Let it drop, he told himself. Let the sword drop and let him smash your head in. You won’t even feel it. Then all this will be over.

Against this, his body had one reply.

‘Fight.’

‘I said I won’t!’ Lenk shrieked back.

‘Man-eh shaa ige?’ the lizard snarled.

‘I wasn’t talking to you!’ Lenk roared

The lizard’s body twitched in response. It slid backwards, breaking the deadlock as it spun about wildly. His dumbfounded stare lasted only as long as it took the creature’s tail to rise up and smash against his jaw.

A heavy blow, but not enough that it should make him as dizzy as he felt. He reeled, feet giving out beneath him. The world spun into darkness, banishing his opponent and his body. He did not strike the earth as he fell, but tumbled through, twisting in the dark.

‘This is it, then?’ He heard his voice echoing in the gloom as a gasp. ‘This is what it is to die?’

‘No,’ the voice answered.

The world came rushing back to him in new eyes. The sand was soft. His sword was clenched in his hands, his hands. The club crashing down upon him was slow, weak. He stared up at what had been his enemy. What he saw was a corpse waiting to fall.

‘This,’ the voice said, ‘is what it is to kill.’

‘SHENKO-SA!’ the lizard screeched.

Lenk’s sword replied for him. There was no shock, no strength behind the lizard’s club as it met his blade. Or if there had been, Lenk did not feel it. He could barely feel anything, even the foot he rammed into his foe’s groin. The creature merely hissed, recoiling with composure unbefitting the injury.

That was unimportant. The earth was unimportant. He rose to his feet, easily. There was weeping from his leg, he knew, but he could not feel it. It was cold in his veins, cold as the steel he raised against his foe. From the corner of his eye, he caught his own reflection in the weapon’s face.

Two blue orbs, burning cold and bereft of pupils, stared back.

That was wrong, he knew in some part of him that faded with every frigid breath. His eyes should have pupils. He should feel hot, not cold. He should fear the voice, fear the chill that coursed through him. He should scream, protest, fight it.

He stared at his opponent over the sword.

No more words.

They sprang at each other, arrows of flesh in overdrawn bows. Their weapons embraced in splinters and sparks, crushing against each other time and again. He could only feel the metallic curse of his sword as it searched with the patience of a hound for some gap in the creature’s defence. Every steel blow sent the lizardman sliding back, every breath grew more laboured, each block came a little slower.

Only a matter of time, Lenk and his sword both knew. Only a matter of time before a fatal flinch, a minuscule cramp in the muscle, something that …

There.

The lizardman raised its club, too high. Lenk’s sword was up, too swift. The creature’s eyes were wide, too wide.

Then the sword came down.

Skin came first, unravelling like paper from a present. Sinew next. Lenk watched as the cords of muscle drew taut and snapped as lute strings too tight. Bone was sheared through, cracking open to expose glistening pink. There might have been blood; he was sure the creature’s arm hit the earth, but didn’t stop to look.

The lizardman looked up, mouth agape, eyes wide as it collapsed to its knees. It mouthed something that his ears were numb to. Threats, maybe. Curses.

All silent before the metal hum of Lenk’s sword as it came up.

No more words.

The sword slid seamlessly, over the arm that came up too meagre to serve as any defence and into the creature’s collarbone. Lenk pushed down, his sword humming happily and drowning out the screaming and muscle popping beneath it. He pushed it down until he felt it jam.

By then, the creature was lifeless, suspended only by Lenk’s grip on the sword that impaled it.

‘This,’ the voice uttered, ‘is what we do.’

It should feel wrong, the young man knew. He should feel the rush of battle, the thunder of his heart. He should feel terrified, worried, elated, relieved.

He should, he knew, feel something, anything other than calm, whole.

Even as the voice faded, the cold going with it, the sense of wholeness remained. His purpose, he realised, was gripped in his hands and knelt lifeless at his feet. His breath came easy, even as the fever returned. The desperation and fear had fled, leaving only a young man and his sword.

His bloody, bloody sword …

His senses came flooding back to him with the sound of a bowstring being drawn. He looked up, mouth parted in a vaguely surprised circle.

