Lenk’s not wrong, you know, he told himself. Even if she could never lift a blade again, it’s not like she doesn’t have it coming. The same could be said of you, of course, and it would be an insult to ethics if you didn’t cut your own throat after hers.
He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath.
But that’s why Lenk told you to do it, isn’t it? Ethics are not a problem for you.
He stood and let the blade hang from his hand as he turned to the door.
Not a lot of use in denial, is there?
He paused, ear twitching. He heard Asper coming, but didn’t bother to move. She roughly shoved him aside, cursing angrily above her breath.
“Quarter of an hour,” she said. “After that, come in.”
Shove past her, he told himself. When that didn’t happen, he insisted. Go in there and open the longface’s throat in front of her. Then confess. Then get your last rites and die. When he stayed still, he cursed himself. You’re not making this easier by letting her delay you, you know. This is not a particularly big blessing.
It was not. It was just enough to permit him the will to turn about and saunter toward the village, already thinking which lizardman might still have enough good will or fear of him to part with a drink. A blessing; small, ultimately meaningless and more than a little harmful.
Denial often was.
A spark. A jolt. A quick jab with a needle, just enough to jerk her out of the day-long stupor. Just enough to speak a few short words in a language only he spoke, only she understood. They flashed across her mind and then were gone.
“About time,” she muttered.
Semnein Xhai rolled her neck, heard it return to life with a satisfying crack. She tugged at her bonds, felt them tight but weak. Her arm was mangled, but it was her arm, and its muscles twitched and creaked under her skin, hungry and angry and other words she didn’t know that translated to “kill them all.”
Her ears pricked up. She heard voices. Real ones, this time: the weak and airy exhales of breath of words that she hadn’t felt in her head. One voice something quiet and meek and trying to pretend it wasn’t; the overscum’s. Another voice, something cold and hard like a piece of metal; his.
His voice, hard and cold and trying to convince itself it wasn’t. His knives, unashamed and bold and everything he should have been. His feet, hurrying toward her. His hand, reaching through.
No, not his hand. Not him that came through. And, at the sight of what did come through, Xhai remembered one more word that translated to “kill.”
“You.”
Everything about the overscum leaked weakness. It seeped out of her eyes. It shook out of her trembling hands. Xhai knew this because she could sense the fear, the hesitation that came from those who thought there was more to them than decaying flesh and dying breath.
The overscum knew it as much as she did; that much was obvious by the fact that she sat herself down forcefully before the netherling. She moved with what she knew wasn’t purpose, stared with what she knew wasn’t courage.
She was lying to herself, trying to hide a weakness that she couldn’t hide behind a stare she knew wasn’t cold, a stare she offered everywhere but Xhai’s milk-white eyes. She directed the fake sternness to a purple forehead, to a long chin, to a sharp cheekbone. Never once to the eyes; purple and pink skin alike knew the facade would shatter into tiny, useless pieces.
The overscum’s bones to follow in kind.
“I am here. .” Asper paused a hair too long between words. “To deliver you your last rites.”
Xhai stared blankly at her. This one wasn’t worthy of her hate.
“To permit you the opportunity,” the overscum continued, “to express remorse and penitence before myself and your-” she paused, catching a word in her throat, “-self for the sins you’ve committed and the lives you’ve stolen.”
Xhai blinked.
“If you’ve anything to say on-”
“Send in the male.”
“The-” The overscum stuttered, recoiled, looked almost offended. “Who? Denaos?”
“He doesn’t need a name. Send him in.” She tilted her head up, offering a sneer the overscum wasn’t worthy of. “You aren’t going to be the one to kill me.”
“Well, no, I’m. . I’m here to offer you-”
“I don’t need that, either.”
“Well, everyone is given the chance to express remorse.”
“Over lives stolen,” Xhai said. “I heard you. You’re not stupid because you’re wrong, but you are wrong because you’re stupid. Lives cannot be stolen.”
At this, the overscum’s eyes narrowed, forced shock into anger that drifted dangerously close to Xhai’s eyes.
“So, what? They simply gave their lives to you?” she asked. “Did they just find your utter lack of a soul so overwhelmingly charming?”
“Lives are given the moment you come out shrieking and covered in blood. Whether or not anyone takes it is up to you.”
“That’s insane.”
“I don’t know what that word means.”
“Figuratively or-” Asper rose, throwing her hands up and turning away. “No, never mind. I’m not going to listen to your poison anymore.”
“Then even you think you shouldn’t be here. Bring me the male.”
“NO.”
The overscum whirled. Eyes met. Crushed against each other. The overscum’s did not shatter. The weakness was still there, of course, growing weaker with each moment. It trembled and quivered and grew moist like any weak thing would, but it did not turn away.
Still, Xhai didn’t really get angry until she started talking.
“I don’t claim to understand him, what he does, or why he does it,” Asper spoke, the quaver of her voice held down, if not smothered, by anger. “I don’t claim to understand why a man like him even exists, but it’s not about him. It’s about the fact that he doesn’t want to kill you.”
Something hot and angry formed at the base of Xhai’s skull and chewed its way down her spine. It gnawed. Inside her head, making her eyes narrow. Inside her heart, making it thunder. Inside her arms, making muscles twitch and crave freedom, to crave the feel of a hundred frail bones gingerly in eight purple fingers and start bending and not stop until this weak and stupid overscum could smell her own filth while it was still inside her.
It made Xhai twitch, squirm, made her turn her gaze away. An uncomfortable feeling. She was netherling: born from nothing, to return to nothing, with nothing between. She had killed before. As a matter of nature.
That she wanted to kill this one, that she wanted this one to suffer and die over words, weak and stupid and moronic and filthy words. .
There was a word to describe what she was feeling, probably. Maybe there was a word for what she was going to do to the overscum as the bonds groaned behind her and threatened to break against her wrists.
“I shouldn’t care,” Asper said, turning away again to piece her stare together. “I don’t care. You deserve to die. He should kill you. I should have killed you back on the. . on the. .”
She shuddered, bit it back.
“And I don’t know why you’re not dead. But you’re not. And whoever kills you, it can’t be this way. It can’t just be with a sigh, like it was going to happen anyway.” She drew in a deep breath, held it. “So, give me this. Give me just one reason, one lie to tell me that, at some point, it might not have happened like this.”
Sunlight seeped in through the reed walls. Sand shifted under Asper’s feet as she took a hesitant step in place. Xhai stared. Neither of them offered an answer. Asper released her breath, lowered her head.