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THE SILVERSWIFT WAS BACK ON THE SEA, UNDER FULL SAIL and with the summer winds at their stern, casting them at speed back towards Middren.

Skedi could feel the shrine Solom had made for him as a faint tug on his heart, not as painful as the one he had once felt with Inara; more like a string binding him, reminding him of other shores, other hopes and dreams.

He could go back. He had somewhere to go back to. Telle had promised to keep it for him, and bring it to Middren if they returned. Because now Solom was no longer around to keep it safe.

But first, Inara. She had insisted on returning with her mother and had threatened to summon god after god from the ocean to follow them if they left her behind.

Whether she could or not, Skedi was more worried about protecting Inara from herself.

She only thought of now, not the future.

Not the consequences. How much more did she have to offer?

Her pain? Her life? She had already wounded her flesh, cut her hair, and made a dangerous promise.

Skedi didn’t want her to bring herself more suffering just to push the limits of her power.

This time, he would come with her, he would be her conscience. He would make sure she didn’t do anything stupid.

Though for now, he was watching her soundly beat Kissen at hitting targets.

‘Fucking pirates,’ muttered Kissen for the hundredth time, rubbing her wounded shoulder, though it was the Restish who had struck her with an arrow. ‘Fucking gods.’

‘Stop complaining because you’re losing,’ said Inara, lowering her bow.

She and Kissen had leaned some broken boards against the latter’s door, after they had been replaced by the newly hired ship’s carpenter. Kissen’s half-joking suggestion that they use the shrines of gods for their target practice had not been met with approval.

Kissen now had a surfeit of knives, bought and sharpened at the Irisian markets, and Inara a new bow. Between them, they had pitted the target with holes.

One of the Irisian crew stepped around them, frowning as Inara’s arrow thudded into the boards.

‘ Se’kes t’bliamich ,’ they said to Inara. You’ll blunt your arrows.

Bahba had filled their ship with her own experienced sailors to get them back to the Middrenite armies as quickly as they could move. Smooth seas and fair winds blessed them, or Yusef did, and the journey that had previously taken a month slid by in a tenday.

‘ Aleyi’i alma ,’ Inara replied. I have a whetstone.

‘What did they say?’ Kissen asked, preparing her next throw.

‘They said I was better than you,’ said Inara with a wicked grin, stretching out her string and sending another arrow flying into the target’s centre. She adored the bow: Skedi could tell by the way her hands shone when she touched it.

Kissen narrowed her eyes at Inara, then looked briefly at Skedi, before clicking her tongue and turning back to the board.

‘Little lick of good it will do me, to ask a liar what the truth is.’ She swapped hands away from her aching shoulder, targeted her knife, then let it fly.

It flashed in the sunlight, slamming straight into the centre, and Kissen grinned, curling her forefinger into the base of her thumb in her ‘fuck you’ sign to the target.

‘And you as well,’ she said to Inara, flashing her gold tooth, and Inara stuck out her tongue.

‘See what I can do with balanced knives.’

‘I’ll thank you for not exercising your colourful gestures around my daughter,’ said Lessa, coming down from the helm where she had been measuring their position against the sun with the sextant and advising Rhiyande where to alter course.

Rhiyande was the only one of the old crew who had been permitted to stay aboard. She had become quieter, more awkward around Kissen, Lessa and Inara, but she had nowhere else to be, and no desire to meet her other crewmates if they ever returned from Restish.

You’ve made the right choice, Skedi whispered to her some days, when she looked liable to cry. Betrayal is never right. It soothed her. Sometimes. And she knew it was Skedi giving her comfort because she sometimes poured some of her drink by his statue in thanks.

‘And Inara,’ continued Lessa, ‘surquedry is in poor taste.’

‘What the salt is “surquedry”?’ asked Kissen. She had drawn another knife and was flipping the blade. She and Lessa were almost as awkward around each other as Rhiyande was around everyone.

‘It means being a sore winner,’ said Skedi.

‘Hmm. We close?’ Kissen threw the blade, and it glinted as it spun, but landed deep, point first, a few inches to the left of Inara’s bullseye. She sucked her teeth, still annoyed.

