That was what he told himself.

That was not what he did.

He placed a hand gently on her, paused as she recoiled from his touch. Undeterred, he gently rolled her over.

And resisted the urge to scream.

She stared up at him through one tear-stained eye. The other was nothing more than a black socket bathed in crimson light. Her naked breast rose and fell with each breath as the ribs where the other one should be shuddered. Half a pair of lips whispered in shuddering words to him as half a black jaw moved up and down with mechanical certainty.

‘I think …’ she said. ‘I think there’s something wrong with me.’

Thirty-Three

His head was burning. If he knew nothing else in the darkness that he had been plunged into, he knew this.

And the voice that accompanied it, hot with emotion.

‘ Could have been so easy …’ it sizzled on his skull, ‘ it all could have been so easy. You could have been away now and we could all have been happy. You could have forgotten her, forgotteneverything. It would have hurt, but you would have survived. Now?’

The darkness became bright, angry red inside his head.

‘ Now I’ll watch you die.’

Lenk’s eyes snapped open. He knew they were open, even if he wasn’t quite sure whether he was awake or even alive. His eyes swam and his head rang. He could see purple shadows moving through great red sheets. He could hear the distant cracking of the sky. His head was still burning, his face still dripping with sweat.

That might have been because of all the fire, though.

The wave of heat that rolled over him returned him to his senses. The wave of crackling orange flame came rolling shortly after. He scrambled to his hands and knees, crawling hurriedly behind the mast before he could feel anything more than the vague sensation of a branding iron tickling his rear end.

Ample reason to figure out what was going on, he thought.

He peered around the mast and was greeted with a sight of carnage. The great red tongues that came lashing out of thin purple palms had long forgotten Lenk. Behind the veil of fire, his face painted orange with the heat, Sheraptus snarled and drove the flames skywards, leaving the deck charred beneath him.

His target, the source of his fury-screwed face, became apparent as the night sky was set alight.

A man, he was at least vaguelysure it was, sailed overhead, the fire licking at his heels as leathery wings carried him over the deck. Those netherling females not lying in various states of cinders, icicles or both surrounded their master protectively, angling drawn bows towards their target.

The man’s hand flashed, in and out of his coat, and produced three scraps of paper. Only when he hurled them did Lenk realise that they were folded into the angular shapes of cranes. That realisation was not quite as interesting, Lenk thought, as the fact that their little papery wings were flapping of their own accord.

The man spoke a word. Whatever language, whatever command, the folded cranes heard and obeyed. Instantly, they turned from white to silver, from dull to shining, from angular to wickedly sharp. Spinning through the air, they found three purple throats and dipped steel beaks into tender flesh.

Bows clattered to the deck. The ensuing gasps and breathless screams as the netherlings clutched at severed windpipes went unheard. Sheraptus appeared less than concerned with the females, thrusting his fingers, and the ensuing whip of lightning, at his elusive prey.

‘Why is this such an issue for you?’ he cried to be heard above the crackling electric blast. ‘I’ve never heard of you before. Why are you so obsessed with me?’

‘Your eradication is a service to more than one power. You are a violator,’ the man replied sharply. ‘In every sense of the word.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I met your victim.’

‘Which?’

‘You took everything from her, including her name.’

‘It comes down to females again?’ Sheraptus snarled, thrusting a finger and sending a jagged blue arc over the man’s bald, brown head. ‘Are vaginae truly so scarce on this world as to be worth this much trouble?’

Lenk took it as his good fortune that the longface’s attentions were so focused elsewhere. His eyes were drawn past the robed figure to the doors of the cabin, just as his thoughts were drawn to Kataria, undoubtedly inside. It would be a simple matter of crossing, infiltrating and retrieving with Sheraptus so distracted.

As simple as matters involving wizards can be, at least.

As if on cue, he felt a familiar hand, far too scrawny and sweaty as to be particularly worrying, on his shoulder. He turned to see Dreadaeleon’s sweat-slick visage and purple-circled eyes staring intently at him.

‘You’ve been busy,’ he noted.

‘It’s incredible.’ The intensity of the boy’s grin raised some concern in Lenk. ‘All of a sudden, the weakness … it was gone! I … I can cast again, Lenk. I can channel it. It feels …’

His eyes went unnervingly wide as he rose up. His pelvis, Lenk noted, was far too close to Lenk’s face beforethe boastful thrusting began.

‘Look! Not a drop of moisture, not a trace of fire, not a wisp of smoke!’ the boy proclaimed loudly. ‘Look! Look!’

‘No! No!’ Lenk seized him by his belt, pulling forcibly down. ‘Now, listen, the longface is distracted and you’re feeling …’ He paused, shook his head. ‘We’re not talking about that anymore. Denaos very clearly didn’t make it or he’d have let us know. We’ve got to go in and-’

‘Save them,’ Dreadaeleon said, nodding. ‘I can feel it, just thinking about it. The power … I can feel the surge. Isn’t that fascinating? Venarie is internal, to be sure, but it’s ruled by thought and logic, not emotion. For it to work this way is-’

‘Can you go out and get burned alive or something distracting?’ Lenk asked. ‘That … bird-man-thing can’t hold him off forever.’

‘The Librarians are trained to great feats of endurance and power, Lenk,’ the boy replied. ‘He can do more than you or I could.’ He winced. ‘And, you know, I’m technically obligated to help him as a member of the Venarium.’

‘ Treason, treachery, betrayal,’ the voice, frigid and sharp hissed inside Lenk’s head. ‘ They are useless. We are-’

‘ Dead,’ the voice, feverish and burning roared inside Lenk’s brain. ‘ You’re dead. You had your chance. You’re going to-’

‘ Ignore that. Focus on duty. Focus on-’

‘ Her. She’s dead, too. You’re all dead and-’

‘Enough, enough, enough,’ Lenk growled to all assembled. ‘I can do this without any of you.’ He glared at Dreadaeleon. ‘If you’re going to be useless, I can do it without you, too.’

‘Useless?’ The boy mopped sweat off his brow, flicked it at Lenk. ‘Do you think I got this from jogging in place all this time you’ve been unconscious, vulnerable and oh-so-stabbable? I’ve been setting on fire, freezing into ice, frying into blackness and otherwise harmingthe longfaces. There were ten more on this deck before you woke!’

‘Eleven.’

The longface came shortly after the word, leading in with a purple fist that drove into Dreadaeleon’s jaw and sent him sprawling to the deck. Lenk had scarcely enough time to blink before her hand jerked backward and slammed him against the mast while she took a moment to drive a foot into the writhing boy’s ribs.

‘He’s already-’ Lenk began to protest.

‘No,’ the longface interrupted, smashing her fist into his face.

He felt the bone-deep quake, felt his skin ripple across his flesh with the force of the blow. His vision did not so much swim as struggle to keep from drowning, eyesight fading as he saw first the remorseless, uncaring long face, then blackness, then her drawn-back fist, then darkness again.