Denaos raised a finger to his lips. She nodded, saying nothing, as he slunk about the halo of light. A rope slid into his hands like a snake, his fists drawing it tight. He rose up behind Xhai like a black flower and angled the garrotte over her head, his hands unnaturally steady.

He had only just begun to lower it when an eerily gentle smile split her long face.

‘I knew you’d come,’ she whispered.

His eyes widened just a fraction before he struck. The garrotte snapped down swiftly, finding the tender flesh of her throat and drawing tight. She snarled, thrusting her elbow back and into his ribs. He reeled, but refused to let go, pulling himself closer, hands shaking as he strained to pull the rope against her windpipe.

‘I knew it,’ she said, her voice only slightly raspy, ‘because I know you, because I know me. I know I wouldn’t leave my foe with just scars to remember me.’

He suffered another elbow, gritted his teeth. It was frustration and not pain that was evident in his face as he pulled so hard that the garrotte creaked in protest.

‘What the hell are you made of?’ he snarled.

‘And I knew they couldn’t kill you,’ Xhai continued, ignoring his words and his rope alike, ‘I knew you weren’t dead …’

Her hand lashed up and over her shoulder, gripping his throat in a vice of purple fingers.

‘Because I hadn’t killed you yet.’

His cry was a weak and pitiful thing against her roar as she yanked hard. He flew out from behind her and out before her with such swiftness as to suggest that, at some point, his innards had been replaced with soft wool.

That theory, and his all-too-fleshy body, were mercilessly dashed as he came crashing down upon the wood.

That should have worked, shouldn’t it? he asked himself, not certain who would answer. I was certain it would.

Everyone makes mistakes, he reassured himself.

Is that her foot above me?

It is.

I should move, shouldn’t I?

He needed no answer to spur him into a roll. Her spike-encrusted boot came smashing down where he had just lain. He sprang to his feet in time to see her pull her foot out, chunks of wood still clinging petulantly to its twisted spikes.

‘That’s fine,’ she said calmly. ‘We’ll take our time with each other, get to know one another.’ She smiled with something that was obviously intended to be warmth. ‘When one of us kills the other, I want it to mean something.’

She leapt at him, just as the knife leapt to his hand. With surgical precision, he slashed it up and against her brow. Like a shattered dam of purple flesh, the blood came weeping out in great rivulets, pouring into her eyes and rendering her blind. She shrieked, swung a fist, seeking him. He sprang backwards and continued to do so as she flailed too wildly.

His retreat came to a sudden halt as he felt his back meet the pillar his companion was tied to.

‘Not a lot of room to move here,’ he muttered.

‘You talk like it’s my fault,’ Kataria snapped. ‘Kill her quick and it won’t be an issue.’

‘I’m not getting near those hands of hers.’

‘Then what are you going to do?’

‘Run, maybe? Probably die. I’m not sure yet.’

‘You didn’t think of a backup?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, come on! What were the odds that strangulation wouldn’t work?’

Anything she might have replied was lost in a howl of metal and a wail of cloven air. He looked and leapt just in time to avoid the massive wedge of metal that served as her sword from taking off his head. It bit deeply into the pillar instead as he scurried around it and the shict bound to it. He grabbed Kataria about her midsection, glancing around her and avoiding her offended scowl, much more concerned with the white eyes painted red narrowed at him.

‘I’m assuming she won’t kill you,’ he said, darting behind the shict as Xhai shot out a fist at his left, ‘or she would have already.’

‘You can’t know that!’ Kataria shouted to be heard over the sword being wrenched free.

‘It’s an educated gamble,’ Denaos said, twisting back behind her as Xhai lashed her blade out to catch him on his right. ‘If she can’t kill you, then you make a very good shield.’

‘I can hear you, you know,’ the longface said.

She swung again. He leapt again. The blade did not so much strike the pillar as shatter it completely. The ropes were slashed, sending Kataria falling to the ground. Splinters sprayed in all directions, a haze of dust and shards assaulting Xhai’s already stinging eyes and sending her into a blind, howling fury.

