by Samuel Sykes
She looked around the beach. “Plenty of people dream of warm shores and sunshine. What’s so weird about it?”
“Aside from the fact that I’m talking to a woman I’ve only heard in my dreams, who is standing wearing pure black on a beach I wasn’t standing on an hour ago, but upon which I now stand, hale and hearty, despite having wounds that threatened to kill me?” He shook his head. “I’m naked.”
“What, you’ve never dreamed of yourself naked before?”
“Not when I’m alone.”
“But I’m here.”
“Which brings me back to my original point. Why are you here? I thought these dreams were from the voice and that’s gone, right?”
She pointedly looked at her feet.
“Right?”
She cleared her throat and looked up with a sheepish smile.
“Kind of,” she replied.
“Oh, son of a—” He slapped a hand over his face, dragging it down. “I can’t even lie quietly with the threat of soiling myself from agony without something psychotic happening. I abandoned the voice.”
“But then you brought it back.”
“But then I got rid of it again,” he snarled. “I threw it away and I haven’t heard from it for a week … or … like, two weeks. It’s hard to keep track at sea.” He pointed affirmatively to the ground. “Point being, this crap is supposed to be over.”
“Oh, look at you,” she said, smirking, “all upset that a crazy voice in your head that tells you to kill demons isn’t making sense.” She sighed. “The reason you’re dreaming of me is the same reason you were able to call upon it. Him, rather. He never really leaves.”
“What? Never?”
“He’s a part of you. As much as you are of him. He invested his power in you and can’t be separated that easily.”
“I never wanted that.”
“Well, no shit you didn’t want that. None of us did. But he chose us, regardless. And we do what he wants us to.”
“But …” Lenk rubbed his head. “I heard other voices. The people in the ice, telling me things. But there was one that told me not to hurt Kataria, that it wouldn’t—” His eyes widened upon her. “You. You told me that.”
“I did.”
“But you said we did—”
“He only wanted you to kill her because you were getting distracted from what he wanted. You fought him over her. Naturally, he wanted her gone. But you denied him, again and again.”
“And now he’s … what? Sleeping?”
“To be honest, I have no idea. No one’s ever really done that to him. He might be gone, he might be away, he might be trying to figure out how to control you to pull your own testicles out through your nose.”
“So, what, you came here just to tell me that?”
“I came here because I was worried about you. I wanted you to be safe and happy. Because there really aren’t that many of us left and the ones who are tend not to live long. We’re either cast out and killed by people or murdered by demons when we’re old enough to fight them.”
“What, there are other demons?”
“Obviously. They’ve been around for ages, privately plotting against each other, striving to be the one to come in and assume total power over mortality. Now, there’s one fewer.” She chuckled. “Of course, that means the others just have one more obstacle removed and are that much closer to enslaving us all, but don’t let that bring you down.”
Lenk blinked and looked down at his feet. “So … what happens now?”
“It isn’t really something I can tell you. You don’t have anyone telling you what to do anymore.” She turned around and shrugged. “I suppose your will and your fate are your own.” She frowned. “I envy you a little.”
“Why a little?”
“Because you might die from your wounds and he won’t be around to help you.”
“Oh.” He stared at the ground as she walked away, down the shore. Then, a thought struck him. “Wait. I could hear you … and I could hear the dead people in the ice. I can’t hear them anymore, but—”
She smiled impishly over her shoulder. “I guess I must not be dead, then.” She looked up, as though she could read something in the cloudless sky. “You’re going to want to wake up now.”
“But I’ve still got—”
“Trust me on this one.”
And she continued walking, fading into nothingess in the span of three breaths against a sun growing brighter.
He awoke with a start, though only by habit. He simply couldn’t remember how people usually woke up. Maybe that was something he would have to learn again.
Unless he died from his wounds. Which still hurt as he rose onto his elbows. He thought briefly about rousing Asper to check his stitches, salve and bandage regimen. But a quick look at her, curled up in sleep with her back to Denaos and Dreadaeleon wedged in rather rigidly nervous sleep between them, discouraged him. Gariath hunched over at the rudder, quietly dozing above the satchels of fruits, fish, and water the Shen had sent them on their way with.
They slept a tired, dreamless slumber for the weary and the wounded.
Most of them, anyway.
At the prow of the boat, she lay, arms over the railing, head tilted backward staring aimlessly up at the sky. Only the rise of breath in her belly and the twitching of her ears suggested that she was alive.
She was not a beautiful sight, not ethereal or mysterious. Her skin did not glisten in the moonlight, though the beads of sweat upon her body shimmered. Her hair hung in dirty, messy strands about eyes lined with weariness. Her muscles were tense, her body hard and unyielding, those parts not covered in bandages or filthy leathers. Her ears were scarred with ugly notches. Her curves were small and hostile. Her skin, bandaged and not, was coated in grime and sweat.
She was Kataria. And every part of her was bloody, dirty, and beautiful.
