“Of you, yes,” she snarled back. “Because I hear the way you talk and I see you talking that way to people that aren’t there. So yeah, I’m afraid of you. And whatever’s wrong with you and of whatever it’s going to do if I’m not there to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection.”
“You do. If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be trying to do it all the time. I wouldn’t be keeping one ear out, listening to you talk to whatever’s inside you while I keep the other ear out for them.”
His sword lowered farther. He stared intently at her. “Who?”
“Them,” Kataria said. Her ears twitched, rose up. “The greenshicts. My people. They’re close. I can hear them. I don’t know how close, though, and that’s why I have to-”
“TRAITOR!” he screamed, taking a step forward.
“Lenk.”
Someone spoke. Outside of his head. Outside of his air. Outside of everything. Close, familiar, so much so it made him ache that he could only barely hear it over the din inside his head and heart.
“Don’t.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
The voices said nothing. None of them.
Kataria said nothing. Kataria did not look at him.
“Tell me how to make it stop.”
He tried to heft his sword, found it too heavy. He tried to breathe, found his throat closing. He tried to look at her, found his vision swimming.
“Tell me.”
No answers. No lies. No truths. No voices.
“Please.”
Only Kataria. Only her tears. Only her stare that he could no longer bear.
He turned away from her. And then, and only then, did someone speak.
“No.”
It reached out of his skull, into his heart, into his blood. It clenched at him with icy fingers, twisted his muscles, sent his fingers tightening against the hilt.
“She must die.”
He opened his mouth to protest, to scream, to apologize to Kataria for what was about to happen. But he had no voice outside his head.
“If you cannot. .”
His arm rose of its own accord. His foot turned him. His eyes went wide as he felt himself, his blade, pointed at Kataria.
“I will.”
Kataria did not back away, did not look away, only whispered.
“Lenk. .”
“Kataria. . I’m so-”
He paused, saw the shadow falling over him, growing larger.
And then he felt the stone.
It struck him from above like a boulder, smashing him to the road beneath him. He felt them: large, powerful hands pressed into his back, hopping off. He saw them: landing before him on five fingers, green as poison, walking away. And when he looked up, he saw the long, lean legs they were attached to.
From beneath a green brow, between ears long as knives and marked with six ragged notches to a lobe, two dark eyes burned holes in his forehead. From down on the stone, she seemed to rise forever, body like a spear with muscles drawn tight behind bared green flesh covered only by a pair of buckskin breeches. Her mohawk crested above her shaven scalp, exposing the black tattoos on either side of her head.
“Greenshict,” Lenk whispered.
“She betrayed us! KILL THEM BOTH!” the voice howled.
“Get up, Lenk! GET UP!” Kataria cried.
All of them were silenced. Kataria by the elbow that lashed out and caught her in the belly, driving her to her knees with a grunt. The voice by the sudden rush of fear that seized Lenk. And Lenk himself by the sight of two large, sharpened tomahawks sliding into the female’s hands.
“Stay still, kou’ru,” the greenshict said calmly. “I can make this quick.”
“So can we,” the voice growled inside him. It seized him once more, forced him to his feet, forced his blade to his hand.
The female smiled, baring canines that would look more fitting on a wolf than anything on two legs, as though she had been hoping this would be his answer. She slid smoothly into a stance, hatchets held loosely, as though she had been born with a blade in each hand.
Something inside him tensed, raised his sword, forced him into a defensive posture. Something inside him forced his eyes to search her stance for weaknesses, tender points to jam a sharp length of steel into. Something inside him smiled.
It never came to blows.
For as soon as either of them took a step forward, the road quaked beneath them. The rock shook, granite shards skittering across the pavement as something struck the stone.
Something below.
Something big.
It struck again, pounding against the road’s supports. There was a crack of stone, a groan of old rock. Cracks formed beneath their feet, growing to tremendous scars in a single breath. In one more breath, Lenk looked at Kataria. She looked up, reached a hand out, said something.
He couldn’t hear her over the sound of stone shattering. And in the next breath, he fell into darkness below.
“LENK!”
Her voice was swallowed up by the chasm, as it had swallowed him. Her reach was woefully short. And her eyes, tearful and useless, could not see him.
“Do not look, little sister,” someone whispered, far away and far too close. “Inqalle will handle it. Avaij will protect you. I will watch you.”
She heard him, knew where he was immediately as she looked up to the coral. Naxiaw stood, face set in a blank, green expression, arms folded over his chest. He watched her, impassively.
She could not think to send the Howling back at him. She could not think to scream at him, to beg him to recall Inqalle, to ask him for anything. She let him watch her.
As she stood up.
As she walked to the edge of the chasm.
As she jumped in.
SEVENTEEN
Asper stared at her hand.
Twenty-seven bones, seventeen muscles, five fingernails, all spackled onto a wrap of flesh and fine hair with what she had convinced herself was a grand design stared back. She stared at it with the kind of anticipatory intensity that one awaiting a visitor might stare at a door, as though her hand would simply open up and show her what else was dwelling inside it.
Her hand was not answering.
“What,” she whispered, “is wrong with you?”
No matter how many times she asked.
“Hurt.”
Fortunately-in the absolute loosest sense of the word-she had more than enough to keep her occupied from such thoughts. Nai lay beside her, unmoving but for her lips.
“Hurt,” she whimpered again.
Asper rushed to her side, as she had every time the girl had opened her mouth. But with no blankets, no water, not so much as a stray bandage with which to even pretend to be doing something useful, there was little the priestess had to offer her.
“Please,” she whispered, “not now.”
Except prayer.
“Just a little more,” she whispered, uncertain to whom. “Not yet. Not yet.” She received only one answer.
“Hurt.”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Asper cursed. She forced trembling eyes to trembling hands, looking from her left to her right and back again before shaking them. “Do something!”
“Hurt.”
Medicine was absent, Gods were lacking, cursed arms from hell were surprisingly unhelpful. Asper looked around her cell, trying to find anything that might have the barest chance. She found nothing but a pair of unmoving bodies. No help. Nothing but a single thought.
What would Denaos do?
“Hey! HEY, UGLY!” she screamed as she pulled herself to the cell door.