The Skybound Sea

SEVEN

So, anyway. .

His wrist twitched. The blade came singing out of its hiding place, all sleek and shiny and puckering up its thin little steel lips.

What exactly are you doing, anyway? You’ve got a throat you need to open, you know. Seems a tad rude to keep her waiting.

He pulled its hidden latch, drew it back into its sheath. It disappeared with a disappointed scraping sound.

And I’d hate for her to think me rude. I also hated Bralston to think me a mass murderer. It seems reasonable that I should be allowed at least a day between murders.

He twitched and the Long, Slow Kiss came whistling out, eager and ready.

You’ve killed more in a day before, you know. Pirates, frogmen. . you might not have the highest score, of course, but you’ve definitely been in the running.

He pulled it back in, silenced its scraping protest with a quiet click.

See, that’s kind of the thing: they aren’t points. Or they shouldn’t be, at least. You shouldn’t be trying to justify this. You murdered thousands, sure, but those were thousands of eyes you didn’t have to look into. This is different. These ones. . hers. . they’ve seen you. They know you. Too well.

Twitch. It came out.

That’s kind of what they look to you for, though, isn’t it?

Pull. It went back in.

They ask too much of you. If they knew what you’ve done-

Twitch.

And why don’t they? Oh, right. Because if you tell them, they’ll always be bringing that up whenever you’re in an argument. “Oh yeah?” they’ll say. “Well, at least I didn’t inadvertently cause the deaths of four hundred wailing children and the rapes of their mothers.” And, really, what kind of retort is there for that?

Pull.

Don’t be stupid. They’re far more likely to kill you for it. Then you’ll go to hell, where you belong, and suffer for all eternity for it.

Twitch.

Would they, though? Kataria and Gariath haven’t even heard of Cier’Djaal. They wouldn’t even care. Dreadaeleon is barely aware of an existence beyond himself. Lenk probably would take offense.

Pull.

Of course, Lenk also just tried to cauterize his own wound to see if it would hurt. Does his opinion really matter?

Twitch.

So that leaves. .

He looked up. The village of Teji was quiet. The Owauku and Gonwa milled about, not paying attention to him as he sat beside the hut that held his prisoner. Not a sign of pink skin or blue robe in sight.

Huh.

Pull.

She usually comes around just as I’m thinking of her. Well, I suppose that would get a bit predictable after-

“Hey.”

Ah, there we are.

He looked up, flashing disinterest at Asper as she stood over him. “Hello.”

“The others have left,” she said. “Just about half an hour ago.”

“You didn’t try to-”

“I did. Not hard. Lenk says he should be back in a few days, assuming all goes well.”

“He just gave himself a rampaging infection and fell into babbling hysterics for the thousandth time,” Denaos said. “How could it not go well with that kind of intellect in charge?”

“He was. . under stress,” she said. “I’m just glad we were there to act when we did.”

“You’re glad?”

“More than I would have been if he tried to do it on his own.”

“Well, naturally. Him acting like a feebleminded toddler must appeal strongly to whatever matronly instincts have been rattling around inside your pelvis for the past ten years.”

“Yes, I have a penchant for associating with men who act like children on a regular basis, apparently.” She glanced to the hut’s door. “Is it done, then?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m sitting out here, not covered in blood and not breathing hard. Because the she-beast inside just sighed and accepted that it was her time.”

“I assumed it would be quick. Cold-blooded murder tends to be, I’ve heard.”

“You’re right, I ought to just untie her. It’s not like she can do a lot after you ruined her arm, right?”

She turned a glower upon him. He shrugged.

“You wanted to talk about it,” he said.

“Not now,” she replied sharply. “And with you, not ever.” Her gaze returned to the hut. “Has she been given last rites?”

“Has the rampaging crazy woman that calls the Gods ‘invisible skycreatures’ been given last rites?”

“It’s likely more apparent to those with more sense than sarcasm, but last rites doesn’t have to be all about the Gods,” she said. “She might have last words. She might have a last request.”

“She likely has both, and I guarantee that both of them consist of ‘bend over,’ ‘sword,’ and ‘jam in your rectum.’” He waved at the door. “By all means, though. Go crazy. Maybe she’ll repent and cover herself with the holy cloth and you two can go deliver cattle together or something.”

She split her gaze between the door and the rogue, making certain neither went wanting for contempt before she finally spat on the earth at his feet.

“I don’t waste my time,” she said, “for any man, woman, or god.”

She turned on her heel and stormed off, disappearing into the village and scattering lizardmen before her. He clicked his tongue and looked back down to his blade, feeling it twitch inside its sheath, against his wrist, trying to come out all on its own.

Lenk’s not wrong, you know, he told himself. Even if she could never lift a blade again, it’s not like she doesn’t have it coming. The same could be said of you, of course, and it would be an insult to ethics if you didn’t cut your own throat after hers.

He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath.

But that’s why Lenk told you to do it, isn’t it? Ethics are not a problem for you.

He stood and let the blade hang from his hand as he turned to the door.

Not a lot of use in denial, is there?

He paused, ear twitching. He heard Asper coming, but didn’t bother to move. She roughly shoved him aside, cursing angrily above her breath.

“Quarter of an hour,” she said. “After that, come in.”

