The Skybound Sea

Still.

Three days after.

On the beaches below, they worked as one. The Gonwa and Owauku had come from Teji, summoned by Shen that had once threatened them. They carried the bodies, they built the pyres from coral and wood, they bore the torches. They filed between the fire and the pile of dead, green flesh in a slow march, as they had since dawn, as they did at sunset, until they moved with such certainty between deaths that it was impossible to tell the difference between them.

“We do not burn our dead.”

Lenk looked up. Jenaji stood at the edge of the cliff, staring down over the beach. The sole patch of sand that was not walled away from the world.

“When my father died,” he said, “it was by a human sword. We were raiding a ship that wandered too close. Shalake called him a hero. We left him his club, his shield, and let the tide rise and take him.”

He looked down at the bodies below. “We had ways of doing things. Ways that we had done things when we were one people. The years came. The Gonwa grew lazy, the Owauku grew stunted. Their suffering changed them. We loathed them for it. We made them swear oaths that our ancestors took when we were still one.”

Lenk looked to the center of the beach, the largest pyre, the brightest fire. Mahalar. They had set him ablaze first. Three days later, he was still burning.

“It took us this,” Jenaji said, gesturing to the scene below, “to see what they had seen. All that you see below is all that remains of us. All of us. We found only bodies and embers on Komga. We came to Teji on bended knee. We begged the Owauku, the weakest of us, to come and bring wood for . . .”

He sighed. “Less than one hundred. Three islands, each one of them a graveyard. And all that we had, the best of us, flies on the wind.”

Lenk looked down at the fire and smoke. He rubbed the secured poultice on his shoulder. He coughed.

“So, yeah, I’m fine,” he said, “like I was saying. Just . . . uh . . .” He coughed again. “Thought you’d want to know.”

Jenaji looked at him. He smiled weakly.

“I mean, thank you, for your help,” he said. “When we came down from the mountain, I probably would have died if you hadn’t helped us. Kataria collapsed, probably from carrying me all the way down—thanks for not mentioning that, by the way—but, uh . . . thanks.”

Jenaji held his stare for a long while before turning back and grunting.

“It’s fine.” He rubbed his eyes. “You did us a service. The Shen would be proud to die for this. We did our duty. We died well.”

Jenaji paused, shook his head.

“No. I still don’t believe it.”

Lenk glanced to his sword at his side. It would seem a little petty to thank them for fishing it out when the waterways beneath Jaga emptied out, he thought. And his request was going to be awkward enough already.

“So, this might be a bad time what with the whole . . . mass death and such,” Lenk said, “but . . .”

Jenaji didn’t wait for him to finish his thought. He took the satchel from his waist, held it up before him.

“Look at that. It weighs nothing. Toss it in a fire, it would burn like any other book. And for this . . .” He looked out over the fires and sighed, tossing it into Lenk’s lap. “Take it. Whatever reason we had to care about it is gone now.”

“We’ll be gone in a day or two,” Lenk said. “Are you sure you can spare a vessel?”

“And food,” Jenaji said. “And a sea chart we seized from one of the ships. It will take you back to your lands.” He looked at the tome for a moment. “Had we just given that tome to you, perhaps none of this would have ever happened. Irony?”

“Poetry,” Lenk replied. “But I guess, all things considered, we’re kind of lucky.”

“Luck is why you are alive and my brothers are dead.” Jenaji shook his head and sighed. “If we were lucky, I would never have met you.”

Lenk looked at Jenaji as the lizardman turned and stalked down the ridge.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Away.”

“I mean, where will you go? You and your people?”

“Same answer.”

He watched him go to join the procession heaping bodies onto the fire. He looked down at the satchel in his lap. He didn’t open it. He didn’t need to. No voice called to him, he felt no great desire to open it. Whatever inside him that had spoken the book’s language was now silent.

Now, the Tome of the Undergates was just a book.

And he was just a man sitting on top an island made of corpses.

“That’s it?”

