Page 22

He moved to swing his hammer towards them, and Kissen grabbed Lessa by the arm, dragging her to her feet and out of the way as he struck it deep into the stone where they had just been standing, shattering the rock like ice.

Satuan froze there, breathing hard, as if his arm had been caught in a trap. Sparks flew out of his eyes as he looked up, panicked, glaring, and Kissen whirled.

Inara was standing a few steps behind them, her hair curled stiffly out from around her head. Her gold-brown eyes were wide and fearful, and Skedi was sitting on her shoulder, small, his ears flat.

‘Go back, Inara,’ said Lessa, her voice shaking as she backed away with Kissen.

‘The water outside is getting too hot,’ Inara said. ‘It burned Aleda. They’re scared.’

Satuan’s rage must be boiling the hot springs, turning them hotter than the sea could quench. Kissen winced to think of hot-headed Aleda given another reason to dislike her. Or Lessa.

‘What thing are you?’ murmured Satuan, looking towards Inara.

Kissen gritted her teeth. He wanted gods and humans to be separate.

Inara was both.

Shit.

The magma flared thick and hot from Satuan’s forge, and with a wrench of power he stood, snapping Inara’s hold on him. Will against will, Satuan was the more powerful: he was an ancient god, and Inara was just a girl.

‘Halfling,’ he hissed. Lava frothed and grew from his vat, the furnace, cracking the floor. The base of the hammer began to glow, and his hands burned hot with rage. ‘Monstrosity.’

Lessa widened her stance defensively, her muscles taut with anger.

Inara frowned at him as if he were not three times her size. ‘We come in peace,’ she said, ‘to bring you offerings …’

‘I want nothing from you , bastard of two bloods. Abomination!’

He lifted his hammer, but Inara steeled her jaw, and Kissen’s practised senses stirred as she felt the girl summoning her will once more. If she focussed, Kissen could hear her intent like a whisper.

Stop. Stay back. Leave us be!

Satuan roared, caught with his hammer still up in the air. Kissen took the moment to grab Lessa, dragging her away from the god and towards the tunnel.

‘Run!’ she yelled at Lessa. ‘Take Inara. Run fast!’

With another roar that shook searing stone down from the ceiling, Satuan broke Inara’s will again and slammed his hammer down on the edge of his furnace, shattering its side.

Molten rock and metal flew out, sizzling where it landed.

Kissen saw it strike her prosthesis, catching light in a guff of smoke.

With a swipe of her cutlass, she scraped it off before the flame caught.

Inara turned and sprinted ahead, Skedi gliding, and Lessa coming up behind.

Lava flowed thickly into the cave-river, bursting up clouds of steam that scalded Kissen’s throat.

She held her breath as the god bellowed, reaching into the tunnel for Inara, his hot hands smashing through the pointed rocks as if they were made of frost.

Kissen turned and brought her briddite cutlass down across his forefingers, slicing through the two of them. Satuan howled and wrenched them back.

‘You call yourself godkiller, and you protect this creature? Traitor to your kind! Traitor to all!’

‘Kissen!’ cried Inara, but Lessa grabbed her daughter’s wrist and dragged her into the misted shadows.

Kissen backed away, keeping the god’s attention, giving them time as the magma seeped out of his furnace.

‘Fucking kill me then!’ she snarled at him.

‘You’d give your life for a runt of no litter?’

‘I’d rather die for something than waste immortality in a cave of my own madness.’

The lava was getting too close. If it got any nearer it would kill her without even touching her. She could already feel it searing her skin, setting fire to her lungs.

The god bellowed out words in a language Kissen didn’t know and threw himself at her.

She had been waiting for this. She drew her dagger and flung it hard.

It struck Satuan in the third eye, and he stumbled and fell under the weight of his own body, splashing into the lava and roaring as it set his hair alight.

Kissen turned and pelted after Lessa and Inara. Her breath was hot, burning, and her vision blurred. She clamped her lips shut, trying not to breathe. She knew this feeling, the scalding of her inner flesh. She stumbled, vision wavering, after the shining path of broken eggshells.

‘GODKILLER!’

Satuan could not be kept distracted for long.

The water along the tunnel ground was flowing black as ash and ink, boiling and bubbling. Kissen charged through it, smashing her head and limbs more than once on rogue teeth of the cave. She blinked blood out of her eyes, close behind the others.

