for sport. It took out her insides and played with them, painting crew deck shorthand with her blood.

  The whole time, it...it sang, it babbled. It repeated radio chatter, the comm announcements. And now it has her voice. It’s been following me for three days, and I can hear her singing some old folk song through the vents.

  But she’s dead. It took her skull and wears it like a mask, but I can still hear her voice.

  Chapter one

  I pause at a market stall, admiring the tooling on the leather, pretending not to notice the two spitters following me. Aware I’m being watched, I keep hands and tendrils to myself and keep moving, looking for the place where the groomers have set up their tents, pretending I don’t know I’m being followed.

  After a few minutes of dodging and weaving, turning off my false eyes and retracting my tendrils, I lose them among the crowd, dipping under a bloated fleshbag and then cutting my way through the leatherworkers until I reach the groomers.

  I browse the shops, feeling rasps and admiring carved bone samples until I find one of my liking.

  “You, drone-female,” I growl, head held high, as befitting a noble lord of a high house in a great clan. “It is my proving day and I need a full-body grind.”

  Drones are the lowest class, and the most numerous. They have no tails, no particular defensive or offensive capabilities. They don’t spit acid, have no great strength or stealth, just a pair of combat arms. Many high houses kill their droneborn at birth, but the commoners typically avoid this practice. After all, someone has to do the menial labor.

  “Of course, my lord,” she replies, snapping her head up sharply from sharpening her tools, shoulders slumped in submission. “There is a cot in the tent.”

  She stands from her workstation and holds back the fleshbag leather curtain to allow me access, closing the tent and tying it shut for privacy. Once secured, I grab her with my grappling hook-tipped tendrils and throw her bodily to the cot, then myself onto her, grasping the cot’s supports with my grappling hooks so she cannot get away.

  ***

  I run the triple-bladed head of my uppermost left tendril down her shoulder, where her combat arms meet her tool arms, then lightly tap my mandibles at the connection between the combat arm’s wrist and blade, kissing her.

  “When I am house-sire of my own line,” I tell her. “You will be the jewel of my harem.”

  She rises from her work-cot, sighing, shoulders slumped in disappointment.

  “Do not tease me, Thresher.”

  She ties her skirt about herself and sets about to readying her tools, oiling the rasps and files, each one crafted for a different blade. By now, she knows my favorite scents and sensations, and her fingers move with practiced precision.

  “What is there to tease?” I ask, following her from her work-cot. “I would not be the first reaper to become a house-sire, even a clan-sire.”

  “Your lord sire would not allow it,” she replies, as I wrap all six tendrils around her, and both sets of arms, nuzzling the side the her neck.

  “If I earn it, he will have little say,” I explain.

  “And your lord grand-sire and lady dam will want you to take a harem of well-bred, high-class females from high houses of other great clans, not a houseless drone commoner.”

  “My darling, you are stronger than any brute,” I whisper in her ear-holes. “More beautiful than any siren, more cunning than any reaper, and more tenacious than any spitter. Who is more worthy of my house than you?”

  “Your lord-sire will sooner see us both dead than you weaken your bloodline with a drone,” she growls as I run my secondary hands down her hips, gently twining my tail around her ankle.

  “It is a myth that drones produce only more drones,” I scoff. “You are as likely to bear clever reapers and powerful brutes and sirens for my house as any.”

  “My lord,” she growls, tensing her shoulders, digging her claws into the table she keeps her oils. “It is not done.”

  “I will have a harem of well-bred sirens and spitters and reapers if it so pleases the house-sire,” I tell her, letting her go so she can get to work on my grapplers. “But you will be the jewel.”

  Again, she scoffs.

  “You compete against many ambitious siblings, half-siblings, and cousins for the role, Thresher. Do not make me a target in your ambitions.”

  “I have ambitions to keep you safe!” I snap, leaning against the table so she can freely reach my grapplers and pull out the tendrils as far as she needs. “You think I want to be a house-sire? I want you, my love.”

  She nips affectionately at my ears, sanding the tip of one grappler to a fine point. “You have me. This is enough for me.”

  “And when your belly is swollen with my eggs?”