He looked over his shoulder. Kataria stood at the edge of the kelp forest, arms folded over her chest, bandaged about the limb and midriff.

“Yeah,” he said, holding up the satchel. “It’s over. Everything is over. We can go back and get paid now.”

“And you’re all right?” she asked.

“Mostly,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “Asper stitched me up, did her business and such. I was in and out for a lot of it and I think she said something about sneezing killing me or something, but—”

She was turning and walking. He called after her, her ears were folding over themselves. She disappeared into the forests.

And Lenk and the tome were left upon the cliff.

“Patron’s coin,” Denaos cursed, “you’re supposed to be lighter without armor.” He grunted as he pulled the corpse to the pyre. “But you won’t lend a hand, will you? You don’t even care.” He wiped sweat from his brow as he looked down disdainfully at the burden. “What with being dead and all.”

He had shut her eyes. Once more when they had somehow opened themselves. He had considered blindfolding her, but he didn’t think it would help. Even in a cold, blind death, he could feel Xhai hating him.

“Not like you deserve this, anyway,” he growled. “You tried to kill me. A lot of people have done that before and gotten away with burials much less pretty than this.” He looked down at her, shrouded in the leather wrapping, and frowned. “I don’t have to do this, you know.”

He dropped her a few feet away from the crude pyre he had assembled at one of the few remaining dry spots at the edge of the ring. A meager thing, cobbled together out of whatever he thought might burn. She could knock it down, smash the pieces and jam the sharp bits somewhere tender without ever breaking a sweat.

Could have, he corrected himself. Probably would have, too, if not for . . . well, you know.

Now, it seemed as though a pile of driftwood and sticks would be something to defy her. She was heavy. He was tired.

She stirred. For a moment, just a fleeting moment that had saved his life before, he wondered if, after all that, she could still be alive. But he saw Asper’s hands around Xhai’s ankles. The priestess did not look up at him.

“On three,” she grunted, “one . . . two . . .”

They placed her upon the pyre awkwardly; she looked more like she had been smashed to rest than laid. The flint would not start and the spark would not catch at first; it was afraid to come out. When it caught and she was engulfed in flames, they watched her burn; as mangled as her face was, after all she had been through, she still looked pissed as hell.

No one said a thing.

It was a fitting funeral for Semnein Xhai, first of the Carnassials.

And then Denaos had to go and ruin it.

“Should you say something?” he asked without looking at Asper.

“She didn’t believe in my god, or any god. What would I say?”

He looked to the fire. “I guess you’re right.”

She looked to him for only a fleeting moment. It was enough for him to feel it, like a brief slap. Embers rose with her sigh.

“I don’t know who she was. I don’t know anything about her beyond the men she was drawn to. Maybe if we knew each other in another time, if they didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have hurt each other like we did.”

Denaos observed a moment of silence.

“Probably not,” he said.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Probably not.”

Another silence followed. Not nearly long enough before she asked.

“Would you have given a funeral for Bralston, too?”

“I would.”

“He wanted to kill you, too, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“But you—”

“Yeah. I did.”

“Why do you mourn for them, Denaos?”

He rolled his tongue over in his mouth a moment. He stared intently at a stray ember burning out on the ground.

“I learned to read when I was eight. First thing I did was visit every temple to every God that had a holy scripture and ask to see it. They all talked about redemption, but there was never any list to it. You just did good and went to be at the side of your God when you died. And they all contradicted each other.”

He sniffed. The ember danced slightly on the breeze, growing bright.

“I killed my first person when I was five. Little boy in Cier’Djaal. He took a liking to me immediately. I wasn’t from Cier’Djaal, so everyone was fascinated by the little pale northerner. The boy’s father was rich. There was a celebration for his son’s fifth birthday. The little pale boy was invited. I remember a big, silver platter with honeytreats. I asked the little boy if he wanted to play a game. A couple of moments later, I showed the little boy’s father his son’s four biggest fingers in one hand and the bloody knife in the other. Took a note to the Jackals and by the end of the night, I was eating honeytreats before I cleaned the blood off my hands.”

