hand upon it. With a snarl, he dislodged her, whirling about as though she’d just attacked him. She matched the murder in his eyes with a roll of her own, placing both hands upon his shoulders and easing him down against the railing.
‘What are you doing?’ He strained to hide the pained quaver in his voice.
‘Hold still; I’m going to check you over.’
‘Asper already did.’
‘Clearly she didn’t do a good enough job, did she?’ She slid back the fabric of his tunic, examining the linen bandage wrapped about his shoulder. ‘Not surprising. Human medicine is roughly where shictish medicine would be if we were just crawling out of the muck.’ She snickered at that. ‘Of course, it’s humans that crawled out of the muck, not shicts, and that must have been centuries ago, so I’m not even sure what her excuse is.’
‘It’s fine. She gave me some salve and—’
‘Bandages. She thinks she can solve everything with bandages and salve.’ Peeling back the white linen, she scratched her chin thoughtfully. ‘A bit of fire would close these wounds, I bet.’
Had Lenk actually heard her suggestion, he might have objected. As it was, her voice was distant to him, second to the suddenly pervasive presence of her scent.
His nostrils flared soundlessly, drinking in her aroma as she leaned over him. His first thought was that she smelled rather unlike what he suspected a woman should smell like. There was no cleanness to her, no softness. Her perfume was thick and hard, an ever-present scent of wood, mud and leather under an ingrained layer of sweat and dried blood. As he swirled her stink in his nose, he became aware that he should find the aroma quite foul; it certainly smelled particularly disgusting on his other companions.
So why, he wondered, was he so entranced with smelling her?
‘That can’t be normal—’
‘What?’
‘What? Nothing.’ He blinked. ‘What?’
‘Fire.’
‘What about it?’
‘You could seal your wounds with fire,’ she repeated, ‘assuming you didn’t break down in tears halfway through.’
‘Uh-huh . . .’
Her voice had faded again, ears suddenly less important than nose, nose suddenly far, far less important than eyes. The scent of sweat, that key ounce of her muscular perfume, became suddenly more pronounced as he spied a bead of the silver liquid forming just beneath the lobe of a long, notched ear.
She continued to prattle on about fire, shictish superiority and any number of topics related to the two. He could only nod, form half-decipherable grunts as he stared at the small trickle of sweat. It slid down her body like a snake, leaving a path of tiny droplets upon her pale flesh in its wake. It trickled down, trailing along her jawline to caress her neck, slithering over a perfectly pronounced collarbone, roiling over the subtle slope of her modest chest to disappear down her leather half-tunic.
Lenk was no longer even aware of her speaking, no longer aware of the dryness of his unblinking eyes or his slightly open mouth.
After a leather-smothered eternity, the bead reappeared just beneath the hem of her garment, settling at the base of her sternum like a glistening star of hope. It quivered there in whimsical contemplation before sliding down the centre-line of her abdomen. It glided over the shadowed contours of her belly’s muscle, across each subtle curve as it journeyed ever downwards, his eyes following, unblinking.
Lenk was forced to swallow hard as it finally reached her navel, dangling off the upper lip like some silvery stalactite, quivering with each shallow breath, each tug of her taut stomach, each breath he unconsciously sent its way, growing heavier. It glistened there, stark against the shadow of the oval-shaped depression before something happened. One of them breathed too hard, flinched too noticeably, and the bead quivered once.
Then fell.
It struck his lap with the quietest of splashes, leaving a dark stain upon the dirt of his trousers. Only when its silver ceased to sparkle did he finally blink, did he finally realise what he had just been staring at for so long.
He stiffened, starting up with an incomprehensible grunt. His head struck something and Kataria echoed his noise, recoiling and rubbing her chin. Eyes bewildered, like a startled beast, she regarded him irately.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘What?’ he echoed in a shrill, dry crack.
She blinked. ‘I . . . didn’t say anything.’ Tilting her head, her expression changed to one of concern. ‘Did I hit a nerve or something?’
‘Yeah.’ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘A nerve or something.’
She nodded silently, but offered no response.