Chapter Four
The serpents had been quiet for a whole day. Too quiet.
They soon made up for it.
Master, shrieked Ootapi in Konrad’s mind, in the very small hours of the morning. Konrad had been dreaming, splayed across his bed in sumptuous comfort. The serpent’s splintered-ice voice interrupted a vision of pleasant strangeness in which he and Nanda sat on the floor of his hut-on-stilts out in the Bones, filling bottles with coloured liquids.
He opened his eyes. What?!
Someone is dead! carolled the snake.
You arrive bearing joyous news, as always.
Ootapi beamed in his mind, as delighted as a child given a bag of sweets. Thank you, Master.
Eetapi and Ootapi had yet to fully grasp the intricacies of sarcasm. Konrad did not trouble himself to explain.
What are the circumstances of thi
