of wood, frowning at the gaping hole between his legs. Definitely some work to be done here, no doubt, and it was work he hardly felt like doing. There’d be wood to find, wood to shape and wood to attach to the ship’s wound.
‘So, you know how to take care of this, right?’ Asper asked, tilting her head at him.
‘It’s not too hard,’ he replied. ‘I did a bit of work under a carpenter back in Redgate.’ He scratched his chin. ‘His name was Rudder, more body hair than flesh. Nice fellow, but a bit handsy when he tossed back a few. So long as you can—’
A sudden movement caught his attention and he glanced over to see Asper busily at work, altering her garments. After a little bit of tearing, she tied a flap of her skirt to each of her legs, securing the fabric with leather strips to form a pair of makeshift leggings. His interest was piqued and he leaned forwards as she rolled up the sleeves of her tunic to her shoulders, exposing firm arms. The faintest hint of a grin appeared on his face as she grabbed the hem of her tunic and rolled it up, tying it off below her chest and baring a slender midsection.
Suddenly aware of his gaze, she looked up with a suspicious glance.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But that’s quite a bit of skin to show if you’re just mending sails.’
‘You can knit,’ she said, scowling at him as she moved over to the boat and pulled herself inside. After rummaging around in a few crates, she produced a shiny, well-worn hatchet. Leaping from the vessel, she hiked it over her shoulder and glanced at him. ‘There’s wood to be cut. If you’re scared of demons and want to sit here and cry, though ...’
He bit his lower lip contemplatively as he watched her go. Truthfully, he had to admit it was a difficult decision: linger here, out in the open where he couldn’t be surprised by anything on two or more legs, or follow a hatchet-wielding, half-clad woman into the forest where he might very well accidentally strangle himself with a vine if insects - or demons - didn’t eat him alive first.
The decision seemed easy, he thought, until he caught one last glimpse of her before she vanished. It was funny, he thought, but he had never noticed the particular delicacy with which her hips swayed.
Thirteen
AN EARNEST HUNT
Forests, Lenk decided, were places where man was not meant to tread.
It seemed a logical enough theory; humanity built their cities out on the open, where they could see threats coming. In the canopy-choked gloom, everything seemed to be a threat.
What had begun as a tiny copse of trees had blossomed into a lush jungle, deep and green as the sea. And, like the sea, the forest, too, was alive. Hidden amidst eclipsing boughs and grasping leaves, sounds emerged in disjointed harmony. Birds sang shrilly, determined to drown out the thrum of insect wings with their agonising choruses. For all the noises, he couldn’t see a single living thing. Not so much as a flicker of movement in the shadows.
Sunlight filtered through the green, twisting net of the forest’s canopy, shadowing every tree that crowded Lenk in an attempt to keep him out of their domain. He glanced about warily; in the darkness, the verdant trunks, slim and black, resembled nothing so much as his quarry.
The Abysmyth comes from the sea, right? He asked and answered himself. Right. It’ll stay near water, then. He paused. But what if it needed to go into the forest for some reason? What if it had to eat . . . demons eat, right? He considered that for a moment. Right. They eat heads, probably. They seem like the kind of thing that would eat a person’s head.
If it had retreated into the forest, it could stand right in front of him and not be seen. Even worse, it could easily ambush anything that wandered by it; after all, how could anyone tell the difference between it and a tree in the gloom?
Simple, he thought, a tree won’t eat your head.
That thought brought him no comfort. Instead the same thought occurred to him each time he forced his eyes closed in a blink: he didn’t belong here. That thought, in turn, opened his eyes in a scowl at the pale figure shifting effortlessly through the foliage in front of him.
How does she make it