Asper found herself unable to leave for the painful familiarity of it all. She hadn’t seen such a display since …

Since I saw myself in the river today.

‘I need …’ Kataria spoke hesitantly, shaking her head and summoning up a growl. ‘I wantto talk.’

‘Oh.’ Asper glanced over the shict’s shoulder. ‘Lenk went into the forest, last I saw.’

‘ Not to Lenk,’ Kataria snarled suddenly, then clenched her teeth, as though it pained her to spoke. ‘To you.’

‘What?’ Asper looked incredulous. ‘What did Ido?’

‘What is that supposed to mean? I just … I want that thing that priests do.’

‘The last time I tried to bless you, you bitme.’

‘I don’t want that. I want the other thing; the one where we talk.’

Asper looked at her curiously. ‘Confession?’

‘Yeah, that.’ Kataria nodded. ‘How’s it work?’

‘Well, with people of the same faith with something they seek atonement for, we usually sit down, they tell me their sins or their problem, and I listen and help if I can.’

‘Yes, yes!’ Kataria’s nod became one of vicious enthusiasm. ‘We need to do that!’

‘I’m not sure it’s-’

‘ Immediately!’

‘Look, we’re not even of the same faith!’ Asper replied hotly. ‘Besides, your problems always seem to be the kind that are solved by shooting someone in the eye. What makes this one so special?’

‘ Fine, then,’ Kataria spat as she turned away. ‘I’ll figure it out myself, as usual.’

The shict’s impending departure should have been a relief, Asper knew. After all, any problems Kataria was like to share were equally likely to be foul, unpleasant and possibly involving the marking of territory.

And yet, she couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of Kataria’s face as she turned away. A choked expression, confused, lost.

The shict had a question without an answer.

And the priestess had an oath.

‘Wait a moment.’ Her own words should have been a worry, Asper knew, but she forced a smile. ‘I can listen, at the very least.’

Kataria turned and stared as Asper took a seat upon a patch of moss, gesturing to the earth before her. With a stiff nod, Kataria took a hesitant seat before her. For an age, they simply sat, staring at each other with eyes intent and befuddled respectively. After waiting long past what would be considered polite, Asper cleared her throat.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what did you want to-?’

‘This is supposed to be anonymous,’ Kataria interrupted, ‘isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘I thought there were curtains or something.’

‘In a proper temple, yes,’ Asper replied. ‘But … look, even disregarding the fact that we’re in a forest, disregarding the fact that youasked meto do this, I’ve known you for a yearnow. Kat, I know you by voice and by smell both.’

‘What Ismell is a loss of principles,’ Kataria replied, far more haughtily than someone clutching a roach leg should be able to. ‘And you, my friend, are reeking.’

‘Oh Gods, fine!’ Asper loosed a low grumble as she shifted about in the earth, turning her back to Kataria. ‘There, is that better?’

A sudden jolt was her answer as Kataria pressed her own back against the priestess’.

‘Sort of.’ The shict’s hum reverberated into Asper. ‘Is there any way you could do this in a different voice so-’

‘ No.’

‘Fine.’

The shict’s snarl was the last noise she made for a long moment. In the silence that followed, it occurred to Asper with some mild dismay that she had never actually wondered what her companion felt like. She had always suspected that Kataria would be more relaxed, her muscles loose and breath coming in slow and easy gulps of air.

Someone who cuts wind with as much abandon as she does wouldhave to be relaxed, right?

But there was nothing but tension in the shict’s body. Not the kind of nervous tremble of dismay at having another woman’s bare flesh touching her own that now enveloped Asper, Kataria’s tension was muscle-deep, her entire body feeling like she had been twisted so tightly that she might explode in a bloody, stressful mess at any moment.

One more regret for ever having agreed to this, Asper thought.

‘So, did you want to talk about?’

‘What’s it like?’ Kataria interrupted.

‘What’s what like?’

‘Being a coward.’

‘What?’ Asper began to rise. ‘Did you get me to sit down just so you could insult me? Because it seems like a lot of work for something you already do standing up.’

‘Wait.’ Kataria’s hand shot out and wrapped with a desperate firmness about Asper’s wrist, yanking the priestess back to the earth. ‘I mean … I’ve watched you. When we fight.’ Her grip tightened. ‘You’re scared.’

Asper opened her mouth to retort, but found precious little to say by way of refuting the accusation, and even less to say to pull her hand back.

‘I suppose,’ she said, pressing her back up against the shict’s again. ‘It can be a frightening thing, combat.’

‘But you don’t run,’ Kataria continued. ‘You don’t back away.’

‘Neither do you,’ Asper replied.

‘Well, obviously. But it’s different with me. I know how to fight. If I cankill it, and I usually can, I do kill it. If I can’t kill it, and sometimes I can’t, I run away until I cankill it and then I come back, shoot it in the face, tear off its face and then wear its face as a hat … if I can.’

‘Uh …’

‘But you,’ Kataria said, her body trembling. ‘ Youlook so terrified, so uncertain … and really, sometimes, I’m uncertain when the fight breaks out. I don’t know if you’ll make it out of this one or that one and I expect you to run. I would, were I you.’

‘But,’ Asper said softly, ‘you’re not.’

‘No, I’m not. I don’t stick around if it’s not certain.’ The shict leaned back, sighing. ‘It was all certain when I left the forest to follow Lenk, you know? I knew I couldn’t stay there because I didn’t know what was going to happen. But everyone knows what a monkey will do. Even one with silver fur just fights, screams, hoards gold and tries to convince himself he’s not a monkey.’

‘Fighting, screaming and hoarding gold is all we’ve done since we left on the Riptide,’ Asper said. ‘Come to think of it, it’s all we’ve done since I met you.’

‘So why doesn’t it make senseanymore,’ Kataria all but moaned as she slumped against the priestess’ back. ‘This was all so much funwhen we started. But now we’re just sitting around in furs, talkinginstead of killing people.’

‘And … that’s bad?’ Asper asked. ‘I’m sorry, I really can’t tell with you.’

‘That’s bad,’ Kataria confirmed. ‘I should be running.’

‘But you’re not.’

‘And whyam I not? Why don’t yourun when you feel like it?’ The shict scratched herself contemplatively. ‘Duty?’

She swallowed the question, and Asper wondered if Kataria could feel her own tension as it plummeted down to rest like an iron weight in her belly. Why didshe stay? she wondered. Certainly not to protect her friends. I need it more than they do. To survive, then? Maybe, but why get involved at all with them, then?Duty?

That must be it.

Yeah, she told herself, that’s it. Duty to the Healer. That’s why you fight … that’s why you kill. It’s certainly not because you’ve got an arm that kills people that you can’t possibly run away from. No, it’s duty. Tell her that. Tell her it’s duty and she’ll say ‘oh’ and leave and then there will be two people who hate themselves and don’t have answers and you won’t be alone anymore.

‘Is it your god?’ Kataria asked, snapping the priestess from her reverie. ‘Does he command you to stay and fight?’

‘Not exactly,’ Asper replied hesitantly, the question settling uneasily on her ears. ‘He asks that we heal the wounded and comfort the despairing. I suppose being on the battlefield lends itself well to that practice, no?’