The Skybound Sea

Page 40

“No.”

“But the crown . . . he covets it. He wears it constantly. He fears its loss. I have seen him remove it. I know it can be taken from him—”

“No.”

“—and given to another—”

“NO.”

“—that they might wield what he does.”

“ENOUGH!”

His roar, shrill as it was, drew attention from the encircling Shen who, at a glare from the siren, returned to the business of sharpening weapons and fletching arrows.

“Do you hear yourself?” Dreadaeleon demanded. “Do you know what you’re suggesting?”

“I know the crown gives power.”

“And do you know where it comes from?”

She nodded, solemnly.

“And do you know that it’s heresy in the eyes of the Venarium?”

“I know it’s necessary in the eyes of the Sea Mother and the world,” Greenhair replied firmly. “A world that breaks beneath our feet as Ulbecetonth begins to claw her way free from that dark place she was sent.”

“And I’m to stop it with the lives of . . .” He laughed, slightly incredulous. “I didn’t even count how many were in that furnace, how many more there might be, how many they spent like kindling to keep their powers running far beyond the point they ever should.”

“As powerful as they are, you are more so. You have the vision, the drive. If only your limits were as removed as theirs are.”

“The stones transfer limitations. The price is still paid, but by someone else.”

“And with that burden no longer yours to bear, you could—”

“LOOK AT THEM.” He swept an arm out over the Shen. “Do you see how they look at you? With reverence? With awe? And you say I should sacrifice their kinsmen? Living beings who speak your name like it’s to be respected, people who don’t know that you’re saying I should eat them alive to commit heresy.”

“I say you should sacrifice some,” Greenhair said, voice raising a quaver.

“And when some isn’t enough? When we need more?”

“It will not come to that.”

“You can’t know that. It’s too high a price to pay to save just a few.”

“To save everyone,” she all but snarled. “Are you deluded with the idea that Ulbecetonth’s threat is contained to this island? The demons are returning. If Ulbecetonth breaks free, she will drown the world, return people to oblivion for the sake of making her children more comfortable. If the longfaces prevail tomorrow, they will deliver this world to darker hands still. You could stop them both if only you lacked—”

“A conscience?”

“Limits.”

For the first time, the porcelain of her face cracked, the melody of her voice broke. She became a creature of desperate stares, bared teeth, sweat-slick temples and urgent, pleading whispers. A greedy, hungry, weeping mortal thing.

“I know you. I know your thoughts. I know what you want, I know what you would do to get it and I know the dark places you don’t dare to tread and they simply do not exist. Your only fear is that they won’t respect you, that you won’t be strong enough to make a difference, that you can’t do what you need to to save her.”

Dreadaeleon felt his eyelid tremble. Somehow the word “her” on the siren’s lips sounded a vulgar thing.

“But you can,” Greenhair said, nodding vigorously. “And I can make it happen. I can give you the power to save her, to save yourself, to save the world. You will die tomorrow, lorekeeper, and she and all of them with you unless you take this power when I offer it to you.”

Dreadaeleon stared at her a moment. That thoughtlessness that had possessed him earlier vanished for but a single moment. And for a single moment, she saw something inside his head, something big and bright and beautiful.

And it made her smile.

And it made him feel sick.

“If, indeed, we’re all going to die tomorrow,” Dreadaeleon said calmly, “then I won’t give everyone the added problem of knowing you’ve suggested what you have. But if it’s over and you and I are both still alive, I will eagerly endeavor to remedy that.”

He turned.

“We are done,” he said.

He walked.

“Your thoughts suggest differently,” she called after him.

He did not stop.

More than anything, it was how horribly candid she was being that irritated Lenk.

She dipped another two fingers into the mixture of ash, water, and dye ground into an ugly, dark-red paste. She drew two lines upon her left cheek, complimenting the ones upon her right and the solid bar of red across her eyes. It matched the stripes encircling her arms, the tiny slashes running along the tops of her ears, the curving barbs running down the sides of her midriff.

She leaned over the edge of the stone bridge that ran over the vast, circular pool below. She stared at her own reflection, checking the application of her paint. Satisfied, she rose back up, dipped another two fingers in, and resumed her work.

As though preparing to go die was a perfectly normal thing.

“For the record,” Lenk said from the other edge of the bridge, “I think this is completely stupid and you’re completely stupid for doing it.”

“Your objection has been noted,” she replied as she drew a single red line from her lower lip to her chin. “And once I’m done here, I will be more than happy to reassure you that it is, in fact, you who are stupid.” She dabbed her fingers again. “And then kick you in the groin.”

“You don’t see the idiocy in this? Painting yourself to be as inconspicuous as a bipedal, wounded raccoon and calling it camouflage?”

“Ordinarily, this would be a poor choice of camouflage,” she said, checking herself in the pool once again. “And, if you can tell me that there’s anything at all ordinary about a forest made out of coral through which fish fly like birds, I’ll gladly stay behind.”

“I misspoke,” Lenk said. “What’s idiotic is the fact that you’re going out there to try and shoot a man who can stop arrows with his brain.”

“Mind,” Kataria corrected. “If he stops arrows with his mind, that’s a problem. If he stops them with his brain, that solves my problem.”

“But—”

“I have an idea.” Kataria whirled on him, narrowing her eyes and baring her teeth. “Let’s you and I just pretend for a moment that I’m actually smarter than a monkey and have already thought about how dangerous this is and how scared I am of doing it and that I’m trying very, very hard not to think about what Sheraptus does to people and what he did to Asper and what he might do to me and then let’s pretend you stop sitting there and telling me how dangerous this is before I pretend to put an arrow through your eye socket just so I can have a moment to tell myself this needs to be done so no one else has to die. How about we do that?”

When she had finished talking she was breathing hard through her nostrils, her lips pressed together to keep from trembling as much as her eyes were as she locked them onto him.

And he was silent.

“It’s not like we have a lot of options,” Kataria said, returning to painting herself. “It has to be this way.”

“I liked Shalake’s idea of attacking Sheraptus through the forest.”

“And then when he realizes something’s up, about the time the arrows start flying, he starts shooting fire. A forest on fire is a death trap, Lenk, one that will waste warriors we need here.” She drew in a long, slow breath. “No. One warrior, one shot is all that’s needed. Right in his neck. Before he knows it. Then I run.” She nodded to herself. “One shot. In his neck. Before he knows it. Then I run.”

She repeated each word, enunciating each syllable carefully until it became mantra, repeating the mantra until it became a deal with some god listening from far, far away.

She was fragile, if only at that moment, if only unwilling to admit it to herself or to him. And so, instead of speaking what he was thinking, he kept it in his head.

There has to be another way, he thought. I mean, Shalake knows the forests. He can find a place that . . . doesn’t burn . . . in a forest. Okay, maybe she has a point. But there’s got to be another way. There’s clearly no way to win this, right?

It took a moment for him to remember that no one would be answering him this time.

There’s always retreat, he conceded to himself.