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Sound plan

A ashed over his leg; he felt soainst his bare foot He explored it with his toes, expecting to find splintered driftwood, ht, perhaps the remains of his co He chuckled at the ainst the object

It was not so soft as flesh, not even as wood He felt firmness, a faht to sit up, fought to reach into the surf and was rewarded with hands around wet leather Alht he was, he jerked hard before fear could randfather’s sword, rose with all the firlittered in the sunlight, defiant of its would-be watery grave The sun recoiled at its sight; there would be no angelic glow of deliverance frorey skies and grirandfather

‘Reh,’ he had finished, ‘you and I, we’re men of Khetashe, men of the Outcast He has no place in heaven for his followers He loathes us for the reputation we cast on him So why should we die when He wants us to?’

Lenk felt his own sht very well be his tiht have been charity frorave He followed the Outcast, though, and Khetashe had never sent hie he would be expected to listen to

He turned and looked over his shoulder, toward a distant wall of greenery A forest, he recognised Forests were plants Plants needed water And so did he

Water first, he thought as he stalked toward the foliage, sword clenched against his body Water first, then food, then find Sebast and keep hih for rew particularly gri to bury

Five

WHITE TREES

‘Tell ell me, Kataria,’ she had said once, ‘what is a shict?’

‘I learned that ages ago,’ her daughter had gruht now if I wasn’t here being stabbed with trivia A buck I could be coated in gore right now if – OW!’

After the blow, her daughter had ave us instinct, nothing else She would not indulge us in weaknesses and we prosper froht!’

‘You told rees with hiht one was! What do you want me to say?’

‘If you could predict what I wanted you to say, you wouldn’t have gotten hit That’s what it means to be a shict’

‘So, violent hypocrisy makes a shict? That sounds pretty siree?’

‘I do’

‘Then tell me’

‘No’

‘No?’

‘Whatever I tell you, you’ll just hitwhat you want me to say, I’m not a shict I know that much’

She had s her arms behind her head as she lay upon the shore The sun was rey clouds, coress By the ti sheets of cloud, as if checking to see if she were still watching, she estimated three hours had passed

She craned her neck up, looking past her bare feet

The shoreline greeted her: vast, e froth, theout before her

And nothing e, noher gaze skyward again, wondering just how long it was acceptable to wait for signs that one’s co cast apart in an explosion of sea induced by a colossal, flesh-eating sea serpent

What does one look for, anyway? she wondered Wood? A severed liteeth Stool?

Very little sign of any of that, she noted with a sigh And why should there be? What were the chances of one of the up, anyway? And if they did, ould they wash up as she did, having lost nothing more than her bow and boots?

They were dead now, she told herself, floating in the sea, resting in a gullet, picked apart by gulls or about to wash up as a bloated, pale, waterlogged piece of flesh They were dead and she was alive She should count herself lucky

She was alive

And they’re dead

And she was not

And he’s dead

And she was a very lucky shict

Shict, she repeated that word in her head I a Shicts don’t fight fair Shicts were given instinct by Riffid, nothing ht to cleanse Shicts kill hue that overruns this world Humans build, humans destroy, humans burn and humans kill Shicts kill humans Shicts do not trust humans

Nature conspired in silence at that moment The roar of the ocean lulled, the whisper of the breeze stilled, the sound of trees swaying stopped All for a nificant thought that crept into the fore of her consciousness

But you did

The creeping thought became a sudden rush of memory, memories she had tried her best to shove in some dark corner of her ainst her skull and lose them

But they came back, no matter how much she tried to block theht of a silver ht it was so unusual to see in a human She remembered how that had made her lower her boer the arrow that had been poised at his head, a head so blissfully free of suspicions and projectiles alike She re him out

Shicts kill hu to drown the hter humans Shicts cleanse the world of humans Mother told you what shicts were

But she could not drown the sounds His sounds, the sounds she had studied and learned: thethathe would think about if not talk about, the sighs thatshe had yet to learn about hirowled inwardly Huold, desire land, desire whatever it is they don’t have Father told you what huh it all, she heard the distant beat of a heart The sound of a heart that had beat fiercely enough to drown out the sound of a roaring sea The sound of a heart that she was supposed to cut out, the sound of a heart that had fed the pulse in a throat she was supposed to slit His heart, his pulsating, hideous human heart that she had heard before they departed His horrific heart His human heart The heart she heard now

But that’s just a ht resounding in her head only once Those are just sounds He’s dead now

And theinside her head