  “You would not be the first to stud a bastard clutch upon a drone,” she laughs. “Nor will you be the last. I will make due.”

  “And I would see my offspring named and acknowledged, if we were to be so lucky.”

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  “You will know them, and that will be enough,” she insists. “And they may compete for right of adoption, as any nameless. Then you will see them named and acknowledge. If we were so lucky.”

  Her clawed fingers are nimble and quick. Even though she has only the one set, she has the hands of a reaper, deft and clever.

  A heavy sigh weighs on my chest. I breathe out sharply enough to make her pause, possibly thinking she caught my skin in her rasp.

  “My dam has been seeking a handmaiden…”

  ***

  Once out of her tent, sated, refreshed, and freshly sharpened, I adjust my mask, then begin making my way to my clan’s territory, all too aware of the time.

  My lady drone has, sadly, declined the offer to serve at my dam’s feet, but her grind skills are, as always, flawless. I feel like a new male after leaving her services.

  The spitters are back. They’re probably siblings, likely from the same clutch. The one on my right has damage to his mandible, likely regrowing it after a fight, and the spewers on that side are non-functional. The one on my left carries a fleshbag-bone club, heavy and dense and polished with use.

  I lead them away from the market, gradually picking up speed, before being followed into a tunnel, and then turning on them.

  “Spitter-gentleman!” I smile, lighting up my false eyes. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “You know what this is about, reaper,” the one with the damage mandible hisses, lisping terribly through the injury. “Give it back.”

  “Give what back?” I ask innocently, spreading all four sets of hands, tendrils retracted into their slits as a sign of non-aggression.

  “Don’t play games, reaper of Clan Fort,” the one with the intact faces snarls. “You’re the only one in Temperance that still believes in clutchling tales.”

  “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insist. “I’m late, and it is my proving day, you know.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make this quick,” the one with the lisp growls, brandishing his weapon. “If it’s all clutchling stories, why do you want it back so much?” I ask, extending my grapplers.

  ***

  My siren-sister, Mezzo, sighs and puts a hand to her head as I enter the arena to stand before our sire’s great throne made of skin and bone of fallen enemies. Her throne is beneath and behind our dam’s, and only the clan-sire, our grandsire, sits higher.

  The red, spiraling vortex of my sire’s eyes flick over me, as does my dam’s crystal blue. She keeps her composure, but he rumbles deep in his throat, eyeing the scorch marks left by the spitter.

  “You’re late,” he growls impassively.

  “Forgiveness, sire,” I reply, holding up the shorn mandibles, still dripping blood. “But I bring trophies for the honor of House Tusker of Clan Arkham.”

  My grandsire smiles with approval, as does my dam, but my sire rumbles again.

  “You bring mandibles, not skulls,” he chides.

  “It was a minor scuffle. Let them wear their shame for their clan to see.”

  “A minor scuffle, and yet it cost you enough time to keep the clan waiting?”

  My mandibles flex, grasping for words.

  “Let him go, boy,” the clan-sire says. “He brought trophies from a good scrap, and has earned the right to be here, despite his lateness.”

  “Yes, sire,” the house-sire, Bludgeon, sighs, giving me a look that says I’ll hear more about this later.

  The clan-sire raises from his high throne, topped with three tusker skulls, each with three pairs of massive tusks.

  “Clan Fort! We are gathered here today to celebrate the eighteenth proving of my grandspawn, Thresher of House Tusker, out of Saprano by Bludgeon. This proving will show his skills and prowess as a reaper of my bloodline. Fight well, my boy. Today you are a man.”

  ***

  I hold the bead up to admire it.

  It was taken from a tusker, one of five, that I killed in the arena. Big, angry, covered in spikes and with thick, heavy tusks, there isn’t much they won’t eat and they’re as ornery as a brute by nature. Alone, they’re dangerous. In a pack, they’re deadly.

  I carved it myself, from one of the tusks, as the animals were sent to be chopped for dinner, which was delicious.

  Eighteen provings. Eighteen similar beads from various bones, teeth, or materials, each one scored with marks to show how many rounds I completed.

