An Affinity for Steel, page 62
He attempted to hide the wince of pain that shot up through his thigh at the mention of the wicked, sewn-up gash beneath his trousers. The agony of the injury itself was kept numb through occasional libations of what remained of their whisky, but every time he ran his fingers against the stitches, any time his companions inquired after his health, the visions would come flooding back.
Teeth. Darkness. Six golden eyes flashing in the gloom. Laughter echoing off stone, growing quiet under shrieking carnage and icicles hissing through his head. They would fade eventually, but they were always waiting, ready to come back the moment he closed his eyes.
‘It’s fine,’ he muttered.
Her ears twitched again, hearing the lie in his voice. He disregarded it, knowing she had only asked the question to deflect him. He drew in his breath through his teeth, tensing as he might for a battle. She heard this, too, and narrowed her eyes.
‘You should rest,’ she said.
‘I don’t want—’
‘In silence,’ she interrupted. ‘Talking doesn’t aid the healing process.’
‘What would a shict know of healing beyond chewing grass and drilling holes in skulls?’ he snapped, his ire giving his voice swiftness. ‘If you’re so damn smart—’
Her upper lip curled backwards in a sneer, the sudden exposure of her unnervingly prominent canines cutting him short. He cringed at the sight of her teeth that were as much a testament to her savage heritage as the feathers in her hair and the buckskin leathers she wore.
‘What I mean is you could be doing something other than counting your precious little arrows,’ he offered, attempting to sound remorseful and failing, if the scowl she wore was any indication. ‘You could use them to catch us a fish or something.’ Movement out over the sea caught his eye and he gestured toward it. ‘Or one of those.’
They had been following the vessel for the past day: many-legged insects that slid gracefully across the waters. Dredgespiders, he had heard them called – so named for the nets of wispy silk that trailed from their upraised, bulbous abdomens. Such a net would undoubtedly brim with shrimp and whatever hapless fish wound up under the arachnid’s surface-bound path, and the promise of such a bounty was more than enough to make mouths water at the sight of the grey-carapaced things.
They always drifted lazily out of reach, multiple eyes occasionally glancing over to the vessel and glistening with mocking smugness unbefitting a bug.
‘Not a chance,’ Kataria muttered, having seen that perverse pride in their eyes and having discounted the idea.
‘Well, pray for something else, then,’ he growled. ‘Pray to whatever savage little god sends your kind food.’
She turned a glower on him, her eyes seeming to glow with a malevolent green. ‘Riffid is a goddess that helps shicts who help themselves. The day She lifts a finger to help a whiny, weeping little round-ear is the day I renounce Her.’ She snorted derisively and turned back to her missiles. ‘And these are my last three arrows. I’m saving them for something special.’
‘What use could they possibly be?’
‘This one’ – she fingered her first arrow – ‘is for if I ever do see a fish that I would like to eat by myself. And this …’ She brushed the second one. ‘This one is for me to be buried with if I die.’
He glanced at the third arrow, its fletching ragged and its head jagged.
‘What about that one?’ Lenk asked.
Kataria eyed the missile, then turned a glance to Lenk. There was nothing behind her eyes that he could see: no hatred or irritation, no bemusement for his question. She merely stared at him with a fleeting, thoughtful glance as she let the feathered end slide between her thumb and forefinger.
‘Something special,’ she answered simply, then turned away.
Lenk narrowed his eyes through the silence hanging between them.
‘And what,’ he said softly, ‘is that supposed to mean?’
There was something more behind her eyes; there always was. And whatever it was usually came hurtling out of her mouth on sarcasm and spittle when he asked such questions of her.
Usually.
For the moment, she simply turned away, taking no note of his staring at her. He had rested his eyes upon her more frequently, taking in the scope of her slender body, the silvery hue pale skin left exposed by a short leather tunic took on through the moonlight. Each time he did, he expected her ears to twitch as she heard his eyes shifting in their sockets, and it would be his turn to look away as she stared at him curiously.
In the short year they had known each other, much of their rapport had come through staring and the awkward silences that followed. The silence she offered him now, however, was anything but awkward. It had purpose behind it, a solid wall of silence that she had painstakingly erected and that he was not about to tear down.
