With that in mind, the rest of the plan falls pretty easily into place. Dread’s glamer, we’re hoping, can apparently draw out the Omens . . . and the big one, too. If that doesn’t work, we’ll find a way to lure them away long enough for us three, who I’ve deemed ‘Team Imminent Evisceration’, to swim across and find our way in.

The remainder will stay behind to watch out for anything, to fix the boat . . . and to carry what’s left of us back to Miron should we fail. Now, I don’t mean our remains, since if we do fail, there’s most certainly not going to be enough left of us to sprinkle on gruel, much less bury.

But Greenhair, for all her shrieking, made clear something that had plagued me for a while.

These aren’t pirates we’re fighting. They’re demons. Their goals aren’t loot and murder, but resurrection. They, themselves something that should not be, are trying to summon something that definitely should not be. And they’re succeeding, if a bigger Omen is anything to go by.

If we do fail, I trust Asper, at least, to make it back to Port Destiny to tell Miron exactly what’s going on.

Dawn is approaching. After a less than satisfying meal of jerky and fruit, my intestines are in working order and my rear is tightly clenched. If I do die today, I most certainly will not be going out soiled.

I’ll write more if I make it out.

Hope is ill-advised.

Twenty

THE PLEASANT LIES

The dawn was shy, too polite to come and chase the stars away, contenting itself to slowly creep into the twilit conversation one wisp at a time. The seas caught between night and day in shiftless masses of molten gold and silver. The night had yet to fade, the dawn had yet to break; the world was mired in an indecision of purple and yellow.

Absently, Lenk wished for more than just a meagre piece of charcoal to sketch the scene.

His desire was for naught; there hadn’t been any quills in the companion vessel’s cargo. He’d likely miss the flaky black stuff when the time came to build a fire, but for now, all it was good for was writing and sketching.

A breeze cut across the sea, heavy with the cold salt of the pre-dawn mist. It slithered across his body like a frigid serpent, and went unheeded. He rarely felt the cold any more. Rain and winter, sun and spring, all felt the same to him: a faint tingle, a passing shiver, and then nothing.

He paused, staring blankly at the journal in his lap.

He couldn’t feel cold any more . . .

‘You’re up early.’

He was torn from further thought by the sound of her voice. Kataria stood behind him, clad in doeskin breeches and shortened green tunic, staring at him with some concern, ears twitching and naked toes wriggling in the sand.

‘Yeah,’ he said, returning to his sketch.

Her footsteps were loud and crunching against the moist sand; that wasn’t good. When she didn’t bother to hide the sound of her feet, it usually meant she wasn’t going to hide any other sounds she might make.

‘You didn’t eat much last night.’ She took a seat beside him.

‘We need to ration.’ He didn’t look up. ‘Gariath eats enough for two men, Denaos eats more to spite Gariath.’ He allowed the corner of his eye to drift over her slender, pale form. ‘You didn’t eat much either, and you’re up as early as I am.’

‘My people don’t eat or sleep as much as humans.’ She didn’t even bother to hide her smirk. ‘We don’t need to.’

‘Mm.’ Even his grunt was half-hearted, long past hearing or caring about the numerous self-proclaimed advantages of shicts.

‘I didn’t know you drew.’ She peered over his shoulder and blanched.

‘Mm.’

‘You’re terrible at it.’

‘Mm.’

‘You don’t seem to understand how this works. I say something to you, you say something back, we fight, maybe someone bleeds. That’s how we communicate.’

‘Too early,’ he replied. ‘I’ll stab you in the eye a little later and we’ll call it a day.’

‘I won’t be in the mood later.’ She leaned over his lap, making him stiffen. ‘What do you draw, anyway?’

‘Those islands to the north.’ He simultaneously gestured to three faint specks of greenery as he shoved her away. ‘I hadn’t noticed them until today.’ He tapped the charcoal to his chin. ‘It’s possible that one of them is Teji. Seems worthwhile to sketch it, don’t you think?’

‘You don’t want to know what I think. What else do you draw?’

