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She had made it when she turned away

She was shict, she told herself Her loyalty was to her people She owed hiies And she had re, found hi his shirt over a freshly stitched wound

She hadat all

Perhaps that hy she unconsciously evaded Naxiaw’s probing instinct: a fear he ht knohy they couldn’t connect, a gripping terror he ht have a solution

She looked to the Spokesain

She found herself surprised to see it there still and not, say, embedded in the skulls of one or more of the humans Naxiaw had seen them, after all, when the two shicts had pulled the ocean He had paused, a mere fifty paces from them, and stared The implications that had seized her with a cold dread then had surely dawned on him as well

Despite his captivity, he was still fresh and energetic Co, limber and swift The humans eak, exhausted and burdened with each other His Spokeser puppy The huhts

He was shict

They were not

She had braced herself, then For what, she wasn’t sure The uncertainty paralysed her, rendered her incapable of doingdimly, unsure what more to do A shict, she kneould have rushed doith hiainst them A companion, she told herself, would have stood between him and them

But a companion would not have stared into her friend’s eyes and turned ahen he screamed her name

And a shict would not have felt wounded when he stared back into hers the following

Kataria had done nothing that night Kataria continued to do nothing As much as she cursed herself for it, that did not surprise her

What did, however, was the fact that Naxiaw had followed her example and let the huendary for, tolerance and patience were not a them

Why he had vanished into the forest, continued to wait here, she did not know Why he hadmore than an offer of cooked amphibians, she could not say What he hoped to find in her as he stared at her so intently, she had no idea

But she wished, desperately, that he would stop

HeOr heseat with an intensity usually reserved for dogs inflicted with parasites He looked away, regardless

‘Cook the poison fro the a pouch froes’

‘My father said it’s how the greenshicts keep their blood toxic,’ she replied

‘Your father knewthe word hang in the air, ‘than he knew about his own people’

‘You knew hieable leader He knehat he was He knehat he had to do He kneas a good shict, and so did we He also knew the value of consu veno, still alive, its red and blue body glistening as it croaked contentedly in his palm, unafraid

‘It is a temporary pain and so snaps one from stupor,’ he said ‘It sharpens the senses, makes one more aware of the weakness of lesser pains … improves the function of the bowels’

He said this pointedly, looking at her She furrowed her brow in retaliation

‘And?’ she pressed

‘And,’ he continued, ‘it is what cures disease’

She stiffened at the word, gooseflesh rising on her back

‘One would assume,’ she whispered hesitantly, ‘that poison would make one as ill as disease’

‘Poison does not make one ill; it merely poisons It is a temporary ele the host is strong enough, it leaves If the host survives, she isas it tentatively waddled across his pal

‘Illness is born of so deeper,’ he said ‘It infects, festers within the host, not as a foreign element, but as a part of her body And because of this, it does not leave on its own Even if syers and births itself anew Because of this, the host cannot wait for it leave It ers clenched into a fist There was a faint snapping sound

‘Cured’

She fought to hide the shudder that coursed through her, more for the sudden ruthlessness of the action than for the fact that he subsequently popped the raw amphibian into his mouth and sed

‘A cured illness is a purified body It leaves the host stronger But this is all assuin with’

He fixed his penetrating stare upon her, sliding past her tender, exposed flesh, past her tre to jelly He saw, then, what he had been searching for She felt the knowledge of it in her heart

‘To infect without being noticed,’ he whispered, ‘is the nature of disease’

She could not bear his searching stare any longer She turned away His sigh was so harsh and alien, unused to his lips

‘How long?’

She said nothing

‘What am I to tell your father, Little Sister?’

She shook her head

‘How am I to tell any of our kinsmen that you have been with hu her lip ‘Tell the Tell them you don’t knohy and tell them that Kataria doesn’t know, either Or tell the about it and talking about it and thinking about it and get on hatever the hell else ere doing before everyone started asking if Riffid even gave a crap if a shict hung around round-ears’

Her hands trembled, clenched the skewer so hard it snapped She looked down at it through blurred vision; she couldn’t re