Tome of the Undergates - Sam Sykes

‘Something to think about the next time you squat.’

With silent footsteps, he was gone.

She strained to hear his boots upon the wood, strained to hear over the sounds of sailors rising on the deck and gulls upon the wind. She strained to hear, as though hoping he would mutter some last bit of advice, some solid stone of wisdom that would crush her with the weight of decision.

Such a sound never came. She glanced up; the sun was not providing anything else today. It had risen lazily and now stood stolidly, firmly resigned to another day of golden silence.

On the decks below, life returned to the Riptide.

Eleven

BERTH

Kataria leaned over the railing, balancing on the heels of her hands as she stared at the restless sea below. It churned listlessly against the ship’s flank, sending up spray that attached to her flesh like swarms of frothy ticks. The small escape vessel looked so insignificant now, in the light of their new intentions. She could hardly recall it being such a salvation when they tried to run the day before.

It had been a temptation then, a betrayal that had beckoned them with promises of redemption from the chaos raging on deck. Today, it threatened her, flashing a smarmy smile of timber as it promised to deliver the companions into the eager, drooling mouth of carnage.

Or perhaps I’m giving it too much credit, she thought. It’s just a boat, after all.

At the far end of the ship, sailors busied themselves with a pulley, lowering crates and various sundries into the boat. She watched with a frown, noting her bow amidst the mess: unstrung, a bit of its perfectly polished wood peeking out from the fur she had delicately wrapped it in. Her left eyelid twitched as a pair of careless hairy hands plucked it rudely from the spot where she had so carefully placed it and tossed it against the vessel’s edge as though it were a common branch.

They did that on purpose, she thought scornfully.

Human hands were without conscience or the ability to lie; what a human desired to say with his mouth, but was prevented from doing by his mind, he did with his hands. Their hands were maliciously clumsy. The whole round-eared race held a grudge over the shictish superiority with a bow.

We can hardly be blamed for that, she told herself. We did, after all, invent archery. They stole it from us.

Envy was an instinct for humans, as natural to them as rolling in foulness was to a dog. . a human-trained dog.

‘You’re going to fall if you keep leaning like that.’

The voice was thundering, even in so casual a mutter. Gariath regarded her impassively, as he might an insect. He snorted, as though waiting to see if she would actually tumble headlong over the railing.

She offered him half a smile and half a sneer, pulling herself backwards.

‘Shicts don’t fall,’ she declared smugly.

‘Shicts don’t do anything right.’ He stalked to her side, making certain to shove her aside with a wing as he looked over the rail. He cast a contemptuous frown at the bobbing vessel. ‘What is that?’

‘They call it a companion ship; it’s used for foraging on islands. Supposedly, it can be manned by two men.’ She winked. ‘Considering we’ve three men, two women and one dragonman, we should have an advantage.’

He merely grunted at that, unaware of her resentful scowl. Lenk would have at least groaned.

‘Five humans are two and a half times as worthless as two humans,’ he muttered.

‘Four humans,’ she replied, twitching her ears.

‘Pointy-eared humans are still humans.’ He didn’t even bother to dignify her threatening bare of teeth with a glance. Instead, he merely kept a disdainful eye upon the craft. ‘This is a stupid idea.’

‘I thought you wanted to chase the demon.’ She knew that speaking so coyly to a creature whose arm was the size of her waist was not, by any race’s standards, a good idea. Still, she was hungry for a reaction; Lenk would have insulted her back by now. ‘Scared?’

He turned to face her, not with any great need to rip her face off, and regarded her through cold, dark eyes. She tensed, ready to leap aside at the first sign of an angry fist. Instead, he merely grunted, ignoring her flicking tongue as she shot it at him. Her sigh was exaggerated and bored, not that he likely heard it.

‘Fear is something for lesser races,’ he rumbled. ‘It’s the only gift their weak Gods gave them, since they sought to deny them intelligence.’ He thumped a fist against his chest. ‘The spirits gave no gifts to the Rhega. I’ll hunt the demon down.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘It was meant for me.’

‘Meant,’ she paused, cocking a brow, ‘for you?’

‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

‘You’d expect a human to understand any better?’ It was with some form of pride that she noted the crew, standing as far away as possible from both shict and dragonman.

‘I wouldn’t expect anyone but a Rhega to understand.’

‘Yeah, well, there aren’t any Rhega around.’

For the first time, she hadn’t intended any offence. Yet, for all her previous prodding and attempts to incite him into a reaction, her innocuous observation caused him to whirl about and turn an angry gaze upon her.

Obviously.