‘Closer by the hour,’ said Lessa. They were headed towards Weild, hopefully to find out what had been happening in the war before they attempted to land anywhere that might not be so friendly.

The edges between Kissen and the lady were still sharp sometimes, and brittle, but they had fought back-to-back, had watched each other brought low.

Skedi already knew that Kissen always liked people more when she had seen them at their worst.

‘Knives are less accurate than a bow, and their range is shorter,’ Lessa said, looking at the pitted boards. ‘It’s impressive you’ve even come close to Inara.’

If Kissen had a tail, she would have wagged it. Human flirting was so strange, bickering and jabbing for weaknesses, then fluffing each other up.

‘Why do you use the knives?’ said Inara. The breeze had grown cooler on the sea as they moved further north, and the wind had turned more westward. She wore a wool jacket, and had braided her hair back from her eyes, much like Kissen. ‘You can use a bow.’

‘Briddite arrows are more useful for annoying gods than killing them,’ said the godkiller.

‘Knives can move quickly.’ She pulled out another blade and flipped it to her other hand.

‘Recognisable patterns get you killed. Especially when some gods chatter worse than any old gadgie.’ She threw the blade and it hit the target just off-centre.

That was her last one, save for the one she still kept by her waist. This one glowed faintly to Skedi’s eyes, with colour.

‘Water gods especially,’ she added, touching the hilt.

‘Do you want to talk to him?’ said Inara, seeing the movement. ‘We could try.’

Kissen crooked a smile at her, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

Instead, she pulled out the knife and sent it spinning towards the boards to land next to the first blade.

‘We have no hold on each other any more,’ she said.

‘Neither should Yusef have on you, the slippery little bastard.’ She looked darkly at the mark on Inara’s arm.

Skedi shrank with guilt. He had let that happen, had let Ina make a promise. Yes, it had saved her mother and Kissen, but it had bound her to a god who cared nothing for her. As soon as they were underway, Yusef had disappeared in a cloud of silks and the scents of perfume.

‘I can break it,’ said Inara, looking at the boon on her arm, bound like a cuff. ‘I’ve done it before. But he said he would find me again and make it a curse.’

She was attempting confidence, brashness.

Like Kissen, like Lessa; but Skedi could feel the question in her statement, the slight tinge of fear.

He looked at the shrines on the ship, where Yusef’s statue still stood.

The Irisian crew hadn’t celebrated their send-off with sacrifices and drinking, but judging by the way they bowed to the shrines when they passed, they had great respect for the quya .

Yusef could have helped them and asked for nothing.

He had enough. Bowls and bowls of love from a city that was not even his, a land that saw him as a vestige and not their true god.

He could have seen Inara as his daughter and helped her, like Lessa.

Like Elo and Kissen even, like all the humans he had met. Instead he had asked for more.

It was disgraceful.

Kissen wanted to lie, Skedi could see it. Wanted to tell her that of course she could protect her from the choice she had made, that she knew of a way to prevent the god finding her again.

‘I’m going to give that bastard a second death,’ the godkiller growled instead.

Lessa released a breath she likely had not realised she had been holding. Of course there was not another god, not one who would not ask for something too. They lived in a world of gods and exchanges, money and deals and blood. A world where no good thing was given for free.

‘Perhaps he’ll change,’ said Skedi brightly. ‘Perhaps he’ll soften as he ages and learns more about humans.’

‘Gods don’t change,’ said Kissen.

‘Skediceth has,’ said Inara.

If Skedi had been human, he would have blushed, Ina said it with such pride. He wasn’t sure he had changed, nor that he had earned her admiration, but he basked in it all the same.

Footsteps came running up from below. The Irisian cook, who was paler even than Kissen but did not know a word of Talic or Middric, hurried across the deck to Lessa, speaking fast in Irisian.

‘What did he say?’ Kissen asked Skedi, who flicked his ear at her.

‘If I haven’t changed,’ he said, ‘why should I tell you?’

Kissen rolled her eyes. ‘Fine, yes, you appear to have changed, you little miscreant.’

Skedi sat back on his hind legs and ruffled his fur, then he dipped his ears down again.

‘He said the fire wants to talk to Inara.’