by Sam Sykes
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 moisture, “-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.
Right behind her.
She whirled about.
And Denaos came to a stiff, sudden halt.
The Long, Slow Kiss hung, its metal lips trembling with his palm, a mere hair’s breadth away from Asper’s face. His breath hung in his throat, afraid to come out lest the blade move just one more hair’s breadth. Likewise, he refused to move back, to relinquish any chance he might have of putting the blade in the netherling’s throat.
So, he settled on his heels, steadied his hand, and looked to her face for any sign that she might move and give him the opportunity he sought. She merely smiled.
“That won’t work,” Xhai said, her voice grating.
“Sure it will,” Denaos replied crisply. “Just move her to the left a little.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
He had heard enough lunatic philosophy from the netherling to know that asking her to continue was something he would regret. And yet, a distraction was a distraction.
“You know that even if I put her down right now, she’s still going to die.” Xhai’s voice was unnervingly cold; a rare feat for one who could rarely be described as anything particularly warm or fuzzy. “Maybe I’ll stomp her head before I bleed out. Maybe she’ll be swept out to sea and drown. She’ll still be dead.”
“You do tend to have that effect on people.”
“It won’t be me that killed her.”
His face twitched: a momentary spasm at the edge of his mouth, involuntary and lasting only as long as it took to blink. But Xhai didn’t blink. She had seen how her words had struck him.
“She came to me,” Xhai continued, voice growing blacker with each breath. “She spoke of reason and fate and a lot of other words that mean ‘weak.’ She came to ask me if I was sorry. She said she had done it for you, to keep you from killing.”
Another twitch; surprise, this time. Surprise that he hadn’t wanted to kill the netherling, surprise that Asper had realized that, surprise that she thought him worth the effort.
“She wanted to know the reason for all of it,” Xhai said. “The reason why you hadn’t killed me. The rea
son why you would have to.”
“For her.” The words came out unexpectedly, crawling out of dry lips on a weak and dying mouth.
“NOT FOR HER.” Xhai didn’t bother to hide the snarl, she embraced it with broad, sharp teeth. “Never for her. It was for me. For us. You and I, we kill because we kill. There is no reason for it beyond it being what we do, what we know has to happen.”
Whatever semblance of logic the netherling thought this might possess was blatantly mad. Whatever truth she wanted to force upon him was forever marred by the fact that she was a killer, a depraved minion to a depraved master.
He could have told her any of this, if only to get her to stop talking.
“There are scars on our bodies,” she said, “there is blood on our hands. We left a long line of corpses to come here. And here we are, you and me. Two more corpses left. Yours or mine. . and hers.”
His hand began to tremble, heart began to quicken.
“She lives in a lie,” Xhai said. “Of invisible sky creatures and bedtime stories. She wants to think there’s a way for any of this to end without killing. Stupid, even if she wasn’t talking about you.”
But he couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop her from talking, couldn’t stop himself from listening.
“She can’t see the bodies you’ve left behind you.”
The woman wouldn’t let him. Not the woman before him, not the woman unconscious. The woman at the corner of his eye: white skin, wide eyes and smiling, at him, telling him in words without words through that great red slit in her throat.
Telling him that the netherling was right.
Telling him that he was a murderer and Asper would die, because of him; that she already had.
Telling him to look. To look at her. To look at Imone.
He did.
And he felt his jaw explode as Xhai smashed her fist against it. Overkill, he realized as he fell to the earth; it hadn’t taken much to send him there. And once he felt the sand crunch under his body, he didn’t feel much like rising again.