Shove past her, he told himself. When that didn’t happen, he insisted. Go in there and open the longface’s throat in front of her. Then confess. Then get your last rites and die. When he stayed still, he cursed himself. You’re not making this easier by letting her delay you, you know. This is not a particularly big blessing.

It was not. It was just enough to permit him the will to turn about and saunter toward the village, already thinking which lizardman might still have enough good will or fear of him to part with a drink. A blessing; small, ultimately meaningless and more than a little harmful.

Denial often was.

A spark. A jolt. A quick jab with a needle, just enough to jerk her out of the day-long stupor. Just enough to speak a few short words in a language only he spoke, only she understood. They flashed across her mind and then were gone.

“About time,” she muttered.

Semnein Xhai rolled her neck, heard it return to life with a satisfying crack. She tugged at her bonds, felt them tight but weak. Her arm was mangled, but it was her arm, and its muscles twitched and creaked under her skin, hungry and angry and other words she didn’t know that translated to “kill them all.”

Her ears pricked up. She heard voices. Real ones, this time: the weak and airy exhales of breath of words that she hadn’t felt in her head. One voice something quiet and meek and trying to pretend it wasn’t; the overscum’s. Another voice, something cold and hard like a piece of metal; his.

His voice, hard and cold and trying to convince itself it wasn’t. His knives, unashamed and bold and everything he should have been. His feet, hurrying toward her. His hand, reaching through.

No, not his hand. Not him that came through. And, at the sight of what did come through, Xhai remembered one more word that translated to “kill.”

“You.”

Everything about the overscum leaked weakness. It seeped out of her eyes. It shook out of her trembling hands. Xhai knew this because she could sense the fear, the hesitation that came from those who thought there was more to them than decaying flesh and dying breath.

The overscum knew it as much as she did; that much was obvious by the fact that she sat herself down forcefully before the netherling. She moved with what she knew wasn’t purpose, stared with what she knew wasn’t courage.

She was lying to herself, trying to hide a weakness that she couldn’t hide behind a stare she knew wasn’t cold, a stare she offered everywhere but Xhai’s milk-white eyes. She directed the fake sternness to a purple forehead, to a long chin, to a sharp cheekbone. Never once to the eyes; purple and pink skin alike knew the facade would shatter into tiny, useless pieces.

The overscum’s bones to follow in kind.

“I am here. .” Asper paused a hair too long between words. “To deliver you your last rites.”

Xhai stared blankly at her. This one wasn’t worthy of her hate.

“To permit you the opportunity,” the overscum continued, “to express remorse and penitence before myself and your-” she paused, catching a word in her throat, “-self for the sins you’ve committed and the lives you’ve stolen.”

Xhai blinked.

“If you’ve anything to say on-”

“Send in the male.”

“The-” The overscum stuttered, recoiled, looked almost offended. “Who? Denaos?”

“He doesn’t need a name. Send him in.” She tilted her head up, offering a sneer the overscum wasn’t worthy of. “You aren’t going to be the one to kill me.”

“Well, no, I’m. . I’m here to offer you-”

“I don’t need that, either.”

“Well, everyone is given the chance to express remorse.”

“Over lives stolen,” Xhai said. “I heard you. You’re not stupid because you’re wrong, but you are wrong because you’re stupid. Lives cannot be stolen.”

At this, the overscum’s eyes narrowed, forced shock into anger that drifted dangerously close to Xhai’s eyes.

“So, what? They simply gave their lives to you?” she asked. “Did they just find your utter lack of a soul so overwhelmingly charming?”

“Lives are given the moment you come out shrieking and covered in blood. Whether or not anyone takes it is up to you.”

“That’s insane.”

“I don’t know what that word means.”

“Figuratively or-” Asper rose, throwing her hands up and turning away. “No, never mind. I’m not going to listen to your poison anymore.”

“Then even you think you shouldn’t be here. Bring me the male.”

“NO.”

The overscum whirled. Eyes met. Crushed against each other. The overscum’s did not shatter. The weakness was still there, of course, growing weaker with each moment. It trembled and quivered and grew moist like any weak thing would, but it did not turn away.

Still, Xhai didn’t really get angry until she started talking.

“I don’t claim to understand him, what he does, or why he does it,” Asper spoke, the quaver of her voice held down, if not smothered, by anger. “I don’t claim to understand why a man like him even exists, but it’s not about him. It’s about the fact that he doesn’t want to kill you.”

Something hot and angry formed at the base of Xhai’s skull and chewed its way down her spine. It gnawed. Inside her head, making her eyes narrow. Inside her heart, making it thunder. Inside her arms, making muscles twitch and crave freedom, to crave the feel of a hundred frail bones gingerly in eight purple fingers and start bending and not stop until this weak and stupid overscum could smell her own filth while it was still inside her.

It made Xhai twitch, squirm, made her turn her gaze away. An uncomfortable feeling. She was netherling: born from nothing, to return to nothing, with nothing between. She had killed before. As a matter of nature.

That she wanted to kill this one, that she wanted this one to suffer and die over words, weak and stupid and moronic and filthy words. .

There was a word to describe what she was feeling, probably. Maybe there was a word for what she was going to do to the overscum as the bonds groaned behind her and threatened to break against her wrists.

