by Sam Sykes
“The city?”
“I didn’t say that, either. Don’t interrupt, it’s rude.” She shook her head. “No. It was never just war with you, daanaja. It was never just revenge. It was land. It was food. It was homes. It was people. It was fighting now so we wouldn’t have to fight one day. With you, there was a chance that things might get better, that the tulwar might have more than just fighting. That eventually, there would be enough food and enough land that they might forget they hated us. Just a little.”
She rose to her feet. She looked to the arrow in her hand, frowned a little, and tossed it to the side.
“The other clans don’t know it, of course. Neither do you, daanaja. No one but the malaa know to look this far ahead. It’s other clans, other races, that get the luxury of dying peacefully. They fight to die. We fight to live.”
Chakaa was crazy.
And Chakaa probably was stupid.
What she said made not a lot of sense to Gariath, which was probably to be expected. Someone who had been stabbed as many times as she had probably hadn’t walked away from it with her mind intact. And her words were stupid. And her ideas were stupid. And that whole dramatic speech sounded as stupid coming out of her mouth as it did coming out of any human’s mouth.
But …
There was something she had said in the middle of all that mess. Something about fighting so that there would one day be no more fighting.
Something about that, he didn’t know what, made him feel lighter.
She walked to her gaambol and kicked it awake. The beast shrieked but clambered to its feet. She grabbed its harness to mount it.
“Wait.”
She turned, regarded him. He stood, taller than he felt like he could.
“I need you to do something for me.”
And, as a big yellow smile split apart her face, she looked like the Chakaa he knew. “Of course, daanaja.”
“I need you to take a message to the clans,” he said. “An important one.”
“They shall have it.”
“And I need your gaambol.” He looked over the ridge. “Can you get past the demons on foot?”
“Well, obviously.” She slapped her chest. “I am Chakaa Humn Mak Lak Kai. They are simply demons. What can they possibly do? Kill me?”
“Tear you apart, eat you, digest you, and maybe shit you out.”
“Ah.”
Chakaa paused, looked thoughtful. Then she shrugged.
“Eh. I’ll do it, anyway.”
FORTY-TWO
A COMFORTING SIN
They failed? How?”
A woman. Middle-aged mother, if the husky weariness of her voice was any indication. She was breathless in a way she hadn’t had the energy to be in quite some time.
“It was an ambush. The tulwar, they pushed into the pass. The Prophet’s army fought back, but …”
A man. A little younger than her, with a shrill, weedy voice used to haggling and complaining. Though today, the snide edge was tempered by fear.
“But what?” the woman demanded. “My son was in the reserves! But what?”
“Shicts,” the man said. “They appeared on the cliffs, like ghosts. They filled both armies with arrows. There was not a man alive after they were done.”
Silence. A wet, choked breath. Then a sobbing shriek.
“Lying,” the woman said. “You’re lying!”
“I am not, woman. The scouts just got back, you can ask them yourselves. They were raving about demons and monsters. But I heard the word, over and over. ‘Shict! Shict! Shict!’”
“No … those animals. Why would they?”
“Because they are animals,” the man said. The sneering anger returned to his voice. “Because they are beasts. They hate us and always have. Why wouldn’t they attack the Prophet?” He made an ugly retching noise. “A false Prophet. It is as the fasha said. Our only hope lies in Ancaa, now. We must go to Silktown with the others.”
“But … my son …”
“He is dead. They are all dead.”
There was more that followed—the usual sobbing and weeping and the predictable ensuing pleas for calm and insisting that they must do what he said. Humans tended to follow the same routines, after all.
But Kataria had heard enough.
Her ears folded over themselves as she slipped away from the edge of the roof and made her way back down into the alley. She stole down the side streets, making her way back to the abandoned buildings at the edge of the Souk.
She wasn’t quite sure why she was being so stealthy, though. It wasn’t like anyone was left to see her, anyway. The streets remained silent as they ever had been. So silent that, even through her folded ears, she could hear the mutter of the wind, the creak of houses …
You could have stopped it.
The whisper of her thoughts.
You could have warned Asper.
Step after step.
You could have killed Shekune. You knew where she’d be.
Breath after breath.
But you didn’t.
All the way through the alleys, down the streets, through the door of the abandoned shop she had found and up the stairs to the bedroom on the second floor.
You saved him, instead.
He was there when she entered, sitting on the edge of the bed instead of lying down. Waiting for her instead of resting. The bread and cheese she had found sat untouched next to the jug of water, still full.
He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t rested.
She had let her people die to save him and he couldn’t even take care of himself.
“What’s going on out there?” Lenk stood up and rushed to her. “What’s happened?”
“Sit down,” she said.
“There’s no time for that, I’ve got to—”
“Sit down.”
She hadn’t raised her voice. She merely met his eyes. His, full of panic and fear. Hers, steady as a river. She placed her hand on his chest, felt his heart pounding in her fingertips as she eased him back onto the bed. She took the plate of food from the table beside it and thrust it into his hands.