The ember rested upon the sand again and dimmed.

“There were a lot more before Imone. I had a talent for killing. I could do it pretty easily, too. Put on a mask and I could be a lover, a supporter, a genuine friend. Knife them in the dark or get them to do what the Jackals wanted them to. ‘Friendly murders,’ they called them back then.”

The ember sizzled to a dull, dark splotch on the ground.

“I guess it was when Imone die—” He paused, caught himself. “When I . . . I killed her, two years after our wedding night, that I started really reading. I went to every scripture, every book, of every god and kept re-reading them, hoping I missed something. Maybe there was some kind of passage marked ‘for those of you who have especially fucked everything to the point that you are almost totally definitely going to burn when you die, please read on.’”

He sniffed again.

“There wasn’t. So I packed up and I went and I just kept going until I met you and Lenk and the others. I needed to do something good, but I was only good at killing. So I suppose I just do what I can to show the Gods that I at least mean good. Like giving killers funerals, sending them to whatever god will have them. You’ve got to figure that you do what you can, when you can, as often as you can, eventually someone up there will tell you you’re okay and you’re coming to heaven with everyone else, you know?”

He finally looked at her. She was still staring at the fire.

“Right?”

When she looked at him finally, he cringed. For the same reasons he cringed when he entered a temple. Because there was no judgment in her eye, no pondering, no hope. Just sadness.

“You talk like it’s a checklist,” she said. “Like you can just keep doing it and someone’s keeping score and you can always come back. Maybe it is like that.” She held her hand out, watched the way the sunlight made the edges of her fingers pink. “I think I thought it was like that, too, at one point.

“But then, if it’s all about numbers, how high can you count? How many good deeds equal a life wrongfully stolen? How many people do you get to kill before you lose count?”

He touched his side. The flesh there felt alien, new, someone else’s. “You saved me, though. You and your arm. I got another chance. That means something, doesn’t it?”

“It means I didn’t want you dead. And whatever’s inside me thought that was enough to save you.”

“So . . . you forgive me?”

She smiled sadly. “Fourteen hundred, Denaos. I don’t think it matters what I say.”

In all the times he had been cut, she didn’t think she had ever seen so much pain etched across his face.

“A waste.”

Dreadaeleon’s footsteps heralded his arrival before his grumbling did. The boy looked surprisingly healthy. His color had returned, his eyes were clear, he hadn’t so much as looked at his crotch for days. And yet, everywhere he went, he staggered, stumbled fitfully. As he did now as he approached the pyre and swept a disdainful glare over it.

“You managed to find this thing in all that mess?” He snorted. “One broken, twisted husk of something vaguely pretending to be a woman out of hundreds. Meanwhile, I search for a corpse positively bursting with magical power and I find nothing.”

“You didn’t find Sheraptus’s body?” The tension in Asper’s voice was palpable. “Does that mean—”

“It means I didn’t find his body.” He rubbed his eyes. “Or Bralston’s. Thus, I walk away from this with nothing.”

“You’ve got your health,” Denaos observed with a grin. “And with all the water that came, I bet you no one could even tell if you soiled yourself. Small blessings and all that.”

And instantly, Asper saw the mask come back on. All the pain from his face was gone, hastily buried in whatever shallow grave he kept all those secrets and the terrified, pale little boy. Once again, he was smiling and beaming with no cares beyond what he could be drinking and who he could be groping.

Maybe this was the real him. Maybe what she had just seen was an act.

But she had saved him, whoever he was. With whatever she had.

No, she told herself. No more whatevers. You know exactly what it is. She stared at her hand. You heard him speak to you. And he can hear you, the paper man said. She paused, turned her thought upon herself like a knife. Hello? Are you there?

