‘I suppose.’

Naxiaw did not wait for the war cry, not the tensing of muscle or the groan of iron skin. He exploded first, charging, his stick held high, his plan a dizzy, swirling collection of images inside a head that swam from blood loss.

The male leads, he told himself. Kill the male. He looks weak. One blow. That’s all it will take. Kill him, break through, run to the water, drown. The others will find you, they’ll pull the map out of your stomach. Don’t watch the female. Watch him.

The male did not move at this sudden charge, instead raising a single white eyebrow. Had Naxiaw glanced to the side, shifted his eye half a hair’s breadth, he would have seen the females backing away. The fear that should have been on their faces was replaced with morbid bemusement, as though they expected something bloody and glorious to happen.

But Naxiaw did not see that.

Watch him. Kill him. Kill the male.

The male’s lips started to move, just barely, beginning as only a few twitches. His eyes shut, not with the tightness of panic, but with a gentleness that suggested some kind of boredom. His breath leaked from his mouth in faintly visible lines of mist.

Kill him.

The male’s eyes opened, milky whites gone and replaced with a burning crimson energy that poured out of his gaze. Naxiaw’s stick was up, feet off the ground. It was too late to worry about the crimson, too late to do anything about the inflation of the male’s chest as he inhaled deeply, too late to do anything but strike.

One blow.

But that would come far too late.

The male’s face split in half with the opening of his mouth; the mist poured from his throat on echoing words that bore no meaning to Naxiaw. The chill that enveloped his body, the frost that formed on his skin – those had meaning.

His feet struck the earth, far, far heavier than when they had left it. The blood crystallised in blackish smears, the healthy green of his skin turned quickly to a light blue. The Spokesman felt light in a hand gone numb. His muscles creaked, cracked under his skin. His jaw opened in a cry, of war or of fear he knew not, and he found he could not close it again.

Then he could not move at all.

When the mist cleared, he saw the male, eyes a disinterested white again. The longface glanced to the side, noting the Spokesman, a finger’s length from his head, and clenched in a frozen blue grip. Paying little attention to that, he reached out and plucked something from beneath Naxiaw’s broken nose.

‘Interesting,’ he muttered, regarding the tiny little crimson icicle. Separated from the shict’s body, it quickly became liquid, sizzling between the longface’s fingers. He hissed and shook his hand. ‘Envenomed blood … curious.’ He leaned forward and studied Naxiaw intently. ‘That may explain why this one is still alive, despite being frozen.’ He rapped a knuckle against Naxiaw’s forehead, smiling at the tinkling sound. ‘It is not a pink. They could not survive such nethra.’

‘Well, I could have told you that. I mean, it’s green.’ The large female chuckled. ‘No wonder you’re in charge, Yldus.’

‘Hush, Qaine,’ the male called Yldus muttered, his voice lacking her snarling ferocity. ‘Whatever it is, Sheraptus will want to look at it closer.’ He glanced over his shoulder to a pair of nearby females. ‘You and you, take it carefully back to the ship. And do be careful not to let any extremities break off.’

‘The rest of you,’ the female called Qaine growled, sweeping her white-eyed glower over the remaining females, ‘retrieve ink and parchment. Remain here and take note of the city’s defences: numbers, weapons, positions, everything. Master Sheraptus demands thoroughness.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘And while I remain appreciative of a female’s need to spill blood, I remind you that your duty is reconno … reconna …’

‘Reconnaissance,’ Yldus sighed.

‘Whatever,’ she snarled. ‘You are not to be seen. Whoever objects answers to me. Whoever violates this order … answers to Sheraptus.’ Her grin broadened at the stiffness that surged through them. ‘Get to work, low-fingers. We return in days.’

‘With an army behind us,’ Yldus added, his face a long, grim frown.

There were grunts of salute, the shuffling of metal as the females reorganised themselves. Naxiaw could not turn his neck, could not even think to turn his neck. He could barely muster the worry for such a thing, either. His mind felt distant, as though whatever rime covered his body also seeped into his skull, past the bone and into his brain.