“Eat.”
He looked as though he might protest but only until he met her eyes again. And under her gaze, he seemed to steady. He let out a sigh and began to eat.
“It was a failure,” Kataria said. “Asper and Gariath, both their armies were wiped out.”
“By demons.”
Kataria shook her head. She opened her mouth, but found that the word would not come. She clenched her jaw and forced it out from behind her teeth.
“Shicts.”
Lenk blinked. “Shicts?”
“Yeah.”
“How? Shicts are just—”
“Shicts are shicts.” Kataria interrupted him with a harsh bark. “We don’t fight, we hunt. We kill.” She felt a cold feeling welling up in her belly. “Sai-Thu—” She caught herself. “Someone showed them a way into the cliffs above the armies. They rained arrows down on both of them, killed most of them. The demons just came in and ate the scraps.”
“What?” He looked incredulous.
“I heard dozens of people talking,” Kataria snapped back. “It’s not demons they’re cursing out there.”
With his mouth full of food, he simply stared down at his plate. And she stared at him, only barely aware of how her hands were curling into fists at her sides.
She had said those words a hundred times in her head and had seen this situation just as many. She thought of everything he would do. He would tell her to think of the greater threat and forget about how her people had just damned themselves. He would moan about there being yet another thing out there to kill him. He would sigh wistfully about how he should have put his sword down long ago—yet again—and why couldn’t he give this up and why couldn’t anyone just let him be.
And then she would hit him.
Maybe hard. Maybe really hard. Maybe enough to knock him out, entirely, or even break some teeth loose.
But she would hit him. She would show him that she could still hurt him, that even if she had saved his life and let everyone else die because of it, she could still do that to him.
She would hit him.
She would prove she could still hurt him.
And it wouldn’t feel good. But it would be necessary.
“I’m sorry.”
Of course, he had to go and fuck that up, as well.
He put the plate down. He stood up. He met her gaze again. And the fear was gone from his eyes.
“How …” He paused and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Do you feel all right?”
She didn’t know how to answer that. Her head felt like someone had lined her skull with iron. Her heart felt like it had turned to a stone and sunk into her belly. She felt like she was going to vomit out something she needed to live.
“Fine,” she said. “I feel fine.”
She didn’t feel fine. But what else could she have felt? What else could she have done, she asked herself?
It was an entire tribe, an entire people, an entire war she had stood against.
She couldn’t have stopped any of it.
And now, she thought, you can’t even punch one fucking human.
Her arms felt numb, like the rest of her. No urge to hit, no urge to kill, no urge to do anything that would make this better. She simply stood there, staring at him, as he stared at her with his punchable face that she couldn’t even fucking hit, she was that fucking powerless.
And he saw her mouth hanging open, her hands hanging limp. And he frowned.
“You’re not fine,” he said.
“I am.”
“But you—”
“I said I was.” Her teeth were out, her ears flat against her head, eyes twisted in a scowl. “You think I’m lying or something?”
He didn’t run. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink as he whispered.
“No.”
“Then shut your fucking face.”
She met his eyes with her scowl, her body tense, jaw clenched, daring him to press the issue, to give her a reason.
But him, with his blue eyes that didn’t turn into a scowl and his old scars that didn’t bunch up into muscles to fight her and his body that just stood there and waited for her and didn’t even have the decency to give her a reason to hit him …
“Useless,” she muttered.
Her eyes drifted far to the edge of the city, toward the wooden walls of Shicttown. The smoke of campfires did not rise from behind its walls anymore. She could not hear the Howling of the people there. It stood, as empty and dead as the rest of the city.
And as her eyes drifted, so, too, did her thoughts. Back to the day when that ghetto had burned as Karnerians had stalked its streets in search of shicts to kill in revenge. Shekune had led the attack that spurred them. The shicts had followed precisely because they knew the humans were simply looking for an excuse to kill them. There were generations upon generations of grudges, vengeances, and sins that they wanted answered. Thousands of years of hatred.
What made you think you could have stopped all that?
Her legs felt weak. She fell forward, pressed her head against the window. The glass was cool on her brow as the night deepened. But she could barely tell; all of her felt cold at that moment.
Behind her, she heard Lenk moving toward the door. Maybe running away. Maybe giving her some space.
She didn’t know.
Or care.
She heard him walk to the door. She heard him stop. She heard him open his big stupid mouth.
“Kwar saved me.”
A surge of heat coursed through her. Uncomfortable, almost painful, like a scar opening again and warm blood hitting cold air.
“From Teneir,” Lenk said. “She was there. She jumped on Teneir, stabbed her a bunch of times, and then … just left.” He paused. “She made me swear not to tell you, but I was a little dead at the time, so I don’t think it counts. But … yeah. She was there. And I’d be dead if she hadn’t been.”
Those weren’t words she was ready to hear. That wasn’t a name she had expected to hear again, not from him. He didn’t spit it. He didn’t curse it. He could have not told her. He could have lied. He could have been as horrible and shitty and awful as everyone else.
