Trapped

I'd been paying such close attention to Pelinor, I hadn't noticed Annah moving toward him. She appeared behind him now, kneeling to match his height and wrapping her arms around his stomach. Her gloved hands locked together at the level of his belt, then pulled in hard, scooping into his stomach: the OldTech maneuver to help choking victims, driving up into the diaphragm to force out air and clear the throat. I felt ashamed I hadn't thought to do it myself-inadequate Phil, still stupid in a crisis.

The push of wind up Pelinor's esophagus forced out a mouthful of maggoty white. I cringed as some of the spill fell on Annah, her arms still around Pelinor's stomach… but she was protected by her thick coat and gloves, the curds unable to reach her bare skin. I rushed to sweep the wet chunks away, brushing them off with my own gloves, wiping Pelinor's clothes too, then scraping myself free with a stone from the road. It seemed they couldn't lock onto our clothing-like leeches, they could attach themselves only to flesh.

Meanwhile, the Caryatid continued to singe off curds, raising a hideous stink of wet rot. She was doing her best to minimize damage to Pelinor's skin, but he was still a puckered red. Second-degree burns at least. His mustache was fully incinerated. The hair on his scalp had wizened to a crisp in a dozen places… and still the curds weren't gone. Gooey white oozed from Pelinor's nose and gleamed between his blistered lips-just like I'd seen on Rosalind.

Dead Rosalind.

Annah yanked up hard again, driving her joined hands into Pelinor's belly. More curds bulged out of his mouth; but they slithered back inside as soon as Annah released her squeeze. Again and again she went through the prescribed motion, scoop in, relax, scoop in, relax… but her very first compression had forced out as much gunk as she was going to get, and subsequent squeezes ejected no more. Pelinor's throat remained clogged-the blockage was too big to dislodge.

When Annah realized that, she let go of Pelinor and gestured at me. "You try." We traded positions and I jammed my hands into Pelinor's gut with every gram of strength I possessed. More curds squirted out of Pelinor's mouth… but not a titanic volley, just a coughing dribble. Not nearly enough to clear his windpipe.

I could picture a glistening mass of white clotted all the way down to his bronchial tubes. Each time I squeezed, the mass was pushed and the top part spilled into his mouth; but I couldn't crush in hard enough to push the whole squirming bulk out of his esophagus, and as soon as I let go, everything slid back down again.

"This isn't working," I said. "We have to think of something else."

"Get his mouth open," the Caryatid commanded.

Annah reached in to pull down Pelinor's jaw. Pelinor resisted, probably just out of instinct: by now, he couldn't have been thinking clearly. Beneath the flame-ravaged skin, his face had gone purple with suffocation; when I looked at the whites of his eyes, they were dotted with the same red petechiae pinpricks I'd seen on Rosalind's corpse. Tiny blood vessels burst by the exertion of trying to draw breath. Pelinor was straining so fiercely, I didn't think Annah could possibly get his mouth open-but a few seconds after she started to try, the rigidity slumped out of his body as he fell unconscious. Immediately, she flopped his jaw wide…

…and the Caryatid plunged the flame into his mouth.

The tiny ball of fire disappeared inside. From where I was kneeling, I couldn't see anything but a yellow-orange light shining out between his lips, the flame so bright it lit his cheeks from within. Smoke wisped out of his mouth and nose; I prayed it was only the ash of charred curds, but I was afraid some of the smoke came from Pelinor himself-his tongue and inner cheeks turning to cinder, maybe even the soft tissues of his throat. The Caryatid would be as cautious as possible, focusing the flame's heat only on the alien chunks that were filling Pelinor's air passages… but she was, after all, playing with fire, and it was Pelinor getting burned.

As the Caryatid worked, she talked in a voice I'd heard from time to time as I passed the door of her classroom. A teacher who reflexively explained everything she was doing, the way she'd talk students through a sorcery exercise. "I've started burning chunks of alien material in his mouth. The nuggets want to avoid the flame… they're crawling away from the heat… but after a few seconds' exposure, they stop moving and drop. Annah, could you sweep out the remains from the bottom of his mouth? Don't burn your glove on the flame. Good. Now"-she took a deep breath-"we'll start on the throat. Phil, I'll need you to squeeze his stomach. As tight as you can and don't let go. Do it."