“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 get 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.