But the spreener doesn’t react as the leckers did. It starts, it rears, and it fights. The entire dock quakes as it lunges, legs grappling with the stone, beak snapping for me. I rush for the chest of swords, hardly able to keep my balance on the shaking floor. Each chomp clacks louder than thunder and echoes against the wall as if an invisible army surrounds us.
Troff slashes at its armor with his sword, striking a joint. The spreener’s many eyes shift as it wheels around to face him. In doing so, its curling legs sweep out and strike me in the side, whipping me across the dock floor and out—
I’m falling.
Wild fear bursts through my body, cold and slick and sharp. Everything slows as terror spurs my brain to work faster.
My harness isn’t buckled.
I don’t have a rope.
The dock looms above me. The canyon below.
I scramble, limbs flying. My nails scrape across the stony side of the city as I plummet, searching for a handle, but there aren’t any. The rock skims my knee, rips up my hands—
I catch a sliver of a ledge and cling to it with all the strength in my right hand, crying out when my weight jerks on my shoulder. A shout echoes above me. I barely register it as Unach as I try to find another handhold, but there’s no space for another grip. My feet dangle. I flail, my left hand glazing over too-smooth rock. I’m holding myself up by just four fingers now.
And I’m slipping.
“Help!” My pulse thumps like a war drum. I can barely hear the commotion over it. Unach hangs thirty feet above me, sword drawn, torn between the spreener and me. Kesta hangs on the other side of the dock, wide eyed.
Fight or flee.
The spreener fights.
Gritting my teeth, digging in my nails, I glare at the spreener’s backside and push the mounting fear out of me, striking it again. As before, it spins and seeks me out, hissing, saliva raining from its beak, bits of broken stone tumbling down.
But it has neglected Kub and Troff. I hear two loud cracks, and the spreener screams, a horrible, grating sound that rattles my eardrums and pierces my brain. The spreener falls off the dock, green ooze spraying from two severed hind legs. It falls into the canyon, but its slime dribbles down the side of the city and toward me. I grit my teeth as the hot ooze splatters my cramping hand. I lose a few millimeters.
“I’m slipping!” I scream. There is no way in the gods’ dry world that I will survive this fall.
“Hang on!” Kesta shouts, working her way down, handhold by handhold.
Again I try to lift my free hand, higher, higher, but there are no dips or crags to fit even a single finger into.
“I’m falling!” I cry. Of all the ways I have pictured myself dying, it was never this.
Azmar.
The canyon looms below me.
“Troff, I’m going to jump!” Unach bellows.
A rope whizzes overhead. I look up to see Unach falling toward me.
My fingers go numb and release the rock. I scream, but Unach’s arm hooks around my waist. Her rope jerks so suddenly my neck pops, and she groans.
I don’t breathe. Then all my air rushes out.
Unach laughs. “I’ve got her!”
I grab her shoulder with my left hand. My right-hand fingers remain curled into claws, unable to release their desperate hold. “Oh stars, Unach. Thank you.” A hard ball forms in my throat. My eyes and nose run while my entire body shivers. I clutch Unach’s tricep with my good hand. “Thank you, thank you. Gods bless you.”
We jerk up a few feet at a time until Kesta grabs my upper arm and hauls us up. All three of us drop onto the dock, safe and secure once more.
I press my head to the cold floor and offer up a million prayers in the space of a breath, pressing myself into it to prove that it’s really there. A small part of my mind is still convinced I’m falling.
“Get a tub!” Kesta shouts, shaking slime from her hand.
Spreener blood is poisonous. I haven’t swallowed any, thank goodness, but I don’t want to contaminate anything, either.
“Ugh.” Unach stands, examining the wet goo I left across her shirt and harness. She looks at me and says, “Don’t open your mouth.”
Kub runs off the dock to do as bidden. Unach barks at Troff to follow, since we’ll have to strip out of the tainted clothing. Goo clings to everything, scratches from the carnage of the giant spider mar the walls, and Unach’s hair is a mess.
I meet her gaze. And despite everything, I laugh. It’s an awkward laugh. I struggle to keep my mouth shut so I don’t poison myself. But it’s all so ridiculous I can’t help it. Unach stares at me a beat, then guffaws loud enough to echo across the dock. She slaps her thigh and cringes at the mess and laughs. Kub and Troff return with a tub, their features twisted in confusion, unease on their faces.
I feel . . . better. Amazing. And I laugh at myself and at Unach and realize how much I love her. She is the sister I never had. She is family. And I realize, with that sobering thought, that my people are wrong. I was wrong. It’s not all about war and strength and size. All of that is just a veneer, easily chipped and discarded.
Unach doesn’t value strength more than anything else. She values family and friendship. Azmar values justice, truth, and love. Perg values relationships and sees to the hearts of others. Kesta is merciful. Troff and Kub are accepting and jovial. They’d rather sit telling jokes, their legs dangling from the dock, than lift a hammer or sword in a caste tournament.
They set the tub in front of me. Warmth blooms in my chest. I belong here, I think, fighting against another smile. This is my home.
Grateful and exhausted, I shift to get my legs under me, then wince as something bites my scraped palm.
It’s a bit of stone, no larger than a coin, from the rock the spreener broke. It has a blue sheen to it, purple where my blood touches it. I pick it up and study it. It reminds me of a bloodstone, though its surface is much rougher, its colors darker, than Azmar’s. Yet my pulse spins. Not a bloodstone, but a blood stone. Perhaps for us, it could be enough.
“Take them off.” Unach jerks her thumb, indicating my clothes. Then, to Troff and Kub, “Out.”
I stand, careful where I drip, and set the stone aside. “Thank you, Unach.”
She shrugs, but I detect relief in her stance. And despite the scare, the slime, the cuts, and the absolute chill of the bathwater, I laugh again.
After I’m dressed in the new leather vest I finished studding and the smallest trollis slacks Troff could find, I have to roll up their waist and secure a leather weapons belt around it. But it works, and I’m grateful for clean clothes. The rest get thrown into the canyon.
I’m used to fear, but it takes a while for it to leave my system fully. For my joints to move smoothly, my heart to beat evenly, my muscles to settle. True fear always leaves a deeper mark than the recoil of my strange ability. Unach remains, and Kesta stays around for another hour to chat, then leaves us to man the dock while other slayers go to the lookouts. The rest of the shift flows uneventfully. I imagine that spreener scared off anything else that might bother Cagmar.