the centre of the corridor, noting grimly the Abysmyth corpse striped by sizzling green lacerations. Quietly, he looked her over, frowning at the bruise upon her flank, the cuts criss-crossing her pale skin, the dried trail of blood under her nose.
‘How was your day?’ he asked.
She sniffed a little. ‘Pleasant.’
‘So long as you kept yourself occupied.’ He took a step forwards, then winced to a halt. Smiling sheepishly, he extended his arm to her. ‘Help me?’
‘Help you?’ She gestured to her own wreck of a body. ‘I fought a hulking, purple-skinned white-haired man-woman! ’
He patted the severed head at his belt. ‘I took the skull off a three-headed shark-lady.’
‘She kicked me,’ Kataria said, gesturing to the long bruise running down her flank, ‘might’ve broken my ribs, too. This was all after I stabbed her.’
‘Yeah? Well, she . . .’ Lenk looked at the head disparagingly. ‘She yelled at me.’
Kataria stared at him blankly. He coughed.
‘Really loudly.’
She pursed her lips. He sighed and offered his shoulder to her.
‘Fine, get on.’
‘No.’ She took his arm instead, draping it over her shoulder. ‘You’d probably soil yourself with the effort, anyway.’ She grunted, bolstering him. ‘You owe me, though.’
‘I’d offer my blood, if I hadn’t left it behind.’ He chuckled, then winced. ‘It hurts to laugh.’
‘Then stop telling terrible jokes.’ She guided him down the corridor. ‘Denaos lived.’
‘Pity,’ he replied. ‘And the others?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Possibly what?’
‘Either.’
He squeezed her hand and she froze. His grip was still warm.
‘You’re alive,’ he whispered, the faintest edge of hysteria in his voice.
‘I am,’ she replied in a voice just as soft.
‘And you’re still here.’
She hesitated, looked down at the ground and frowned.
‘Yeah . . . I know.’
‘I didn’t think—’
‘Don’t ruin it by starting now.’
And so they hobbled in silence until they reached the water’s edge. There they stopped, there they stared at themselves in the gloom.
The liquid seemed slightly less oppressive now, the air a bit cleaner, if tinged by a distant stench of burning. Kataria glimpsed Lenk’s reflection in the water as it twisted and writhed. Odd, she thought, but as distorted as it was, she could still pick out his features, his silver hair and his blue eyes.
What comfort she took in that was lost the moment she spied her own reflection, however. The creature of pale skin and green eyes stared back up at her, twisting, contorting and fading. She frowned, for even as her reflection re-formed, she still didn’t recognise the shict looking back at her.
‘Kataria,’ Lenk began, sensing her tense under him, ‘I—’
‘Later,’ she grunted, adjusting herself and him as they slid into the water.
If there was a later, she would handle it then. Whatever excuses needed to be made, whatever apologies had to be voiced to herself, to her Goddess, to her kin, could be made later. For now, they were both alive.
And Kataria couldn’t help but think it would be easier if one of them weren’t.
Thirty-One
THAT WHICH FADES
Denaos had never believed the idea that one of his particular talents should prefer the darkness. The sun was far more pleasant; it illuminated, it warmed, and didn’t mind at all if one happened to admire it nude, unlike certain people with primitive notions of modesty and boundaries.
‘We could learn a bit from you, my golden friend,’ he whispered to the great yellow sphere, reaching down to scratch a particularly errant itch.
After the eternity it had taken to leave Irontide, the sun was a particularly welcome sight. It was two long days in a dank, decrepit stone hall stinking of ash and blood before they were rested enough to make the long swim back to Ktamgi. The effort was made all the harder by the grievous injuries sustained during their excursion to the crumbling fortress. Even Asper had tended to them with a degree more listlessness than usual; many of his companions still lingered in uncertain fates.
But, he thought, they aren’t here now.
And so Denaos lay upon a beach blissfully free of demons, netherlings or hulking she-beasts while at least three of his companions were threatened with the imminent possibility of a slow, agonising death.
It was a good day.
Naturally, the thought occurred with a twitch of an eyelid as he heard the sound of footsteps on sand, someone has to come and ruin it.
‘Hey.’
Lenk’s voice, he thought, was a dull and unenthusiastic brick hurled through a pleasant stained-glass window depicting a rather tasteful scene of curvaceous nude women and apple trees. Knowing that such a thing would be lost on the young man, he chose to