You should ask him about it, Fyra said.
Churls opened her eyes and found that her daughter had placed her tiny hand in Churls’s own. She resisted the knee-jerk urge to snatch it away. But concentrating on the contact, she realized it felt like nothing. The breeze caressed Churls’s hand, chilling the sweat on her palm. Holding her daughter’s hand felt like air passing through her lungs.
You will, won’t you, Mama, Fyra said. You’ll ask him?
“I will,” Churls said, and stood alone on the edge of the cliff.
‡
As she expected, Berun had not yet returned. Churls often woke in the hours before dawn, always to find the constructed man absent. He returned just before the sun rose. She never asked him where he had been. It was his business—productive business, sometimes. On four separate occasions, he had brought breakfast back with him. Two rodents with crushed skulls. Once, he had bagged a rodent and an owl, which Vedas refused to eat.
Each time, Berun had also returned with a new pair of rocks in his hands, ready to be ground down into marbles. Churls wanted to ask him about his nighttime activities, but could not find a way to broach the subject. Fairly certain he liked her, she did not want to run the risk of making him uncomfortable. He reminded her of Abi, the precocious child her sister had adopted. He even stood the same way, like he was waiting for instructions. Ever watchful. Sensitive.
Churls sat down, not tired in the least. Her eyes had fully adjusted to the night.
Vedas lay face down only a body-length from her, half on, half off his bedroll, posture unnaturally tense for a sleeping man. His left palm lay flat on the ground, but his fingers curled into the soil. He had pulled his right knee up until it was level with his waist, and the toes of his left foot pointed into the ground. Both calf muscles bulged with tension. He looked almost as if he were crawling, or climbing a wall.
Churls admired the twin curves of his buttocks, and wondered what would happen if she ran a fingertip between them. She indulged this fantasy while stroking her inner thigh. Her eyelids grew heavy as her fingers found their mark.
A sound behind her. A pebble shifting against another pebble.
Before she could move, Vedas pushed off the ground and leapt forward, aimed at a point just behind her. He twisted in the air as he flew, back grazing her left shoulder. She had barely begun to turn when his body, struck by something in midair, bowled over her. Pitching forward, she was unable to raise her hands before her face struck earth. Her lower lip peeled back and dirt ground against her teeth. A glancing blow, either Vedas or the thing he had caught, scraped along the right side of her head, nearly taking her ear with it. She roared into the ground.
A growl answered it.
Churls lifted her head in time to see Vedas and the cat disengage. He was a mere beat slower getting to his feet, and took a vicious swipe to the head. The blow should have taken his head off, yet he simply twisted his neck with the impact and kept moving. He circled the cat, a darkly furred, compactly muscular beast that must have weighed nearly as much as Vedas. It spat, hind legs twitching, front paw extended, swiping with dizzying speed whenever the black-suited man tried to close in.
Vedas took another hit to the head. Churls saw the white of the cat’s claws, no less than two inches long. Again, Vedas took the impact as though it were a boxer’s weak cross.
Churls rose to a crouch, the taste of blood and dirt in her mouth.
“Stay back!” Vedas yelled.
She had not noticed before, but he had masked his face completely. Unbelievable, that it alone had shielded him from the cat’s claws. Unmindful of his warning, she snapped her head around to locate her sword, and crabwalked backwards to it. Its worn hilt felt good in her hands, but she doubted it would be of much use against the man-sized feline if it turned its attention back to her.
Snarling, the cat sprung toward Vedas. Falling under its weight, he caught its head in his hands before its canines found his throat. Slowly, he closed his fingers around its neck. Its back paws skittered along his legs, unable to hook claws into flesh. As Vedas’s grip tightened, the cat thrashed ever more wildly atop his body. Its front paws slapped at his head, claws failing to sink in there as well.
Churls became aware of the sound coming from the animal’s constricted throat. A low, almost human gurgle. She had heard the sound before. She had strangled men before.
She ran forward. Her blade passed through the cat’s heart with expert precision, but the animal’s seizures opened the gash wider, and then tore the sword from Churls’s hands. Blood fountained from the wound, hitting her chest squarely, drenching her instantly.
Its heat shocked her, and she fell to her knees.
‡
The blood had created a tight film across her chest. It itched horribly, but she did not scratch at it. Her lower lip was swollen to twice its normal size, and the entire right side of her head burned as though it had been scoured with grit paper.
The sun had barely risen, and the world was beautiful. Almost six thousand feet below her and peppered with tiny islands, an expanse of bluegreen sea extended to the horizon. Sunlight passed through the shallow water as if it were glass, revealing the wrack-spotted sand below. Huge, paddle-finned reptiles drifted between the islands, their scale impossible for Churls to comprehend. Legend said the ocean was no deeper than a man could throw a stone, but this too was difficult to understand.
Men could not sail the ocean, so how could they know how deep it was? The cat lay at Churls’s feet. One leg had fallen over the edge of the cliff. Its fur was matted with blood and dirt. It had indeed been as heavy as a man. Berun had offered to carry it, but Churls preferred to do it herself. She had told the constructed man to stop apologizing. How could he have known a cat would attack?
Vedas lay recuperating. His suit had protected him from most of the damage, the fact of which still amazed Churls. She had examined his jaw and asked him to rotate his joints. Though these tests proved his injuries were not debilitating, his neck and right knee stiffened enough to worry her. Clearly, she reasoned, travel would have to wait until tomorrow. He complained, but Churls insisted he rest. She sprinkled suffun root over his breakfast, and he had fallen to sleep soon after.
It was an unexpected comfort, knowing that he lay in a deep sleep. The stress of hiding her attraction, of maintaining the fragile balance of moods between them, was so easily shrugged away. She did not have to think about answering his next question, proving to him again and again that she knew best how to lead them from one place to the next. She stood unclothed, relaxed as she always was after a fight.
She heard Berun’s steps long before he reached her.
“I don’t want another apology,” she said without turning. “Save it for Vedas if you like, but I doubt he wants it, either.”
“No apology,” he rumbled. “There’s a pond not far. I brought you water.” She turned. “I have…”
She shook her head. The constructed man dripped water from the bottom of his oddly distended belly. He had carried the water with him, but could not create a perfectly sealed container.
The spheres rolled away from the bathtub he had formed, and Churls peeked inside. She laughed.
“What?” Berun said.
“You brought a traveler with you. Look.”
Berun’s eyes rolled free from his face and tumbled slowly down his chest. Perched above the water, they observed the orange-scaled fish that swam in tight circles inside his makeshift stomach. He reached inside and cupped it against a wall.