When he looked down, Kataria was staring at him with vast and empty eyes.

‘I could have died,’ she whispered. ‘And if I had, there would be no one left to help you.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t let you die.’

‘Then help me find my knife.’

‘Asper isn’t well,’ Kataria said, rising to her feet and slipping her rent bonds. ‘You have your people. I have mine.’

Before he could protest, she sprang to her feet and darted past the flailing longface, shoving the cabin door open and disappearing. Though he knew he ought to feel it, the urge to curse her as a coward was decidedly faint.

The pang of regret at not having fled first: decidedly not.

A snarl seized his attention. Xhai kicked the last remnants of the shattered pillar out of her way, advancing toward Denaos, her eyes shining through a face painted with blood and adorned with splinters. Her smile was one of contentment, unconcerned with the red dripping over her lips to stain her teeth. His face was one of fervent panic as he backed away and searched for any way past her that didn’t end in disembowelment.

‘No,’ she answered his wild gaze. ‘No more chases, no more interruptions. This is where one of us dies.’ Even reflected in the blade she levelled at him, her smile was possessed of macabre affection. ‘I’m glad it ended this way, Denaos.’

The rogue did not cry out as he was backed up against the wall, did not think to beg or plead or make deals. There was no room in her face for that. What else he saw in there – the tinges of joy, of desire, of lust – he was determined not to take as the last thing he saw before being gutted.

Thus, when he saw the slender form of Asper stalking towards the woman on shaking feet, her body trembling, her arms still bound behind her, he focused on her immediately.

‘I fought for so long,’ the priestess whispered, though to who was unclear. ‘I wanted so badly to believe there was a reason I should.’ There was a sizzling sound; a wisp of smoke rose from behind her. ‘I wanted to believe that the Gods wanted me for something other than this.’

Xhai glanced over her shoulder at the woman and snorted before returning her attentions back to the rogue.

‘There are no gods,’ the longface said.

‘There are,’ Asper whispered.

An arm extended from her shoulder: a black, skeletal limb bound in a red glow that pulsated like a decaying heart.

‘They just don’t care.’

The sword fell from Xhai’s grasp the moment Asper laid that red-and-ebon hand that belonged to something that was not her upon the longface’s neck. It was a gentle grasp, no more force behind it than that a wife would use to rub her husband’s shoulders. Five fingers rested lightly upon the netherling’s neck.

And Xhai screamed.

The longface fell to her knees, every muscle visible bunching up and tearing beneath her flesh. Her jaw threatened to snap off with the force of her wail, her eyes threatening to boil out of her skull and dribble in thick yolks into her mouth.

‘NO!’ she shrieked. ‘NO!’

‘I told myself that, too,’ Asper replied, shaking her head as tears poured down her cheeks. ‘I tried. But there’s nothing to be done.’ She choked on a sob. ‘They abandoned me. I did everything for the Gods and They just let that … let him happen to me. What’s the point in resisting now? What does anyone care?’

‘I … won’t …’

Xhai’s arm rose up as if to stop her. There was a loud snapping sound as an invisible force very visibly shattered her hand, causing her fingers to seize up in agonised curls. Asper’s arm reacted immediately, fed on her suffering. The flesh of her shoulder seemed to dissipate into sizzling wisps as the crimson spread farther up her arm.

‘This hasn’t happened before,’ she said, ‘but why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t everything be taken from me, flesh and soul?’

‘S-stop …’ Xhai whimpered.

‘I can’t … I told them to take it,’ Asper whispered. The crimson light spread like a stain of paint. The fur wrapped about her chest sizzled and fell off, her left breast bathed in translucent crimson, exposing blackened ribs below. ‘To take it all.’

‘And … I … said …’

Xhai howled, lashing out her uninjured fist that struck Asper against the jaw like a purple sledge.

‘Stop!’

She continued to howl, to hammer, flailing wildly behind her and screaming even as her forearm trembled and shattered like her hand had.

‘STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!’