Before he could answer, her hands darted out like two pale ferrets. Before he could protest, they snatched the journal out of his lap. Cackling unpleasantly, she tumbled away from him, evading flailing fists. With a deft leap, she rolled to her feet and began to thumb through the pages, strolling away with an insulting casualness.

‘Hm, yes.’ She scratched an imaginary beard, eyes darting over the pages. ‘Seas . . . gates . . . demons . . . hope.’ She smacked her lips. ‘A little morbid, you think? It needs a bit of editing. Skip all this gibberish about humans and stick to the parts about shicts.’

‘It’s for reading, not wiping.’

His hands closed murderously about empty air as she sprang away. Backpedalling without the slightest hint of caution, she continued to peruse.

‘Just as well, I’m not so much the literary sort.’

‘More of the illiterate sort, are you?’

‘If you could be half as clever in your writing, you might actually have some value. Let’s see if your drawings are half as terrible.’

‘What? Wait a moment!’

‘A moment to you is an eternity to me.’ She nimbly evaded his hands as she noted the various sketches scrawled in charcoal. ‘Not bad, I suppose. If you ever lose your will to fight, you can hack out a living with a piece of charcoal and a dream, can’t you?’

She was prepared to slam the book shut and hurl it at him as he took a menacing step forwards when a frayed edge of parchment caught her eye.

‘What’s this, then? Something worth reading amongst such drivel?’

No sooner had the page turned than her feet froze in the sand. Her eyes went wide at the sight before her: an image that looked almost wrong in the midst of Lenk’s writings. With an elegance she had not seen in his other drawings of demons, landscapes and other combinations of equally boring and horrifying subjects, the page seemed less a sketch and more a memory, revisited frequently in the strokes of charcoal and ink.

It was slender, a wispy figure traced in smooth lines upon the parchment, hair long and unbound, fluttering like wings behind a naked, rigid back. Everything about the figure was hard, fighting against the softness of the lines and winning effortlessly. Even its eyes, brighter than black ink should allow, were fierce and strong.

It wasn’t until she noted the pair of long, notched ears that she heard his feet thunder on the shore.

He lunged, wrapped arms about her middle and pulled her to the earth in a spray of sand. She was breathless as he straddled her waist; whether from the drawing, the blow or the physical contact, she did not know. He loomed over her in a burst of blue, two eyes bright and dominated by vast, dark pupils. She found no memories of what that stare had once lacked, only a desire not to look away, a desire to meet his gaze.

And to smile.

Such a feeling lasted for but a moment before she spied the journal held high above him like a weapon of leather and paper. With a snarl, he brought it down and smashed it against the side of her face.

‘OW!’ She shoved him off and scowled as he skulked away. ‘How is that, to any race, a reasonable reaction?’

‘Based on the fact that a man’s journal is his sole refuge from the vile and uncouth elements of the world he chooses to name as his companions,’ the young man replied snootily. ‘And, as a violator of that refuge, I invoked my Gods-given right to bash your narrow head with that refuge.’

‘Disregarding the obvious fact that your logic is completely deranged,’ she pulled herself to her feet, ‘why so secretive about it, anyway? It’s not like I haven’t seen anything you put in there.’

His stride slowed at that, suddenly afflicted by some degenerative disease that forced him to walk, then trudge, then stop with a painful finality, rigid as a corpse in an upright coffin.

‘These are my thoughts.’ His whisper cut through the air like a knife.

‘Well,’ she gritted her teeth, feeling his voice rake against her flesh, ‘I mean, they’re fine and all, but—’

‘But what? You’ve seen them before, have you?’

‘No, but—’

‘Heard them, then?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Exactly.’ He whirled on her, hurling his scowl like a spear and skewering her upon the sands. ‘You don’t see my thoughts. You don’t hear my thoughts. You don’t know anything beyond what your self-important shicty self believes you do.’ His mouth went tight as he tucked the journal under his arm and stalked away. ‘Let’s not ruin that special relationship we share.’

He had barely taken two steps before he felt her reply impale him and hold him fast.