Not with his eyeballs alone, anyway.
‘Look,’ he said, sighing. ‘I don’t know what it is about me that’s got you so angry these days, but we’re not going to get past it if we keep—’
If her disinterested stare didn’t suggest that she wasn’t listening, the fact that the shict’s long ears suddenly and swiftly folded over themselves like blankets certainly did.
Lenk sighed, rubbing his temples. He could feel his skin begin to tighten around his skull and knew full well that a headache was brewing as surely as the rain in the air. Such pains were coming more frequently now; from the moment he woke they tormented him well into his futile attempts to sleep.
Unsurprisingly, his companions did little to help. No, he thought as he looked down the deck to the swaddled bundle underneath the rudder-seat at the boat’s rear, but I know what will help …
‘Pointless.’
Gooseflesh formed on his bicep.
‘The book only corrupts, but even that is for naught. You can’t be corrupted.’ A chill crept down Lenk’s spine in harmony with the voice whispering in his head. ‘We can’t be corrupted.’
He drew in a deep breath, cautiously exhaling over the side of the ship that none might see the fact that his breath was visible even in the summer warmth. Or perhaps he was imagining that, too.
The voice was hard to ignore, and with it, it was hard for Lenk to convince himself that it was his imagination speaking. The fact that he continued to feel cold despite the fact that his companions all sweated grievously didn’t do much to aid him, either.
‘A question.’
Don’t answer it, Lenk urged himself mentally. Ignore it.
‘Too late,’ the voice responded to his thoughts, ‘but this is a good one. Speak, what does it matter what the shict thinks of us? What changes?’
Ignore it. He shut his eyes. Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it.
‘That never works, you know. She is fleeting. She lacks purpose. They all do. Our cause is grander than they can even comprehend. We don’t need them. We can finish this ourselves, we can … Are you listening?’
Lenk was trying not to. He stared at the bundle beneath the bench, yearning to tear the pages free from their woolly tomb and seek the silence within their confines.
‘Don’t,’ the voice warned.
Lenk felt the chill envelop his muscles, something straining to keep him seated, keep him listening. But he gritted his teeth, pulled himself from the ship’s edge.
Before he knew what was happening, he was crawling over Kataria as though she weren’t even there, not heeding the glare she shot him. She didn’t matter now. No one else did. Now, he only needed to get the book, to silence the voice. He could worry about everything else later. There would be time enough later.
‘Fine,’ the voice muttered in response to his thoughts. ‘We speak later, then.’
Ignore it, he told himself. You can ignore it now. You don’t need it now. All you need is …
That thought drifted off into the fog of ecstasy that clouded his mind as he reached under the deck, fingers quivering. It wasn’t until he felt his shoulder brush against something hard that he noticed the two massive red legs at either side of his head.
Coughing a bit too fervently to appear nonchalant, he rose up, peering over the leather kilt the appendages grew from. A pair of black eyes stared back at him down a red, leathery snout. Ear-frills fanned out in unambiguous displeasure beneath a pair of menacing curving horns. Gariath’s lips peeled backwards to expose twin rows of teeth.
‘Oh … there you are,’ Lenk said sheepishly. ‘I was … just …’
‘Tell me,’ the dragonman grunted. ‘Do you suppose there’s anything you could say while looking up a Rhega’s kilt that would make him not shove a spike of timber up your nose?’
Lenk blinked.
‘I … uh … suppose not.’
‘Glad we agree.’
Gariath’s arm, while thick as a timber spike, was not nearly as fatal and only slightly less painful as the back of his clawed hand swung up to catch Lenk at the jaw. The young man collapsed backward, granted reprieve from the voice by the sudden violent ringing in his head. He sprawled out on the deck, looking up through swimming vision into a skinny face that regarded him with momentary concern.
‘Do I really want to know what might have driven you to go sticking your head between a dragonman’s legs?’ Dreadaeleon asked, cocking a black eyebrow.
‘Are you the sort of gentleman who is open-minded?’ Lenk groaned, rubbing his jaw.