The sensation of movement was lost to him. He could not recognise the sky as two females gripped him by his arms and legs and tilted him onto his back. They proceeded to carry him down the hill, behind Yldus and Qaine, as though he were little more than a fleshy blue piece of furniture.

‘Days, she says,’ one of them muttered, her voice muted to his ears. ‘How does anyone expect us to wait that long?’

‘The Master demands patience,’ the other replied.

‘The Master demands a lot,’ the first one growled. ‘He never asks the females to hold their iron.’ She glowered. ‘Rarely does he ask netherling females to do anything for him, so absorbed with the pinks …’

‘No one questions the Master,’ the other one snarled. ‘Leave complaining to low-fingers.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the remaining females. ‘Weaklings.’ She glanced at Naxiaw, stared into his wide, rime-coated eyes. ‘This thing is hardly heavier than a piece of metal. How did it kill the other two?’

‘As you said, they were low-fingers pretending to be real warriors. They should have stuck with their weakling bows instead of thinking they knew how to use swords.’ She snorted, spat. ‘They die first when we attack.’

‘They can’t even speak right. What was it she said before she died?’

‘“Eviscerate, decapitate, exterminate.”’

‘That can’t be right. It’s “eviscerate, decapitate, annihilate,” isn’t it?’

‘Right. Exterminate means to crush something under your heel and leave its corpse twitching in a pile of its own innards. It is what humans do to insects.’

‘What does “annihilate” mean?’

‘To leave nothing behind. Low-fingers can’t even remember the stupid chant.’ The other one hoisted Naxiaw higher as a sleek, black vessel drifted into view on the beach below. ‘That’s why they’re dead.’

Ten

DREAMING IN SHRIEKS

Lenk had never truly been in a position to appreciate nature before. It was always something to be overcome: endless plains and hills, relentless storms and ice, burning seas of trees, sand, salt and marsh. Nature was a foe.

Kataria had always chided him for that.

Kataria was gone now.

And Lenk wasn’t any closer to appreciating nature because of it. The moonlight peered through the dense foliage above, undeterred by the trees’ attempts to keep it out. The babbling brook that snaked through the forest floor became a serpent of quicksilver, slithering under roots, over tiny waterfalls, to empty out somewhere he simply did not care.

When he had found it and drank, he had thanked whatever god had sent it. When he used it to soothe his filthy wound, promises of conversion and martyrdom had followed.

Now, the stream was one more endless shriek in the forest’s thousand screaming symphonies. His joy had lasted less than an hour before he had began to curse the Gods for abandoning him in a soft green hell.

It was murderous, noisy war in the canopy: the birds, decrepit winged felons pitting their wailing night songs against the howling and shaking of trees of their hatred rivals, the monkeys.

His eyes darted amongst the trees, searching for one of the noisy warriors, any of the disgusting little things. His sword rested in his lap, twitching in time with his eyelids as he swept his gaze back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum.

None of them ever emerged. He saw not a hair, not a feather. They might not even be there, he thought. What if it’s all just a dream, a hallucination before Gevrauch claims me? A shrill cry punctured his ears. Or could I ever hope to be that lucky?

He clenched his scavenged tuber like a weapon, assaulting his mouth with it. It was the only way he could convince himself to eat the foul-tasting fibrous matter. Kataria had taught him basic foraging, in between moments of regaling him how shicts were capable of laying out a feast from what they found in mud.

She could have found something else here, he thought. She could have found some delicious plant. ‘Eat it,’ she would have said, ‘it’ll help your bowel movements.’ Always with everyone’s bowel movements …

No, he stared down at the floor, always with my bowel movements.

He wasn’t sure why that thought made him despair.

‘But she’s dead now. They all are.’

The voice came and went in a fleeting whisper, rising from the gooseflesh on his arm. It had grown fainter through the fevered veil that swaddled his brain, coming as a slinking hush that coiled around his skull before slithering into silence.

