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As one, the fire erupted from his eyes as a wave of force swept out fro it up in small waves of dirt In a ered He watched it sweep over dunes, over beach, over puddle, following a distant, unseen goal

He waited patiently

He heard a scream, faint in the distance

Female

He s her clutching at her ar?’ Asper wailed ‘What is it?’

He was about to ask when he was struck by it aup into his body with a burning hand, seizing his bowels in intangible icy fingers and giving it a sharp twist

Keep it together, old ether She’s in trouble now Keep it together for her He took a step toward her, collapsed onto his knees Breath was co up to choke him from the inside FOR VENARIE’S SAKE, YOU WEAK LITTLE--

His insult died with his thoughts as electricity gripped his skull, setting it rattling in its thin case of flesh and hair For a fleeting moment, he are of the sensation, aware of what it hts, to harness the electric impulse in his skull The human mind was too complex for that, he knew, just as he knew that every experimental attempt to do so had ended in--

He screa His vision was darkening

He looked to his side Asper was not screa, always terrified He was supposed to protect her now Once he res, he decided, he would do just that All he needed to do was remember how to do that, also how to breathe

Asper was clutching her ar clearly The certainty was still present in the set of her jaw, the deterlinised it; he wished he could reht, he wondered how things could have gone so wrong He was going to save everyone, save her But noas nu under hiripping his shoulders, pulling hi He stared up into Denaos’ face and suht

You dumb asshole

Nine

PESTS

Five hundred and forty-nine patches of disease crawling on two legs, he thought as he stared down at the tiny port city beneath the setting sun

Two hundred and sixty able to hold a weapon, with five hundred and twenty eyes that spoke of their inability to kno

One hundred and three of theressions out against an ocean that was far too kind to them

Ninety and six of the froenitalia was an excuse to let others do the fighting

Ninety remained, evenly split between visitors in short boats who believed that the glittering chunks of rain hatother peoples beneath its boot, and the children …

The children …

Naxiaw scratched his chin, acknowledging the coarse scrawl of tattoos etched from beneath his lip to up over his skull

Forty and five little, toddling future larets on skinny, hairless legs His eyes narrowed, teeth clenched behind thin lips Forty and five future murderers, butchers, burners and desecrators

He had counted

Diseases all

Naxiaw took note of them: where they stood, eapons they carried and which ones would cower in pools of their own urine when he led the rest of theer smeared with black dye, on a piece of tanned leather, he scrawled the city as he saw it froe, kicking with carefree casualness as he plotted a death with each dab of dye

Port Yonder, as the humans called it, was a city built on contempt

It was a demonstration of stone walls and heood that the kou’ru bred with more rapidity than could be contained It was proof that there would never be enough flesh and fish to satisfy their voracity It was their assertion of contempt for the land, that they would desecrate and destroy in the na walls to cower behind, to raise filthy little children behind

Children, he knew, that will grow up to consume more land, to spread the same disease

It was a city that proved beyond a doubt the threat of huers down the long black braid that descended from his otherwise hairless head He brushed the four black feathers laced into its tuft He had earned them the day he proved that threats, no ht seeeance would be later; for the moment, he returned their conte deee unnecessary The humans hadn’t spotted him in the week he’d been there, and wouldn’t To do that, they would have to look up

All it would take for him to be spotted would be for one of thereen skin, to squint until they saw the long, pointed ears with six notches carved into each length, to let eyes go wide and scream ‘Shict!’ They would all be upon him, then; they would kill hi, assemble their forces, pass the word to their many outliers and empires

And then, Intsh Kir Maa, Many Red Harvests, and all the long and deliberate years that had gone into its planning would be foiled The greatest collaboration ast the twelve tribes would be ruined

And the hulory, would fester

But for that to happen, they would have to look up

Naxiaw couldn’t help but feel slightly insulted at the ease hich the plan was developing He had dared to venture doards the city on more than one occasion, to slip a bit of venom into a drink or subtly jab someone from afar with a hair-thin dart For his efforts, he had counted ten diseases cured The venom acted quickly – a brief sickness, a swift death That wasn’t the probleered him was that the humans never seemed to care

No alarms were raised, no weapons drawn, no oaths sworn as their cohed, cried and fell dead They simply dumped the slain into the ocean and went on without sorroithout hatred, without asking why

He had hoped to share that with theifts of anguish, the ones he had taken when the round-eared menace had come to his lands But the humans would not accept it They refused sorrow They refused pain They refused him

Many Red Harvests would be a lesson asof two people, linked forever in death

But that would take time That would take patience For now, he simply sat on a cliff and continued to plot the end of a race as serenely as he ht paint the sunset

The s’na shict s’ha had time The s’na shict s’ha had patience

The s’na shict s’ha kne to paint a scene of vengeance

His ears suddenly pricked up of their own volition, sensing the danger long before he did Footsteps, the details beco clearer with each hairsbreadth by which his ears rose Four flat, heavy feet clad intheir approach loud and unwieldy

Huilant searchers for a threat It did not matter

His eyes drifted to the thick Spokes the twisting, n burned into its polished and solid wood

Two , he told himself No one cares Then there are only five hundred and forty-seven strains of disease to cure Still … He folded up the tanned hide into a thin, solid square With a yawn, he tossed it into hiscareless

The footsteps stopped; he narrowed his eyes They had found his carunted

He raised a hairless brow at the voice It was thick, sharp, grating with an indeter off one another He was not so concerned with their unfamiliarity; the disease caave him pause was the distinct, if harsh, feht now? He had thought that to be a strictly shictish practice They are evolving …

‘Saharkk Sheraptus sent others ahead of us?’ the other one asked, gru and spared us the--’

There was the sharp crack of rowl instead of a shriek

‘His motives are not for you to question,’ the first one snarled ‘And he’s called Master now’ The footsteps began again ‘And we’ll find out ants to stomp here uninvited’