She blinked. He smiled.
‘That was a joke.’
‘Oh, well. . yes, it was rather funny.’ Her smile trembled for a moment before collapsing into a frown. ‘But, Lord Emissary, is it not natural to wish I could help?’
His features seemed to melt with the force of his sigh. He set the clay cup aside, folded his hands and stared out through the mess’s broad window.
‘I have often wondered if I wasn’t born too soon for this world,’ he mused, ‘that perhaps the will and wisdom of Talanas cannot truly be appreciated where so much blood must be spilled. After all, what good, really, can the followers of the Healer be when we simply mend the arm that swings the sword? What do we accomplish by healing the leg that crushes the innocent underfoot?’
The question hung in the air, smothering all other sound beneath it.
‘Perhaps,’ his voice was so soft as to barely be heard above the rush of the sea outside, ‘if we knew the answers, we’d stop doing what we do.’
He continued to stare out at the roiling seas, the glimmer of sunlight against the ship’s white wake. She followed his gaze, though not far enough; his eyes were dark and distant, spying some answer in the endless blue horizon that she could not hope to grasp. She cleared her throat.
‘Lord Emissary?’
‘Regardless,’ he said, turning towards her as though he had been speaking to her all the while, ‘I suggest you spare yourself the worry of who kills who and work the will of the Healer as best you can.’ He plucked up his teacup once more. ‘Do your oaths remain burning in your mind?’
‘“To serve Talanas through serving man.”’ She recited with rehearsed confidence. ‘“To mend the bones, to bind the flesh, to cure the sick, to ease the dying. To serve Talanas and mankind.”’
‘Then take heart in your oaths where your companions take heart in coin. We all serve mankind in different ways, whether we love life or steel.’
It was impossible not to share his confidence; it radiated from him like a divine light. He was very much the servant of the Healer, a white spectre, stark and pure against the grime and grimness surrounding him, unsullied, untainted even as taint pervaded.
And yet, for all his purity, she knew he was her employer and her superior, not her companion, no matter how deeply she might have wished him to be. She looked wistfully to the companionway, remembering those she had left on the deck.
‘Perhaps it wouldn’t harm any to go up and see what strength I could lend them.’ She turned back to the Lord Emissary. ‘Will you be-’
Her voice died in her throat, eyes going wide, hands frigid as her right clenched her left in instinctive fear.
‘Lord Emissary,’ she gasped, ‘behind you.’
He spared her a curious tilt of his long face before turning to follow her gaze. Though he did not start, nor freeze as she did at the sight, the arch of a single white brow indicated he had seen it. How could he not?
It dangled in front of the window, pale flesh pressed against the glass as it hung from long, malnourished arms. To all appearances, it seemed a man: hairless, naked but for the dagger-laden belt hanging from its slender waist and the loincloth wrapped about its hips. Across its pale chest was a smeared, crimson sigil, indistinguishable through the smoky pane of glass.
Asper had to force herself not to scream as it pressed its face against the window. Its eyes were stark black where they should have been white, tiny silver pinpricks where pupils should have been. One hand reached down, tapped against the glass as a mouth filled with blackness opened and uttered an unmistakable word.
‘Priest.’
Miron rose from his seat. ‘That’s irritating.’
‘Lord Emissary,’ she whispered, perhaps for fear that the thing might hear her. ‘What is it?’
‘An invader,’ he replied, as though that were enough, ‘a frogman, specifically.’
‘Frog. . man?’
He hummed a confirmation. ‘If you would kindly inform your companions that their attention is required down here, I would be most grateful.’
Before she could even think to do such a thing, she felt the floor shift beneath her feet as the ship rocked violently. A din rose from above, a shrieking howl mingled with what sounded like polite conversation. A discernible roar answered the call, a chest-borne thunder tinged with unpleasant laughter.
Something had happened on the deck, and whatever had happened had also met Gariath. Another noise reached her through the ship’s timbers.
From the cabins beyond the mess in the ship’s hold, she heard it: the sound of an iron porthole cover clanging to the deck, two water-laden feet squishing upon the wood, a croaking command in a tongue not human, nor shictish, nor any that she had ever heard.
Something had just crept into the ship.
Something crept closer.
Her hand quivered as it reached for her staff. Lenk’s hands wouldn’t quiver, she thought. Her breath was short, her knees quaking as she trudged towards the cabin’s door. Kataria’s knees wouldn’t knock. Her voice was timid, dying on her lips as she tried to speak. Gariath wouldn’t squeak.
Lenk, Kataria and Gariath were somewhere else, though. She was here, standing between the noise and the Lord Emissary. When her hands wrapped about the solid oak staff, she knew that at that moment, the warriors would have to leave the fighting to her.
‘Lord Emissary,’ she whispered, stepping towards the hold, ‘forgive me for my transgressions.’
‘Go as you must.’
She cringed; it would have been easier to justify staying behind if he had been angry with her. Instead, she took her staff in her hands and crept into the gloom of the Riptide’s timbered bowels.
Miron turned from the portal towards the foggy glass of the window. The frogman was gone, slid off to join its kin on the deck. No matter; a black void spread beneath the water’s surface, a mobile ink stain that slid lazily after the ship as it cut through the waters.
‘She sent you, did she?’ he muttered to the blackness. Absently, a hand went down to his chest, tracing the phoenix sigil upon his breast. ‘Come if you will, then. You shall not have it.’
He turned, striding from the mess towards the shadows of the hold, intent on reaching his cabin. In his mind, a shape burned: a square of perfectly black leather, parchment bound in red leather, tightly sealed and hidden from the outside world.
‘They shall not have it,’ he whispered.
There was a sound from the shadows, a masculine cry of surprise met by a voice dripping with malice. Someone screamed, someone ran, someone fell.
The man tumbled out of the shadows, the broad, unblinking whites of his eyes indiscernible against the swathes of bandages covering his face. He croaked out something through blackened lips, staring up at Miron as Miron stared down at him, impassively.
A webbed foot appeared from the darkness. A pale, lanky body emerged. Two dark, beady eyes set in a round, hairless head regarded him carefully. Through long, needle-like teeth, it hissed.
‘Priest.’ It raised its bloody dagger. ‘Tome.’
The thing peered through the jagged, splintering gash in the ship’s hull that used to be a porthole. Only shadows met its black eyes as it searched through the gloom for another pale shape, another thing similar to this one. Quietly, it slid two slender arms through the hole, a hairless head following as it pulled a moist torso through the rent in the timbers.
The hole was no bigger than its head. Absently, the thing recalled that it should not have been able to squeeze through it.
It set its feet upon the timbers, salt pooling around its tender, webbed toes. Slowly, it bent down to observe a similar puddle upon the floor where similar feet had stood just moments ago. And yet now there was no sign of those feet, nor the legs they belonged to, nor any sign of that one at all.