Denaos muttered something under his breath as he rooted through the jars, swabs, and vials, tossing each one upon the ground before producing something and thrusting it at her. Satisfied, she scraped out a thick paste and rubbed it upon the burn wound. Lenk eased into her arms, the salve apparently soothing some of the pain.
“Not enough,” she muttered.
“Why not?” Lenk asked.
“Possibly because I used it all trying to fix another idiot’s mistake weeks ago.” She sighed, spreading the salve with delicate precision. “Still, assuming bedrest and coverage, I can probably keep the infection down until we reach the mainland.”
“Can’t you use something local?” Denaos asked. “A root? An herb?”
“Charbalm requires more refinery than I can do with a mortar and pestle. You don’t find it outside of apothecaries.”
“Surely, there’s something. .”
“If I say there isn’t, then there isn’t.” Each word was spat between clenched teeth at the rogue. “You need tools to make charbalm: distillation, mincing, rare herbs and roots. . other healy stuff.”
“Healy stuff,” Denaos said flatly. “You know, between that and your enlightened description of the stuff as gray and goopy, I’m not sure I feel-”
“I don’t give a winged turd what you think,” she roared at him. “I am a PRIESTESS of TALANAS, you ASS. I know what I’m doing. Now give me a Gods damned bandage and then hurl yourself off a cliff.”
A man, quite possibly insane, lay burned and wounded in her arms. Another man, quite possibly dangerous, scowled at her with suspiciously dark stains on his tunic and another man’s hat in his hands. It was not, in any sense, the sort of situation where she should allow herself a smug, proud smile.
But, then again, she had just rendered Denaos speechless.
“What did you learn?” Lenk asked from Asper’s arms, voice rasping.
“About what?” Denaos growled, rifling through the bag, all humor vanished.
“You’ve had a day with the netherling. What did you find out about them? Jaga? Anything?”
“Not a lot, thanks for asking,” Denaos replied. “She’s as helpful as you’d expect a woman capable of reversing the positions of your head and your scrotum to be.”
“You’ve gotten better out of worse.” Lenk’s voice was strained with distant agony as he shrugged off Asper and staggered to his feet.
“I’ve had time to do that. Time and tools.”
“You’ve got a knife and you’ve had a day. What you got from Rashodd-”
“It’s not that simple.”
“And yet you-”
“It’s not that simple.” The narrow of his eye left nothing so light as a suggestion that not talking about it would be wise. A threat would be more accurate. “We won’t find anything useful from her.”
There had been times when Lenk’s voice commanded, times when his gaze intimidated. Despite size, despite injury, Asper knew both she and Denaos looked to him for reasons beyond those. But never did his voice inspire cringe and never did his gaze cause skin to crawl than when he spoke as he did now.
“Kill her.”
Denaos sighed, rubbed his eyes. “Is that necessary?”
“Well, I don’t know, Denaos. When it comes to killing women who are capable of reversing the positions of your head and your scrotum, is it more necessary or practical?”
“What, exactly, makes this one any different from the others you’ve killed?” Asper asked, rising up and dusting off her robes. The gaze she fixed on Denaos was less scornful than he deserved; perhaps she simply had to know.
“It’s complicated,” the rogue offered, not bothering to look at either of them.
“It is not,” Lenk insisted, his voice cold. “We get the tome. We kill anyone who is in our way.”
“She’s tied to a chair in a hut.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“She’s not going anywhere.”
“Not yet. Not ever.” Lenk narrowed his eyes. “No loose ends. Our duty depends on it.”
When Denaos looked up into the man’s stare, his own was weary. His voice dribbled out of his mouth on a sigh.
“Yeah. Fine. What’s one more, right?”
He flipped the wide-brimmed hat in his fingers, tossed it to Lenk. The young man caught it, looked it over, furrowed his brow.
“This is Bralston’s,” he noted.
“And now it’s yours.” He slipped on a smile. “It’s just that easy.”
He turned, disappeared into the forest. Lenk stared at the hat in his hands for a moment before turning to Asper.
“Fix whatever else you need to fix with my shoulder,” he said. “I leave in an hour.”
“And Denaos?”
“Stays here with you and Dread. We have a better chance of slipping in with fewer people.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Lenk didn’t seem to hear. Or care. She told herself that was rather a wise attitude to have for the rogue. The less she cared, the better. Less chance of him failing, then.
That was a wise attitude. Reasonable.
She tried to convince herself of it as she plucked up her bag and produced a bandage and swab. She looked at Lenk as he knelt down to collect his shirts and the agitated red mass upon his shoulder, glistening with too little salve.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” his voice was gentle, “I wanted to see if it would hurt.”
SIX
He placed a foot upon salt-slick stone. Barely more than the scuff of boot on granite. The silence heard him and came out of a thousand little shadows and pools of water to greet him with resounding echoes.
A thousand footfalls greeted him in the gapingly empty hall, as though by sheer repetition the massive chamber could pretend there was life in its depths. It committed itself to the illusion with every step he took, each echo rising and waiting for him to speak and be repeated a thousand times and complete the deception.
Sheraptus was not in the habit of indulging anyone, let alone stone.
His nostrils quivered, agitated. He was not about to indulge them, either, by placing cloth to nose and masking the stench. He shut his eyes, forced down his distaste and drew in a sharp breath.
The air sat leaden in his nose, heavy with many things as he continued down the great, empty hall. Sea was first among them and with it salt, acrid and foul. Dormant ash was there, in great presence. And something else. Something familiar.
His boot struck something and he stumbled forward. Pulling the black hem of his robe away exposed a pale, hairless face staring up at him with lifeless black eyes and a stagnant aroma wafting from a mouth filled with needle teeth.
No. His crown burned upon his brow, smoldering with thought. Not that.
But close. The scent of death, heaviest and most pungent, was not making it particularly easy to sense out that enigmatic aroma. Understandable, he thought, given all the corpses.
He hadn’t been at Irontide when it all happened, when his warriors had stormed the fortress to retrieve the tome and kill the demonic leader known as the Deepshriek. As he swept a glance about the hollow chamber, though, he absently wished he had been; he certainly wouldn’t have left all these corpses about.
They lay where they had fallen, white and purple, frogman and netherling: gored, cut, rent, stabbed, impaled, trampled, ripped, strangled, drowned, broken, and decapitated. They swelled only barely from salt water. Gulls had not come to feed upon them, as though they were too unclean even for vermin.
He could understand why they hadn’t feasted upon the frogmen, of course, demon-tainted filth that they were. He felt vaguely insulted that his warriors were similarly untouched, as though there were something wrong with them.