“Die? No, human. We are born dead. Every Shen child is raised to know that his life belongs to the oaths we swore. We escaped slavery under Ulbecetonth to be made slaves again through generations. The oaths became hymn. The Shen below have been waiting for tomorrow all their lives, the time they can kill and die and be free of this. . all of this.
“I would have them live. I would have them have an island that was a home and not a battleground waiting to happen. I would have them find uses for things other than weapons. And that cannot happen unless you-”
“I’m not going to,” Lenk said. “I can’t.”
He staggered to his feet, plucked up his shirt, and eased it back over his head. When his vision was cleared of the cloth, Mahalar stood at the edge of the stairs, staring over his shoulder at the young man.
“I am well aware of what you can’t do, human,” Mahalar said. “I know you can’t survive without it. That wound in your shoulder is not the only thing that pains you, is it? All the agony it has spared you from is coming back.”
“This isn’t doing a lot to convince me,” Lenk replied.
“I suspect it might not. If you can’t see that you will die without the voice, then you cannot be convinced. But I was in the chasm, too. I saw you. And you know that Ulbecetonth will break free one day. And you know she will come for you, the murderer of her children.”
The elder Shen turned and began to shamble down the stairs.
“But maybe you’ll get lucky and die tomorrow. That way, you won’t have to see what happens when she does break free.”
Lenk watched him go. He watched the fire pits go dark as the Shen extinguished them and hefted their weapons. He watched the fish flee from the sky as the first light of dawn began to creep over the horizon. He watched the forest and wondered where Kataria might be in that tangle of kelp and coral.
And he tried to ignore the pains creeping through his body.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Dawn came timidly over Jaga, unwilling to challenge the mist that slid through the forest. And the mist, sensing weakness, did everything it could to smother the light. The result was something that crept over the island like a slow-moving tide, washing out colors in a foggy gray.
Those ambitious fish that emerged early to peck at the coral and the sands, and those opportunistic fish that emerged earlier to prey upon the former, moved like motes of dust in light. They were bright and vivid against the gray, living grafitti on something perfectly bland and respectable.
The island was perfectly devoid of sound.
The island was drained of color.
The island was a gloomy hell of serenity with absolutely nothing to do but sit quietly in a perch of sturdy red coral and wait for something to happen.
Summarily, Kataria thought, it was the perfect time to put an arrow in someone’s gullet.
Or it would be once he decided to come by. She sat nestled amidst the coral, perched upon the perfect spot. Just enough twisted red branches to conceal her with a fair amount of space to offer a clear view-and a clearer shot-of the highway before her and a fair amount of space to wriggle out when everything went to hell.
Not that everything is going to go to hell, she cautioned herself. Goodness no. It’s all quite simple. He’s arrogant, unaware, uncautious. He’ll never see you and he won’t know what’s happened until you’re gone. All that could go wrong is the extremely unlikely event of him. . looking up. Then you’re dead. Or worse, alive and at his mercy and then you’re-
Stop, stop, STOP!
She clutched her ears, trying futilely to block out her own thoughts. There was a time and a place for self-doubt and it most certainly wasn’t when one was about to try to kill a sexual sadist who spewed fire and lightning like a chubby child spews cake crumbs.
Especially when that chubby child was composed of hundreds of berserker, sharp-toothed warrior women brimming with jagged metal and bloodlust and quite possibly-
Stop it again, she urged herself. What did you usually do in times like these? Shoot something? Right, right, that’s coming. What else? Ask your friends? Gariath would tell you to shoot something. Asper would tell you to pray. That works for her, doesn’t it? Right. Good. Start praying.
She opened her mouth for a moment. When no words came out, the thought occurred to her.
Pray to. . who, exactly?
Riffid was the obvious answer. Riffid would have been helpful. Riffid gave shicts nothing but the skill and the will to get things done. She sent no boons and offered no miracles. Riffid would have let her shoot and be done with it.
But Riffid was a goddess for shicts.
Riffid was down in the chasm, where Kataria had watched Inqalle die, where Kataria had spilled Naxiaw’s blood, where Kataria had chosen to protect a human. Riffid was taking Inqalle to the Dark Forest. Riffid was hearing Naxiaw ask for the strength to kill the traitor who shot him.
Riffid would not listen to her.
And when-and if-she walked away from this, she was not sure who would.
For a long time, she tried not to think.
A long time turned into a longer time. While her mind was content to remain silent, her body was slightly more vocal. She could persuade herself not to think about all that had happened, but his scent lingered in her nostrils, she could still feel the tension of his muscle as she dug her nails into him, she could taste his sweat, his blood, his skin against her skin as he-
This isn’t helping, she grunted inwardly. Thoughts of him were as distracting as thoughts of the others and one invariably led to the other. So, as she felt the need, she attempted to empty thought and body at once.
Pulling her pants down and positioning the jar, wouldn’t have been easy for anyone else but a shict. But it was a common practice amongst hunters to keep their waste, liquid and otherwise, off the ground to avoid upsetting the prey’s delicate sense of scent and alerting them.
Admittedly, she had no idea if netherlings even had a sense of smell or if their noses were just there to be broken, but by her third filling of the jar she thought she might as well keep going. And once the tinkle of liquid stopped, she hiked her breeches back up, sealed the jar, and let it hang from the straps she had used to secure it to her belt.
Well, then, she thought, if only shicts do that, you’ve still got. . something.
She forced her head silent.
And in that silence, she heard it. Her ears pricked up, full of the sound of iron upon stone, alien curses upon lips. It began softly at first, distant clanking and distant roaring. And then the kelp quivered and the coral rattled with the tromping of boots. The fish scattered, fleeing into folds of forest and shadowed holes. The mist slithered away into the trees.
And she saw them.
They came one by one at first, a few females in ratty armor wielding crude spears. They snarled amongst each other as they used their weapons to pry stones and debris from the ancient highway, kicking them into the forest as they cleared the path for the purple tide that came boiling up the road.
Rattling, clanking black armor grinding against armor as shoulder brushed against shoulder. Spikes masquerading as swords held hungrily in gauntleted hands. Shields with jagged edges clanged in eagerness. Long faces curled up in jagged-toothed snarls as the female netherlings marched forth, their impatient, foreign-tongued curses blending seamlessly with the sound of grinding iron.
In teeming numbers, rows of black-haired heads, columns of twitching purple muscle, masses of iron and spit and snarls, the netherlings came in a slow-moving wave of flesh and metal, their thunder barely contained.