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‘You wish to prove it,’ Inqalle said softly, a statee or insult ‘I wish to see it’
‘Then let me show you how to make a redshict, you six-toed piece of--’
‘There is another way, Little Sister’
Kataria paused She felt Inqalle’s Howling, the promise within its distant voice, the desire to help And Inqalle heard the anticipation in her little sister’s, the desperation to be helped Inqalle smiled, thin and sharp Kataria sed hard, voice dry
‘Tell me’
‘You know you talk in your sleep,’ her daughter had said years later, long after she was gone frohter wore a white feather ‘I could have shot you from four hundred paces away’
‘Lucky forwith silver hair had said in return ‘Which, coincidentally, is the sixth time you’ve told me you could kill me’
‘Today?’
‘Since breakfast’
‘That sounds about right’
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘Do it already Add another notch to your belt … or, is it feathers with you?’
‘I don’t have any kill feathers’
‘What are those for, then?’
Her daughter had tucked the white one behind her ear ‘Lots of things’
‘Okay’
‘You’re not curious?’
‘Not really’
‘You’ve never wondered e do e do?’
‘If the legends are true, your people’s connections with my people tend to be either arroords or fire That all seehter had frowned
‘You, though …’ he had said
‘What about me?’
He had stared, then, as he hefted his sword
‘You stare at hter to stop He hadn’t told her daughter to leave And Kataria never had
They stretched out into the distance, over the sand, a story in each , of pain, of confusion, of fear She narrowed her eyes as she knelt do, tracing her fingers over two of the tracks The voices in the footprints spoke clearly to her, told her where they were heading
She knew her conise their tracks
‘There are more,’ Inqalle said behind her ‘They are familiar to you’
‘They are,’ Kataria replied
‘They are your cure’
She turned and saw the feather first Inqalle held it in her hand, attached to a smooth, carved stick She held it before Kataria
‘You knohat this is’
‘I remember,’ she said ‘A Spokesman’
‘It speaks It makes a declaration This one says that you shall not arded Kataria coolly ‘This one will tell you when you are a shict’
‘I remember,’ she said ‘My father told me’
‘This is a cure for the disease This is a cure for your fear This restores you’ She handed the Spokesman to Kataria ‘Keep it Use it Survive until you becoain’
‘And when I do You will know?’
Inqalle tapped her head
‘We will all know’
Six
CHEATING LIFE
The heavens ue, this translated roughly to ‘it’s not h times to know Those humans he knew had been happiest when they could blame someone else
Formerly humans, he corrected himself, currently chum Lucky little idiots with no one to blame
Not entirely true, he knew If their heavens did indeed circle enigone to the curses upon his head froht, to praise theirsent to them
Or is that what they call ‘irony’?’
But that was a concern for dead people Gariath, sadly, was still alive and without a convenient excuse for it
The Rhega had no gods to blaods to claim them That hat he wanted to believe, at least
He had been able to overlook his inability to die, at first, throwing hifaces, at de out with only a few healthy scars They h blood to choke on, but they were lucky Death by a Rhega’s hand would be as good a death as they could hope for
When a colossal serpent failed to kill hi more than just mere luck The sea, too, had rejected hiods did exist, and if their circles ide enough to touch hi him alive
Now that is irony
The forreed And if he had learned anything froods rarely seemed content to allow a victim of their ironies merely toin their misery They preferred to leave reed victories into wounds that had routinely failed to prove fatal
And, as his own personal oolden scowl upon hi more faithful by theunder liquid skin, the Akaneed continued to whirl, twist and writhe beneath the sun-coloured waves It ele, furious eye upon hiolden slit that burned through the waves
Just as it had burned all throughout the ht Just as it had continued to burn throughout the afternoon he squatted upon the sand, watching it as it watched him