‘Oh, right,’ he whispered, ‘there’s two.’

It happened too fast: the string humming, the arrow shrieking, the flesh piercing. He felt it impale itself deep into his thigh, near his wound. He collapsed to his knees, falling with the other lizardman’s corpse as he lost his grip on his sword.

‘Ah,’ he squealed through the pain. ‘Khetashe, but that hurts.’ He looked up at the inked lizard stalking toward him. ‘I think you missed, though. It didn’t hit bone.’

The lizard didn’t seem to hear or care as it casually nocked another arrow.

‘It’s funny, though,’ Lenk said, giggling hysterically. ‘Moments ago, I was wishing for this, hoping for it. Now, I’ve killed your ugly little friend here and I want to live so I can kill you, too. But …’ He let loose a shrieking peal. ‘But you’re going to kill me. Is that irony or poetry?’

No answer but the drawing of a bowstring.

‘I shouldn’t be afraid,’ he whispered, ‘but … I can’t help but feel that I learned something a little too late.’

‘Too bad for you,’ the lizard replied in perfect, unbroken human tongue.

‘Oh,’ Lenk said, blinking. ‘Two things, then.’

Voice and bow spoke with one unsympathetic voice. ‘Shame.’

Lenk had no reply; pleading seemed a little hypocritical, what with the creature’s companion dead at his knees. Still, stoicism seemed hard to achieve in the face of the arrow. With nothing left, he desperately tried to come up with a final thought to ride into the afterlife.

And all he could come up with was, Sorry, Kat.

A shriek hit his ears. Not of a bow, he realised as he watched the creature spasm, but of a long, sharpened stick that ended its swift and violet flight in the lizardman’s shoulder. The arrow fell to the earth, and the lizardman shrieked and scampered backward, groping at the makeshift spear in its flesh.

‘Lenk,’ a voice said, distant. ‘Move.’

‘What?’ he asked in a trembling voice.

‘Down, moron!’

The shape came tearing over him, hands on his shoulders and pulling itself over his head. In a flash of brown and white, it struck the creature in a tackle, pulling both to the ground.

Lenk blinked, unable to make sense of the frenzy of movement before him. He caught glimpses of green, brighter than the lizard’s flesh, amidst a whirlwind of pale white and gold. The creature shrieked under the other shape, swatting at clawing hands and biting teeth.

The shriek arced to a vicious crescendo. There was a flash of bright ruby.

Blood, Lenk realised, then realised his own leg was warm and wet. Blood! It poured out of his wound in rivulets from the jagged rent the arrow had left, spilling across his leg and onto the sand. How long have I been bleeding? Why didn’t anyone tell me?

That thought was fleeting, as were the rest as he felt himself grow dizzy.

He heard, faintly, the sound of a tail slapping against skin and an agonised grunt. The pale figure toppled to the earth as the creature scrambled up, clutching a face painted with glistening red. It howled curses, incomprehensible, as it scrambled away, dragging its bow behind it.

‘I got its eye,’ the figure laughed as it rose up. ‘Reeking little bleeder.’

A familiar voice, Lenk thought, though its features were unfamiliar. Even as it rose and stood still, its face was blurry, its figure hazy as it approached him. It leaned closer; he thought he could make out some mass of twisted gold and emerald, a mouth stained with red.

‘Lenk?’ it asked, its voice feminine. It twitched suddenly. He felt a hand on his leg. She had found his wound. ‘Oh, damn it. Was it too much to ask that you survive on your own for two days?’

Hands wrapping around his torso, arms under his, sand moving under him. The sensation of being dragged was not as visceral as it should be, but he was quickly learning to forget what it should be.

‘Poetry,’ he gasped, breath wet and hot.

‘What?’

‘If I had just died quickly after I realised I didn’t want to, that would be irony.’

‘You’re not going to die,’ she snarled, tightening her grip. He made out other voices, alien languages behind him. ‘Help!’ she cried to them. ‘Help me pick him up! Move!’

‘I am,’ he laughed on fading whimsy. ‘It’s beautiful poetry now; I see it. I’m going to die.’