She reached out to him, the thing inside her. As she had reached out to Talanas before, as she had reached out to Taire. And there was silence, but not as she had heard before. No empty silence of a god gone deaf. A tense silence. A moment before a cat pounces upon a mouse. An instant between an awkward laugh and a long, slow kiss. A silence of someone there.

Listening.

And Asper quietly wondered if she would ever miss the days when she thought she was alone.

“Nothing but smoke and ashes.”

She caught Dreadaeleon’s mutter as the boy folded his hands behind his back and watched Xhai burn.

“You can break something like a living being down so thoroughly with only fire. When they’re gone, they’re nothing more than smoke and ashes. And yet, for some reason, the creature you loathed and that loathed you is made a pitiable and honorable thing when they’re reduced so thoroughly.” He snorted. “And by the envy of savages and bark-necks, our knowledge of life and death goes no further than that. A bunch of soot and dust is all we’ll ever know.”

“Look, if you were going to be all dour and depressing, why’d you even come to a funeral?” Denaos snapped.

“It’s not as though I had anything better to do. Gariath is off being hailed as a hero for slaying that colossal fish. Lenk and Kataria are being hailed as slayers of demons. People with no knowledge beyond how to swing a heavy piece of metal are heroes and I . . .” He narrowed his eyes. “I am here.”

“You can’t be serious,” Asper said. “We stop a threat to the mortal world, kill a beast that wasn’t even supposed to exist, somehow come out of it alive and you’re upset that no one paid enough attention to you?”

“It just seems a little unfair is all.”

“Well, it’s not like you didn’t get anything out of it,” Denaos chimed in.

“Didn’t I? I couldn’t find Bralston’s body, either. The only person remotely worthy of a graceful disposal of his corpse and he’s washed away on the tide. The Venarium will not be pleased.”

“The Venarium will be one item on a formalized list of guests warmly invited to suck the hairiest parts of my anatomy,” Denaos said, folding his hands above his head as he turned back to the pyre. “We’re alive, miraculously.” He shot a sideways glance to Asper, who looked away. “And we’re here. The only three humans in a world filled with talking lizards and dead fish-things.”

“Three?” Asper lofted a brow. “What about Lenk?”

“If everything Lenk says is true, it’s beyond a miracle that he’s alive. It’s suspicious. And if everything we saw him do in the battle, what with the turning gray thing and speaking in tongues, then . . .”

A frown creased his face.

“Whatever he is, he’s not one of us.”

They said nothing more. The fire filled the silence with solemn chatter, crackling and hissing as it slowly carried Xhai away and into the sky on a cloud of smoke and ashes.

“Right here.”

Shalake put his foot down on the earth. It was damp and moist under his scales, the water having reached this far into the forest.

“It was going to have happened right here.” He pointed to either side of the clearing. “See, it’s not a far journey from the wall or the ring. But that’s not the important part.” He pointed up, to the moonlight shining through the crack in the coral canopy. “The moon shines through here just so.”

He walked to one of the openings. “In my mind, it’s always on the walls. I’m repelling some great invasion force. I’m full of arrows. But I’ve left far more dead behind me and my brothers lived because of me.” He took long, trudging steps toward the center of the clearing. “I limp here and stagger.” He demonstrated, leaning on his tooth-studded club. “I can go no farther. All the years of service and bloodshed have taken their toll. I look up to heaven.”

He did so. The shadows of the coral branches blended with the black stripes of his warpaint to paint him almost pitch-black.

“And I whisper my last words.” He sighed, kneeling upon the earth, letting his club fall. “And then, I die. Right here on the ground. One with Jaga forever.”

Gariath watched impassively, crouched on his haunches atop a large stone. Shalake’s one good eye glimmered with mist. His other was wrapped tightly behind a bandage.

“The thing is, I never knew what my last words were going to be. To my father, to Mahalar . . . maybe the oaths I swore when I became a warwatcher. Just one more time.” He stared at his footprint in the damp earth. “And when I finally had the chance to utter them . . . I said nothing. I did nothing. My brothers were all dead and I couldn’t remember what the oaths were.”