‘Worry will cause you nothing but pain,’ Greenhair whispered. Her voice seemed to rise now, the whispering crescendo to a melodic choir. ‘You need only rest, silver-hair. Fear for them later. Close your eyes … You need only worry about one thing.’
‘What’s that?’ he asked, barely aware of the yawn in his question, barely aware of the iron weight of his eyelids.
‘Where is it?’ she whispered, a gentle prod in his ear.
‘Where’s what?’
‘The tome,’ she prodded again. ‘Where is it?’
‘This,’ another voice, harsh and cold against her melody, hummed inside his head, ‘is wrong. We must search, not rest.’
‘The Akaneeds leave nothing …’ Lenk repeated, his own tone listless.
‘How does she know of the serpents? Why does she want us to sleep?’
‘You must have had it,’ Greenhair whispered. ‘You have read it. You know where it is.’
‘She does not know that,’ the voice growled, drowning out her whisper. ‘She cannot know that.’
‘How,’ Lenk muttered, ‘do you know that?’
He felt her tense beneath him, even as he felt his head tighten.
‘I … I do not …’ she began to stammer, the melody breaking in her voice.
‘She’s in our head,’ the voice roared, echoing off his skull. ‘Get out! Get out! GET OUT!’
‘OUT!’
He shot up like a spear, whirling around just as she scrambled to get away from him. Her pale, slender arm was held up in pitiful defence before a slack-jawed, wide-eyed face full of terror. He was unmoved by the display, as he was unmoved by the hot agony in his leg. That pain quickly seeped away, replaced with a chill that snaked through his body, numbing him to pain, to fear.
To pity.
From beneath the emerald locks, a large, crested fin rose upon the siren’s head. The same coldness that numbed his muscles now drove him forward as he leapt upon her and wrapped his hands about her throat, slamming her to the ground.
‘No more songs, no more screaming.’ It was not Lenk’s voice that hissed through his teeth, nor his eyes that stared contemptibly down upon her. ‘You … betrayed us.’
She choked out a plea, unheard.
‘All you care about is the tome! Pages! Nothing but pages of demonic filth! Kataria … the others …’ He felt his teeth threaten to crack under the strain of his clenched jaw. ‘They mean nothing to you!’
She beat hands against his arms, unfelt.
‘Those things, the Akaneeds,’ he snarled, his breath a fine mist, ‘they didn’t attack immediately. They didn’t act like beasts at all! Someone sent them!’ He slammed her head upon the ground. ‘Was it you? Did you do this to us? Did you kill Kataria?’
She drew back a hand. Tiny claws extended from her fingers, unnoticed.
His next words were a startled snarl as she drew her hand up and raked the bony nails across his cheek. He recoiled with a shriek and she slithered out from under him like an eel. Before he even opened his mouth to curse her, she was on her feet and rushing to the sea. In a flash of green and a spray of water, she vanished beneath the waves.
‘You can’t run,’ Lenk growled as he staggered to his feet. The agony in his leg made its presence known with a decidedly rude sear of muscle. He collapsed, reaching out for the long-gone figure of the siren. ‘I’ll … kill …’
A glint of viscous liquid upon his fingers, tinged with his own blood, caught his eye. He brought it close, watched it swirl upon his hand even as he felt it swirl inside his cheek. His eyelids fluttered, pulse pounded, body failed.
‘Poison,’ the voice hissed inside his head. ‘You idiot.’
He made a retort, lost in a groan and a mouthful of sand as he collapsed forward and lay unmoving.
The cold, Lenk decided, when he regained consciousness, was sorely missed. When he managed to realise that he had a rather impolite crab scuttling over his face, pinching at tender flesh in search of something to devour, he also realised that his skull was on fire.
Or felt like it, at the very least.
He cast a look up at the sky, saw the shroud of clouds that masked the sun. Yet he still burned. Even the mild light that filtered through in rays that refused to be hindered seared his eyes, his flesh.
Fever.
He felt an itch at his leg, reached down to scratch and felt moist and scaly flesh under his nails. However long he had been out, the sun had suckled at his wound and left a mass of green-rimmed skin weeping tears of blood-flecked pus.
That would explain it.
He looked around for Greenhair, wondering if perhaps she might be able to make another makeshift bandage to stem the flow. He felt an itch on his cheek quickly followed by a sting of pain.
Oh, right …
The urge to chase her down and beat a cure out of her was fleeting; even if she hadn’t vanished into the sea like the shark-whoring ocean-bitch she was, he couldn’t very well search the whole beach on a limb that begged for a merciful amputation.
He was so very tired.
Perhaps, he reasoned, it would be better to just wait for Gevrauch’s cold hand on his shoulder. Perhaps it would be better to be the final period in the Bookkeeper’s last sentence on a page marked: ‘Six Imbeciles who Fought for Gold and Were Eaten by Seagulls. Big, Ugly Seagulls. With Teeth.’
Yes, he thought, better to die here, wait for it. Wait to see the others … wait to see my family. Following that thought came his grandfather’s words, with no voice to accompany them.
‘Gevrauch loathes an adventurer,’ he had said to him once, ‘because they never know when to die. We don’t return the bodies we were loaned when the Bookkeeper asks for them. Recognise when it’s your time to die. Suffer it. Say a prayer to Him and maybe He’ll forgive you refusing your space in His ledger all these years.’
Sound advice, he thought.
His boat was likely at the bottom of the sea, along with the fortune he had chased. His companions likely weren’t far away, drifting either as half-chewed corpses or long, sinewy Akaneed stool. After both of those images, the fact that he had no food or water didn’t seem quite so worrying.
He would not like to upset the Gods and be sent to hell; he had seen what came out of that place. No, no, he told himself, it’s over now. All the suffering, all the pain he had experienced in his life all led up to this: a few moments of heat-stricken delirium, then off to the sea to be picked clean by crabs and eels.
Sound plan.
A wave washed over his leg; he felt something bump against his bare foot. He explored it with his toes, expecting to find splintered driftwood, maybe from his craft. Or, he thought, perhaps the remains of his companions: Asper’s severed head, Denaos’ chewed leg. He chuckled at the macabre thought, then paused as he ran a toe against the object.
It was not so soft as flesh, not even as wood. He felt firmness, a familiar chill as blood wept from his toe.