“I shouldn’t care,” Asper said, turning away again to piece her stare together. “I don’t care. You deserve to die. He should kill you. I should have killed you back on the. . on the. .”

She shuddered, bit it back.

“And I don’t know why you’re not dead. But you’re not. And whoever kills you, it can’t be this way. It can’t just be with a sigh, like it was going to happen anyway.” She drew in a deep breath, held it. “So, give me this. Give me just one reason, one lie to tell me that, at some point, it might not have happened like this.”

Sunlight seeped in through the reed walls. Sand shifted under Asper’s feet as she took a hesitant step in place. Xhai stared. Neither of them offered an answer. Asper released her breath, lowered her head.

“So, that’s that, then. This was always how it was going to be.”

“No.”

Asper turned.

Xhai lamented, absently, that she only saw the overscum’s stare shatter for a moment before the rest of the face followed under a purple fist. But that was an instant, when confidence and coldness broke and left only weakness to be struck to the dirt, that was enough to make her smile.

“This was going to be easy,” Xhai said, rubbing the knuckles of her ruined hand. The bones creaked under the marred purple skin; maimed, but still offering cheerful, angry little pops. “This was going to mean nothing.”

Wide eyes betrayed fear. Not enough to stop Asper’s feet, however, as she scrambled to them and ran for the door. Xhai didn’t bother to chase. There was no need.

Not when there was a perfectly good, if slightly stained, chair right behind her.

Her hand slid smoothly to it. As smoothly as it sailed through the air. It exploded against the overscum’s back, sent her sprawling to the earth in a shower of splinters. She rolled, groaning, still clawing for the door; not dead.

Good. She didn’t deserve it. Not this fast. Not this way.

Not when others would want her alive.

Xhai strode over to her, placed a foot between her shoulder blades and took a fistful of her hair. The overscum’s shriek wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of her neck creaking as she drew it back. Her neck was close to snapping, close enough to let Xhai look down upon her bloodied nose, her shattered stare, the weakness leaking out of her face.

Close.

“But this. . this has meaning now,” Xhai said. “This is something that’s going to hurt. This is. .” She narrowed her eyes, gave a stiff jerk to the overscum’s hair. The ensuing shriek didn’t give her any pleasure. “He would know.”

The netherling’s arm snapped, brought the woman’s face against the earth. The dirt ate the scream, ate her struggle, ate everything but the overscum’s breath. She lay in her grave barely dug, unmoving. But alive.

“There’s a reason for this, too,” Xhai muttered. She seized the overscum by her belt, hoisted her effortlessly up and over her shoulder. “And that’s because Master Sheraptus wants you alive.”

She pushed the leather flap aside, striding into the sunlight. Those Green Things saw her, screamed, scattered; weak things that didn’t matter. Her eyes were for the distant shore, the blue seas and the dark shapes at the very edge of the horizon.

Black ships bearing kindred crew: those who had felt the same spark at the back of their head, who had heard the same call from their Master. They came for her. They came at his command.

As netherlings did, as she did, without ever asking why.

“Theory,” he said softly.

Dreadaeleon held up his hands to the light, inspected them. He squinted, trying to see the blood rushing through his fingers.

An erratic, convoluted mess, the human body was. The Venarium might call it a well-made machine to make themselves sound enlightened, but no one would look at the maps of veins and slabs of sinew and call it coherent. They might say that magic came from the same machine, followed the same laws, but no one knew exactly how it worked.

If they did, Dreadaeleon wouldn’t be dying as he spoke. “We acknowledge that Venarie follows rules, regulations,” he continued to the empty air of the village. “We acknowledge that it demands an exchange: power for power. That latter power must come from the human body, and we acknowledge that it does not come cheaply, hence the laws that govern its use.

“And acknowledging that the body and the Venarie it channels are one, we must also acknowledge that the body governs Venarie as much as Venarie governs body.” He smacked his lips, his tongue felt dry. “And in our hubris, we so often forget that there is much of the body that we do not know. Dozens of processes flow through us, the same that govern emotional flux, can affect the channeling of Venarie.

“Is it not true that a wizard using magic in fury is misguided and reckless? Is it not true that sorrow and despair can inhibit the flow of magic? Is that not why we value discipline and control? Perhaps it is these things, these. . these emotions that-” he blinked, his eyes stung with bitter moisture, “-excuse me, these emotional numbnesses that can cause the Decay, a stagnation of magical flow and maybe it’s that. . that same emotion that can cure or. . or. .”

His eyes were swimming in their sockets. His breath was wet and viscous, seeping out in tiny sobs from behind the thick lump that had lodged itself in his throat.

“I just. . I don’t want to die,” he said softly. “I don’t. I’ve got a lot of things to do here and. . there’s this girl and other stuff. And I just can’t die. And I can’t go back to the Venarium, either, and wait to die there. Just. . just let me try something. Let me figure this out and. . and. .”

He drew in a sharp breath. He shut his eyes tight. He bowed stiffly at the waist.

“Thank you, in advance, for your consideration of this theory.”