‘Not to that degree, no,’ he replied, burying his boyish face back into a book that looked positively massive against his scrawny, coat-clad form.
From the deck, Lenk’s eyes drifted from his companion to the boat’s limp sail. He blinked, dispelling the bleariness clinging to his vision.
‘It may just be the concussion talking,’ he said to his companion, ‘but why is it we’re still bobbing in the water like chum?’
‘The laws of nature are harsh,’ Dreadaeleon replied, turning a page. ‘If you’d like that translated into some metaphor involving fickle, fictional gods, I’m afraid you’d have to consult someone else.’
‘What I mean to say,’ Lenk said, pulling himself up, ‘is that you can just wind us out of here, can’t you?’
The boy looked up from his book, blinked.
‘“Wind us out of here.”’
‘Yeah, you know, use your magic to—’
‘I’m aware of your implication, yes. You want me to artificially inflate the sails and send us on our way.’
‘Right.’
‘And I want you to leave me alone.’ He tucked his face back in the pages. ‘Looks like we’re all unhappy today.’
‘You’ve done it before,’ Lenk muttered.
‘Magic isn’t an inexhaustible resource. All energy needs something to burn, and I’m little more than kindling.’ The boy tilted his nose up in a vague pretext of scholarly thought.
‘Then what the hell did you take that stone for?’ Lenk thrust a finger at the chipped red gem hanging from the boy’s neck. ‘You said the netherlings used it to avoid the physical cost of magic back at Irontide, right?’
‘I did. And that’s why I’m not using it,’ Dreadaeleon said. ‘All magic has a cost. If something negates that cost, it’s illegal and thus unnatural.’
‘But I’ve seen you use—’
‘What you saw,’ the boy snapped, ‘was me using a brain far more colossal than yours to discern the nature of an object that could very well make your head explode. Trust me when I say that if I “wind us out” now, I won’t be able to do anything later.’
‘The only thing we might possibly need you to do later is serve as an impromptu anchor,’ Lenk growled. ‘Is it so hard to just do what I ask?’
‘You’re not asking, you’re telling,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘If you were asking, you’d have accepted my answer as the decisive end to an argument between a man who is actually versed in the laws of magic enough to know what he’s talking about and a bark-necked imbecile who’s driven to desperation by his conflicts with a mule-eared savage to attempt to threaten the former man, who also has enough left in him to incinerate the latter man with a few harsh words and a flex of practised fingers, skinny they may be.’
The boy paused, drew in a deep breath.
‘So shut your ugly face,’ he finished.
Lenk blinked, recoiling from the verbal assault. Sighing, he rubbed his temples and fought the urge to look between Gariath’s legs again.
‘You have a point, I’m sure,’ he said, ‘but try to think of people besides yourself and myself. If we don’t reach Teji by tomorrow morning, we are officially out of time.’
‘So we don’t get paid in time,’ Dreadaeleon said, shrugging. ‘Or don’t get paid at all. Gold doesn’t buy knowledge.’
‘It buys women with knowledge,’ another voice chirped from the prow.
Both of them turned to regard Denaos, inconsiderately long-legged and slim body wrapped in black leather. He regarded them back, a crooked grin under sweat-matted reddish hair.
‘The kind of knowledge that involves saliva, sweat and sometimes a goat, depending on where you go,’ he said.
‘A lack of attachment to gold is an admirable trait to be nurtured and admired,’ Asper said from beside him, ‘not met with advice on whoremongering.’
Denaos’ scowl met the priestess’s impassively judgemental gaze. She brushed his scorn off like snow from her shoulders as she tucked her brown hair behind a blue bandana. Her arms folded over her blue-robed chest as she glanced from Denaos to Dreadaeleon.
‘Don’t let it bother you, Dread,’ she said, offering a rather modest smile. ‘If we don’t make it, what does it matter if we go another few weeks without bathing?’ She sighed, tugging at the rather confining neck of her robes to expose a bit of sweat-kissed flesh.
