‘In …’ she whispered. ‘Inqalle?’

Inqalle nodded, but did not so much as blink. She continued probing, staring into Kataria, sensing out with the Howling that which Kataria could not hide. Kataria did not bother to keep herself from squirming under the gaze, from looking down at her feet. In a few moments, Inqalle had looked into her, had seen her shame and judged.

‘Little Sister,’ she whispered, ‘I know why you are here.’

‘It’s complicated,’ she replied.

‘It is not.’

‘No?’

‘You are filled with fear. I hear it in your bones.’ Her eyes narrowed, ears flattened against her skull. ‘You have been with humans …’

Funny, Kataria thought, that she should only then notice the blood-slick tomahawk hanging at Inqalle’s waist. She stared at it for a long time.

Amongst shicts, there were those that loathed humans, there were those that despisedhumans and then there were the s’na shict s’ha, those few that had seen such success driving the round-eared menace from their lands that they had abandoned those same lands, embarking on pilgrimages to exterminate that which had once threatened them.

And for those that had consorted with the human disease, slaughter was seen as an act of mercy to the incurably infected. As such, Kataria remained tense, ready to turn and bolt the moment the tomahawk left her belt.

The blow never came. Inqalle’s gaze was sharp enough to wound without it.

‘Kataria,’ she whispered, taking a step closer. Kataria felt the greenshict’s eyes digging deeper into her, sifting through thought, ancestry, everything she could not hide from the Howling. ‘Daughter of Kalindris. Daughter of Rokuda. I have heard your names spoken by the living.’

Her eyes drifted toward the feathers in Kataria’s hair, resting uncomfortably on a long, ivory-coloured crest nestled amongst the darker ones.

‘And the dead,’ she whispered. ‘Who do you mourn, Little Sister?’

Kataria turned her head aside to hide it. Inqalle’s hand was a lash, reaching out to seize her by the hair, twisting her head about as Inqalle’s long green fingers knotted into her locks.

‘You are … infected,’ she hissed, voice raking Kataria’s ears. ‘Not voiceless.’

‘Let go,’ Kataria snarled back.

‘You speak words. That is all I hear.’ She tapped her tattooed brow. ‘In here, I hear nothing. You cannot speak with the Howling. You are no shict.’ She wrenched the white feather free, strands of hair coming loose with them. ‘You mourn no shict.’

‘Give that back,’ Kataria growled, lashing out a hand to grab it back. With insulting ease, Inqalle’s hand lashed back, striking her against her cheek and laying her to the earth. She looked up, eyes pleading. ‘You have no right.’ She winced. ‘Please.’

‘Shicts do not beg.’

‘I am a shict!’ Kataria roared back, springing to her feet. Her ears were flattened against her head, her teeth bared and flashing white. ‘Show me your hand again and I’ll prove it.’

‘You wish to prove it,’ Inqalle said softly, a statement rather than a challenge or insult. ‘I wish to see it.’

‘Then let me show you how to make a redshict, you six-toed piece of-’

‘There is another way, Little Sister.’

Kataria paused. She felt Inqalle’s Howling, the promise within its distant voice, the desire to help. And Inqalle heard the anticipation in her little sister’s, the desperation to be helped. Inqalle smiled, thin and sharp. Kataria swallowed hard, voice dry.

‘Tell me.’

‘ You know you talk in your sleep,’ her daughter had said years later, long after she was gone from the world and her daughter wore a white feather. ‘ I could have shot you from four hundred paces away.’

‘ Lucky for me that you were only six away,’ the thing with silver hair had said in return. ‘ Which, coincidentally, is the sixth time you’ve told me you could kill me.’

‘ Today?’

‘ Since breakfast.’

‘ That sounds about right.’

‘ So?’

‘ So what?’

‘ Do it already. Add another notch to your belt … or, is it feathers with you?’

‘ I don’t have any kill feathers.’

‘ What are those for, then?’

Her daughter had tucked the white one behind her ear. ‘ Lots of things.’

‘ Okay.’

‘ You’re not curious?’

‘ Not really.’

‘ You’ve never wondered why we do what we do?’

‘ If the legends are true, your people’s connections with my people tend to be either arrows, swords or fire. That all seems pretty straightforward to me.’

Her daughter had frowned.

‘ You, though …’ he had said.

‘ What about me?’

He had stared, then, as he hefted his sword.

‘ You stare at me. It’s weird.’

He hadn’t told her daughter to stop. He hadn’t told her daughter to leave. And Kataria never had.

*

They stretched out into the distance, over the sand, a story in each moist imprint. They spoke of suffering, of pain, of confusion, of fear. She narrowed her eyes as she knelt down low, tracing her fingers over two of the tracks. The voices in the footprints spoke clearly to her, told her where they were heading.

She knew her companions well enough to recognise their tracks.

‘There are more,’ Inqalle said behind her. ‘They are familiar to you.’

‘They are,’ Kataria replied.

‘They are your cure.’

She turned and saw the feather first. Inqalle held it in her hand, attached to a smooth, carved stick. She held it before Kataria.

‘You know what this is.’

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘A Spokesman.’

‘It speaks. It makes a declaration. This one says that you shall not mourn until you are a shict.’ She regarded Kataria coolly. ‘This one will tell you when you are a shict.’

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘My father told me.’

‘This is a cure for the disease. This is a cure for your fear. This restores you.’ She handed the Spokesman to Kataria. ‘Keep it. Use it. Survive until you become a shict again.’

‘And when I do. You will know?’

Inqalle tapped her head.

‘We will all know.’

Six

The heavens move in enigmatic circles.

In the human tongue, this translated roughly to ‘it’s not my fault.’ Gariath had heard it enough times to know. Those humans he knew had been happiest when they could blame someone else.

Formerly humans, he corrected himself, currently chum. Lucky little idiots with no one to blame.

Not entirely true, he knew. If their heavens did indeed circle enigmatically overhead, and they had indeed gone to them, they were likely hurling curses upon his head from there at that very moment. A tad hypocritical, he thought, to praise their mysterious gods and resent being sent to them.

Or is that what they call ‘irony’?’

But that was a concern for dead people. Gariath, sadly, was still alive and without a convenient excuse for it.

The Rhegahad no gods to blame. The Rhegahad no gods to claim them. That was what he wanted to believe, at least.

He had been able to overlook his inability to die, at first, throwing himself at pirates, at longfaces, at demons and at his former humans and coming out with only a few healthy scars. They might have cursed him, if he left them enough blood to choke on, but they were lucky. Death by a Rhega’s hand would be as good a death as they could hope for.

When a colossal serpent failed to kill him, he began to suspect something more than just mere luck. The sea, too, had rejected him and spat him onto the shore, painfully alive. If gods did exist, and if their circles were wide enough to touch him, they took a cruel pride in keeping him alive.