His step shook the ship as he thundered forwards. The teeth he bared at her, she noted, were far bigger and far sharper than hers. She resisted the urge to back away, even as his hands tightened into fists. Retreat, more often than not, tended to be viewed as even more of an insult by the dragonman.

‘You don’t have the right to utter that word.’ He prodded a claw into her chest, drawing blood and sending her staggering backwards. ‘The Rhega tongue was not meant for your ugly lips.’

‘Then what am I supposed to call you?’ Her attempt to draw herself up seemed rather pitiful when she noted that the top of her head only came up to the middle of his chest, five times as broad as hers. ‘Dragonman? That human word?’

‘There are many human words.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘All of them are equally worthless. Rhega words are worth more.’

‘Fine.’

He ignored her challenging scowl as she rubbed at the red spot beneath her collarbone. They both looked towards the sea, observing the bobbing craft.

‘So,’ she broke the silence tersely, ‘what is it you think you’re meant to do with this demon?’

‘Kill it.’

‘Well, naturally.’

‘A Rhega’s kills have more meaning.’

‘Of course they do. It doesn’t bother you that you couldn’t harm it before?’

‘Hit something hard enough, it falls down. That’s how the world works.’

‘You hit it fairly hard before.’

‘Then I’ll have to hit it harder.’

She nodded; it seemed to make sense.

‘Riffid willing, we’ll do that.’

‘You should save the names of your weak Gods,’ he snorted. ‘The more you utter them, the less likely they’ll be inclined to send you their worthless aid. Besides,’ he folded his arms over his chest, ‘we won’t be doing anything. I will kill the demon and if your Gods aren’t useless, they’ll kill you quickly and get you out of the way.’

‘Riffid is the true Goddess,’ she hissed, ‘the only Goddess. ’

‘If your Gods intended to cure you of your stupidity, they would not have made you that way in the first place.’

She sighed at that, though she knew it was futile. Gariath’s response was hardly unexpected. To credit his objectivity, she grudgingly admitted, he had equal disdain for any God, shict, human or otherwise. His interest in theological discussion tended to begin with snorts and end in bloodshed. It would be wiser to leave now, she reasoned, before he decided to end this conversation.

And yet, she lingered.

‘So,’ she muttered, ‘what’s got you in such a sunny mood today?’

His nostrils flared. ‘There’s a scent on the air. . one I haven’t sensed in a long time.’

His face flinched. It was such a small twitch, made smaller in the wake of the rehearsed growl that followed, that he doubtlessly hoped no one would notice. But nothing escaped a shict’s attention. In the briefest of moments, concealed behind the subtlest of quivers lurked the mildest ruminations of a frown.

His eyes shifted suddenly. They did not soften, as she might have expected, but rather seemed to twitch in time with his face, as though desperately remembering how to.

‘It doesn’t stay.’ His voice was distant, unaware of her presence beside him. ‘It goes. . it returns. . then goes again. It never stays. When it does, it is. . overwhelmed, drowned out by other stinks.’

One eye rolled in its socket, so slowly she could hear the muscles creak behind it as he narrowed it upon her.

‘That, too, would be remedied if you weren’t here.’

Even Kataria was surprised by herself when she leapt forwards. She drew herself up, tightening, tensing and baring teeth in an attempt to look imposing: an effort she clearly took more seriously than he.

‘Don’t you go threatening me, reptile,’ she spat. ‘You seem to forget that I’m not a human. Don’t act like I have no idea what you’re talking about and don’t forget that no one else even has a hope of understanding what you’re going through.’ She jabbed a finger against his chest, narrowly hiding a wince behind her mask of ire. ‘I’m the closest thing you’ve got to one of your own.’

A silence hung between them, an eternity of inaction. The world seemed to fall silent around them. Gariath regarded her indifferently, his shadow choking her slender frame. He took a step forwards, closing the distance between them to a finger’s width.

Like a great mountain sighing, he leaned down, muscles groaning behind leathery skin. His nostrils flared as he brought his face closer to hers, sending the feathers in her hair whipping about her cheeks. There was thunder in her ears, her instincts screaming to be heard over the pounding of her heart and the tension of her muscles, screaming for her to run.

The cacophony was such that she barely even heard him when he whispered, ‘Is this the part where I’m supposed to cry?’

The thunder stopped with her heart; her face screwed up.

‘Wh-what?’

‘After this delightful little chat about racial harmony and standing tall against the human menace, are we supposed to be charming little friends? Am I supposed to break down in your puny arms and reveal, through tears, some profound insight about the inherent folly of hatred as you revel in your ability to bridge the gap between peoples? Afterwards, will we go prancing through some meadow so you can show me the simple beauty of a spiderweb or a pile of deer dung or whatever it is your worthless, stupid race thinks is important?’

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