Excerpt: Ink for Thieves

In an instant they covered her body, trampling across her stomach and over her head, her hair tangled in their slimey mandibles. Guido thrashed and screamed, but the insects were relentless. She felt particular movement around the back of her leg where she was wounded, and she realized with freezing horror that they were feeding on her blood.
“Guido, keep still!”
Andros was there, although she couldn’t see him through the press of beetles.
“Help me! Get them off!”
There was another sharp pain, this time just above her hip, and another at the top of her arm. I’m going to die, she thought, eviscerated in the desert by blood sucking cockroaches.
There was a flash of grey and she caught sight of Brun-Sig briefly, his face lined with effort.
“I cannot kill the devils while she is underneath,” he complained. One of the beetles disappeared from view, picked off and thrown by the vigand. Another was thrown, and then another, but the beetles were righting themselves and scurrying back again, any sense of self preservation scattered by the scent of blood.
“Keep still Guido,” came Andros’ voice again, “Brun-Sig can’t hit them with his axe if you keep squirming,”
“He’s doing what?”
There was a thud next to her and a splatter of wet inards.
“Don’t do that! You’ll hit me!”
“Foolish soul,” Brun-Sig’s voice was flat, “you cannot die again in Aspic,”
“Yes I can, yes I can!”
Belatedly Guido realised she still had her knife in her hands, and using every last piece of strength she punched upwards and outwards. It caught one of the beetles in the very centre of its wet mouth- abruptly, its legs stopped moving altogether, and the ceaseless squeal stopped.
“In the face!” she screamed triumphantly, “You have to stab them in the face!”