The widening of the boy’s eyes was impossible to miss, as was the swivel of his gaze to the aghast expression Asper wore. Powerful as the boy might be, he was still a boy, and as large as his brain was, Lenk could hear the lurid fantasies running wild through his skull. Asper’s movement had sparked something within the boy that not even years of wizardly training could penetrate.
A smirk that was at once both sly and vile crossed Lenk’s face.
‘Think of Asper,’ he all but whispered.
‘Huh? What?’ Dreadaeleon blinked as though he were emerging from a trance, colour quickly filling his slender face as he swallowed hard. ‘What … what about her?’
‘You can’t think she’s too comfortable here, can you?’
‘None … none of us are comfortable,’ the boy stammered back, intent on hiding more than one thing as he crossed his legs. ‘It’s just … just an awkward situation.’
‘True, but Asper’s possibly the only decent one out of us. After all, she gave up her share of the reward, thinking that the deed we’re doing is enough.’ Lenk shook his head at her. ‘I mean, she deserves better, doesn’t she?’
‘She … does,’ Dreadaeleon said, loosening the collar of his coat. ‘But the laws … I mean, they’re …’
Lenk looked up, noting the morbid fascination with which Denaos watched the unfurling discomfort in the boy. A smile far more unpleasant than his gaze crept across his face as the two men shared a discreet and wholly wicked nod between them.
‘Give me your bandana,’ Denaos said, turning towards Asper.
‘What?’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Why?’
‘I smudged the map. I need to clean it.’ He held out his hand expectantly, batting eyelashes. ‘Please?’
The priestess pursed her lips, as though unsure, before sighing in resignation and reaching up. Her robe pressed a little tighter against her chest. Dreadaeleon’s eyes went wider, threatening to leap from his skull. Her collar, opened slightly more than modesty would allow at the demands of the heat, slipped open a little to expose skin glistening with sweat. The fantasies thundered through Dreadaeleon’s head with enough force to cause his head to rattle.
She undid the bandana, letting brown locks fall down in a cascade, a single strand lying on her breasts, an imperfection begging for practised, skinny fingers to rectify it.
Lenk watched the reddening of the boy’s face with growing alarm. Dreadaeleon hadn’t so much as breathed since Denaos made his request, his body so rigid as to suggest that rigour had set in before he could actually die.
‘So … you’ll do it, right?’ Lenk whispered.
‘Yes,’ the boy whispered, breathless, ‘just … just give me a few moments.’
Lenk glanced at the particular rigidity with which the wizard laid his book on his lap. ‘Take your time.’ He discreetly turned away, hiding the overwhelming urge to wash apparent on his face.
When he set his hand down into a moist puddle, the urge swiftly became harsh enough to make the drowning seem a very sensible option. He brought up a glistening hand and stared at it curiously, furrowing his brow. He was not the only one to stare, however.
‘Who did it this time?’ Denaos growled. ‘We have rules for this sort of vulgar need and all of them require you to go over the side.’
‘No,’ Lenk muttered, sniffing the salt on his fingers. ‘It’s a leak.’
‘Well, obviously it’s a leak,’ Denaos said, ‘though I’ve a far less gracious term for it.’
‘We’re sinking,’ Kataria muttered, her ears unfolding. She glanced at the boat’s side, the water flowing through a tiny gash like blood through a wound. She turned a scowl up at Lenk. ‘I thought you fixed this.’
‘Of course, she’ll talk to me when she has something to complain about,’ the young man muttered through his teeth. He turned around to meet her scowl with one of his own. ‘I did, back on Ktamgi. Carpentry isn’t an exact science, you know. Accidents happen.’
‘Let’s be calm here, shall we?’ Asper held her hands up for peace. ‘Shouldn’t we be thinking of ways to keep the sea from murdering us first?’
‘I can help!’ Dreadaeleon appeared to be ready to leap to his feet, but with a mindful cough, thought better of it. ‘That is, I can stop the leak. Just … just give me a bit.’
He flipped through his book diligently, past the rows of arcane, incomprehensible sigils, to a series of blank, bone-white pages. With a wince that suggested it hurt him more than the book to do so, he ripped one of them from the heavy tome. Swiftly shutting it and reattaching it to the chain that hung from his belt, he crawled over to the gash.