‘You’re not,’ she snarled as another pair of hands picked up his legs. Green hands. ‘I won’t let you.’

He rode those words, off the stained earth and into oblivion.

Fifteen

PREFERABLE DELUSIONS

‘That could have gone better.’

‘Really? I thought it went rather well. In hindsight, I suppose we should have killed the one with the bow, first.’

‘Hindsight.’

‘Yes. I could have done with a bit more planning, couldn’t I?’

‘Planning.’

‘Look, if you’re just going to repeat everything I say, I can really have this conversation by myself.’

‘There was no PLAN.’ His head trembled, brains rattling against bone. ‘There was only you indulging your madness and nearly ending us.’

‘I’m … I’m sorry, I just felt—’

‘Feeling is a corruption of the mind and body. Feeling is what we eradicate from ourselves before we eradicate whatever did this to us.’

‘Whatever did this … to us?’

‘Something was in our head. Something is interfering with our duty, my commands. Something … we must kill it.’

‘We must kill something.’

‘Not just kill it. Maim it. Burn it. Eviscerate it. Rip it apart and press its meat between sharp rocks. Cleanse it.’

‘What is it?’

‘Unknown.’

‘So … do I just start eviscerating and hope I get lucky?’

A frigid silence consumed him.

‘Do not grow smug.’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Do not grow confident. Do not grow comfortable. Do not let anything stewing in the tepid mush boiling in your skull convince you that you are in control.’

‘What do you—?’

‘I saved you from your suicidal madness. I saved you from the demons. I continue to preserve your life in the name of our duty.’

‘But what is it? What is our duty?’

‘That you do not know is only further proof that you do not deserve the legs you are allowed to walk with. I save you only that we may fulfil our duties. What I preserve, I can destroy.’

‘That would seem a little contradictory, wouldn’t it? Destroy me and you die, too … don’t you?’

‘I did not say,’ a gentle breeze caressed his mind, ‘that I would destroy you.’

‘What does that mean?’

The wind died.

‘What does that mean?’

Warmth returned.

‘What are you?’

‘I’m here,’ said another voice. ‘I’m right here.’

‘What? Where?’

‘Here, Lenk. I’m right here.’

A swift, erratic beat of a drum: certain of nothing.

It reached her as she pressed her ear against his chest, rising up from some deep place inside him. It had come to her before in fleeting whispers, murmurs, the occasional frantic scream. Now his heart hummed softly, sighing inside his body.

And though she knew she should try to resist it, her smile grew with each beat.

‘He’s alive,’ she whispered. She let her head rest upon his chest, felt it rise and fall with each breath. Her eyes closed. ‘Damn.’

It would have been easier if he had died, if he had stayed dead. She could have shed a tear, said a few words of memory, and called herself a shict again. She looked to the bandages covering his wounds, smelled the aroma of their salve. She could rip those off right now, she thought, and he would be dead and her problems would be solved. It was another opportunity, another chance to prove herself. And again, she couldn’t kill him.

You couldn’t even watch him die, she scolded herself. You couldn’t even have just sat back and let him die. Why couldn’t you do at least that?

Kataria sighed in time with his heartbeat; it was never that easy.

Her ears twitched as his muscles spasmed under his skin. Bones moaned, blood began to flow unhindered; he was waking up. She pulled back, heard his eyelids flutter open and held her breath as they peeled back fully. He groaned, turned his head and stared at her.

Two blue eyes, brilliant with the moisture that flooded them, looked up. Two blue eyes, she released her breath in a relieved exhale, with pupils in them. It was Lenk looking up at her, and not whoever else dwelt inside him. It was Lenk’s eyes blinking, Lenk’s lips twitching.

Lenk’s trembling hand, reaching up to touch her.

You could go now, you know, she told herself. You could run away and he would tell himself it was all a dream. You could find another way off the island and never see him again. Then, at least, you could say you didn’t sit there and let him touch you. It would be easy.

She saw the bleariness clear from his eyes, tears drying in the sun seeping through the thatched roof. She felt his fingers on her cheek, felt her shame straining to be heard as she pressed her face into his palm. She could feel his heartbeat through his fingertips, growing faster, and sighed.