you,’ he replied, glancing at the cleanup taking place along the deck. ‘Lots of dead humans . . . must be a good day for you.’
‘Only a few over a dozen,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Barely a dent in their numbers. Nothing worth celebrating.’
‘You’re aware that I’m human, right? Because, really, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that remark.’
‘Well, it’s not as if any of the humans I like died.’ She followed his gaze as a drowsy-looking Quillian appeared to assist Asper. ‘In fact, several humans I don’t like survived.’ She sniffed the air, scratched herself. ‘Still, good day.’
Supposedly.
He suspected he should agree; a day that ended with someone else dead instead of himself usually qualified as ‘good’ for an adventurer. He suspected that his next thought should have disturbed him quite a bit more than it did.
This time, dead bodies just aren’t enough.
Had this been a chance raid, some simple act of piracy like he had originally suspected, of course he could take pride in the fact that he could still stab people and thus was still employable. But this hadn’t been a chance raid, there were too many factors screaming that this was something worse.
The calm demeanour of a famously bloodthirsty and deranged breed of murderers, a man who had no business being in the company of such towering and fierce creatures, a bell that sang instead of a ballista that shot.
A chill crept up his spine.
‘Staring . . .’
He could feel it immediately, almost heard her eyes turn hard behind him as they bore into him, digging under flesh, searching, studying. He gritted his teeth, tried not to twitch under her gaze. But something inside him lacked willpower. He felt something shift under his skin.
‘Make her stop.’
‘You’re worried.’
When he turned, her smile was gone. He saw her, then, without the heat of battle to cloud his mind. She was weary: sweat slicked her skin and seeped into the cuts on her muscular physique, her hair clung in dirty clumps and the feathers she wore whipped about her wildly. She was the very vision of savagery, the image conjured up when people spat the name ‘shict’.
And she was staring at him with eyes full of concern.
‘You’re thinking.’ Her ears twitched, as if hearing his very thoughts.
His breath caught in his throat at that idea. ‘We won,’ he gasped, ‘they lost.’
She nodded intently.
‘But they didn’t curse. They didn’t scream. Wouldn’t you have?’
‘If we had lost and I wasn’t dead, probably.’
‘They were calm.’ He turned a glower over the sea. ‘They shouldn’t have been.’
A hand was laid on his shoulder. He felt her through the leather of her glove and the cloth of his tunic, felt her heartbeat just as he knew she could hear his. Just as he knew he should pull away, just as he knew that she didn’t touch humans if she wasn’t pulling arrows out of them.
Just as he knew he could not.
Everything went silent inside him. The wailing drone ceased, the smile vanished from his mind. He could feel himself grow warm again, feel the blood pump through him, coursing under her touch.
She turned him to face her, he did not resist. Her eyes were not soft, but not hard. He had no idea what lurked behind her green orbs as she stared into him, just as he had no idea what to do.
‘It’s over,’ she said with a certainty he hadn’t heard from her before. She smiled. ‘Stop thinking.’
He watched her lay her bow upon her shoulders, looping her arms up and over it. Her hair drifted in the breeze and carried the scent of her sweat into his nostrils as she walked away. It filled his breath, now deep and regular again as he repeated calming words to himself.
‘It’s over.’ He rubbed his eyes, laid his sword against the railing and leaned backwards. ‘It’s over.’
He heard the voice. It was soft, fading even as it spoke, but he heard it. He heard it speak a single word, ask a single question.
‘Over?’
And then, he heard it laugh.
Three
PRESIDING OVER RUIN
By the time Lenk clambered up the stairs leading to the helm, the cheering had died down. A few fellows enthused at not being killed had dared to clap him on the back once Kataria had left his side, finding boldness in the absence of his maligned companion. Their enthusiasm was slain as surely as their fellows, however, when they cast a glance upon the deck and surveyed the work that had to