‘In this case,’ he continued, ‘it’s stupid of her to think she’s going to die with anything more than mud in her teeth and a rock in her skull. That’s as invisible as victories get, I suppose. Eh? No, it makes sense to them morally.’

He’s speaking to you, she told herself, not the air … maybe both.

‘It basically means she’s lying to herself. Really, all we’re fighting over is killing rights, which is acceptable.’ He snorted disdainfully. ‘But she wants to kill the others, the stupid weaklings, to prove she’s less stupid and weak. This is a lie … sorry, a moral victory.’

He’s taunting you, trying to lure you out. Keep going. Don’t fall for it.

‘And this is why they look at her with hatred, why Lenk feared to turn his back to her.’

She froze.

‘She is a liar, a schemer. She tells herself they have to die for reasons she thinks will help, that she’ll stink less like a human after rubbing against their soft skin for so long. They know this. They hate her. What?’ He grunted. ‘Yes, I’dkill them, but only because I don’t like them. Honesty is an admirable trait.’

She was not prepared for this. Claws, fists, bellowing roars she had steeled herself against. But when he spoke with confidence, not rage, when his words were laced with cunning rather than hatred, she was stunned into inaction.

‘Ironic? Yes, I know what the word means. That’s different, though. I don’t protectLenk. If he needed protection, I would laugh as he died. I give him the respect and honour of a fair fight by killing her first. He’s a stupid bug, all wings and stinger, that will leap into the jaws of a snapping flower because he can’t tell that the pollen stinks. He knows there’s something foul about the stench, but he sniffs it, anyway. Sheis the pollen. I’m just clearing his nostrils.’

Well?she demanded of her body. What are you upset about? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Lenk’s hatred, his fear … if you’ve got that, it’s all so much easier, isn’t it?

It was supposed to be, anyway.

‘No, no …’ Gariath’s voice drifted softly over the leaves like a breeze. ‘That’s not the funny part. The real humour is that she’s running away when I’m doing her a favour she doesn’t deserve. If she does fear, as you say she does, not being so pointy-eared, then how is what I’m doing a bad thing? Eh? No, I disagree. The kindest thing here …’

She felt the shadow on her back, looked up into hard black eyes.

‘Is a swift and fair death.’

Move.

She did, too late.

His claws raked her, dug into the tender flesh of her back. She felt blood weeping down her skin, shallow muscles screaming, but not the numbing agony that would suggest a crippling blow. She tried to ignore the pain and scrambled away. She leapt to her feet, heard him fall to his feet and his claws as he charged. The bug grew large in her eyes, its stink brilliantly foul in her nose.

He lunged; she jumped.

He caught her ankle in a grasping claw; she seized a handful of pasty yellow innards.

She twisted and saw his teeth looming forward. With a growl to match his, she thrust the glistening, guts-laden fist at him and smeared the insect’s ichor into his nostrils.

Though he didn’t let go, he did howl. The roach’s juices vengefully filled his nostrils, seeped over his snout to sting his eyes. He threw his head back enough that she could pull her ankle from his weakened grip, claws scratching at her heel as she did.

He sprang to his feet, swung his fists out, lashed his tail out, stomped the earth in a blind, anosmic rage.

His roar filled her ears, as did the sound of his nostrils futilely searching the air for her. Such sounds continued as she ran into the forest, leaping over the river’s shallows and leaving him far behind. Without direction, without stopping, she ducked branches, leapt over logs. And through his howling and snarling she could hear his words, spoken with such venomous clarity. She could feel them continue to seep into her, as she could feel her eyes brim with tears.

She ran, and lied to herself that she wept because of the pain in her back.

She flew past a roach, the rainbow-coloured insect’s antennae twitching curiously as she sped past it without so much as a glance. It chittered quietly, confused. She did not look back at it.

Perhaps if she had, she might have noticed the pair of wide yellow eyes peering out of the foliage. Perhaps, if she had, she might have heard the sound of long, green footsteps that set off after her.

Thirteen

Bralston, like most wizards, resented the term ‘magic’ as it pertained to his gifts.

Magic, in the accepted application of the word, was a dismissive means of explaining the inexplicable. The word ‘magic’ was uttered, whispered and squealed at everything from stars falling across the sky to a flower blooming in snowfall.

Wizards did not practise ‘magic.’ Wizards channelled Venarie. And as Venarie was the soul of the wizard, so too was reason the soul of Venarie.

‘Magic’ was no more mystical than a fever in the blood, the moisture in one’s breath, the faint shock that occurred when one touched a doorknob or the force that kept a man’s feet on the ground. Venarie was simply an added quality that allowed wizards to channel fever to flames, to freeze the moisture in their breath, to twist a shock to a bolt of lightning and to defy the earth itself.

This had been explained before, in countless theses, debates and lectures to the gifted and the unenlightened alike. Met with too many slack-jawed stares and the inability of the unenlightened to even fumble with these concepts, let alone grasp them, the Venarium had turned their efforts to more worthwhile studies.

Without the guidance of wizards, the unenlightened had turned to the only other source of explanation: their priests. And the priests offered only one explanation.

‘Magic.’

Venarie was the domain of wizards.

‘Magic’ was the practice of priests.

The explanation wasn’t always ‘magic.’ Just as frequently it was ‘fate,’ or ‘the will of the Gods,’ or ‘apologies that your son died in a war we told him was just; perhaps if you had just given a few more coins in the dish when it was passed your way.’ Whatever the explanation, priests lived to undo what wizards did.

The reasons for the Venarium’s enmity for priesthoods of all faiths had roots that sank into the earth of history, the greatest one taking years to explain in full every slight and grudge the wizards had meticulously recorded.

Bralston did not have years, so he simply settled for scowling across the table at Miron Evenhands.

‘I don’t like you.’

For his part, the priest seemed unfazed by this. He simply smiled, a sort of smile that irked Bralston to admit reminded him fondly of his grandfather, and brought a cup of steaming tea up to a long face beneath a white cowl.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Lord Emissary said.

‘Apologies suggest that there is something you can do to alter my opinion,’ Bralston replied sharply. ‘I assure you, my reasons remain steeped far enough in history and philosophy that any such suggestions are ultimately a frivolous, and borderline insulting, waste of time and attention on your part and mine.’

‘That’s one interpretation.’ The priest bobbed his head. ‘There are others. For example, it can also imply a deep lament that history and philosophy have more to do with an opinion than character and personal experience do. It can also imply a subtle desire that said relations could be repaired, if only through two open minds meeting at the right time with the right attitude.’

Bralston snorted, crinkling his nose in a sneer. ‘That’s stupid.’