‘Go left!’ she bellowed, hoping they would hear and Satuan wouldn’t over his own raging. She threw down all her emotional guards, hurling her thoughts and voice towards them all. Left and climb. ‘Left and climb!’

I hear you. Skedi’s fierce thought came back to her, and she gasped with relief. She shouldn’t have; steam tore into her lungs and she hacked and coughed before breaking out into the light.

The sea was simmering with heat. A black cloud had spread out into the water, like ink poured into a well. All the bathers were gone, save for one human body floating in the water, and a few dead fish.

Kissen sprinted right, away from Inara, Lessa, and Skedi, running for the jetty.

She stumbled twice, mistiming her right leg’s rhythm and slamming her knees into the ground, steam and smoke flying from her back, her hair, her burned skin.

She picked herself up and flew towards their boat, slicing through the rope that held it with her cutlass and throwing herself in with enough force to push it into the water.

She still couldn’t breathe, away from the steam. The pain of her lungs was dizzying, and she barely held on to consciousness as she paddled out and out. Looking back, she could see people clinging to the cliff face, having climbed to escape from the deathly water. Staring, watching.

Good.

The sound of splitting stone snapped out over the harbour. Dust rose as the cliff hanging over the tunnel cracked outwards, flinging three people down to a bloody death on the sharp rocks.

Better than boiling, Kissen hoped. No time for guilt, no time for shame.

She kept paddling out in the black, a lone figure in the dark of the sea. The water wasn’t boiling here; the tide from beyond the island rushed in to cool it, beating back the magma-fuelled rage of the god.

Satuan burst out of the tunnel, taking half the cliff with him.

He did not care for the screams of the bathers, instead slamming his hammer into them for good measure.

Kissen saw Arlo from the Silverswift , his eyes widening as the god’s weapon crushed the rocks below him and shook him loose.

He wailed as he fell. The other crew of the Silverswift were close, too close to the god’s fury.

‘Satuan!’ Kissen cried, trying to distract him. As petty and irritating as Lessa’s crew was, they didn’t deserve so brutal a death. ‘Here I am!’

Satuan saw her. His remaining eyes widened, and he strode towards her through the water, lava oozing slowly out after him. Anger made fools of both humans and gods.

‘You think you can escape me?’ the god bellowed. Kissen paddled further out, trying to keep ahead of the heat. But he was gaining, so she stood, brandishing her cutlass.

‘You think I give a fuck?’ she cried from her aching lungs. Was this far enough? She wasn’t even being paid for this.

He dived for her, his metal hands reaching down to tear her apart, still hot and smoking. Kissen braced herself, holding out her cutlass, wheezing with pain, then, just as he was about to strike, she leapt into the sea.

No Osidisen to save her this time. No father’s promise. She had no gods on her side. Only hope. And brains.

Satuan’s hammer and hands smashed straight through the boat, breaking it to pieces and plunging into the cold waves from the deep sea. As his hot-metal hands struck, they stiffened. Froze. The god cried out in pain, his wail reverberating through the cliffs.

Kissen grabbed onto a piece of driftwood, trying to push herself further from the god as he drew out his hands, his hammer dropping. He shrank from titan, to giant, to man, and the briddite knife fell from his eye.

Satuan looked up, his hands in front of him, and at last saw the cliffs of the cove, the people clinging to them, staring at him. A god, in the world, powerful, terrifying. She wondered if he could see their awe, their fear. Their belief.

Hundreds of people who might beg forgiveness, give him offerings, who would pray. Love would come from fear, love from the humans he detested. And it would keep him alive.

Kissen, barely able to keep her chin above water, was choking on salt and damaged lungs.

Satuan bared his teeth. ‘Curses on your war,’ he hissed. ‘Curses on your half-god. She will be used by you humans and tormented to her death. And I hope that day you are made to watch.’

With that, he disappeared in a breath of wind and ash. Back to his shrine, back to solitude.

Kissen coughed, tasting blood. Lava was still pouring from the cliffs, filling the water. She would boil soon like a frog in a bath, and she hadn’t the strength to save herself. She had no more tricks in her arsenal, she had no more promises to call upon.

Kissenna.

She heard a voice in her weakening mind, familiar. A flap of wings, the flash of a button, and a string of green beads.