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
“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.
“Will there be a need for getting answers? Because I might like that,” the harbormaster said as Miron walked between them.