Page 8

SKEDI FELT WEARY, WRUNG OUT FROM THE INSIDE.

And it was not just all the emotions singing around the city like a miasma of shining hues.

Nor was it the ship. Aft to stern ran sharp and jagged with colour as the crew reckoned with the chaos that had befallen them, wrapping Tarin’s lightless body up in sailcloth and committing it into the hands of the useless Graiis guards.

No, this worn, weak feeling had plagued Skedi for weeks. In the desperate Lesscian rebellion, he had grown far beyond his size and strength, far beyond what he was supposed to be. He was not a big god; he was never meant to be great.

Inara said it had taken days for him to wake after finding themselves in Sakre. Skedi did not normally sleep. For him, there had been only darkness, the darkness he had once known before he had awoken for the first time in a child’s arms. Memories gone. Shrines lost.

Memories he did have this time. Panic and anger in Lesscia, the cracking of thorns beneath his huge wings, the tang of blood in his mouth. The taste of pure power that came from sacrifice. Inara’s sacrifice.

But in using that power, he had lost more than could be regained from the power of Inara’s that kept him alive.

The little independence he had built was gone, and the tether that bound them was as tight as it had been back in the Craier manor.

He didn’t know what to do about it. He had almost died, and it wasn’t even dying.

His lights wouldn’t go out like Tarin’s.

He wouldn’t have a body for Inara to weep over, nor shrines to shatter.

He would simply cease to exist, never to be born again, for there were so few people who really loved him.

Yet he wouldn’t, couldn’t, ask Inara for offerings to give him back his strength. Already, he hungered for the brightness he had tasted from her blood, her complete faith in him.

‘What are you moping about, rabbit?’

Kissen’s voice broke into his reverie, and he realised he had been crouching on the bowsprit, his ears drooping, wings down, staring at the ship’s shrines.

‘I’m not a rabbit,’ said Skedi.

‘I was trying to be nice.’

‘Don’t try to be nice. I can’t stand a bad lie.’

Kissen smirked and folded her arms. She had put on a jacket and a fresh breastplate that cut her chest tattoo in half, showing only the top of the curl of the ‘Fuck you’ symbol.

Scal lufts would be the Talician phrase, but she used the sign a human would make with thumb and forefinger, like the loose curl of an untied rope.

Her northern looks, one leg, and aggressive bearing had earned her many angry stares in the city: one of the reasons she had moved to Lessa’s ship long before it was ready to depart.

Skedi, too, had seen division in the way people looked at him.

Lessa had told him not to hide, and he was certain he was a pawn in whatever long game she was playing with Arren and his reign.

But the folk of Sakre were not so fond of gods as the pilgrims on the road, or the rebels in Lesscia.

Most when they saw him touched briddite talismans worn around their necks, moulded in the shape of a man, a stag’s head, or the pointed veiga symbol. Warding him away.

Unlike Lesscians, Sakreans still saw the king as their saviour, and Skedi was beginning to understand that there were as many moods in a single human as there were gods in the world. Let alone cities full of them.

Sitting by Kissen, her colours hidden, her manner familiar, was peaceful.

A point of stillness in the rattle of activity across the deck and below.

The ship was all music, and the sailors worked in rhythm with it.

The draw of the ropes, the creak of the hull, the flap of the flags and the calls of the crew who knew their work as they knew the beating of their own hearts.

They crawled up the mizzen and mainmast, unbinding the sails as the helm kept steady on the wheel, preparing to guide them out of harbour.

All but three of the mooring lines had been freed from the quay, but a few others were looped around the posts on the harbour wall, ready to be released from the Silverswift itself, which already strained to be loosed from them, edging over each wave as the breeze caught it.

Skedi had once ridden on ships like this, in the company of the great god of safe haven.

Lady Craier stood grimly behind the helm, Captain Lertes at her side, as Aleda bellowed orders.

‘Heave!’ She had lungs of brass and her voice cracked like a whip. ‘Heave!’ Her husband shone with pride.

The mainsail flapped, then distended, filling with an offshore wind.

‘Tighten on the starboard! Helm, to port!’

‘Port!’ echoed the helm, turning the wheel so the ship moved away from the harbour wall.

‘Draw in!’

The ropes whipped around the harbour posts with a sound like sawing, then splashed into the water before being reeled in, arm over arm, to be coiled neatly on the ship’s deck as it slid away into the water.

All the blood had already been scrubbed clean.

‘Inara has come a long way from not wanting to shoot rabbits,’ said Kissen, as if sensing where his thoughts had turned.