‘I know you don’t dream.’

Lenk forced himself not to turn around; he would not give her the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen, would not let her hear his heart skip a beat. The sound of the waves was suddenly uncomfortably quiet, the creeping of the mist far too slow for his liking.

‘Not like other humans, at least,’ she continued softly. ‘Yours are fevered and wild. You snarl and whimper in your sleep.’

‘And what tells you this?’ he replied, just as soft. ‘Whatever mental illness passes for shictish intuition?’

‘You cry out in the night from time to time.’ Her voice was emotionless, denying him any anger and any opportunity to end this conversation. ‘Not loudly, not lately, but you do. I’ve seen it.’

His breath caught in his throat. Suddenly, her hand was on his arm, the naked flesh of her fingers pressing against this rapidly tensing bicep. Though desiring not to, though he shrieked at himself not to, he turned and stared into her twin emeralds.

In the year he had known her, he had become accustomed to so much of her: her savagery, her ears, her profoundly morbid laughter. Even her near-total disregard for human life was something he had learned to accept about her. Her stare, however, was something he knew at that moment he would never feel comfortable under.

She never condemned him, never judged him; never did an emotion flicker in the endless green. Her face was blank, mouth small as eyes were wide. He felt vulnerable under her gaze, beyond naked, as though she stared through flesh, bone, sinew, past what some people might call a soul and into something else entirely.

And for all that he strained to deny her, he could not help but stare back.

‘What do you dream about?’

‘Dawn is rising. The others will be getting up soon.’ That he seemed unable to pull himself from her was a fleeting thought. ‘Go and bother one of them.’

‘Do you dream of your family?’ Her grip tightened on his arm. ‘Do you see them when you close your eyes?’ She clenched his hand in hers. ‘Lenk . . . is it them you hear?’

‘Shut UP!’

He ripped himself from her with a shocking ease, meeting her stare with a scowl. Where her eyes were a vast, passionless green, he felt his brim with a scornful blue. He suddenly felt very cold.

‘I don’t need your interrogations.’ His voice leaked between his teeth in a frigid cloud. ‘I don’t need your sympathy. I don’t need to talk about this and I’m not going to.’

At once, her gaze lost its distance and lack of expression. It flitted like that of a beast, darting between fear and resolve, squirming between trembling and firmness. In response, his grew harder, going deep and narrow like a dagger’s cut. His jaw clenched, his hands trembled at his sides.

‘I need you to stop staring at me.’

The journal fell to the sand. The sound of it crashing upon the earth echoed through the dawn.

When he turned, all of nature fell silent behind him. The morning took on a thick and oppressive sentience, the mist twisting to angry fingers that sought to impose themselves between the two companions to make room for another presence.

Someone else seemed to step between them, carving a stand with icy feet and turning a hostile, eyeless scowl upon the shict.

And she did not yield.

She had felt it before, seen it walking behind Lenk as an envious shadow, seeking to push others away as it sought to pull itself forwards. She had seen it pull itself into him, overcome him, become him.

She did not fear it, not any more, not for herself.

‘Sorry ...’

His body shrank with his sigh. She grunted in reply.

‘You remember seeing me fall,’ she said. ‘Do you remember what happened next . . . with the Abysmyth?’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do. I do.’ She took a tentative step forwards. ‘I was alive . . . awake long enough to see it. You fought well, better than I’d ever seen you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It wasn’t you fighting, though.’ Her voice was hesitant, even as her stare was steady. ‘It wasn’t you who knelt over me. It was someone else.’ She forced herself to stare out over the sea. ‘Someone with eyes that had no pupils.’

Lenk offered no reply. The beach was reluctant to speak for him, its waves quiet and breezes humble. She rubbed her arms, feeling rather cold at that moment, caught between the silence of the sea and him.

Between them both stood someone else.

She took a step to the side, quietly, as if to get away from the presence. Immediately, she felt a bit warmer, but not because of any removal from an imaginary presence. It wasn’t until she felt much warmer that she glanced out of the corner of her eye to see Lenk standing in her footprints, staring out over the ocean, silent.

