This. This rock. This rock within a rock, and all its tiny, weepy tears, was what they were going to fight for tomorrow.
What people would die for.
“Death hasn’t bothered you before.”
“Well, maybe it does, now. I know it does, you.”
“I was actually feeling pretty okay with just getting on my skin-ship and leaving.”
“Your skin. .” She stopped herself from pursuing a line of conversation too stupid to bear. “If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place. We had a hundred chances to leave, to take an easier job with better pay, but you chose to follow the tome all this way.”
“I didn’t, no. Something else made me come. Something in my head. It wasn’t bothered by however many people could die. I think it got a little giddy at the prospect, in fact. But I didn’t come here for them. I came here for it.”
“And you could have resisted it, like you have before. But you’re here, with me.”
“And the demons. And the netherlings. And the Shen.”
“And me,” she repeated. “But if you still want to run away, this is your last chance.” She clicked her tongue, looked up at the shifting stars overhead. “But if, just once, you want to do something that might be worth not running from. . well, I guess this is also your last chance.”
He turned from her gaze, sighing as he leaned onto his knees.
“I’m just having a hard time seeing the point in it all. We kill the netherlings, then what? Ulbecetonth is still under there.”
“Then we kill her, too.” She sneered. “I said we can’t solve this by running away. Violence is still a good answer.”
“How do we kill her, then? Whatever was in me, it killed demons. It kept me alive. Without it, I’m-”
“Not crazy,” she interrupted, edging over to him. “Not insane. Not listening to anyone but you. Everything else you’ve done has been for some voice in your head, some dream that haunted you. But now. .”
She lay a hand upon his shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze, and smiled.
“Now, whatever you do tomorrow, you do for yourself.”
He returned the smile, hoping she would think the tears forming at the corners of his eyes were the result of overwhelming emotion and not because she was currently squeezing a hunk of decaying, pus-weeping flesh that was his shoulder.
She rose to her feet. He took a moment to swallow a scream and followed her. They walked to the edge of the stairs together and were caught between stars. Beneath them, the fires of the Shen continued to burn as the lizardmen continued to work in silence. Above them, the fish brimming with the lights of their bodies continued to dance and sway in the shadow of the mountain.
“There.” Kataria pointed out over the distance, where the road slipped from the vast circle of sand and disappeared into the coral forest. “That’s where I’ll do it.”
“You sound awfully confident.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, her grin gleaming with her canines. “I’m me.”
“It might take more than fancy new arrows to kill him, you know.”
“Ah, yes.” She plucked her weapons up, stringing them across her shoulder. She took a single arrow from the quiver, a long, black-shafted thing with a nasty-looking barbed head. “Ravensdown fletching, barbed heads that can’t be pulled out without causing excessive bleeding.” She batted her eyelashes at him mockingly. “How did you know?”
“I just saw it in the Shen stockpile and thought of you,” he replied with a shrug and a smile. “You like them, I take it.”
He wasn’t sure if she was trying to appear amorous, seductive, or maybe a little hungry, but her gaze was hard, unwavering, and more than a little predatory as it ran up and down him.
“If we had more time, I’d convince you.” She slipped the arrow back in the quiver. “But I’ve got to go get my jar and get into position.”
He chose not to ask about the jar.
“I suppose I should tell you something deep and profound before you leave, shouldn’t I?” he asked.
She looked him over and gestured with her chin. “Go ahead, then.”
He drew in a sharp breath and nodded. “Ever since I was young-”
He made it about that far before she seized him by his collar, pulling him closer to her. Fragile as anything else about her was, the firmness of her body as she drew him up against her and pressed her lips to his was not. His arms found her tense, taut, trembling beneath him.
He felt as though he held a precarious grip on a tall mountain with nothing but emptiness beneath him. And when it ended, when she pulled away, he felt as though he fell.
“It was going to be boring, anyway,” she said, smiling as she wiped a bit of warpaint from his lips and reapplied it to hers. “Stay alive.”
“You, too,” he said, watching her as she traipsed away and down the stairs. After a moment, he called out after her. “If you don’t return, I just want you to-”
“Gods, I get it, Lenk!” she snarled back. “Riffid, if I knew you were going to get like this, I would have just let Inqalle kill us both.”
He glanced to the bridge, saw one of the many stone fragments broken from its edges. He resisted the urge to wing one of them at her head as she trotted down the stairs, if only because his shoulder was currently in agony.
Agony became searing pain in a matter of a few short breaths and one decidedly unmasculine squeal. He could feel his skin breaking, dying beneath his tunic, he could feel the blood and disease weeping from it. He peeled out of the garment before more than a few spatters of red could stain it.
He threw himself to the edge of the bridge, only narrowly keeping himself from tumbling into the water as he strained to scoop up a precious handful. He had only a moment to notice how it tingled unpleasantly upon his skin. When he splashed it onto his shoulder, though, he had more time to appreciate just how painful it was to feel the cold chill of the water upon the blackening rot of his wound.
And more than enough time to try not to cry like a little girl.
He could see his face contorted in the rippling reflections below, the screwed-up agony distorted into something even worse as he swallowed his screams, let his tears fall into the pool and lie on top of it, like they weren’t good enough to simply blend in with the rest of the water.
He shook, brushed, clawed the water from his wound. It fell upon the stones, gathered together, slid off the bridge to smother his tears and rejoin the pool.
“The water will not soothe you.”
Had he not been close to crying, he might have had the wit to ask how Mahalar had appeared at the end of the bridge and what he was doing there. But the elder Shen’s comings and goings and the very intent way with which he stared at Lenk from behind his hood were, at that moment, not the weirdest thing about him.
“It does not remember you.”
The Shen rose to his feet, shambled to edge of the bridge and leaned over, casually letting a hand dangle several fingers’ lengths above the water.
And, like a cat pleased to see its master, the water rose to the Shen. In liquid tendrils, it reached out from the pool to caress his fingers, running water over the rotted skin and exposed carpals of his hand.
Lenk cringed; this seemed like the sort of thing he would regret asking. Still. .
“How?”
“It was there. Ages ago. And so was I.” He pointed a bony finger to the storm clouds encircling the mountain. “From there.”
“Rain doesn’t do. . that,” Lenk pointed out.
“Rain touches the earth, is drank, is gone.” Mahalar bobbed his head. “Some of this water touches the earth. It flows beneath the mountain. You saw it in the chasm.”