He opened his eyes. A bulbous yellow eye the size of a grapefruit looked back at him. After a moment, the Owauku’s other eye rotated in its socket to give him the attention of both. Perhaps he had stopped paying attention after the first sentence and kept one eye politely on the boy while the other swiveled away to find something more interesting.

Hard to blame him, isn’t it? he asked himself. Look at him. A walking beer keg with two giant eyeballs. His day is probably bursting with excitement. This was a stupid and humiliating exercise to begin with. To continue would only be-

“So,” he interrupted himself, “what’d you think?”

“Huh?” the Owauku asked.

Yes, exactly.

“Admittedly, the ending could use some polish,” he continued, forcing a smile onto his face, “what with the. . the crying and begging and all. But ultimately, the theory is sound and the conclusion is solid. Bralston can’t reject it without serious thought.”

The Owauku’s head bobbed heavily, not quite large enough to suit its massive eyes comfortably, nor quite small enough to convey the subtle difference between politeness and comprehension.

“So,” Dreadaeleon said, “what, you think maybe present the hypothesis more quickly?”

“Mah-ne,” the Owauku replied crisply, “sa-a ma? Sa-ma ah-maw-neh yo. Sakle-ah, denuht kapu-ah-ah, sim ma-ah taio mah lakaat. Nah-se-sim. Ka-ah, mah-ne.”

Dreadaeleon nodded carefully, made a soft, humming sound.

“So,” he said, looking up and sweeping his gaze about the village and the various green-skinned things milling about, “which one of you speaks human again? We can do this over.”

“NAH-AH! AH-TE MAH-NE-WAH!”

He turned around, saw the other Owauku rampaging forward, if legs that closely resembled pulled sausages could rampage. As it was, he came closer to rolling downhill than rushing forward. Whatever urgency was not present in his stride, however, was more than made up for in his voice.

“Ah-te mah-ne-wah siya!” he cried out. “SAKLEAH-AH-NAH!”

After the Owauku serving as Dreadaeleon’s audience caught the rushing one’s arm, all forms of comprehension that the boy might have pretended he had quickly vanished. The two began exchanging words, gestures, rolls of their bulging eyes with tremendous frequency. And yet, as alien as the rest was, one word, repeated often and with great fear, he picked up.

“Longface.”

Between the direction the rest of the Owauku came fleeing from and the rather distinct sound of someone’s tender something being stomped on, the rest was relatively easy for Dreadaeleon to figure out.

And he was off, heedless of his imminent death as he could be.

Which, it turned out, was not a lot.

This isn’t smart, you know, he told himself as he pushed past and stepped over the fleeing Owauku. Whatever the longface is doing, you can’t handle it. You’re dying already, you know. Did you forget? The Decay? That thing that breaks down your body and magic and blends them together? Bralston could handle this. You should find him. Denaos would be able to do it well, too. Hell, even Asper could-

He didn’t come to a screeching halt at the sight of the netherling, towering tall and menacing with the unconscious woman draped over her shoulder. He didn’t think to express his shock with a pithy demand that she halt or a curse-laden command that she drop her captive. He didn’t think about heroics or that he was going to be dead sooner than he thought or how nice it would feel for Asper to find him standing triumphant over the villain.

Dreadaeleon came to a slow, leisurely halt.

He watched the woman stalk toward the distant shore, heedless of him.

He said no words, made no gestures, felt nothing.

He simply flew.

The sand was gone beneath his feet, the power bursting from either hand and bringing the air to silent, rippling life. His left shoved against the wind and sent him flying through the air, coattails whipping like dirty wings. His right extended, palm flat, and struck with the sound of thunder.

The air twitched, an unseen wall of solid nothing erected by a tremble of palm and flick of finger. The netherling didn’t see him coming, didn’t see the wall that stretched before his palm. She didn’t need to. The power bursting before his palm struck her as a stone strikes a river.

And she, too, flew.

She cried out, some trifling and insignificant noise against the sound of the air smashing against her and the wind carrying her and the mutter of the tree that rejected her body with a crack and a weary groan.

Asper lay upon the ground. He knelt beside bloody, broken her, earth-stained and unconscious her. She breathed, she lived. Why, he didn’t know. He didn’t care.

He heard the netherling rise in the creak of bones, the bare of teeth. He saw her rise before the dent she had left in the tree, a spine perforated by splinters arching as she did.

Inside his head, there were words being spewed in a language he couldn’t understand, some things about logic, sense, not dying a horrible death under purple hands, that sort of thing.

Words were just noise now, same as whatever the netherling was saying to him as she stalked forward. Buzzing, annoying, worthless little words he couldn’t hear over the sound of his body: fire smoldering under his skin, thunder dancing across his fingers, ice forming across his lips to the angry beat of his heart.

He was alive.

Asper was alive.

Facts the netherling had strong and decisive disagreements to as she broke into a tooth-bared, fist-curled, curse-filled charge. As her eyes burst into wild white orbs, his closed. As her roar came out on a hot breath, his drew in gentle, cool, cold, freezing.

When he could feel the earth shake beneath her stride, he opened eyes and mouth alike. His breath came out in a cloud of white, smothering her roar, consuming her flesh in tiny gnawing jaws of icicles and shards of frost. She was swallowed by the cloud, disappeared in the freezing mist. But he could hear her: voice dying as tongue was swollen, skin cracking as rime coated flesh and shattered and coated again, stride slowing, stopping, ceased.