And they were content to say nothing.

‘I can barely remember it.’

He shattered the silence with a murmur.

‘I don’t remember how they died, only that they were dead.’ His eyes were blank and empty. ‘I remember shadows, fire . . . swords. There was no one left afterwards.’ His eyes turned downwards. ‘I woke up in a barn, a burned-out thing. I had hidden, I don’t remember why I didn’t fight. I don’t remember whose barn it was, I don’t remember what house it was closest to. I don’t remember anything about my mother, my father, my grandfather but their faces . . .’

She heard his eyes shut tight.

‘Sometimes . . . not even that.’

He turned away, made a move as if to leave and let the cold presence take his place. Her hand shot out, seizing his and pulling him back.

‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he whispered.

She squeezed his hand, turned him to face her and smiled.

‘Then don’t.’

A breeze sang across the sea, heavy with waking warmth. As if possessed of a sense of humour all its own, it pulled their long hair up into the sky, strands of silver and gold batting playfully at each other.

The stars disappeared completely. The sun found its courage in the murmurs of the forest and the shore’s crude symphony. Day rose.

‘Time to go soon, huh?’ She glanced out at the orange horizon. ‘I should probably prepare myself.’

‘I haven’t even told you my plan,’ he replied. ‘You might not even be involved.’

‘Of course I’m involved,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m the smart one.’

She patted a pouch at her belt before darting off down the beach, long hair trailing behind her. Lenk watched her go and found a smile creeping of its own accord onto his face. She was pleasant company indeed, he thought, and her imminent death would indeed be a tragedy.

In moments, the sounds of her fleeting feet were replaced by a decidedly lazier step. Lenk glanced over his shoulder to spy Denaos approaching, scratching himself in all manner of places that hardly needed bringing attention to. Hair a mess, vest hanging open around his torso, he casually slurped at a tin cup brimming with coffee.

‘Good morning.’ He paused to take a long sip, glancing at Kataria’s diminishing form. ‘My goodness, driven her away at last, have you? Did I miss something fun?’

‘Solitude and tranquility,’ Lenk grumbled.

‘Both hard to come by.’ He nodded. ‘I’d be rightly irate, were I you.’

‘What are you doing up, anyway?’ The young man tilted his head at the rogue. ‘You don’t usually stir before midday unless you have to piss or you’re on fire.’

‘First of all, that only happened once. And I couldn’t sleep. Everyone was keeping me up.’

‘Everyone, huh?’

‘Everyone,’ he grunted. ‘Gariath snores like the beast he is and Asper snores like the beast she ought to resemble. Dreadaeleon and his green-haired harlot were the worst, though.’

‘What, he wanted a lullaby?’

‘Apparently so.’ The rogue shrugged. ‘He says her songs help him focus his Venarie or clear his mind or empty his bowels or some equally stupid wizardly garbage, I don’t know. At any rate, the little trollop of the sea apparently doesn’t need to sleep, so she just hums all the Gods-damned time.’ He quirked a brow. ‘What were you two doing, anyway?’

‘Not sleeping, same as yourself,’ Lenk replied.

‘Unfortunate.’ He shook his head and sipped. ‘I’m not sure what the procedure for marching into a demon’s nest is, but I’m certain it requires at least eight hours of rest. You can’t scream for mercy if you’re yawning, after all.’

‘I’m going to miss these little chats.’

‘Well, I’ll burn a candle for you later, if I happen to remember in between offering thanks to Silf that it wasn’t me who got his head eaten.’

‘Oh?’ Someone giggled. ‘You think your God loves you enough to spare you that?’

Both men glanced up, expecting to see Kataria, though neither seemed to recognise the creature stalking towards them. It was her height, same slender build, same pointed, notched ears, but it wore an entirely different skin.

Jagged bands of glistening black warpaint alternated down her body and arms, giving her a dark, animalistic appearance. Her broad canines were white against the two solid bands of black that covered her eyes and mouth. Her ears, also painstakingly painted, twitched excitedly.