And she hadn’t spoken to him in a week.
He hadn’t pressed her. Most of his time had been spent getting treated by Asper, arguing with Denaos over the sea chart, or trying to break up fights over who had to look which way when it was someone’s turn to make water.
In all that time, she hadn’t so much as looked at him.
But the woman in his dreams had told him to wake up. He was awake now. And she was there.
He edged over to her, trying not to wince with the effort. He hesitated when he drew close to her, then he opened his mouth to speak. Her hand shot up.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “You should hear this.”
He waited. She didn’t say anything. He looked around as her ears went erect.
“Hear … what?”
“Wait until she comes close.” She pointed over the edge. “There.”
A great shadow of some old fish, vast and with a horizontal tail like an axe blade, slid beneath the surface. And so close, Lenk thought he could hear it. A low, keening wail. A long, lonely dirge.
“She’s singing,” Kataria said. “She’s the only sound down there. I don’t think there’s any fish left in these waters.” She frowned. “Maybe that’s why she sounds sad.”
“Because there’s nothing left for her?”
And then, she looked at him with two eyes. In one, there was the way she had always looked at him, with the fondness, with the laughter, with the curiosity. And in the other, there was the way she had looked through him, with the fear, with the anger, with the cold appraisal of a predator sizing up prey.
Between them, there was something else entirely that she looked at him with. And he stared straight at it.
“Because something happened,” he said, “and whatever was supposed to happen, didn’t, and now everything’s changed. And she’s not sure what happens now.”
She looked down at the deck and drew her knees up to her chest.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
A long silence passed. The waters chopped at the boat’s side.
“What do you think you’ll do when we g
et back to the mainland?” she asked.
“My original plan was to get paid, take the money, and go hack dirt somewhere until I die,” he replied. “Maybe that won’t happen again. But I want to find somewhere to hang up my sword.”
“Liar.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’ve lost that sword a hundred times and it keeps finding you,” she said. “If you hang it up, it’ll just come back. You keep calling to it.”
He looked at it, sitting in its sheath next to the tome. “Maybe I’ll put it to better use.”
“Than what? Killing? What else is it going to do?”
“I don’t know. Guard duty or something. Something good.”
“There are only a few good things you can do with a sword,” she said, frowning. “And none of them involve what you do with it.” Slowly, her eyes became one, full of doubt, full of fear. “Do you want to kill forever?”
He found himself hesitating before answering. Of course, he didn’t want to kill forever. But could he? Even without the voice, she was right. The sword returned to him. And he never hesitated to call it.
“Say no,” she said.
“No.”
“Liar.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No, because you can’t answer it truthfully. You don’t want to kill, but you’re not going to have a lot of choice. What you are …” Her voice drifted off, she struggled to find the words, much less speak them. “You’re … I don’t know. All this and I still don’t know anything about you except one thing.”
He didn’t ask. Not with his mouth.
“I …” The words came slow and painful. “I feel … things.”
He blinked.
“Things.”
“And they make me scared. And they made me scared in the chasm when I shot Naxiaw to save you. And they made me scared when you touched me. And they make me scared now that I’m talking to you, because I’m not sure what they are and I don’t know what they make me and I don’t know what I’m going to do because I have them.”
He didn’t have an answer. No answer he could voice, anyway. Because everything he could say would only convince himself of the obvious: that she was a shict, that he was a human, that there were differences that went beyond ears and that he had almost killed her over them.
Because whatever the voice had told him, he had listened. Whatever the voice had asked him, he had agreed. Whatever part of him that had wanted to hurt her … was part of him. Not a voice.
She would be safer without him. She could go back to her tribe, tell them she had made a mistake.
“You should go,” he said. “Go back.”
“No.”
“It’s for the—”
“Sorry, but are you of the impression I don’t mean what I say when I say it?” She snarled, baring canines. “I’m not going back. And if you bring it up again, I’ll eat your eyes.”
“Oh. Okay, then.”
“Sorry, it’s just … I can’t go back. Because of these things. Not all of them are about you. I … maybe I am a shict. I’ve got the ears and I’m good with a bow. But there’s some part of me that isn’t. And if I go there, I’ll feel …”
She sighed, rubbed her eyes.
“But if I stay, we’ll never stop killing. Shicts, humans, whatever else. They’re still my family. They’re still people. I can kill them, sure, but after this … whole thing with the tome.” She looked up at the sky. “There was just so much blood.”
There was nothing he could say to that. Everything he could say would just be confirmation. Everything he might suggest would end in “you can’t stay.” And every whisper he could make would be desperate and end in “please don’t go.”
Strong men would say “leave.”
Good men would say “watch, I’ll throw my sword overboard for you.”
Wise men would say nothing at all.
“I … you … it’s hard.”
Lenk said this.
“Because everything about you is hard. The way you look at me, the way you talk to me, the way I am …” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s all hard. It was hard when I met you. It’s never not going to be hard and even when it’s not, it’s going to be painful.”
