by Samuel Sykes
“If you’ve anything to say on—”
“Send in the male.”
“The—” The overscum stuttered, recoiled, looked almost offended. “Who? Denaos?”
“He doesn’t need a name. Send him in.” She tilted her head up, offering a sneer the overscum wasn’t worthy of. “You aren’t going to be the one to kill me.”
“Well, no, I’m … I’m here to offer you—”
“I don’t need that, either.”
“Well, everyone is given the chance to express remorse.”
“Over lives stolen,” Xhai said. “I heard you. You’re not stupid because you’re wrong, but you are wrong because you’re stupid. Lives cannot be stolen.”
At this, the overscum’s eyes narrowed, forced shock into anger that drifted dangerously close to Xhai’s eyes.
“So, what? They simply gave their lives to you?” she asked. “Did they just find your utter lack of a soul so overwhelmingly charming?”
“Lives are given the moment you come out shrieking and covered in blood. Whether or not anyone takes it is up to you.”
“That’s insane.”
“I don’t know what that word means.”
“Figuratively or—” Asper rose, throwing her hands up and turning away. “No, never mind. I’m not going to listen to your poison anymore.”
“Then even you think you shouldn’t be here. Bring me the male.”
“NO.”
The overscum whirled. Eyes met. Crushed against each other. The overscum’s did not shatter. The weakness was still there, of course, growing weaker with each moment. It trembled and quivered and grew moist like any weak thing would, but it did not turn away.
Still, Xhai didn’t really get angry until she started talking.
“I don’t claim to understand him, what he does, or why he does it,” Asper spoke, the quaver of her voice held down, if not smothered, by anger. “I don’t claim to understand why a man like him even exists, but it’s not about him. It’s about the fact that he doesn’t want to kill you.”
Something hot and angry formed at the base of Xhai’s skull and chewed its way down her spine. It gnawed. Inside her head, making her eyes narrow. Inside her heart, making it thunder. Inside her arms, making muscles twitch and crave freedom, to crave the feel of a hundred frail bones gingerly in eight purple fingers and start bending and not stop until this weak and stupid overscum could smell her own filth while it was still inside her.
It made Xhai twitch, squirm, made her turn her gaze away. An uncomfortable feeling. She was netherling: born from nothing, to return to nothing, with nothing between. She had killed before. As a matter of nature.
That she wanted to kill this one, that she wanted this one to suffer and die over words, weak and stupid and moronic and filthy words …
There was a word to describe what she was feeling, probably. Maybe there was a word for what she was going to do to the overscum as the bonds groaned behind her and threatened to break against her wrists.
“I shouldn’t care,” Asper said, turning away again to piece her stare together. “I don’t care. You deserve to die. He should kill you. I should have killed you back on the … on the …”
She shuddered, bit it back.
“And I don’t know why you’re not dead. But you’re not. And whoever kills you, it can’t be this way. It can’t just be with a sigh, like it was going to happen anyway.” She drew in a deep breath, held it. “So, give me this. Give me just one reason, one lie to tell me that, at some point, it might not have happened like this.”
Sunlight seeped in through the reed walls. Sand shifted under Asper’s feet as she took a hesitant step in place. Xhai stared. Neither of them offered an answer. Asper released her breath, lowered her head.
“So, that’s that, then. This was always how it was going to be.”
“No.”
Asper turned.
Xhai lamented, absently, that she only saw the overscum’s stare shatter for a moment before the rest of the face followed under a purple fist. But that was an instant, when confidence and coldness broke and left only weakness to be struck to the dirt, that was enough to make her smile.
“This was going to be easy,” Xhai said, rubbing the knuckles of her ruined hand. The bones creaked under the marred purple skin; maimed, but still offering cheerful, angry little pops. “This was going to mean nothing.”
Wide eyes betrayed fear. Not enough to stop Asper’s feet, however, as she scrambled to them and ran for the door. Xhai didn’t bother to chase. There was no need.
Not when there was a perfectly good, if slightly stained, chair right behind her.