When all sound was frozen, he shut his mouth. The cloud waned before him, a nebulous prison holding a frozen captive. An impressive feat of power, one that would leave any wizard drained, much less one diseased as he.

And you’re not even sweating, his thoughts crept in, uninvited and unwanted. You’re still alive. No fatigue, no sign of Decay. This isn’t right, is it?

He tried to ignore the sensation of something scratching at the back of his skull. Thoughts weren’t important. His fading life was not important. The frozen body in the cloud, the power he summoned to his hand to shatter it, only scarcely more important. The fact that Asper lay behind him, breathing, saved. .

Because of you, old man, he thought, unable to stop. You’re the hero. You’re alive. You’ve done it. She’s going to wake up and see you standing over a bunch of shattered chunks of red ice that used to be a person and she might think that’s a little weird at first, but then she’ll know what happened and she’ll reach up and. . and. .

She’s going to wake up, right?

Something twitched behind his brain, an itch that couldn’t be scratched.

Maybe. . just look. . just check. .

He glanced over his shoulder. She was still there. Still breathing. Just as he knew she would be.

He furrowed his brow. Wait. . if you knew she would be, then why-

A loud cracking sound interrupted his thoughts. A second one interrupted his ability to stay conscious.

The netherling came out of the cloud, her rime coating shattering into pieces, her breath a hot and angry howl as it tore from her mouth. Her fist shot out, snowflakes and shards shattering in a cloud of white and red as her fist hammered his chest.

And again, he flew.

Like an obese, wingless seagull.

Xhai took only a moment to admire the distance she sent the scrawny overscum flying. Of course, part of that might have to do with the fact that half his body weight appeared to be his coat. Still, it was hard not to smile as she watched him sail through the air, tumble across the sand, skid against the earth, and come to a halt in a pile of dirty leather.

But it got easier to resist the urge when she glanced over her shoulder and saw the dark ship bearing her passage drawing closer. Another glance at the unconscious overscum in the sand was all it took to remind her why she didn’t have time to stalk over and finish off the dirty, skinny one.

There were, for once, more important things to do than kill.

She shook herself, brushing off the frost and the tiny bits of skin they spitefully took with them. She held a hand up, noting the tiny red gashes left behind. Tiny, weak wounds from tiny, weak power. “Magic,” they called it. Nethra was different.

Nethra was power. It didn’t leave tiny pinpricks. It destroyed. Master Sheraptus commanded nethra, she thought as she hefted the unconscious female up and hauled her to the shore. In his hands, it was pain.

The kind this scum deserved.

The ship was drawing closer to the shore. She could hear the rowing chants as the vessel crept forward like a many-legged insect upon the surface.

She stared out over the waves contemptibly as she stood in the surf. Their arms were as weak as their voices, their chants lazy and distant as they hauled their vessel closer. Weak enough that she could hear her own breathy curse, her own bones creaking inside her, sand shifting beneath a foot, a faint click.

Right behind her.

She whirled about.

And Denaos came to a stiff, sudden halt.

The Long, Slow Kiss hung, its metal lips trembling with his palm, a mere hair’s breadth away from Asper’s face. His breath hung in his throat, afraid to come out lest the blade move just one more hair’s breadth. Likewise, he refused to move back, to relinquish any chance he might have of putting the blade in the netherling’s throat.

So, he settled on his heels, steadied his hand, and looked to her face for any sign that she might move and give him the opportunity he sought. She merely smiled.

“That won’t work,” Xhai said, her voice grating.

“Sure it will,” Denaos replied crisply. “Just move her to the left a little.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

He had heard enough lunatic philosophy from the netherling to know that asking her to continue was something he would regret. And yet, a distraction was a distraction.

“You know that even if I put her down right now, she’s still going to die.” Xhai’s voice was unnervingly cold; a rare feat for one who could rarely be described as anything particularly warm or fuzzy. “Maybe I’ll stomp her head before I bleed out. Maybe she’ll be swept out to sea and drown. She’ll still be dead.”

“You do tend to have that effect on people.”

“It won’t be me that killed her.”

His face twitched: a momentary spasm at the edge of his mouth, involuntary and lasting only as long as it took to blink. But Xhai didn’t blink. She had seen how her words had struck him.

“She came to me,” Xhai continued, voice growing blacker with each breath. “She spoke of reason and fate and a lot of other words that mean ‘weak.’ She came to ask me if I was sorry. She said she had done it for you, to keep you from killing.”

Another twitch; surprise, this time. Surprise that he hadn’t wanted to kill the netherling, surprise that Asper had realized that, surprise that she thought him worth the effort.

“She wanted to know the reason for all of it,” Xhai said. “The reason why you hadn’t killed me. The reason why you would have to.”

“For her.” The words came out unexpectedly, crawling out of dry lips on a weak and dying mouth.

“NOT FOR HER.” Xhai didn’t bother to hide the snarl, she embraced it with broad, sharp teeth. “Never for her. It was for me. For us. You and I, we kill because we kill. There is no reason for it beyond it being what we do, what we know has to happen.”

