She looked up through eyes rolling in their sockets. For a moment, she saw him. And then she saw his blade, growing closer.
He fell upon her, sheer luck being all that he could attribute to the blade being pointed downward as he did. It was gravity that struck and drove the steel into her chest. It was his weight, leaning upon the pommel, that jammed it deeper. It was his exhaustion, his agony, his pain that made him stare into her eyes, that made him hear her as she whispered on a dying breath.
“Worth it. For her.”
“Yeah.”
It was Lenk who said that.
Whether it was Lenk who fell backward off of a corpse and staggered to his feet, whether it was Lenk who shambled farther into the darkness and didn’t dare look behind, even he wasn’t sure.
She found him after combing amongst the dead.
After stepping over the body of she who was supposed to be her sister, after picking between the skeletons, after following the blood and weariness and dead voices in the darkness, she found him. Standing amongst the dead as though he belonged there.
Talking to the dead.
“I can hear you,” he whispered. “I can hear you, but I’m just so tired and you really don’t seem to be listening to me. What’s that? I’m saying, you couldn’t do it. When the time came, you couldn’t make me do it. That’s my entire point. You aren’t as strong as you think you are.”
She didn’t turn away from him. Didn’t so much as blink. This was a choice she had made the moment she’d had the opportunity to shoot him and let it go, as she had so many times before.
“They’re not going to answer, you know,” she said.
He didn’t look at her. “I know.”
“You don’t have to keep talking to them.”
“They keep talking to me, though. I’ve asked them to be quiet so many times.”
“Then stop asking them.”
“Please-”
“Stop begging them.”
“I can’t-”
“I know,” she said. “I know you can’t.”
His shoulders slouched, his head bowed. When he spoke again, it was a voice that was cold. “More trickery. Can’t tell us what to do anymore. Betray us eventually.”
He was tensing, fighting something inside him, losing. She did not run.
“I know, I know,” he whimpered. “And that’s why we have to kill. Always kill. The others spoke of traitors, betrayal, they know. That’s why they scream.”
“You want to kill me.”
He said nothing.
“Then go ahead.” She threw her bow aside. “I won’t fight you.”
He spasmed, as though he had just swallowed a knife. He clutched at his head, trying to dig out whatever was going through it right now. The scream that burst from his lungs was something beyond his, beyond whatever voice he had spoken with before.
And when he turned to face her, his eyes were bereft of pupil, of white, of anything but a blue that froze over with fury.
“KILL!”
He hurled himself at her without purpose, nothing but hateful screaming and frenzied flailings. She looked into the eyes in his face, saw hate, vengeance.
And she did not run.
She merely stepped to the side.
He almost flew past her, would have if she hadn’t caught him by the throat. Her forearm wrapped around his neck, pressed against his windpipe as she jerked back with a snarl.
He flailed, clawed at her arm, kicked wildly. He collapsed to his knees, drawing in sharp, rasping breaths that grew steadily weaker. But even so, the fury inside him didn’t relent. Neither did she.
“Liar,” he choked, “lied to me, said wouldn’t fight.”
“I won’t fight you,” she replied. Her forearm tightened around his windpipe, drew his head close against her in an intimate hatred. “But this isn’t you. This is something else.”
She pulled harder. He grew weaker, his body limper. The fight left him along with his breath.
“And if you can’t fight it, Lenk,” she said, “then I will.”
When he hung limp in her arms, helpless and lifeless, she released him, easing him onto the sand. She turned him over gently and looked into his face. His face. Slack as it may be, it was his face with mouth hanging open, his eyes that were shut tight.
Him.
No one else.
Her ears pricked up at the sound of padding feet. Naxiaw emerged from the shadows, eyes steady, face calm. He looked at her, searching for something inside her. She looked back, offering nothing. Whatever he found, though, he nodded.
“That must have been difficult, sister,” he said.
She looked down at Lenk. “He isn’t dead. Not yet.”
“I saw. You used the lion killer on him.”
“It was supposed to be painless,” she said, skulking over to collect her bow.
“Maybe mercy is more respected in your tribe. The s’na shict s’ha have no use for it. We left it in our homes when we went to go cure the land of this disease.”
“Uh huh.”
He stared down at Lenk’s unconscious body, studying it. “The way he fought, his eyes. . I suppose it is the nature of the disease to mutate. Find an antidote for it, the disease becomes more resilient, virulent. This one. . he is something I have not seen.”
“He was a rare case.”
“Was.” Naxiaw slid his Spokesman stick into his hand. He raised it high above his head. “Turn away, sister. I wish you no more pain.”
“Me either.”
The air whistled. The sand crunched softly as the stick fell from his hands. It took a moment for him to realize what had happened. He still didn’t understand when he saw the arrow shaft quivering in his leg. Not even when he looked up and saw her drawing another one, aiming it at him and releasing.
It struck him in the shoulder. Now he bled. Now he knew.
And he screamed.
“INFECTED!” he roared, clutching the arrow in his shoulder. “You’re further gone than I thought, sister. Put the bow down before your cure becomes even more-”
“There is no cure, Naxiaw. Not for what happened to me.” She spoke without a quaver in her voice as she calmly nocked another arrow. “And there’s no such thing as no more pain. For anyone.”
“So you intend to kill me,” Naxiaw snarled, gesturing down at Lenk. “For this? For the thing that killed Inqalle? Your sister?”
“She wasn’t mine,” Kataria replied, drawing the arrow back. “I’m sorry she died for me. I’m sorry you bleed for me.” She took aim. “I’m sorry, Naxiaw. You don’t have to believe me. But I do.”
“Think of what you’re doing, sister. Think of what your tribesmen would say.”
“What they’ve always said. What I never understood.”
“They will hate you. They will hunt you.”
“I know.”
“They will kill you.”
“That, too.”
“Stop being so damn calm about it, then.”
“I can’t be angry. Not about this, no more than I can be angry about the dirt and the sky and the dead. This, what’s happening here, is not something I can help. It simply is.”
He snarled. “Do it, then. Kill me, as he killed Inqalle, as you kill Inqalle’s memory.”
“I don’t want to. And I won’t. Because you’re going to leave.”
“Leave?” He backed away, hunched over like a wounded animal. “Leave this unavenged? Leave my sister’s body here?”
“No. You can take her body. You can come back and kill me someday. You can kill every human in the world and however many tulwar, couthi and other people it takes to make you happy.”
She stepped over Lenk.
“But this one belongs to me.”
What passed between them, as their eyes met and narrowed upon each other, was not the Howling. But it was something. Something that made him realize, made her stronger. And for the first moment since they had met, they understood one another.
He turned and stalked away, into the darkness. “Your father would hate you for this.”
She lowered the arrow as he retreated. “And my mother?”