‘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
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.
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.
‘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 say something different.
‘Naked here. Go away.’
‘We’ve got work to do,’ Lenk replied with an unsympathetic tone. ‘The boat needs to be repaired. There’s wood to chop and nails to hammer.’
‘Why in the name of all good and virile Gods did you think that coming to a naked man with messages of chopping wood and hammering nails would persuade him?’ Denaos snorted. ‘Get someone else to do it.’
‘Everyone else is gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know, just. .
‘Well, why don’t you scurry off and see if they left any scat to track them by?’ He snorted and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Or, for a better idea, why don’t you just go and rest yourself? Your leg can’t be feeling too well.’ He coughed. ‘Not here, of course. Go find your own stretch of beach.’
‘I feel fine.’
Denaos arched his neck, regarding his companion who stood, he thought, far too close. Still, the young man looked to be standing firm, favouring his uninjured leg, to be sure, but largely unaffected. It struck the rogue as odd that someone who had been bitten by a demon shark should be standing only two days later, but that was a concern for another time.
‘I’m incredibly comfortable right now, I’ll have you know,’ the rogue muttered. ‘I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but it takes a considerable amount of effort to achieve the precarious position in which sand does
A period of silence, punctuated by the idle banter of the surf, followed before Lenk spoke again in a voice decidedly meeker than his own.
‘Please?’
‘Whatever for?’
‘I need to talk to someone.’
‘About what?’
‘Things. . you know.’
‘So talk,’ the rogue replied. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I can’t. . I mean, not here.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, back in Steadbrook, whenever we needed to talk about something, we’d do it over work.’ Lenk rubbed the back of his neck. ‘And it’s not like we can get off the island until someone finishes the vessel, anyway.’
‘I think I see,’ Denaos said, humming thoughtfully. ‘You’d like to talk to me, but instead of doing it like a human being free of mental illnesses, you’d like me to indulge you in this quaint little ritual devoted to furthering your already stunted social skills and rewarding you for not acting like a normal person.’
‘Basically.’
Denaos yawned, then pulled himself to his feet. ‘Fine.’
‘I mean, it’s nothing all that important,’ Lenk said to the rogue’s back as the taller man began walking towards the pile of nearby tools. ‘I’m just a little. . confused.’
Denaos froze for a moment, then sighed. He waved a dejected hand as he turned around and began walking to his discarded clothing.
‘Hold that thought. This sounds like the kind of conversation I’ll need pants for.’