Whatever semblance of logic the netherling thought this might possess was blatantly mad. Whatever truth she wanted to force upon him was forever marred by the fact that she was a killer, a depraved minion to a depraved master.

He could have told her any of this, if only to get her to stop talking.

“There are scars on our bodies,” she said, “there is blood on our hands. We left a long line of corpses to come here. And here we are, you and me. Two more corpses left. Yours or mine. . and hers.”

His hand began to tremble, heart began to quicken.

“She lives in a lie,” Xhai said. “Of invisible sky creatures and bedtime stories. She wants to think there’s a way for any of this to end without killing. Stupid, even if she wasn’t talking about you.”

But he couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop her from talking, couldn’t stop himself from listening.

“She can’t see the bodies you’ve left behind you.”

The woman wouldn’t let him. Not the woman before him, not the woman unconscious. The woman at the corner of his eye: white skin, wide eyes and smiling, at him, telling him in words without words through that great red slit in her throat.

Telling him that the netherling was right.

Telling him that he was a murderer and Asper would die, because of him; that she already had.

Telling him to look. To look at her. To look at Imone.

He did.

And he felt his jaw explode as Xhai smashed her fist against it. Overkill, he realized as he fell to the earth; it hadn’t taken much to send him there. And once he felt the sand crunch under his body, he didn’t feel much like rising again.

Not with so many people looking at him with eyes open and eyes closed and eyes glazed over and dead.

“Uyeh!”

“Toh!”

Iron voices were calling out, chanting. He could see the dark shadow that was the ship coming forward, oars being drawn up as it bobbed into the surf and toward the shore.

Xhai turned, looked over her shoulder. “My Master calls.”

“Your master is dead,” Denaos replied.

He wasn’t entirely surprised when she smiled at him like she had a very awful secret.

“Don’t,” he said, trying to rise to his feet.

“I do,” she said. “Because he calls. Because that is what I do.”

“Don’t take her.”

“He wants her.”

“You can’t know that.”

She looked at him intently for a moment before raising her arm: a twisted and mangled mess, it nonetheless bowed to her will. She clenched cracked and bent fingers, forcing it into a fist. The knucklebones and wrist bones and cracked skin and visible veins conformed to the command in a series of sickening pops.

“I know she did this to me,” Xhai said, voice growing hotter. “With whatever she has inside her. He will want to know.”

“He doesn’t,” Denaos insisted, forcing himself to his knees. “He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t care about what she did to you. He doesn’t care about you. He wants her,” he pointed to Asper, “her flesh and her screams. You know what he’ll do to her. You know what he does to all of them. He doesn’t deserve them.”

“He is the Master,” Xhai snarled. “It is his right to take. He wants her.”

“And you don’t,” Denaos said, “and it isn’t. You don’t want him to have her or anyone else. You deserve him.”

He wasn’t sure if she had even bothered to hide the twitch, the snarl that was less than her usual display of anger and so much more than all the fury she had shown him before. He chose to focus on it, regardless, his eyes upon her mouth as he spoke.

“You kill,” he said, “because of him.”

Her lips trembled.

“They die,” he said, “because of you.”

Her teeth clenched.

“It’s for you. All for you,” he said. “And he wants her. He doesn’t deserve her. You deserve him.” He opened his arms in submission. “And me.”

And her lips pursed shut. No snarl, no smile, no frown. Nothing she had in her limited repertoire of expressions could she offer to those words. Her eyes had never needed to show anything in their milky whites before. And so she simply stared, blankly, at him.

“Take me,” he insisted. “Leave her behind, where he can’t get her. It’s not about her. You don’t want her.”

The ship pulled up alongside the beach, groaning as a great black behemoth as it drew itself through the waves. Purple faces lined up at the railing, dead-white eyes stared down at him, at her, expressionless but for the contempt that could not be contained by death.

And when he looked back at Xhai, he saw those same eyes, that same hatred, moments before she turned around.

“I want her,” she said, “to suffer.”

And she walked into the waves, striding effortlessly through the surf that tried vainly to push her back. Through it, he could see Asper’s eyes fluttering open, hear her groaning as she rose from her stupor. Still too numb to notice Xhai hoisting her up over the railing, she flopped up into the waiting hands of the netherlings. Maybe that numbness would continue.

Maybe she wouldn’t even know how he tried to save her, how he had failed so miserably, how he had sat on his knees and watched her simply be taken away. All because he never wanted Asper to look at him like Xhai had.

Maybe that would provide him a momentary comfort when he thought about what they would do to her, he thought, shortly before he turned his blade on himself for his cowardice.

He heard footsteps scurrying behind him. He heard the shrill cries of a boyish voice too angry to know it was boyish. Dreadaeleon, he thought. Dreadaeleon had seen everything.

Maybe he would kill him, Denaos thought, spare himself the trouble.

As it was, Dreadaeleon didn’t even seem to see the rogue. He went running past, eyes locked firmly on the ship as it began to pull away in the surf. No cries for it to stop, no shrieks of impotence, no words at all.

Only Dreadaeleon, who came skidding to a halt just shy of the lapping surf. Only Dreadaeleon, with the blue electricity cavorting up and down his arms with crackling laughter. Only Dreadaeleon.

And the sound of thunder.