Skedi ruffled his wings, catching them on the salty air. It was pleasant to feel the warmth of the new summer.

‘Anger is a dangerous thing,’ he said. ‘And she is too young to hold all she has seen and not ache with it. All the injustice, all the sorrow.’

‘I know anger,’ said Kissen, leaning on her staff with her arms folded. ‘I know every shape it takes. But … this was different.’

Skedi had seen it, the flame of fury burning up Inara all the way down to her fingertips, her need to make use of it. ‘Have you truly never killed a human?’ he asked.

For a moment, Kissen’s colours flickered, some buried emotion rising to the surface. Skedi hadn’t seen enough of Kissen’s colours to understand their shades and meanings, but he knew enough of her expression to understand guilt.

‘I have killed,’ she said. ‘I did not rescue Maimee from the fires of Blenraden. I have failed to save people from their gods. But until Talicia, my blade had never taken a person’s life. And he was just a boy, not much older than Inara.’

A truth, quietly spoken. Skedi was growing quite fond of truths, when they had a purpose.

‘Ina frightens me,’ he admitted in return. He had never said that before, even to himself. ‘Sometimes. Her anger frightens me.’

Kissen nodded. Fear, she also knew in every shape. ‘We need to help her control it,’ she said. ‘Help her understand it.’

We. So interesting to be ‘we’. He and Inara were ‘we’. But somewhere along the way, his and Kissen’s hatred had faded to a kind of companionship. Inara had brought them together.

‘I have so little power, veiga,’ said Skedi quietly, now he was truth-telling. ‘I fear losing Inara’s faith. I fear fading. I fear death. What can I do?’ He shrank a little, but Kissen did not gloat, or laugh, she frowned.

‘She has lost a lot, our girl,’ she said. ‘But we’re the few who still have her trust. I’ll give her honesty; you give her love. She’ll need both.’

Skedi nodded. As he did so, the great sails luffed for a moment, bubbling with wind, and then caught again, their streamers stretching southwards.

The ship dipped on one side, turning about.

Its prow now pointed to the pink and misted horizon.

Open sea. They passed between the harbour walls of grey stone, and the breeze turned cooler, shedding the smoky haze of the city and its hills.

‘On sea!’ yelled Captain Lertes, and Lessa and the others raised a cry of ululation, strange and exuberant in the face of all the day had brought them.

Kissen did not cheer, her shoulders tensed as they moved away from the green hills and forests of Middren. The craft shuddered as the waves rose about them, higher outside the harbour, slamming against the side of the boat.

‘Graemar!’ cried Lertes. ‘Slim! Rhiyande! Cages, barrels cups!’

If the ship had been active before, it now stirred like a hive of bees chasing a queen.

Two of the crew swung down from the topsail they had been setting, landed on the deck and ran below, their colours bright with anticipation.

Inara came out of her cabin beneath the aftcastle and helm, her face pale and her curly hair knotted back beneath a scarf.

Her beautiful tunic had been bloodied, so now she wore a rougher jacket with wide sleeves and vines embroidered over the pockets.

Her mother had been trying to buy back her affection with clothes, and it was working only a little.

Lessa called for Inara from behind the wheel, but she ignored her. Instead, she came up towards Skedi and Kissen.

‘We’re moving,’ she said, holding on to the polished wooden railing and looking back towards Sakre, on the port side as the ship turned south. The hilled city was lit gold and peach by the light of the now-sinking sun. ‘I almost thought we wouldn’t today.’

‘Take shelter with us,’ said Kissen, putting a friendly arm around the girl’s slim shoulders. Inara leaned in, and they stood in companionable silence. The look Lessa gave them across the deck could have stilled the heart of a god. Skedi hoped they wouldn’t notice.

‘Something else is happening,’ he said, pointing his nose down at the main deck.

The two called Rhiyande and Slim had come piling up from belowdecks carrying a small barrel sealed with wax and wound with colourful ribbons.

Three more folk followed, one bearing a wicker cage with a squawking rooster inside.

Finally, Graemar the cook appeared with a half-open bag of greenlings, a sour citrus fruit, flung over his back.

‘Of fucking course,’ Kissen muttered, tightening one hand around her staff as if to hold herself back. ‘Sailors are such superstitious bastards.’

‘What are they doing?’ said Inara as the crew on deck parted and the bag, barrel and cage made their way towards the aftcastle.

The shrines.

‘A sacrifice,’ said Kissen sourly.