Kem Anh smiled, slid a fingernail along Sinn’s neck, then nodded. He stepped forward.
I’ve been alive a long time and never seen a fight like the one that unfolded on that island lost in the delta. Nor do I expect to. Kossal and Ela numbered among Ananshael’s finest servants. I had seen them sparring, of course, back in Rassambur. I’d gone toe-to-toe with Ela. I thought I knew just how fast she was, how dangerous. I was a fool. Whatever deadliness I thought I had witnessed before had just been sport for them, casual activity to stay warm while they searched for a fight that might be worthy. Even the crocs of the Vuo Ton hadn’t tested them, not truly. As they glided down the slope toward Sinn they seemed to shed everything unnecessary, to slough off all superfluous gesture and motion. All that was left of them, when they hefted their weapons to attack, was death.
They flanked him, Kossal coming in high from the left, while Ela rolled low to the right, striking out, trying to hamstring the creature as he turned to face the priest. There was nothing unusual about the tactic, but the perfection with which they performed it made my heart ache. They might have been listening to some silent music, just the two of them, stabbing and retreating, feinting and riposting as though they could both hear the thundering rhythm, those high, staccato notes. They traded attacks like musicians passing the melody back and forth between different instruments, one, then the other, then both at once, exploring the same motif at different pitches: Kossal the drum, Ela the whip-fast fiddle played above it. There are only so many themes in a fight, but the two of them piled infinite variation on those finite notes, flipping them, slowing them, sliding echoes of earlier attacks between all the main movements.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from them, but I heard Ruc exhale quietly at my side. “Sweet Intarra’s light.”
“They don’t worship Intarra,” I replied.
“No,” he agreed, his voice thick with awe. “They do not.”
It seemed impossible that anyone, anything could survive against that attack. Sinn was naked and unarmed. They should have shredded the flesh from his bones in moments. And yet, somehow, he was still standing, fighting like the viper for which he was named—slow, almost lethargic, coiling and uncoiling, feints and counterattacks too fast to follow. He flowed between the sickles and axes as though he were not flesh, but a reflection, an apparition, something horribly gorgeous culled from a dream, impervious to all mortal instruments.
Behind him, Kem Anh and Hang Loc watched, teeth bared, eyes bright.
There is a stillness hidden in all speed. The three fought as though locked in the amber of their violence. Bronze carved gleaming lines across the day. There are moments, listening to music, when you forget to follow the intertwining lines, when you lose track of the tempo, of the counterpoint, abandon all thought and let the sound wash over you. So it was that day in the delta as my Witnesses, servants of Ananshael, fought to make their greatest offering to the god.
“We have to go in now,” Ruc growled.
He was right at my shoulder, so close he could have kissed me or slipped a knife into my side. His eyes, however, were on the fight.
“We have weapons, he doesn’t,” he went on. “Five against one. Five against three if the other two decide to get bloody.”
I turned to look at him. “We can’t win.”
He met my gaze. “Then we’ll die. Everyone dies. You should know that—you’re fucking Skullsworn.”
“I’m not Skullsworn,” I replied, shaking my head. “I failed.”
“Because you didn’t murder me?”
“Because I didn’t love you.”
“You are insane.”
I turned away from the accusation, from those awful green eyes, to find Chua beside me. Blood leaked from the wound in her stomach, streaked her pants, dappled the dust at her feet. Pain twisted her features, but beneath that pain her strength remained, her stubbornness. This was the woman, after all, who had survived two weeks alone and boatless in the delta. Despite the spiders gestating inside her, she didn’t look ready to die just yet.
Or no. That was wrong. She was ready to die, but not lying down. Despite her wounds, she held the bronze spear steady. I hadn’t noticed her picking it up.
“He is right,” she said, then spat a bolus of blood and phlegm into the dirt.
I stared at her. “That we can beat them?”
“Of course not. He is right that everyone dies.”
Shame washed over me, hot as a monsoon rain. Despair had stripped me so violently of my faith that it had come to this: I needed a fisher and a soldier to remind me of my god’s most basic truth. I gathered my breath into my body, steadied myself, then turned back to the fight.
Ela had lost ground. Sinn had her pressed back against a patch of tangle vine. It was an even more dangerous position than it seemed; she had little room to maneuver, and worse, if a few of those thumb-long thorns snagged her clothes, she’d be held fast. Although I was staring right at it, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was impossible to imagine Ela defeated, Ela dead. Even knowing what I knew about her foe, I couldn’t believe it.
How could the world go on being the world without her in it?
“We have to move,” I said, lurching forward.
Before I’d taken two steps, however, Sinn, who had been ducking under and around Kossal’s hatchets while forcing the priestess backward and still backward, attacked. The Nevariim moved so fast I couldn’t see his hands. He was in one position, then another, the space between elided with terrifying ease. Ela, somehow, anticipated the attack, raised a sickle to fend him off. The creature moved back a step and Ela lunged, far off her balance, reaching, overreaching, then crying out in surprise as she stumbled forward. Sinn hissed, lashed out for her throat.
And Kossal’s ax was there.
For a heartbeat everything went still.
The pale creature studied the blood welling from his skin—the rent ran finger-deep from his elbow to his wrist—turned to look at Kossal, knocked aside the flurry of attacks that followed, slapping the flats of the ax-heads with his palms, then stepped back, out of range.
Ela straightened up, glanced at Kossal. He winked at her. I’d never seen him wink. Ela shook her head ruefully.
“Ananshael,” she prayed, “please take this love of mine before he begins to gloat.”
“The god comes for us all,” the priest replied, then turned back to Sinn.