Her hand slid smoothly to it. As smoothly as it sailed through the air. It exploded against the overscum’s back, sent her sprawling to the earth in a shower of splinters. She rolled, groaning, still clawing for the door; not dead.
Good. She didn’t deserve it. Not this fast. Not this way.
Not when others would want her alive.
Xhai strode over to her, placed a foot between her shoulder blades and took a fistful of her hair. The overscum’s shriek wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of her neck creaking as she drew it back. Her neck was close to snapping, close enough to let Xhai look down upon her bloodied nose, her shattered stare, the weakness leaking out of her face.
Close.
“But this … this has meaning now,” Xhai said. “This is something that’s going to hurt. This is …” She narrowed her eyes, gave a stiff jerk to the overscum’s hair. The ensuing shriek didn’t give her any pleasure. “He would know.”
The netherling’s arm snapped, brought the woman’s face against the earth. The dirt ate the scream, ate her struggle, ate everything but the overscum’s breath. She lay in her grave barely dug, unmoving. But alive.
“There’s a reason for this, too,” Xhai muttered. She seized the overscum by her belt, hoisted her effortlessly up and over her shoulder. “And that’s because Master Sheraptus wants you alive.”
She pushed the leather flap aside, striding into the sunlight. Those Green Things saw her, screamed, scattered; weak things that didn’t matter. Her eyes were for the distant shore, the blue seas and the dark shapes at the very edge of the horizon.
Black ships bearing kindred crew: those who had felt the same spark at the back of their head, who had heard the same call from their Master. They came for her. They came at his command.
As netherlings did, as she did, without ever asking why.
“Theory,” he said softly.
Dreadaeleon held up his hands to the light, inspected them. He squinted, trying to see the blood rushing through his fingers.
An erratic, convoluted mess, the human body was. The Venarium might call it a well-made machine to make themselves sound enlightened, but no one would look at the maps of veins and slabs of sinew and call it coherent. They might say that magic came from the same machine, followed the same laws, but no one knew exactly how it worked.
If they did, Dreadaeleon wouldn’t be dying as he spoke.
“We acknowledge that Venarie follows rules, regulations,” he continued to the empty air of the village. “We acknowledge that it demands an exchange: power for power. That latter power must come from the human body, and we acknowledge that it does not come cheaply, hence the laws that govern its use.
“And acknowledging that the body and the Venarie it channels are one, we must also acknowledge that the body governs Venarie as much as Venarie governs body.” He smacked his lips, his tongue felt dry. “And in our hubris, we so often forget that there is much of the body that we do not know. Dozens of processes flow through us, the same that govern emotional flux, can affect the channeling of Venarie.
“Is it not true that a wizard using magic in fury is misguided and reckless? Is it not true that sorrow and despair can inhibit the flow of magic? Is that not why we value discipline and control? Perhaps it is these things, these … these emotions that—” he blinked, his eyes stung with bitter mois
ture, “—excuse me, these emotional numbnesses that can cause the Decay, a stagnation of magical flow and maybe it’s that … that same emotion that can cure or … or …”
His eyes were swimming in their sockets. His breath was wet and viscous, seeping out in tiny sobs from behind the thick lump that had lodged itself in his throat.
“I just … I don’t want to die,” he said softly. “I don’t. I’ve got a lot of things to do here and … there’s this girl and other stuff. And I just can’t die. And I can’t go back to the Venarium, either, and wait to die there. Just … just let me try something. Let me figure this out and … and …”
He drew in a sharp breath. He shut his eyes tight. He bowed stiffly at the waist.
“Thank you, in advance, for your consideration of this theory.”
He opened his eyes. A bulbous yellow eye the size of a grapefruit looked back at him. After a moment, the Owauku’s other eye rotated in its socket to give him the attention of both. Perhaps he had stopped paying attention after the first sentence and kept one eye politely on the boy while the other swiveled away to find something more interesting.
