‘Who was she?’ The question came from her mouth unbidden on the tail of that sporadic voice that rose from her mind.
‘What?’ He hesitated pulling her up, looking down at her. The mask shattered completely, crumbled in thick, white shards onto the sand. What was left behind was something hard-eyed and purse-lipped. ‘What did you say?’
‘She … the woman you were speaking of.’ Asper pulled herself the rest of the way up. ‘You kept apologising.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ He let his hand fall from hers. ‘How would you even know? You were out.’
‘I remember, though. I must have been awake for part of it, and—’
‘No, you weren’t.’ He cut her off with a razor edge. ‘I watched over you. You were out and you didn’t wake up, at any time.’ He turned away from her curtly. ‘I’m going to go sleep myself now. Go check on Dread.’
She watched him take all of three steps before the words came again.
‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, ‘I’m sure she forgives you.’
He turned upon her with the staggering need of a beggar two weeks starved. Considering her through expressionless eyes for a moment, he walked toward her, arms up in benediction. With more confusion than hesitation, she let herself into his embrace. There was no warmth in his arms, but an unpleasant constrictor tightness.
She gasped as she felt the knife, sliding like a snake up her tunic to kiss her kidneys with steel lips, the menace of the weapon conveyed in a touch that barely grazed her skin.
‘You,’ he whispered, his voice an unsharpened edge, ‘don’t ever speak of her.’
‘You …’ She swallowed hard. ‘You said you didn’t have any knives left. You lied.’
‘No,’ he gasped, looking at her with mock incredulousness. ‘Me?’
And in a flash, he was striding away from her. His back was tall and straight, shaking off his threat like a cloak. It fell atop the shards of his mask, and as she stared at his back, mouth agape, she couldn’t help but feel that he was already weaving another one to put on.
A warm breeze blew across the beach. The sun was silent. Her left arm began to ache.
*
After much careful deliberation, a lone seagull drifted down off the warm currents crisscrossing the island to land upon the sands and peck at the earth. In its simple mind, it vaguely recalled not visiting this area before. It was a barren land, bereft of much food. But in its simple eyes, it beheld all manner of debris not seen on these shores before. And thus, curious, it hopped along, picking at the various pieces of wood.
A shadow caught its attention. It looked up. It remembered these two-legged things, such as the one that sat not far away from it. It remembered it should run from them. It spread its wings to fly.
And instantly, it was seized in an invisible grip.
‘No, no,’ Dreadaeleon whispered, pulling his arm back. The force that gripped the seagull drew it closer to him, the bird’s movement completely wrenched up in panic. ‘I need your brain.’
His voice was hot with frustration. He hadn’t expected it to take nearly this long to seize a stupid bird that, by all accounts, should be infesting the shores like winged rats. But that was a momentary irritation, one quickly overrun by the sudden pain that lanced through his bowels.
His breath went short, his hand trembled and the seagull writhed a little as his attentions went to the agony rising into his chest. This was not normal, he knew; pain was the cost of magic overspent, and the ice raft he had wrought to deliver his companions certainly qualified. But those pains were mostly relegated to the brain and rarely lasted for more than a few hours. This particular agony that coursed through his entire being was new to him.
But not unknown.
Stop it, he scolded himself. You’ve got enough trouble without wondering about the Decay. You don’t have it. Stop it. Focus on the task at hand. Focus on the seagull.
The seagull, he thought as he drew the trembling bird into his lap, and its tiny, juicy, electric little brain.
Still, he hesitated as he rested a finger upon the bird’s skull. More magic would mean more pain, he realised, and it seemed unwise to expend any energy on anything that wasn’t guaranteed to find salvation from the sea. And, as magic went, avian scrying was as unreliable as they came.
Dreadaeleon had never found a bird that wasn’t a bumbling, hunger-driven moron. He could sense the electricity in its brain now: straight, if crude, lines of energy suggesting minimal, single-minded activity. It was those lines that made birds easier to manipulate than the jumble of confused sparks that made up the human brain, but it also made them relatively pointless for finding anything beyond carrion and crumbs.
But carrion and crumbs were food. And, as his growling belly reminded him, food was not something they had managed to salvage.
He whispered a word. A faint jolt of electricity burst through his fingers, into the avian’s skull. It twitched once, then let out a frightened caw. He could feel the snaps of primitive cognition, bursting in his own mind as their electric thoughts synchronised.
Scared, they told him. Scared, scared, scared, scared.
‘Fine,’ he muttered. ‘Go, then.’
He released the bird, sending it flying out over the waters. He leaned back, closing his eyes. In his mind, he could feel the gull’s presence, sense its location, know its thoughts as he felt each sputtering pop of thought in its tiny brain. All he needed to do now was wait; he could hold onto its signature for at least an hour.
A lance of pain shot through him. He winced.
Or less.
‘What do you hope to achieve?’ someone asked him.
‘Animals search for food first. If there’s any around here, I’ll know about it,’ he replied, his thoughts preoccupied with the gull’s.
‘There are many places the Sea Mother’s creatures go that you cannot.’
‘If I can tap into a seagull’s brain, I can certainly figure out how to get where he’s going,’ he snarled. Only when his ire rose higher than his pain did he realise that the voice was not that of one of his companions.
But it was not unknown.
He turned about and saw her standing before him: tall, pale body wrapped in a silken garment, fins cresting about her head, feathery gills blended with emerald-colour hair. He looked up, agape, and the siren smiled back at him.
‘I am pleased that you are well, lorekeeper,’ Greenhair said. The fins on the sides of her head twitched. ‘Or … are you?’
‘Not so much now,’ he said. He tried to rise, felt a stab of pain and, immediately afterward, felt the urge to wince.
Don’t do it, old man, he warned himself. Remember, she’s tricky. She can get into your head. She can manipulate your thoughts. Stay calm. Don’t think about the pain. She’ll know … unless she already knows and is telling you how to feel now to further her agenda. Stop thinking. I SAID, STOP THINKING!
‘Be calm, lorekeeper,’ she whispered. ‘I do not come seeking strife.’
‘Yes, you’re quite talented, aren’t you? You find it without even searching for it,’ Dreadaeleon muttered. ‘You tricked us into going into Irontide after the tome and abandoned us when we had to fight for it.’
‘I was concerned for the appearance of—’
‘I wasn’t finished,’ he spat. ‘You then came back after we had it and got into my head.’ He tapped his temple. ‘My head, and tried to tell me to steal it for you.’
She blinked. ‘You are finished now?’