Free Pure Dead Brilliant by Debi Gliori Page B

offering: some daddy longlegs' legs, a sun-dried bluebottle.” Seeing Pandora shudder at these suggestions, Tarantella amended her menu somewhat. “No? Perhaps not . . . How about some cake? A cup of tea? In my experience, you have to
feed
the male of the species before attempting to converse with it. So. Feed him and then attempt to make friends. And”—the tarantula ran a little black tongue over her lipsticked lips—“if
that
fails, then just go ahead and eat him. That way he can't answer back. Byeeeee.” Winching herself upward on a spinneret, Tarantella vanished abruptly into the shadows.
    Alone again, Pandora smiled. Odd as the conversation had been, it had also been enormously comforting. As cobwebs heal wounds, the company of Tarantella had soothed her hurt feelings. She stood up and leant against the window seat, breathing onto a pane of dirty glass and wiping it clean with her sleeve. Down below, way off in the distance, she could see the masts of Black Douglas's beautiful boat anchored off the shore of Lochnagargoyle. Dwarfed by distance, tiny people dotted the lawn, and she could just make out the figure of Mrs. McLachlan hanging out sheets to dry on the line. Beside her, Marie Bain was slowly pegging out several tentlike black corsets and shrunken stripy stockings, the cook's body language clearly indicating that she regarded guest laundry as a task not within her job description.
    From the attic window they all looked so small and insignificant, but as Damp wobbled across her line of vision, Pandora was reminded of how very dear they were to her. Just because she couldn't reach out to touch them right now didn't change how she felt about them. It depended on one's viewpoint, she decided. Titus was still her brother, and nothing would change that; just because he appeared to be as far away as one of the tiny figures below didn't mean she would never reach him again. Cheered by this thought, Pandora crossed the attic and lifted the trapdoor to go downstairs.
    “Tarantella?” she called over her shoulder. “Thank you for your advice. I'll try the stomach route to his heart—it's bound to succeed.”

Down the Hatch
    ( A.D. 145: Becalmed somewhere off northeastern Caledonia)
    T he war against the Celts had been one of the most bloody campaigns ever waged in military history, illustrating what happens when vast empires attempt to crush the life out of small but determined guerrilla tribes. Death came to the pristine shores of Nova Caledonia as each high tide surrendered its grisly flotilla of Roman corpses, which provided rich pickings for the flocks of hooded crows blowing in on the December gales.
    Captain of a warship engaged in an attempt to recapture the port of Lethe, Nostrilamus had been mortally wounded when an iron vat of boiling pitch exploded on deck and embedded long shards of metal in his legs. Now he lay in his stateroom, his skin the color of tallow, his injured limbs a stinking mess of putrefaction. Visitors to his sick bay had to hold vinegar-soaked sponges to their noses in order to withstand the stench, and even the ship's surgeon refused to attend his patient, preferring to take his chances on deck in the mercifully clean-smelling gales that threatened to capsize their craft. Even these winds were unpredictable. Yesterday the warship had wallowed in peaks and troughs larger than herself but today, becalmed south of Aberdonium, the wind had vanished at dawn, turning the surface of the water into jaundiced glass and causing the sails to hang limply from the masts. Surfacing briefly from his delirium, Nostrilamus ordered the oars to be used and, exhausted
by the simple effort of giving a command, sank back on his befouled bed of pelts as the great drum began to beat the rhythm for those slaves unfortunate enough to live below decks.
    Heave—thump—heave—thud—
faster
—crack—heave—thump
it went. And just audible below the rhythm of the drum came the sound of groans and sobs as