He flung his arms forward with difficulty, as though he carried a great weight upon his wrists. He flung that weight out from pointed fingers, the electricity bursting from his fingertips with its shrieking laughter. It did not sail through the air; it was at his fingers at one moment, and at the next, it was raking against the ship’s hull, sending smoldering splinters sizzling into the surf as it split apart the wood.

Iron voices could express panic, too, Denaos noted. Or at least, they did when the longfaces disappeared from the railing and dove for cover. Xhai remained snarling, defiant, even as she leapt from the surf and seized the ship’s railing to haul herself up and over.

Scrambling for weapons, maybe. Looking for bows and arrows. Denaos didn’t know. Denaos was having a hard time paying attention to anything past the curtain of steam rising from the sea and the boy in the dirty coat who turned and scowled at him with eyes glowing red.

“Well?” Dreadaeleon asked. “Why didn’t you do anything?”

“I. .” Denaos replied. “I don’t. . I don’t. .”

“And I. . don’t. .”

The boy shot out a hand. Vast, invisible fingers seized Denaos about the waist. The boy clenched it into a fist. The fingers wrapped, tugged at Denaos’s body, pulled him across the sand.

The boy flung his hand in an overhead pitch and shouted.

“CARE!”

And Denaos flew.

He knew this was the right thing, of course, to fly to the aid of a companion and rescue her from the same fate he had failed to rescue her from just nights ago. This was a good, moral thing to do. Reasonable.

Didn’t stop him from screaming, though.

He came to a stop amidst a crash of bodies, hurtling into the netherlings as they had plucked up bows to return fire upon his companion. They tumbled to the deck, a tangle of limbs and a mess of metal.

Denaos liked to think they hadn’t even noticed the blade slipped into their jugulars, at least not until he rose from the heap of purple flesh and walked away on red footprints.

He caught sight of Asper first, awake and wide-eyed and silent against the jagged knife pressed to a throat laid bare. Xhai second, impassive and dead-eyed as she clenched hair in one hand and a hilt in the second. Both saw him, both spoke to him, one with words and one without.

“This isn’t going to work,” Xhai said.

“Sure it will,” Denaos said, advancing slowly. “You hate her too much to kill her like this. You’ve got too good of a reason to cut her throat open.”

Xhai said nothing. The hard lump that disappeared down Asper’s throat, gently scraping against the blade as it did, as her eyes grew ever wider, suggested his confidence was not entirely shared. And still, Denaos advanced.

“You’re not going to kill her,” he said. “Not when you can do worse. Not when you need to show me there’s worse.”

Xhai narrowed her eyes. Asper let out a faint squeak, more than ready to lose a few locks of hair and not quite sure she wouldn’t just find the blade planted in her belly later. And still, Denaos advanced, smiling.

“And because you’re not going to kill her,” he said, growing closer, “this is where the last corpse falls. This is where you and I die,” he said, rushing forward, “this is where-”

Whatever he was going to finish that thought with, he was sure, would have sounded better if he wasn’t forced to tell it to the hilt that rose up and smashed against his mouth. Asper’s sudden leap to her feet and snarl of challenge, too, would have likely been more effective if Xhai had not simply jerked down hard and sent her into the deck by her hair.

And he would have felt worse about all this, of course, had his head not suddenly assumed the properties of a lead weight: dense, senseless, and utterly useless for anything but lying there.

“Not this way,” Xhai growled as she hoisted him up and over her head. “Not so easily. And not because of her.”

He was vaguely aware of her carrying him to the railing. He saw, vaguely, the shape of Dreadaeleon throwing his arms backward. He felt, vaguely, the sensation of air ripped apart as the sand erupted behind the boy and an unseen force sent him sailing through the air toward the ship, eyes glowing and coattails whipping.

“Should have killed me before,” Xhai snarled. “That would have been better.”

It was then that Denaos was reminded that lead weights had at least one more use.

Her arms snapped forward and he flew, tumbling senselessly through the air. He didn’t hear Dreadaeleon’s cry of alarm, barely even felt it when he collided with the boy and the two went crashing into the surf.

He only really rose from his stupor when he was aware that he wasn’t breathing. Everything was forgotten: Dreadaeleon, Asper, Xhai, whichever one of them had sent him into the sea. He could think only of escape, only of air.

He scrambled, flailing against a shapeless, shiftless tide. It was by pure chance that he found the sky and gulped in a thick, rasping breath. It was by dumb luck and a lot of kicking that he managed to find the shore, crawling out in sopping leathers and hacking up seawater onto the sand.

After a moment, as he balanced precariously on his hands and knees, it all came back to him: breath, sense, Asper. . and how exactly he had managed to fail so many times in one day.

It seemed as good a time as any for Dreadaeleon to rush up and kick him in the side.

“You useless moron,” the boy snarled, delivering another sharp kick that sent him rolling onto the ground.

Denaos winced, clutching his ribs and wondering when, exactly, the boy had found time to develop any kind of muscle.

“You know,” he settled for saying, “I liked you better when getting angry just made you urinate uncontrollably.”

“Why didn’t you do something?” the boy demanded, drawing his leg back. “Why didn’t you attack her?”

“Complications.”

