That raised questions. He had enough of those.
Where is she?
That one, in particular.
“Lurking. Waiting. To kill you.”
That answer, too, was tiresome.
If only because he had thought of it before the voice had.
“Kataria!”
She had been waiting for him to call. She never heard his voice anymore. She felt it instead, in the tremble of her ears. Far away, right beside her, it sounded the same.
Not always comforting, but familiar. Distinct. His.
Ordinarily, “revolting” would have followed on that list. She was past hating herself for coming to anticipate his voice. She knew the feel of it as she knew the feel of sweat on her skin.
She felt it now. Not as pain. Not as pleasure. But a slow, coursing ache that moved down her stomach, sliding from bead of sweat to bead of sweat, clenching muscle, pinching flesh. Not pain. Not comfort. Not anything she had felt before. But she could not let go of it.
And that was why she forced it off of her now. That was why she tuned out his voice, shut her ears and her skin to it. That was why she listened to the nothingness, felt the silence instead. This was an ache she wanted to hold onto.
And to do that, she would have to save him from her people.
She shut her eyes and reached out with her ears into the nothingness. For only in the nothingness could she hear her people. Only in silence could she feel Naxiaw.
Even if he didn’t want her to.
The Howling had been weaker lately. On Teji, it had been a wild thing, roaring and raging inside her like a maddened beast. But she had been uncertain, doubtful then, yearning to feel a shict and feeling nothing instead.
But now it competed with his voice, raked at her with claws, bit at her with fangs, tried to coat sweat with blood. It might have been her choice that she felt Lenk’s voice stronger, that the roar of instinct grew ever more faint.
Never faint enough to completely shut her from Naxiaw, though.
Hatred. Determination. Compassion.
Fleeting emotions. Guarded thoughts. She didn’t know what they were thinking, what their instincts were saying. She didn’t know where they came from. She knew only from whom they came.
Greenshicts.
They had followed her to Jaga.
And they were close.
Close enough that, when she felt a hand placed upon her shoulder, she whirled about with canines bared and a hand upon her knife.
Lenk didn’t look particularly surprised at the reaction. Between the times he had tried to take some of her food and the times she had elaborately described how a scalping was performed, she supposed he had seen her teeth enough times for the shock to fade.
“Why didn’t you call back?” he asked.
“Too dangerous,” she didn’t entirely lie.
“I suppose that makes sense.” He glanced around the road, eyes slowly sweeping its stained ground. “Not too smart to go around scream. .” His eyes drifted to the ruins of an inner wall. “Scream. .” His eyes settled on the great gashes that split the inner wall into rubble. “Screa-”
His eyes rose up above the inner wall. And up. And up.
“That’s. . uh. .”
“A forest,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “You’ve seen them before.”
“That’s a forest of-”
“Seaweed.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but where’s the sea?”
Rising into the gray sky above, barbed leaves quivering, the kelp stood tall and swaying ponderously. That they moved without a breeze was not as unnerving as was how easily they did it. They did not quiver as a branch in the wind might. Their sway was fluid. Eerily so.
“Like they’re. . in a sea. Without water.”
“It’s also denser than a damn rock and it goes on forever,” she said, gesturing down the road with her chin. “Stay here.” She hefted her bow off her shoulder, began to stalk away. “I’ll go search for an opening.”
“Wait, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to go, too?”
“I move more easily alone.”
“Since when?”
“I always have. I’m just not humoring you anymore.” She growled, already stalking away. “Stay here and guard the supplies.”
She had taken only two more steps when he asked it.
“Why?”
Barely more than a whisper, the question was not for her. She should have pretended she hadn’t heard it. But he would never have believed her. Not with the big, pointy ears that drooped dejectedly as she turned around.
“Why what?”
“Why are you going off alone? Why do you keep going off alone? Why do you turn your back to me?”
She winced; not a good answer.
She sighed; a worse one.
“Stay here.”
“I need to talk to-”
“JUST STAY HERE.”
Sprinting away was not the best answer, either. But at least it got her far away fast enough to ignore whatever he said next. He’d have more questions and her answers were only going to get worse from there.
Like there’s a right answer, she thought ruefully. What are you going to tell him? “Hey, stay here while I go try to find the greenshicts I hung around with when I still kind of sort of maybe wanted to kill you. I’ll bring you back a snack.”
Her belly lurched into her throat. She swallowed it back down on a wave of nausea.
Not that the truth is much better. Go on and tell him it hurts when he looks at you. Go on and see what happens when you tell him you know he wants to hurt you.
She sighed, closed her eyes.
So, that’s settled. Running away was the right answer. You can’t help if it’s still a terrible one.
She looked up to see the wall of kelp rising taller, swaying slowly, freakishly.
Terrible and useless.
The inner wall was all but powder. Nowhere near as thick or as strong as the outer, it had crumbled to a thin line of shards that valiantly tried to hold back the kelp forest. Not that it was needed; the kelp was a wall unto itself, green and vast and utterly impregnable, marching endlessly along the road.
It was a sign, she knew. An omen sent to tell her that she should go back, talk to him, tell him that she was trying to protect him, that he made her hurt, that she wanted to hurt, that she knew he wanted to hurt her.
Riffid didn’t send omens.
But Riffid was the goddess of the shicts.
Kataria was a shict. . wasn’t she?
She sighed, rubbed her eyes. This was stupid. Maybe she shouldn’t go back. Maybe it would be easier to just sit here and wait for something to come along and kill her and save her the trouble.
Not likely. She cast a glower about the highway. For the home of the Shen, you’d think there’d be more-
Her hand shot up, thumped against her temple, trying to beat that thought out.
No! NO! Do not finish that thought. You know exactly what will happen if you do.
She settled back on her heels, drew in a sharp breath. The kelp swayed silently. The mist boiled silently. The stone watched silently. She released it.
There. That wasn’t so hard, was-
Her ears twitched, then shot straight up at a sudden sound.
“Oh, come on-” she snarled under her breath.
Anywhere else, it might have been a murmur lost on the wind and never heard. Here in the silence, the sound of a bowstring being drawn was so loud it might as well have been using a cat as an arrow.
Hers was just as loud as she whirled around, arrow leaping to string as she aimed it upward.
The Shen squatted, bow drawn on her, high upon the wall. Not so high that she couldn’t see the malicious narrow of the lizardman’s yellow eyes or the glint of the jagged head at the end of a black shaft.