  Five, I think, weaving into my hair, freshly cleaned and scented with oil after I dropped from exhaustion in the ring. I came within five rounds of my sire’s record. Mezzo came within three, but banshees are physically almost as big and strong as brutes, plus the destructive scream.

  Five.

  Within five of Bludgeon of House Tusker, out of Lethal by Force.

  That’s a high achievement for a brute or a siren, but it borders on prodigy for a reaper. The house-sire sets the proving standards, and my sire, the house-sire, tests all his house-brood and prospectives as befitting a brute.

  I am not built for endurance. I am fast, stealthy, silent, but not the massive slab of meat my sire and brute-siblings are.

  When I dropped, spent, I heard my grands-sire say, “You have no idea how to properly use a reaper, boy.”

  I tie the knot to hold the string of eighteen beads in place. I have many such braids, for various reasons. The first time I took an enemy’s mandible. The first time I saddlebroke a runner. When an enemy begged me for mercy in front of witnesses. I docked an enemy's hair and he never knew, I disarmed an opponent, I stole livestock from a rival, I lead a murder of house-reapers on a raid into a rival’s tower.

  I—

  “You!”

  My sire’s words rumble through me like the trampling hooves of a runner. He seizes me around my middle and flings me over his head. I dig my claws and grapplers into the walls and ceiling to stop my descent, facing him.

  “Yes, house-sire?” I ask.

  “You!” he bellows, red eyes narrowed, distorting the black trifoil of his soul marks. “You shamed me in front of the clan-sire! The whole clan!”

  My dam’s voice calls from behind me. “My stud, the boy shattered every reaper-record held by House Tusker.”

  “Stay out of this, Soprano,” he snarls, before turning back to me. “You show up late, bearing mandibles instead of skulls, disheveled and covered in acid burns. Whatever you took from House Boiler better have been worth it!”

  I wince. The other clan got involved. Lovely. Still, he doesn’t seem to know what upset them so badly. That’s a high point.

  “Bludgeon, my love,” my dam, jewel of my sire’s harem, pleads. “It was just a scrap of old leather. It wasn’t worth skulls.”

  She knows. Of course she knows. She was originally of House Boiler of Clan Clarkson. They went to her. They told her.

  “A scrap of leather?” he hisses through foot-long teeth, a looming mouth on stocky legs and a stumpy tail. “You shame me in front of your grand-sire over a scrap of leather?”

  “It’s boy’s play, my love,” I hear my mother cringe.

  “So he was late for play, my jewel?” the house-sire sneers. “Eighteen provings, Soprano. He is old enough to know his duty. And how to fight properly. Tricks and games are coward’s tools, boy. In a fair fight, your cousins would have presented me your skull.”

  “And then what benefit is it to me to fight a larger opponent head-on, my lord?” I ask.

  His eyes dilate. The pupil eclipses the black soul marks in his red eyes, turning his entire being almost entirely black, except for the silver studs that dot his skin and the exposed ridges of his spine trailing to his stiff tail.

  That was the wrong, answer, apparently.

  Boxed in between my dam and my sire doesn’t leave much room. If I dodge, he’ll be even angry. What am I to do, cut his heel-strings and behead him in front of my dam? Take his mandible as a trophy, to show that I am more worthy of the title of house-sire than he?

  I’m on the floor before his lumbering bulk can reach me, between his legs and up his spine. My tail flashes and his left mandible falls to the floor, a trophy well-earned.

  I expect him to stop, to bow to his humiliation and capitulate. My dam cries out, out of concern for me or love for him? Still, I am elated. I scored five rounds less in the proving, but I have defeated the house-sire, now worthy of a title (and a harem) of my own.

  But I underestimate his rage. His meaty slab of a hand catches me by the grapplers, and I am on the ground beneath him. Still dripping blood from his missing mandible, he plants a huge foot on my back and pulls the tentacles.

  I feel the flesh stretch. I hear it tear.

  With his secondary arms, he pulls my long hair back from my skull and slices through it with a belt knife. A spray of carved beads fly in all directions as my dam gasps.

  “You will sign up on a scavenging party at first bell,” he snarls, stepping over me to get to his mandible. “Don’t come back until you have earned your house, or I’ll have that pretty drone in the market’s spine for a bedpost.”