Hard to blame him, isn’t it? he asked himself. Look at him. A walking beer keg with two giant eyeballs. His day is probably bursting with excitement. This was a stupid and humiliating exercise to begin with. To continue would only be—
“So,” he interrupted himself, “what’d you think?”
“Huh?” the Owauku asked.
Yes, exactly.
“Admittedly, the ending could use some polish,” he continued, forcing a smile onto his face, “what with the … the crying and begging and all. But ultimately, the theory is sound and the conclusion is solid. Bralston can’t reject it without serious thought.”
The Owauku’s head bobbed heavily, not quite large enough to suit its massive eyes comfortably, nor quite small enough to convey the subtle difference between politeness and comprehension.
“So,” Dreadaeleon said, “what, you think maybe present the hypothesis more quickly?”
“Mah-ne,” the Owauku replied crisply, “sa-a ma? Sa-ma ah-maw-neh yo. Sakle-ah, denuht kapu-ah-ah, sim ma-ah taio mah lakaat. Nah-se-sim. Ka-ah, mah-ne.”
Dreadaeleon nodded carefully, made a soft, humming sound.
“So,” he said, looking up and sweeping his gaze about the village and the various green-skinned things milling about, “which one of you speaks human again? We can do this over.”
“NAH-AH! AH-TE MAH-NE-WAH!”
He turned around, saw the other Owauku rampaging forward, if legs that closely resembled pulled sausages could rampage. As it was, he came closer to rolling downhill than rushing forward. Whatever urgency was not present in his stride, however, was more than made up for in his voice.
“Ah-te mah-ne-wah siya!” he cried out. “SAKLEAH-AH-NAH!”
After the Owauku serving as Dreadaeleon’s audience caught the rushing one’s arm, all forms of comprehension that the boy might have pretended he had quickly vanished. The two began exchanging words, gestures, rolls of their bulging eyes with tremendous frequency. And yet, as alien as the rest was, one word, repeated often and with great fear, he picked up.
“Longface.”
Between the direction the rest of the Owauku came fleeing from and the rather distinct sound of someone’s tender something being stomped on, the rest was relatively easy for Dreadaeleon to figure out.
And he was off, heedless of his imminent death as he could be.
Which, it turned out, was not a lot.
This isn’t smart, you know, he told himself as he pushed past and stepped over the fleeing Owauku. Whatever the longface is doing, you can’t handle it. You’re dying already, you know. Did you forget? The Decay? That thing that breaks down your body and magic and blends them together? Bralston could handle this. You should find him. Denaos would be able to do it well, too. Hell, even Asper could—
He didn’t come to a screeching halt at the sight of the netherling, towering tall and menacing with the unconscious woman draped over her shoulder. He didn’t think to express his shock with a pithy demand that she halt or a curse-laden command that she drop her captive. He didn’t think about heroics or that he was going to be dead sooner than he thought or how nice it would feel for Asper to find him standing triumphant over the villain.
Dreadaeleon came to a slow, leisurely halt.
He watched the woman stalk toward the distant shore, heedless of him.
He said no words, made no gestures, felt nothing.
He simply flew.
The sand was gone beneath his feet, the power bursting from either hand and bringing the air to silent, rippling life. His left shoved against the wind and sent him flying through the air, coattails whipping like dirty wings. His right extended, palm flat, and struck with the sound of thunder.
The air twitched, an unseen wall of solid nothing erected by a tremble of palm and flick of finger. The netherling didn’t see him coming, didn’t see the wall that stretched before his palm. She didn’t need to. The power bursting before his palm struck her as a stone strikes a river.
And she, too, flew.
She cried out, some trifling and insignificant noise against the sound of the air smashing against her and the wind carrying her and the mutter of the tree that rejected her body with a crack and a weary groan.
Asper lay upon the ground. He knelt beside bloody, broken her, earth-stained and unconscious her. She breathed, she lived. Why, he didn’t know. He didn’t care.
He heard the netherling rise in the creak of bones, the bare of teeth. He saw her rise before the dent she had left in the tree, a spine perforated by splinters arching as she did.