But, she thought, he fucked that up, too. And so did Kwar.
“Thank you.”
His hand was on her shoulder. She hadn’t heard him approach. When had he ever been able to sneak up on her? She could feel the calluses on his hand, warm against the bare skin of her shoulder.
“For everything,” he said.
His hand lingered there for another moment. She heard the wood grind beneath the heels of his boots as he turned to leave. His hand began to slip away.
Until she reached out and caught it.
She didn’t know why—not in her head, at least. Something deeper inside her knew why she took his hand, why she squeezed it. Something that had lain quiet for a long time in a very cold place and now craved something warm. That part of her knew why she pulled his hand lower, pressed it against her naked side.
The warmth—his warmth, old and familiar and in every one of his scars—flowed into her. His hand squeezed her side gently. And then harder.
Her arm snaked up, found his neck, found his hair, wrapped fingers around it. She pulled him close to her, felt his body press against hers, felt the beating of his heart through her back.
She pulled his head toward her. His lips found her neck, brushed across the tender skin of her throat. She could feel the cold slipping away, feel her blood rushing up to her skull, into her ears as he whispered.
“Kataria …” he said, “if you’re feeling … confused …”
“I’m not,” she replied.
“But if you are—”
“Lenk.”
She looked to the window. By the moonlight, she caught the barest glimpse of his reflection as he looked at her, the barest glimpse of her canines as she smiled in a way she hadn’t smiled in a long time.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Her hand slipped from his hair, down his chest, to the the leather of his belt and down to between his legs. She found him ready beneath her hand as she gave him a squeeze, as she pulled at the buckle of his belt, as she let his trousers fall around his ankles.
She pressed herself against him, felt him pushing at her breeches as she fumbled at her own garment. She hooked her fingers into the waist of her breeches, pulled them down, bending low. She took his hands in hers, she guided them to her hips, she squeezed his fingers.
And, slowly, she slid herself onto him.
He met her. Her body tensed as his hands tightened around her. Her forearms pressed against the cold window, her breath fogging the glass as he pressed into her. Her ears drooped low, the blood leaving them, her head, her neck, rushing down to her belly, her hips, her legs.
He began to rock against her, a slow rhythm that steadily picked up. She could feel him behind her, feel the coil of his muscles, growing taut in the way she knew they did. She could feel the roughness of his scars upon her, the familiar lines that told her everything she needed to knew about him. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, his thighs pressed against hers, his teeth clenched.
And it all felt so easy.
She pushed back against him, forced him to give a step. She arched her back. She pressed her brow against the glass. She pushed herself against him, pushed him deeper inside her, pushed until he pushed back.
He pressed her against the window. She felt the cold glass against her belly. She felt her hair falling across her back, trailing down to brush against his hips. She felt herself growing more numb, pushing against him, her hips pressing hard until she forced him back again.
And this time, he yielded. He held on to her, his breath coming out in harsh gasps as she thrust herself against him. A growl escaped between her clenched teeth as his hands tightened around her hips, as she tightened around
him. She felt him respond to her, felt the blood rush down to his hips, felt his grip go tight and numb.
She needed this. This moment, this breath, this lightheaded feeling of a wide open sky beneath her and a solid rock behind her. She needed this moment where she acted and he followed, where he was strong and solid and unyielding as she needed him to be. She needed to control this moment, as she could control nothing else.
The blood left her head, left her arms, left everything to rush to between her legs, to feel him with everything she had. And there, she could feel everything inside her, inside him, come together into one singular warmth.
As though this moment, and him and her in it, shared one heartbeat.
Her cry came loud and long, a noise from somewhere deep inside her that she hadn’t let out in a long time. His followed, a grunting, snarling noise she had missed too much. And when it was over, she leaned against the window and let herself go limp in his arms. She let him guide her to the bed. She let her head fall against his chest, let the blood return to her ears, let the sound of his heartbeat fill her ears.
He was safe, at least. He was alive, at least. Even as the rest of the world burned, he was still here.
If this was all she could save, that was fine with her. If the people she loved were all she could protect, then she would protect them.
If armies burned down the world and demons choked on the ashes, she would not let them die.
Even if everything else did.
That thought, she suspected, should not have made her feel as warm as it did.
But, as she felt his breath in time with hers and the heartbeat of this moment continued, she found she did not care.
FORTY-THREE
A CALL BETTER LEFT QUIET
After a long moment of surveying the Souk—or what had been the Souk—Lenk nodded to himself. He put his hands on his hips, stared down at the great skeletonized bazaar, and spoke.
“Here.”
Kataria, shooting him a sidelong glance, seemed less than convinced. “Why here?”
“Space, mostly.”
He stretched his arms out wide over the great circle that had been Cier’Djaal’s biggest market, turned into Cier’Djaal’s biggest battlefield, and was now Cier’Djaal’s biggest graveyard.