The Spiked Collar

Hajnalka

The iron in his fist is cold enough to burn.

Vencel marches me past the chittering mantises, his scarred grip clamped around my upper arm like a vice. We step onto an arched stone bridge hanging over a black gorge. Below us, thousands of pale mandibles saw against raw limestone. The sound vibrates through the soles of my ruined leather slippers, rattling the enamel in my teeth.

He hauls me into a cavern carved directly out of the basalt bedrock.

A crude forge dominates the center. Charcoal embers glow a sullen dull orange beneath an oversized copper alembic covered in green verdigris. Baskets of slick, pulsating gray organs sit in brine near a wooden trough. The stink of rotten sulfur and crushed beetle carapace hits me like a slap.

"Your new quarters, my lady," Vencel says.

He shoves me toward a stone post anchored into the floor. I catch my balance on the damp edge of a workbench, refusing to stumble. My fingers brush the hidden seam of my torn silk overskirt. A tiny glass capillary vial of caustic lye is still intact against my hip. He was too busy crushing my ribs in the aerie to search me properly.

"A pigsty," I say, smoothing down my shredded lace cuffs with deliberate precision. "Though I suppose for a man who beds with vermin, this passes for high luxury."

Vencel chuckles, a low sound with no warmth in it. He pulls a heavy iron band from a hook beside the forge.

Four jagged inward-facing studs gleam along its inner rim. A heavy chain trails from a forged hinge at its base.

"You talk too much for a woman who just fell six hundred fathoms," he says.

He closes the distance between us in three long strides. The heat radiating off his broad chest crowds out the damp cellar air. He towers over me, smelling of burnt tallow, crushed chitin, and predatory arrogance. His left arm hangs bare to the elbow, the occult chitin plating scarred and pitted from where my centipede acid chewed into his flesh.

"Hold still, Hajnalka."

"Touch me again and I will melt the other arm," I tell him.

He moves faster than a striking mantis.

His scarred left hand catches my throat, fingers pressing into the carotid pulse just enough to freeze the air in my chest. He forces my chin up until the back of my head hits the cold limestone pillar.

My body stiffens. My pulse thrashes against his thumb.

The humiliation tastes worse than bile.

With his free hand, Vencel snaps the hinged iron around my neck and padlocks the trailing chain through the forged iron ring on the stone post.

The cold metal bites the tender skin above my collarbones. The blunt iron studs dig into the sides of my neck, close enough to pinch with every swallow. He slots the locking pin home with a heavy, final click.

He does not let go.

He leans down, his mouth inches from my ear. The stubble along his jaw scrapes my cheek.

"One tug on the chain and the spikes pierce your windpipe," he whispers, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm. "Try to run, and the weight snaps your neck. Try to brew anything that smells of surface treason, and I feed you to the brood-matron piece by piece."

"A charming domestic arrangement," I manage, keeping my voice flat even as the iron pinches my flesh. "Did you forge this dog collar yourself, or steal it from a kennel?"

Vencel’s dark eyes narrow. A flicker of genuine amusement crosses his rough-hewn face. His thumb traces the swollen ridge where the iron rests against my skin, surprisingly light, almost gentle.

"I made it for you the moment I saw your smoke rising from the karst," he says. "You have until dawn to distill twelve flasks of stabilized queen-gland pheromone. The supply in my lantern is running dry. If my mantises get hungry before the batch is brewed, I will open this grate and let them sort out breakfast."

He releases my throat and steps back.

My knees tremble, but I lock them tight. I will not give him the satisfaction of seeing me drop.

He gestures toward the baskets beside the trough. "The glands are harvested from the southern brood. Six hundred pounds of pressure to crack the casings, then slow reflux with sulfur salts. Erzsébet usually handles the boil, but she is blind and slow. You are supposed to be an artist."

"Erzsébet is an idiot," I say coldly, inspecting the crude glass retorts on the workbench. "The glass is warped. The condensers are choked with calcified lime. And your sulfur salts are contaminated with crude arsenic. It is a wonder your beasts have not eaten you already."

Vencel pauses at the threshold of the iron-barred gate, turning back with a predatory grin.

"Then fix it, alchemist. Prove you are worth the air you breathe down here."

He pulls the heavy iron gate shut between us. The iron latch falls with a brutal thud, and the heavy brass padlock turns. His heavy footsteps echo down the stone corridor, fading beneath the endless, rhythmic clicking of the swarm outside.

Silence settles over the forge.

I stand motionless by the stone post. I reach up with trembling fingers and touch the cold iron ring around my neck. The inward studs are sharp enough to draw blood if I turn my head too fast.

Four paces of slack chain. Just enough to reach the workbench and the stone basin.

I take a long, measured breath, letting the sulfur-laden air clear the panic from my lungs. Panic is sloppy. Aristocrats who panic in the Bakonyerdő karsts end up digested in the limestone crevasses.

I turn to the workbench.

The glassware is primitive, but the heat source is solid. I inspect the baskets in the brine trough. Inside, thirty slick, leathery queen-glands pulse with faint phosphorescence, weeping an oily amber fluid.

I pick up a crude iron scalpel from the tray.

I press the tip of the blade into the fibrous seam of the largest gland. The outer shell parts smoothly, releasing a sharp, pungent vapor of concentrated pheromone. My eyes water from the potency, but my hands do not shake.

The chemical carrier is unstable because they boil it too fast. The high heat denatures the volatile peptides before the sulfur can bind them. If I use a cold distillation with the crushed limestone salts stacked in the corner, I can double the yield and triple the potency.

More importantly, the byproduct of cold-distilled queen gland is a dense, paralyzing neurotoxin that attacks arthropod nerve cords within seconds.

I slip my hand back into the torn silk seam of my skirt, feeling the cold glass vial of caustic lye hidden against my thigh.

Vencel Szilágyi thinks he has locked a terrified noblewoman in an iron collar.

He has just handed me the keys to his arsenal.

I strike an iron flint against the charcoal burner, watching the spark catch. The blue flame licks the base of the copper alembic, casting long, sharp shadows across the cavern walls.

Let him come back at dawn. I will have his poison ready.