Asper did, her grasp shattered under the hail of blows. She collapsed, weeping, heedless of the looming purple shape as she rose up. Xhai stared at her through trembling eyes, looking from her to her ruined arm. Her face quivered, jaw hung open, as though on the brink of asking why, of demanding how, of weeping along with the priestess.

Instead, when her mouth found her voice, it was only a scream that came out.

‘QAI ZHOTH!’ she howled.

And nothing more came of it as a force exploded across her back.

She buckled under the attack, tried to look over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of the tall man in black leather holding up her master’s chair. Her eyes, and her face, were driven back down as he smashed the chair against her back again and again. It cracked, splintered, shattered in his hands, and still he brought it down upon her until she no longer moved and he was left holding two hewn chair legs.

He set them down six blows later.

Panting, Denaos spared only as much attention for the netherling as it took to confirm that she wouldn’t get up. Once that was clear, and after he had given her rock-hard flesh a kick for good measure, he turned his attentions to his companion.

‘Asper,’ he whispered gently.

She was curled in on herself, trying to bury her left arm under the whole of her shuddering body, weeping violently. With some trepidation, he knelt beside her, wary to touch her after what he had seen, wary to even look at her.

Kataria had run. He could, too. Asper was safe now. There was no reason to stay here. He could escape now, too. She wouldn’t want him around, either, when she finally looked up. He was a coward, a thief, a brigand. She had called him these before. He had run from her before. He could do so now. It would be easy.

That was what he told himself.

That was not what he did.

He placed a hand gently on her, paused as she recoiled from his touch. Undeterred, he gently rolled her over.

And resisted the urge to scream.

She stared up at him through one tear-stained eye. The other was nothing more than a black socket bathed in crimson light. Her naked breast rose and fell with each breath as the ribs where the other one should be shuddered. Half a pair of lips whispered in shuddering words to him as half a black jaw moved up and down with mechanical certainty.

‘I think …’ she said. ‘I think there’s something wrong with me.’

Thirty-Three

TO OUR PEOPLE

His head was burning. If he knew nothing else in the darkness that he had been plunged into, he knew this.

And the voice that accompanied it, hot with emotion.

‘Could have been so easy …’ it sizzled on his skull, ‘it all could have been so easy. You could have been away now and we could all have been happy. You could have forgotten her, forgotten everything. It would have hurt, but you would have survived. Now?’

The darkness became bright, angry red inside his head.

‘Now I’ll watch you die.’

Lenk’s eyes snapped open. He knew they were open, even if he wasn’t quite sure whether he was awake or even alive. His eyes swam and his head rang. He could see purple shadows moving through great red sheets. He could hear the distant cracking of the sky. His head was still burning, his face still dripping with sweat.

That might have been because of all the fire, though.

The wave of heat that rolled over him returned him to his senses. The wave of crackling orange flame came rolling shortly after. He scrambled to his hands and knees, crawling hurriedly behind the mast before he could feel anything more than the vague sensation of a branding iron tickling his rear end.

Ample reason to figure out what was going on, he thought.

He peered around the mast and was greeted with a sight of carnage. The great red tongues that came lashing out of thin purple palms had long forgotten Lenk. Behind the veil of fire, his face painted orange with the heat, Sheraptus snarled and drove the flames skywards, leaving the deck charred beneath him.

His target, the source of his fury-screwed face, became apparent as the night sky was set alight.

A man, he was at least vaguely sure it was, sailed overhead, the fire licking at his heels as leathery wings carried him over the deck. Those netherling females not lying in various states of cinders, icicles or both surrounded their master protectively, angling drawn bows towards their target.

The man’s hand flashed, in and out of his coat, and produced three scraps of paper. Only when he hurled them did Lenk realise that they were folded into the angular shapes of cranes. That realisation was not quite as interesting, Lenk thought, as the fact that their little papery wings were flapping of their own accord.

The man spoke a word. Whatever language, whatever command, the folded cranes heard and obeyed. Instantly, they turned from white to silver, from dull to shining, from angular to wickedly sharp. Spinning through the air, they found three purple throats and dipped steel beaks into tender flesh.