It didn’t appear to be, for his smile didn’t diminish. Even when his lips quivered, it only grew a little larger. His eyes didn’t grow any colder, their blue suddenly seeming less like frigid sheets of ice and more like the sea, endless and peaceful.
And even as she stared back at him, he didn’t turn them away from her.
That, she knew, was unusual. He had stared at her many times before through many different eyes. She had felt his curiosity, his anger, his yearning all hammered upon her back through his stare. And always, he had turned away like a sheep before a wolf when she turned to meet his stare.
Now, it was she who felt the urge to turn away. It was she who felt her smile as sheepish upon her face. To see him so … pleasant, without his sword and without blood spattering his face, was so unusual she couldn’t help but feel as though it were somehow wrong, as though he were naked without violence and anger.
As if you needed any more reason to run.
‘We’re trapped here, you know,’ she said, ‘for the foreseeable future, at least. We have no weapons, no tome, no clothes. We’re stuck amidst a bunch of walking reptiles and you just barelysurvived an arrow through your leg.’ She sneered, leaning back onto her hands. ‘So, just in case you’d forgotten, there really isn’t anything to smile about.’
‘I suppose not,’ he replied, ‘but things are a lot better than they were two days ago.’
‘Things will get worse.’
‘They always do,’ he agreed, nodding. ‘But for now …’
For now, she told herself, you should be dead. It should have been me to kill you. For now, I’m sitting here feeling like a helpless idiot becauseI’m the one turning away fromyour stare. For now, I let you …touch me like that. My father thinks a human touch can infect a shict, and you touched methat way. You touched my ears! For now, I should kill you, I should run, I should killmyself so I don’t have to think about you and your horrible diseased race and your round ears.
As the thoughts ran through her head, only two words made it to her lips.
‘For now?’ she asked.
‘For now,’ he said, smiling. ‘We’re alive.’
‘Yeah,’ she sighed, returning her smile. ‘All of us.’
He blinked, his face screwing up in confusion.
‘Did you say all of us?’
‘She did,’ came a familiar voice from the leather flap.
A smile crossed both their faces at the sight of a head full of thick brown locks over a hazel stare peering through the doorframe. The smile beneath it was slight, but warm, genuine and comfortably familiar.
‘All of us,’ Kataria repeated, gesturing to the door. ‘Including ah-he man-eh-wahere.’
‘I see,’ Lenk said, smiling.
‘You can still call me Asper,’ the priestess replied. ‘The Owauku are fond of long names, apparently.’
‘I noticed.’ A long moment of silence passed awkwardly before Lenk finally coughed. ‘So, uh, are you going to come in?’
‘Yeah … sure, just …’ The priestess fidgeted behind the door. ‘Just don’t rush me.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Kataria said, smirking. ‘ Ah-he man-eh-waapparently means “shy when near-nude.”’
‘ You’renear-nude, too,’ Asper spat through the door and tilted up her nose. ‘And those of us withoutthe physique of an adolescent boy have something to be considered worth concealing.’
‘Is that right?’ Kataria snarled. ‘Maybe you can pray some clothes up, then? Like you prayed us to have a safe journey?’
‘Physique andwits to match,’ Asper growled at her. ‘It’s those prayers, and the faith that accompanies them, that are keeping me from bashing you in the head.’
‘With what? Those colossal haunchesof yours?’ Kataria bared her canines at the priestess. ‘I’d like to see you try.’
‘So …’ Lenk shifted his stare between the two of them. ‘Did I miss something reallyfun, then?’
‘It’s nothing.’ Asper’s bashfulness apparently disappeared as she stormed into the hut, a bulging waterskin pressed against her torso. She thrust it into Lenk’s hands as she knelt beside him. ‘I need to check your injury. Drink.’
He did so, greedily, as Asper ran practised hands over his bandaged thigh, applying pressure to certain locations.
‘You tore your stitches open when the Akaneeds attacked,’ she said, not looking up. ‘It wasn’t easy to close you up again. Not to mention clear out the infected skin andsalve and stitch up the arrow wound you so charitably left me to work with.’
‘I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t just put me out of my misery, then,’ he replied between gulps.
She hesitated suddenly, spine stiffening. Absently, she rubbed an itch on her arm and returned to work.
‘Yeah,’ she muttered, ‘I guess so.’ She pressed on part of his leg. ‘Did you feel that?’
‘A little,’ he replied, ‘but it didn’t hurt.’
‘Good, good,’ she said, nodding. ‘It wasn’t toobad an infection, thankfully. The Owauku had the medicine and the Gonwa knew how to use it.’
‘Gonwa?’ Lenk arched a brow.
‘The other lizards here,’ Kataria replied. ‘Taller, skinnier … and apparently good with medicine.’
‘Not that their help was all that necessary,’ Asper interjected. ‘Most of the work I did on your wound before held over, so you shouldn’t have been in too much pain.’
At that, Lenk sputtered on his water.
‘Wait, what?’ he asked, gasping for breath. ‘It hurt like hell.’
‘Well, yeah, but not too much, right? You could still walk. Your fever was only mild.’
‘ Mild?It felt like my brains were boiling! I was hallucinating! I saw …’
Kataria’s own eyes widened as he turned a cringing, moon-eyed stare at her. She met his gaze for a moment, the sudden quiver in his eyes allowing her to scrutinise him carefully. He turned away.
‘I saw things,’ he muttered.
‘With this infection? I doubt it,’ Asper replied. ‘It was probably just exhaustion.’
‘But I-’
‘You didn’t,’ she said, curtly.
‘He says he did,’ Kataria interjected.
‘Well,’ Asper said, turning a heated glare upon the shict, ‘how nice of you to be concerned for a lowly human.’
At that, Kataria felt her anger quelled only by the shame that blossomed within her like an agonising rose. She’s right, she told herself. I shouldn’t be concerned. She rode that thought to the sandy earth, turning her gaze away.
‘Just eat something,’ Asper said, rising up. ‘You’ll be fine. I’ll check on you later.’ She stalked to the door, heedless of Lenk’s befuddlement of Kataria’s scowl. And yet, she hesitated at the frame, standing in the door flap. ‘Lenk … you know I wouldn’t ever put you out of your misery, right?’
‘Sure, I know.’
‘Good,’ she said. She cast a smile over her shoulder, small and timid. ‘I’m glad you’re all right.’
And then, she swept out of the hut, leaving Lenk blinking and Kataria flattened-eared and hissing at the space left behind.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what was that?’
‘She’s been agitated ever since she started working on you,’ the shict replied, never taking her glower off the door. ‘She started screaming one night, telling everyone to get out … went mad for a while, I don’t know. Denaos certainly hasn’t been a help in calming her down.’
‘Denaos? He’s alive?’
‘And here, as well as Dreadaeleon.’
‘And Gariath?’
She blinked, opened her mouth to reply, then shook her head.
‘Not yet,’ she muttered before quickly adding, ‘if at all.’
‘If at all,’ he echoed, and the weight seemed to return to him.
‘Don’t think about it,’ she said, smiling and placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’d be rather anticlimactic if you worried yourself back into a coma. What say we find you something to eat?’
‘That’d be nice,’ he said, rubbing his belly. ‘I haven’t had anything but tubers and roots.’
‘Ha!’ She clapped her hands. ‘You remembered how to forage just like I taught you! And they said humans couldn’t be trained!’ Laughing, she rose up from the sandy floor. ‘I’ll go hunt something down for you.’