He supposed he ought to have been thankful. He had long wished to be free of the voice, of its cruel commands and horrific demands. Now, as he sat alone under the canopy, he silently wished that it might linger for a moment, if only to give him someone to talk to preserve his sanity.

He paused mid-chew, considering the lunacy of that thought.

He grumbled, continuing to chew. It’s not as though you could ever preserve your sanity talking to the others, either. If anything talking to Kat would only drive you madder in short order.

‘It matters not,’ the voice whispered. ‘She’s drowned, claimed by the deep. They all are. They all float in reefs of flesh and bone; they all drift on tides of blood and salt.’

Lenk had never recalled the voice being quite so specific before, but it slithered away before he could inquire. In its wake, fever creased his brows, sent his brain boiling.

That isn’t right, he told himself. The voice made him cold, not hot. It was the fever, no doubt, twisting his mind, making his thoughts deranged. Of course, your thoughts couldn’t have been too clear to begin with.

There was a rustle in the leaves overhead, a creak of a sinewy branch as something rolled itself out of the canopy to level a beady, glossy stare at him. It hung from a long, feathery tail, tiny humanlike hands and feet dangling under its squat body. Its head rolled from side to side, rubbery black lips peeling back in what appeared to be a smile as its skull swayed on its neck in time with its tail.

Back and forth, back and forth …

It’s mocking me, Lenk thought, his eyelid twitching. The monkey is mocking me. He put a hand to his brow, felt it burn. Keep it together. Monkeys can’t mock. They don’t have the sense of social propriety necessary to upsetting it in the first place. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Of course it does. Monkeys have no sense of comedic timing. It’s not in their nature …

He stared up, found his tongue creeping unbidden to his cracked lips.

Their juicy … meaty nature.

His sword was in his hands unbidden, glimmering with the same hungry intent as his fever-boiled eyes, licking its steel lips with the same ideas as he licked his own rawhide mouth.

The monkey swung tantalisingly back and forth, back and forth, bidding him to rise, stalk closer to the tiny beast, his sword hanging heavily. It wasn’t until he was close enough to spit on it that the thing looked at him with wariness.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he growled. ‘This is nature. You sit there and swing like a little morsel on a string, I bash your ugly little face open and slurp your delicious monkey brains off the ground.’

The beast looked at him and smiled a human smile.

‘Now, doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical?’ it asked in a clear baritone.

Lenk paused. ‘How do you figure?’

‘Are you not aware of how close the families of beasts and man are?’ the monkey asked, holding up its little paws. ‘Look at our hands. They both suggest something, don’t they? The same fleeting, insignificant, inconsequential lifespan through us both …’

‘We are not close, you little faeces-flinger. Mankind was created by the Gods.’

‘That sort of renders your point about “nature” a bit moot, doesn’t it? Gods or nature?’ The monkey waggled a finger. ‘Which is it?’

‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it!’ Lenk snarled, jabbing a finger at the monkey. ‘Look, don’t argue with me. Monkeys should not argue. That’s a rule.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere, I don’t know.’

‘What is the desire to be shackled by rules, Lenk? Why did mankind create them? Was the burden of freedom too much to bear?’

‘And if monkeys shouldn’t argue,’ Lenk snarled, ‘they damn well shouldn’t make philosophical inquiries.’

‘The truth is,’ the monkey continued, ‘that freedom is just too much. Freedom is twisting, nebulous; what one man considers it, another does not. It’s impossible to live when no one can agree what living is.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Thusly, mankind created rules. Or, if you choose to believe, had them handed down to them by gods. This wasn’t for the sake of any divine creation, of course, but only to make the thought of life less unbearable, so that these thoughts of freedom didn’t cripple them with fear.’

‘Shut up!’ Lenk roared, clutching his head.

‘We both know why you want me to be silent. You’ve already seen this theory of freedom in action, haven’t you? When a man is free, truly free, he can’t be trusted to do what’s right. The last time you saw someone that was free—’

‘I said …’ Lenk pulled his sword from the ground. ‘Shut up.’

‘He attacked a giant sea serpent and caused it to sink your boat, killing everyone aboard and leaving you alone.’