It was easier, somehow, talking about it while facing the jaguar, as though the animal were a reminder of my god’s power, of the fact that, whatever we said to each other, whatever pain we inflicted or felt, death was there to take it away, to smooth it over. I raised my spear in the old Manjari crane guard, halfway above my head, then closed my eyes.
I don’t know what sense it was with which I felt the jaguar leap. Maybe the wind of its attack stirred the tiny hairs on my arm. Maybe I heard it. Maybe I saw a shift in the shadows beyond my eyes’ red lids. Maybe my god spoke in my bones. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I knew. With all the strength in my weakened arms, I slammed the spear down, through the pelt, through the corded muscle, through the choked feline scream, down in the sun-baked dirt. I could hear Ruc fighting behind me, locked in his own mortal contest, but I kept my eyes closed, my hands tight around my spear as the cat spasmed. When all I could feel vibrating through the wooden shaft was the last, trembling breaths, I allowed myself to look.
I had thrust the spear straight through the jaguar’s back, just above the front shoulder, pinning it to the earth. It stared at me with those liquid eyes, bared its teeth, then lay its head on the dirt, a wild creature finally tamed beneath Ananshael’s patient hand.
It wasn’t until I’d ripped the spear free of the blood-soaked body that I realized the fight behind me was over, too. I turned to find Ruc leaning on one knee, panting above the second jaguar’s corpse. Sunlight snagged on his sword’s bronze, glistened in the blood slicking the edge, transforming each drop into a ruby as it fell. Sweat dripped from his face, soaked his vest, mingled with the blood leaking from his shoulder, where the cat had snuck inside his guard, and from the punctures on his arm, the remnant of our fight with the croc. He didn’t seem to notice any of it. His eyes never left me. The whole world might have disappeared, might have sunk into the mud.
“Why did you come back?” he asked.
I could feel the answer inside me like a thorn snagged on my mind: I came back to fall in love with you, then give you to the god. Kossal could have said it. Kossal always said exactly what he meant. Ela could have said it. When I opened my mouth, however, to finally speak the truth, I found different words.
“I came back to find out what was living in the delta. I wanted to know what happened to me as a child.”
Not a lie, but not the whole truth either.
Ruc studied me warily, chest heaving, but before he could press the matter further, Chua shuddered awake with a moan. For a few heartbeats she groped at the air, the ground, obviously lost.
“Chua,” I said, moving toward her.
She froze at the sound of her name, then rolled onto her hands and knees, clawed a rock from the soil, and came up with the jagged stone between her fingers as though she were ready to smash my skull into splinters.
“Chua,” I said again, taking a step back as I spoke. “It’s Pyrre and Ruc. We’re on an island. They poisoned us, then dumped us.”
Her dark eyes flitted from me to Ruc, then back, focusing slowly.
“I remember,” she said, voice dry and ragged. She didn’t let go of the stone. “Where are the other two?”
“Disappeared,” Ruc replied. “They were gone by the time I woke up.”
The fisher nodded as though she expected as much. “Then they are dead.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said.
“Your bets do not matter.” She studied the river’s sluggish current for a moment, then shook her head. “We need to get farther from the water.”
“Why?” Ruc asked.
“Crocs. Water snakes. We should not have survived the night. There are a hundred creatures.…”
She stopped, eyes fixed on the carcass of the dead spider. She dropped the stone. Her hands groped at her stomach as though following some intuition all their own, found the scabbed-over gash where the creature had laid its eggs. Slowly, in the way of a woman weary from a long day’s labor anticipating rest and a warm bath, she closed her eyes. I expected her to claw at the wound, to rip it open, to try to find whatever had been left inside her and force it out. Instead, she pressed her palms to the bloody skin. The motion was slow, tender, almost protective.
Ruc glanced at me, then looked back at Chua. “What’s going on?”
She opened her eyes. “I did not survive the night after all.”
“Another snake bite?” Ruc asked, looking down at the woman’s hands.
She shook her head. “Something slower. Something worse.”
Out on the river, a fish the color of butter broke the surface to catch a low dragonfly, then disappeared into the murk, leaving behind only the slowly spreading rings. I watched it for a moment, then turned back to find Chua’s eyes on me, warm and steady.
“Kill me,” she said.
The spear was feather-light in my hand.
“No,” I replied quietly.
“That spider,” she pointed to the crabbed corpse, “has laid her eggs inside me. Soon, they will hatch, grow, begin to devour my stomach, my intestines, and then they will burst through my skin.”
“I know.”
“Then kill me.”
“I can’t.”
Chua’s forehead wrinkled. “You are Skullsworn. I heard you in the cell.”
I could feel Ruc’s gaze driving into me, as though he could see past my chest and into my heart.
“I’ll give you to the god when the time comes.”
“The time is now,” the woman insisted. “By noon they will have hatched.”
“Then we will wait until noon.”
It felt wrong to refuse. Ananshael’s beauty is exactly this: his ability to deliver us beyond our own suffering. With a quick thrust of my spear, I could spare her the hot, burrowing agony to come. She would be free before she hit the ground, released. This is what I had trained for, what I believed more deeply than I believed any other thing. Another day, another month—I would have opened her throat in a moment, gladly, but suddenly my days were numbered, and my work was still undone.
A woman, her stomach ripe with new life.
Had Ananshael answered my prayer? Had he sent the spider to give me one final chance to complete my Trial? Or was I deluded?
A million million mortal creatures trace their paths over the world each day, threading the air and water, walking the land. Not all of them are sent by gods. There is no special providence hidden in the death of every spider. It seemed viciously possible that Chua’s fate had nothing to do with my Trial, that I was betraying the very god I had begged to serve by drawing out her agony instead of ending it. Again I considered thrusting the spear through her throat. Again I did not.
There are moments in life when reason fails, when even the greatest genius is worth nothing. All the years studying, learning, training obscure the brutal fact that there are things we cannot know. A woman could pace out the distance between Dombang and Rassambur, but the world is filled with spaces we can never measure, effects forever severed from their causes, furious motion for which the prime mover has been lost. It was possible Ananshael sent the spider, possible he did not. In the face of a god who resists all interrogation, the only way forward is faith.
Chua and Ruc were both watching me as I shook my head again.