Inside his head, there were words being spewed in a language he couldn’t understand, some things about logic, sense, not dying a horrible death under purple hands, that sort of thing.
Words were just noise now, same as whatever the netherling was saying to him as she stalked forward. Buzzing, annoying, worthless little words he couldn’t hear over the sound of his body: fire smoldering under his skin, thunder dancing across his fingers, ice forming across his lips to the angry beat of his heart.
He was alive.
Asper was alive.
Facts the netherling had strong and decisive disagreements to as she broke into a tooth-bared, fist-curled, curse-filled charge. As her eyes burst into wild white orbs, his closed. As her roar came out on a hot breath, his drew in gentle, cool, cold, freezing.
When he could feel the earth shake beneath her stride, he opened eyes and mouth alike. His breath came out in a cloud of white, smothering her roar, consuming her flesh in tiny gnawing jaws of icicles and shards of frost. She was swallowed by the cloud, disappeared in the freezing mist. But he could hear her: voice dying as tongue was swollen, skin cracking as rime coated flesh and shattered and coated again, stride slowing, stopping, ceased.
When all sound was frozen, he shut his mouth. The cloud waned before him, a nebulous prison holding a frozen captive. An impressive feat of power, one that would leave any wizard drained, much less one diseased as he.
And you’re not even sweating, his thoughts crept in, uninvited and unwanted. You’re still alive. No fatigue, no sign of Decay. This isn’t right, is it?
He tried to ignore the sensation of something scratching at the back of his skull. Thoughts weren’t important. His fading life was not important. The frozen body in the cloud, the power he summoned to his hand to shatter it, only scarcely more important. The fact that Asper lay behind him, breathing, saved …
Because of you, old man, he thought, unable to stop. You’re the hero. You’re alive. You’ve done it. She’s going to wake up and see you standing over a bunch of shattered chunks of red ice that used to be a person and she might think that’s a little weird at first, but then she’ll know what happened and she’ll reach up and … and.…
She’s going to wake up, right?
Something twitched behind his brain, an itch that couldn’t
be scratched.
Maybe … just look … just check …
He glanced over his shoulder. She was still there. Still breathing. Just as he knew she would be.
He furrowed his brow. Wait … if you knew she would be, then why—
A loud cracking sound interrupted his thoughts. A second one interrupted his ability to stay conscious.
The netherling came out of the cloud, her rime coating shattering into pieces, her breath a hot and angry howl as it tore from her mouth. Her fist shot out, snowflakes and shards shattering in a cloud of white and red as her fist hammered his chest.
And again, he flew.
Like an obese, wingless seagull.
Xhai took only a moment to admire the distance she sent the scrawny overscum flying. Of course, part of that might have to do with the fact that half his body weight appeared to be his coat. Still, it was hard not to smile as she watched him sail through the air, tumble across the sand, skid against the earth, and come to a halt in a pile of dirty leather.
But it got easier to resist the urge when she glanced over her shoulder and saw the dark ship bearing her passage drawing closer. Another glance at the unconscious overscum in the sand was all it took to remind her why she didn’t have time to stalk over and finish off the dirty, skinny one.
There were, for once, more important things to do than kill.
She shook herself, brushing off the frost and the tiny bits of skin they spitefully took with them. She held a hand up, noting the tiny red gashes left behind. Tiny, weak wounds from tiny, weak power. “Magic,” they called it. Nethra was different.
Nethra was power. It didn’t leave tiny pinpricks. It destroyed. Master Sheraptus commanded nethra, she thought as she hefted the unconscious female up and hauled her to the shore. In his hands, it was pain.
The kind this scum deserved.
The ship was drawing closer to the shore. She could hear the rowing chants as the vessel crept forward like a many-legged insect upon the surface.
She stared out over the waves contemptibly as she stood in the surf. Their arms were as weak as their voices, their chants lazy and distant as they hauled their vessel closer. Weak enough that she could hear her own breathy curse, her own bones creaking inside her, sand shifting beneath a foot, a faint click.
