“And if you’re not lying, if there is no pain. .” He walked toward the fire, hand extended.
“I didn’t-” For the first time, the voice stammered. “What are you doing?”
His fingers wrapped around the hilt, felt the heat. He pressed it to his shoulder, and felt it burn.
“STOP!”
Bralston never heard the sound of his word.
He saw it instead.
He watched his word leave his throat. He watched his voice fly out on a gurgle and a thick red splash. He watched his life spatter softly upon the earth and settle in quivering beads.
He watched the blade, never having seen it as it struck. He watched as it glistened with his life. He watched as the murderer wiped it clean, pulled it back into its hiding place in his glove.
Like it was just another murder. Common.
And the murderer stood before him, already dusting off the earth from his body, the dark blood indistinguishable upon his black leathers. He looked at Bralston, weaponless, clean, as though he had never added another body to his debt.
All that remained to speak against him was Bralston. And Bralston’s voice lay in a thick puddle on the sand.
No.
He collapsed to his knees.
No, damn it.
He swayed, vision darkening.
Not like this.
He felt himself teeter forward.
Anacha, we were going to-
“Imone.”
He heard the word as he felt the hands steady him. He looked up, saw the murderer’s clean face, saw the murderer’s dead stare. The man removed his glove, pressing it against the bright red smile in Bralston’s throat. Not enough to save him, just enough for him to listen.
“Say it,” the murderer said.
Bralston gurgled.
“She wasn’t the Houndmistress. She had a name. Imone. Say it.”
“Im. . Ihmooghnay,” Bralston croaked.
The murderer stared at him. Almost insulted that a man with a cut throat should slur.
“She had a city,” the murderer said. “She had a name.” He stood up, let Bralston topple to the earth and splash in his own life. “One that should be spoken on the lips of dying men.”
He winced, as though he only now became aware of what he had done, as he stared at the just and moral choice leaking out onto the sand. He turned away, the sight too much to bear.
“Sorry,” he said.
He turned and walked into the forest, stopping only to pluck up his dagger and the hat, pitifully still, that had been pinned beneath its blade. Bralston raised his hand, trying to summon thought from a head draining, trying to summon voice from the earth. Enough for a spell, enough for a curse, enough for anything.
“You. .” he rasped, “you. . you. .”
“I know,” Denaos said.
The man ducked, vanishing into the underbrush. He was gone long before Bralston clutched at the spellbook at his hip. Long before Bralston cried out as he grasped at his leaking life.
Long before Bralston could see nothing but darkness.
The smell of ripe flesh cooking cloyed her nostrils.
One breath later, she heard him scream.
She whirled about. Through the smoke and the scent of char, she could see him. Bits of him.
His eyes were wide and yellow with the reflection of the heat. His face was stretched with agony, looking as though it might snap off and fly into the underbrush at any moment.
She rushed toward him, fist up and slamming against his jaw. The knife came off with pink strips of flesh curling into thin, gray wisps as it fell to the ground and sizzled into the sand.
Of all the oaths she had taken and hymns she had recited to Talanas, she was fairly certain she had, at one point or another, sworn not to do what she just did. But the Healer would have to understand, if He existed at all.
That worry would have to wait. Prayers and whatever other blows she had to complement the last, too. She made a point not to forget to deliver them, though.
Right now, her eyes were on the mass of molten flesh that bubbled like an undercooked pastry with a viscous, red-tinged filling. The sutures of gut were seared into his flesh, veining his shoulder in a tangled mass of black atop a cherry red and visibly throbbing skin. A parasite would have been a more accurate description, a fleshy tick gorged with blood that twitched as it drank deeply.
Proper metaphors were hard to come up with as he writhed in her grip and screamed in her ears.
“That hurt,” he gasped. Tears fled from the corners of his eyes, seeped into the twisted contours of his grimace. He reached up to grab his shoulder, fought to rise to his feet. “That really hurt.”
“You’re kidding,” she muttered. One hand came down firmly upon his bare chest, sending him to the earth and holding him there. The other wrenched his hand away from the wound. “Hold still.”
Closer up, it ceased to be a metaphor and she saw it for what it was: sealed up in a mass of ugly melted flesh, a seeping, weeping pustule begging for any number of infections dying to come in. The fury with which she sighed would have been better expended on cursing or punching.
“Should I even ask?” she snarled.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” he replied, eyes shut tight. “You should have stopped me.”
“What was I supposed to do?” She recoiled from the accusation, and not just because of the oddity of it all.
“You said there would be no pain.” His shrieking died, consumed in an angry growl. “You said there would be nothing.”
“I. . I never did!”
“Oh, you didn’t expect that?” His laugh was a black thing that crawled up her spine and made itself cozy at the base of her neck. “So, you don’t know everything?”
“Who are you talking to?” she pressed, her voice fervent. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Is it not yet obvious?”
A man’s voice came from behind her. Not the voice she wanted to hear. Not the man she wanted standing over her.
“He’s done something amazingly stupid again,” Denaos muttered. With a rather insulting lack of immediacy, he leaned over her shoulder, gingerly holding a broad-rimmed leather hat in his hands. “So, Lenk. .” He paused, smacking his lips. “Why?”
“Not important,” Lenk muttered. “Just fix it.”
He glanced from the knife, thin blobs of flesh still cooking on its blade, to Lenk. “Friend, considering what you’ve just done, I don’t think there is a way to fix you.”
“Shut up, shut up,” Asper growled. She frowned at the wound. “Just. . just get me my bag. Hurry.”
To his credit, Denaos did snatch up her bag with haste. It was a credit squandered, as ever, by what came out of his mouth next.
“It seems as though haste is kind of self-defeating, really,” he said, holding it out to her. “I mean, he’s never going to learn if you just keep fixing him up.”
She couldn’t spare a glare for him, nor anything more than an outstretched hand. “Charbalm.”
“What’s that?”
“The goopy gray stuff. I’ve got a little bit left.”
“A little bit doesn’t sound like enough,” Denaos said, rooting around in the bag haphazardly.
“It won’t be,” she snapped. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re in the middle of a Gods damned jungle. It’ll be a miracle if he isn’t already infected.”
He pulled a small wooden jar from the bag, flipping the latch on its lid and handing it to her. She poured some of the thick, syrupy liquid into her hand before snarling and hurling the jar at him.
“I said charbalm, moron! This is mutterbye! A digestive.”
“They’re not labeled!” the rogue protested, ably sidestepping the projectile.
“I said gray and goopy. How much more description do you need, you imbecile?” The insult was punctuated with a frustrated slap on Lenk’s shoulder and, a breath later, the scream that followed and sent her wincing at him. “Sorry.”