Tome of the Undergates

He coughed. ‘Out of respect, of course.’

‘Then maybe you should go and linger with him,’ Lenk snorted. ‘If we’re lucky, I’ll only have to come back to see one of you still alive.’

‘Unsurprising as it might be, I find the near-dead to be rather more pleasant company than that lizard.’

‘Then do me,’ Lenk paused, ‘and her the respect of showing proper manners and worrying a little.’ He grunted. ‘Or by seeing how many daggers you can fit in your mouth. Whichever.’

‘Worry?’ Denaos made a scoffing sound. ‘Would that I could.’

The wind between them died. Lenk turned a scowl upon the rogue.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Frankly, I’d rather not say.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have said it in the first place,’ Lenk snarled. ‘What do you mean by that? ’

The rogue’s shoulders sank as his head went low to hide the rolling of his eyes.

‘Really, you don’t want me to continue. If I do, you’ll get all upset and pouty, then violent. You’ll do something you’ll later regret, then come crawling back like a worm to tell me I was right and, honestly, I’m not sure if I can stand such a sight.’

‘Whatever I do, I’m guaranteed to regret it less if you don’t have the testicular-borne valor to finish your thought.’

Denaos half-sighed, half-growled.

‘Fine. Allow me to slide a shiv of reality into your kidneys. ’ He shrugged. ‘If she dies, it’ll be a tragedy, to be certain. She was a fine shot with that bow of hers and a finer sight for eyes used to far too much ugly, I’ll tell you. But it’s not like we’re losing anyone. .’ He paused, tilting his head, wincing as though struck. ‘I mean. . in the end, she’s not one of us. She’s just a shict. No shortage of them.’

Lenk blinked once. When his eyelids rose, it was not through his own stare that he saw his hands reach out and seize the tall man by his collar. It was not his arms that trembled with barely restrained fury. It was not his voice that uttered a frigid threat to the rogue.

‘The only regret here,’ he whispered, ‘is that my sword is stuck in a corpse that isn’t yours.’

This is it.

The thought rang through Asper’s head solemnly, like a dirge bell.

It had to happen eventually.

Her breath was short, sporadic.

You did your best. .

Kataria’s face was almost part of the scenery, so unchanged was it. As much as Asper searched, as much as she prayed for a twitch of lips or flutter of eyelids, she found nothing. The shict seemed more in a deep dream than a breathless coma, more at peace than in pain.

That might be a sign, her thoughts flooded her head like a deluge, that’s Talanas’s mercy to you. What do you know about this, anyway? You can tie up scratches and kiss scraped knees, but you can’t heal a damn thing without bandages.

She pressed her fingers against Kataria’s throat; no pulse. . still.

It’s not so bad. You can’t save them all. Remember the last one? She was in so much pain, but you managed to take that away. Her left hand twitched involuntarily. You can do the same for your friend, can’t you?

‘Shut up,’ she snarled, ‘shut up!’

She forced her mind dark, silenced the voices in the rhythm of chest compressions and the futile monotony of breathing. There was solace in monotony, she knew, comfort in not seeing ahead. She forced her gaze away from the future, focused on the now, the lifeless shict and the quiet muttering.

‘I can do this,’ she whispered, ‘I can do this,’ she told herself as she had for so long, ‘please, I can do this. .’

She drew in her forty-third breath and leaned closer to the shict’s lips. She hesitated, hearing a sound so faint as to be a shade more silent than a whisper: a choked, gurgling whisper.

‘Please,’ she whispered again.

The lifeless muscles in Kataria’s body twitched. Asper forced herself to continue, biting back hope.

‘Please.’

The gurgle came again, a little louder. Kataria’s body jerked, a little livelier.

‘Kat. .’ She was terrified to raise her voice. ‘Please. .’

A smile wormed its way onto Asper’s face. The shict’s pale lips parted, only slightly, and drew in the most meagre, pathetic of breaths.

‘Yes,’ her giggle was restrained hysteria, ‘yes, yes, yes!’

Her eyes widened with a sudden dread as she saw something bubble in the shadows of her companion’s mouth.

‘Oh, no! No, no, WAIT!’

As though possessed, the shict’s body shuddered violently, her mouth stretching so wide as to make her jaw creak threateningly. A torrent of translucent bile came flooding out of her, arcing like a geyser as her lungs were brutally evacuated.

Groaning, Kataria rolled onto her side and expelled the last traces of the muck with a hack. Body trembling, she had barely the strength to fall upon her back. The sun seemed bright and harsh above her, her breath foreign and stagnant on her lips.

Through fluttering eyes, she became aware of a shadow falling over her. She tensed, her voice forgotten, a scream bursting from her lips as only a faint, ooze-tinged squeal.

Two wicked blue moons stared down upon her. Her heart raced, head glutted with fragmented imagery: grey flesh, silver hair, two blue eyes burning like cold pyres, pupilless.

She opened her mouth to scream again, but caught herself. Or rather, a pair of strong hands caught her by her arms, pulling her closer. She writhed in the grip, unwilling to stare into the eyes that shifted before her. As dizziness and half-blindness faded, she beheld a gaze that was dominated by two big, hound-like pupils.

‘Calm down,’ Lenk whimpered, ‘just calm down. You’re fine.’

‘Fine,’ she repeated as she took in his face, his pink skin and blinking eyes. ‘I’m fine.’ She paused to cough, forcing a weak smile on her face. ‘I mean, as far as nearly dying goes.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded. ‘Just don’t strain yourself. Take breaths as they come.’ He raised her to a sitting position as he eased a waterskin into her hands. ‘Drink. You’re sure you’re well?’

‘A damn sight better than some of us,’ someone snarled from behind.

Asper’s scowl burned two holes in the mask of viscous sludge covering her face. Her lips quivered from behind the vomit, as though she sought to scream but thought better of it. Fuming so fiercely as to make the bile steam, she resigned herself to grumbling indignantly and mop-ping the substance with her sleeve.

‘Oh, you messy little sow.’ Denaos giggled as he joined his companions. ‘Gone and eaten your pudding like a fat little baby, have you?’

Artfully dodging the glob of vomit she hurled at him, he approached Lenk and Kataria with all the candour of someone who had not just recently dismissed a looming death as an unfortunate inconvenience.

‘And how are we today?’ he asked with a broad smile. ‘I was slightly worried we’d have to cut your body into six pieces so that you wouldn’t come back.’ He added a knowing nod. ‘That’s what happens when shicts die, you know. They’ll come crawling right out of the grave to rip your eyes out and eat them.’

‘One would hope she’d have the sense to rip out your tongue first.’ Lenk hurled his voice like a spear at the rogue, though Denaos seemed to dodge that just as gracefully as he had the vomit. ‘Maybe she’d like to hear what you-’

‘Well, that’s all fine, fine and dandy.’ Denaos interrupted the young man with a timely spear of his own. ‘Good to know we all emerged from another near-death experience with only one of us nearly dying. A fine score, if I may say so.’

Lenk opened his mouth to retort, but a hacking cough from Kataria shredded that before it reached his lips.