“So why do it?”
“Because I don’t have anything else. I’m not talking about family or something like that, either. I just don’t … know what else to do besides fight and kill. Even when I say I’m going to go to a farm, it all sounds fake, like something I’m never going to ever see and I can just keep talking about it like that makes me better for wanting it.”
She was looking at him now. Hard. Her stare was unbearable. But he couldn’t look away from her. Her eyes, even in the darkness, seemed huge. And the more he looked at them, the larger they seemed. They grew to take him in and they became everything, her eyes.
“But then you look at me. And then I touch you. And then I smell you. And there’s something else there, besides killing and fighting. And I want that more than ever. And I’ll do whatever it takes to hold onto it.”
He reached out and took her hand. He pulled her to him. She slid onto her belly, against his body, her back curving and her body sliding into the slope of his as though she always belonged there from the very beginning. He could feel the breath in her stomach, the scent on her hair, the fear in her eyes.
And it hurt.
“So … just tell me what that is. I’ll figure out the rest.”
There was nothing they could have said. Nothing he could say to allay their fears. Nothing she could say to convince him this was a good idea. Nothing that came on words that were too full of things that would make them be afraid.
And so he drew her closer to him.
And she leaned into him.
And he felt her breath fill him and she felt the callouses on his hands against her back and they felt themselves slide into each other as though they had always been supposed to do that.
And he closed his eyes.
And she closed hers.
And she laid her head upon his chest.
And he held her.
And they said nothing.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I MISSED YOU, TOILETS
“They were not good people. They were not moral people. They were not of particular fiber but for the sinew that fueled their often-misguided deeds.” Knight-Serrant Quillian Guisarne-Garrett Yanates lowered her head, placing a bronze gauntlet to her breastplate. “But they were, indeed, children of the Gods. And at least one of them was definitely a priestess, questionable though her choices might be, so that should at least earn them a little favor. So … you know … have fun in hell.”
She turned and flashed a smile beneath a tattoo under her right eye. The dark-skinned man with the bald head and the well-made clothes seemed less than impressed.
“It loses something toward the end,” Argaol said.
“Like what?”
“Like any semblance of sanity or dignity.”
“They’re lucky they’re getting this much from me,” Quillian replied with a sneer. “I doubt there are two people in the world that would give an elegy for a group of unsanitary adventurers, let alone practice it.”
“For there to be a funeral, there need to be bodies.”
“Several weeks missing? In that tiny boat? No word from Sebast or anyone we’ve sent after them? In the absence of a body, I opt for logic.” She glanced at the shorter man in the even-better-made clothes next to Argaol. “From what I understand, we have little choice.”
The harbormaster of Port Destiny glared at her. “I’m simply saying, as I was before you went off and did … that, that you have no bodies so you can have no funerals, so your request to stay in port without extra charge has been denied.”
“And as I was telling you,” Argaol replied, “it’s out of my hands. The charter doesn’t want to leave yet, so we don’t leave.”
“And where is the charter? This …” The harbormaster
flipped through a ledge. “Miron Evenhands.”
“Lord Emissary Miron Evenhands,” Quillian corrected. “You speak of a member of good standing of the Church of Talanas and would do well to remember that.”
“And said character is somewhere … out there.”
Argaol swept a hand out toward the distant city, its spires rising from the blue sands of the island and sprawling well past its boundaries into the ocean, a city standing on rocks and pillars carved by someone that no one cared to remember or honor.
“He went there a week ago and hasn’t come out of the city since. We checked the temples, the inns. He’s got some kind of sense that lets him know when people he owes money are coming, I don’t know.”
“The charter you signed made it perfectly clear that you couldn’t keep a vessel like this,” the harbormaster said, gesturing to the great three-masted vessel moored next to them, “without the fees.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Argaol grunted. “You can take it up with his bodyguard.”
“It’s been well past the date we agreed to meet up with the adventurers,” Quillian replied with a shrug. “The Lord Emissary insists on waiting longer out of compassion, but he is a reasonable man. Within a few days’ time, he’ll come to terms with the fate of the heathens and we’ll be on our way.”
“Then you’ll pay for those days and however many more it takes for you to wait,” the harbormaster insisted. “The concerns of Talanas or his emissaries are not mine and—”
“And?” Quillian punctuated the question with the gentle clink of a bronzed gauntlet resting on the pommel of a longsword.
The harbormaster eyed her blade carefully for a moment. “I’m a civil servant, Serrant. There is little you can do to me that life already hasn’t.”
“There will be no need for any of that.”
Austere and pure as a specter, Miron Evenhands glided across the dock. Tall and stately, he walked through a press of dockhands and sailors toting loads to their ships without so much as brushing against them. His white robes remained bright and untarnished by salt, water, or more unsavory substances around the dock. His smile was soft and benevolent, as though he were meeting his granddaughter instead of interrupting impending violence.