“You just stood there,” the boy snarled, kicking at him again.

“Hung there,” Denaos said, arms shooting up to catch him by the foot, “by my throat, in the grip of a woman whose size is only rivaled by her philosophy in terms of lunatic things that should not be.” He twisted the ankle, brought the boy to the ground. “What about that does not sound complicated to you?”

“Why did I use you?” Dreadaeleon muttered, kicking away and scrambling to his feet. “I could have saved her by myself. I could have stopped her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Dreadaeleon said, rubbing his head. “There was an itch. . on my brain, or something. Something talking in my head, I don’t know.”

“Next time, just say ‘complications.’” Denaos pulled himself to his feet. “Makes you sound cleverer.”

Dreadaeleon didn’t seem to be listening. Dreadaeleon didn’t seem to be doing much beyond pacing, watching the ship disappear beyond the horizon, a black dot vanishing. Denaos followed his gaze, wondering, perhaps, if he had been lucky enough to be underwater when Asper had started screaming.

After a moment, Dreadaeleon seemed to come to a decision.

“I’m going after them.”

“Uh huh,” Denaos said, rising to his feet.

“They can’t get too far on oars alone,” the boy said, turning around sharply. “Bralston has a wraithcoat, he can-”

Denaos was up, standing before him in the blink of an eye. “No, he can’t.”

“Yes, he can,” the boy replied sharply, trying to maneuver around the rogue. “Just because you’re too much of a coward to do anything doesn’t mean he won’t.”

He had just found his way past the man’s bulk when a hand shot out, clamped his shoulders, and spun him about. He stared into Denaos’s stare, something harder and colder than had ever been offered to him.

“Think,” the rogue said. “And think hard. Bralston is concerned with a netherling that he thinks is dead and with taking you away from here. Which of those sounds like he’s going to be giddy to help you?”

Dreadaeleon’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How did you know he-”

“You’ve been rehearsing speeches at the lizardmen for a day now,” Denaos snapped. “Some of them do speak our language, you know, and they speak it to anyone who will listen.”

“He’d want to go after them, regardless,” Dreadaeleon said. “He’d want to track them down, to finish them off. They served a renegade, a violator of the Laws of Venarie.”

“He would, yes,” Denaos said. “Without you. He’d kill them. He’d rescue her. Do you want her to see his big ugly face when he bursts in to save her? Or do you want her to see-” he stopped shy of saying “us,” “-you?”

Denaos knew his logic had been accepted, as flimsy as it was, the moment he felt the boy shrug his hands off. He turned and stalked toward the shore, staring at the point where the ship had vanished.

“Then we need a way to pursue them,” he said.

“That seemed a nice trick when you flew off the beach,” Denaos replied.

“That was pushing,” Dreadaeleon said. “A momentary inspiration. We use magic to hurl things around all the time, turning it on an unmovable object would naturally propel us forward. But it’s limited and it’s strenuous.”

“You didn’t look strained.”

“That’s good,” Dreadaeleon replied. “You just keep contradicting me and I’ll sit here using my vast intellect to consider how to help Asper before she’s reduced to chunks of sopping meat. This is a great plan.” He rubbed his temples. “And they’re out of sight now, and we don’t even know where-”

“Komga.”

The resonant bass of Hongwe’s voice drew their attentions to the Gonwa as he stalked forward, spear in hand, with a trio of lizardmen behind him.

“Ah,” Dreadaeleon said, lip curling up in a sneer. “Thank goodness the cavalry has arrived, with sticks and rocks, just in time to be of absolutely no use.”

Hongwe gave a distinct snort of indifference as he stalked past the wizard and crouched down alongside the shore, staring intently at the surf as though he could track the ship through the waves.

“I came when I heard the longface escaped,” he said solemnly. “When the first longface burst from the caves of Komga, she brought down six of us before we were able to put enough spears in her to kill her. When the next twenty came, we were forced to flee, to abandon our families to their mercies just to save ourselves.

“What the island is now, is not our home,” he said. “It vomits smoke and fire. It is full of metal and there are no more trees. Our families are dead, even if they walk among the living, still. They are not ours anymore.”

“The netherlings have a base there, then,” Denaos said, raising a brow. “And you know how to get there.”

“I do,” Hongwe said, rising. “I have canoes to take you there, as well.” He turned and began to stalk away. “On the far side of the island. They will make it there by nightfall. We will arrive by dawn. They are faster and their lead grows each moment we-”

He paused, looking over his shoulder to note that neither human had begun to follow him. He furrowed his scaly brow.

“There is a problem?”

“Well, no,” Denaos said, “I mean, not really. .”

“It’s just that, usually you warn about the danger and the fact that no one has ever returned,” Dreadaeleon said, shrugging. “I mean, you make a big deal out of it, usually.”

He scowled at them. “This is my home that I speak of. These are my kin that I wish to avenge. This is your friend they have taken.”

“Oh, no, I get that, really,” Dreadaeleon said. “It’s just, you know, surprising and all. .”

Hongwe sighed. “Would you like me to offer some sort of warning?”

The two men glanced to each other. Denaos sighed, rubbed the back of his neck.

“No, I guess not,” he said, hurrying to catch up, “I mean, Asper probably would hate us for it.”