The Wings of Ashtaroth

Chapter 18: Saviours: Section III: Kirin

Kirin: Ledan: Ek-Anout

Silices hobbled toward Kirin on bloody feet.

It didn't make sense—Kirin had strangled him, not stabbed him. Why was there so much blood? Blood between his toes, slick at his ankles as though the bones beneath had been broken. Blood on his hands, sticky as sap in his nailbeds.

Kirin felt it as though it clung to his own skin.

Darkness fuzzed at Silices's shoulders, disturbed by every step he took in Kirin's direction.

"You killed me for a Masseni rat, Kirin. One of your own. A child. Will you tell my mother whose face watched the light fade from my eyes? Will you tell her why I died?" Bloody footprints stained the ground where Silices stepped. "That rat bitch was dead anyway. One of your own, Kirin. One of your own for one of them."

Daylight flickered in Kirin's vision—shades of blue and purple and orange veiled by his eyelids. Something soft and warm was holding him.

It was like he was in two places at once.

In the dark place, Silices raised three of his bloody fingers to Kirin's lips. Silices's skin tasted of salt and iron.

Half awake, Kirin jostled in his sleep, aware of someone approaching, yet unable to jerk his eyes open. A tender hand cupped his shoulder and shook him gently.

He opened his eyes and the boy he'd thought he'd strangled filled his vision. "Silices!"

Silices recoiled. Were his fingers shaking?

"It's me. Vasthes." Silices's twin laughed nervously, wringing his hands. "You'd think people could tell us apart, now I'm alone."

Kirin sat up, only to be blinded by the sun. He was lying on a settee beneath Varco's curtained tower aboard the Eralia. The curtains were parted so that Kirin and Vasthes had a perfect view of a crescent-shaped dockyard and a flat carpet of sandstone buildings stretching outward into a vast desert. Lorai and Anouti vessels were tethered alongside the Eralia, their gangplanks lowered and their decks all but abandoned.

This wasn't Zimrida.

Kirin rubbed his eyes, his dream-addled mind struggling to keep up with the real world.

Like it had every morning since the siege, Kirin's mind raced through events since the island: how he'd carried Silices's broken body back to the ship, how he'd spun a tale for Vasthes of Silices's valour, how he'd gone to bed each night since Zimrida either crying or cursing, and how he'd woken up the same way and then comforted Vasthes that his brother had died a hero.

Kirin stared at his thumbs. He could feel the subtle bumps of Silices's neck muscles beneath his fingers and the pounding of the boy's frantic heartbeat pulsing against his palms.

Vasthes's eyes were red-rimmed and sleep-starved, but this morning Kirin didn't have it in himself to lie for the boy's benefit.

"Where are we?" Kirin had a vague recollection of waking briefly, of Varco's concern that the stalker Kirin had seen on Zimrida might be Marianus's spy.

Vasthes's eyes widened. It was the most change Kirin had seen in him for days. "Don't you remember? You woke a few hours ago. We're in Ledan, in the rat's nest."

Ledan. Kirin struggled to root out any memory of their arrival at the Anouti capital, but he must have slept through it because he remembered nothing.

The worst were the waking hours, when he barely felt anything at all—not even well-earned guilt. Ydelka, Yakov, Silices . . . . Kirin was so tired of their screams. It was difficult even to muster his hatred of Oran into a motivating force. Too much was obscure and confused in Kirin's memory. Why had he called out for his mother? Why had he killed a man of Lorar for a Masseni bitch?