Between the next inhale and the exhale, the marks appear, sharp-edged, dark against her little sister’s temples. Nigh smiles softly, shows her teeth, cheeks flushed.
Skinpainter lets their hands fall. ‘That’s plenty for a little one, even for a little monster.’ They pat her cheek. ‘There we go, small fangs.’
Nigh holds a hand out towards their face. For a second, they lean in to the touch. Then from behind them, screams.
A soldier has fallen somehow, stumbled and missed a footing. The side of his face met by the sharp edge of a shield, leaving skin hanging loose, blood flowing. Not deep, but messy, his teeth surprisingly white amid it all.
The tattoos on the left side of his face sheared clean through.
A scratch is all that’s needed.
A cold flood of fear runs through Icecaller’s gut. ‘Run home, Nigh,’ she says, ‘quick as you can.’
Her fingers tighten on the spear, as her sister disappears like a whisper, helpful hands opening paths away from the hall, deeper into the mountain. As Nigh is ushered to safety, Skinpainter moves faster than Icecaller thought possible, each step propelling them across the hall.
The screaming, bloody-faced soldier turns to meet them and is met by an open-handed slap that cracks bone.
For a second, a mist of blood hangs in the air.
For a second longer in that mist, a face, spectral, twisted, inhuman. Blossoming in the blood.
Skinpainter’s palm is spread wide, red and slick. The ink on their hands stretches out in thin tendrils through the drifting haze, brushing the soldier’s ragged skin, holding back something that struggles to flower on the tattered edges of the wound. They step closer to the injured man, pressing ink to blood. And the people of Thell form a ring around them, shields tight, spears out.
The screaming has stopped. The wounded man is forced to his knees, face lit with horror. Spear-points rest at his back, his neck, his shoulders. And Icecaller begins to move before she can control her stupid fucking feet.
Because a scratch is all it takes, one single slip from a sweaty fucking spear.
And she’s never really bought the stories until now.
As she runs, Painter’s bloody fist becomes a claw lined in black ink. Their fingers hook into a mouth strung wide with terror, driving themselves down a throat that gags and struggles as Skinpainter steadies themselves astride the soldier’s body. One wide hand on his windpipe, their feet planted either side of his heaving lungs.
Maybe they chant, maybe they sing. The noise that leaves their lips vibrates the air, a mess of harmonies and tones that drives the ink down off their arms and into the body below.
And underneath that buzzing song, she hears her father’s voice berating her, over and over.
Don’t disturb the cairns. Don’t break the skin.
In her ears, something hums. In her veins, something thrums, even as her momentum carries her to the circle’s edge. Inside, beyond the backs of the soldiers, the injured man is hooked to Skinpainter’s hand like a fish on a bone line. He flops wildly. His eyes white and white again.
She has no time to go through the circle of shields, so she goes up and over. A hand either side of the shoulders nearest her, a strong push and she’s over their heads.
The space between the spears is small. For a second, her brain screams curses as she curls into a roll that misses the spear-points by a shaved hair, and drops her next to Skinpainter’s straining form.
When she lands, her breath runs ragged, her tattoos scorching a thin line of fire against her skin. She’s shitting herself at how terrible an idea this is. A hairsbreadth from her widening eyes, the soldier’s blood dances in the air. It shifts as Icecaller approaches and she glimpses eyes, lips, teeth; a face lined in crimson wetness.
The cold possibility that all her dad’s bluster and bullshit might have been true hits her at the same time as the coppery stink of meat. Raw meat.
Underneath it, distantly, she smells cookfires. Against the odds her stomach rumbles fiercely.
Great.
Skinpainter glances at her. They are still chanting. As they chant the swirling blood is drawn to them in red drops, dragged wriggling into inky shapes, writhing across skin. Soon they are penned in, lined in solid black.
She turns slowly to look at the circle of nervous men and women, and chokes down the tremor in her voice, focuses on getting those spear-points the fuck away.
‘What are you waiting for? Stitch him.’
A pair of young soldiers run off to fetch medical supplies. Another pair drag the injured man to one side. He leaves a memorybehind on the stone, wet and red. Icecaller studies it as he lies curled in on himself, shivering. Blankets are brought, warm water. Herbs. And all she can think is that the myths are real. She can’t deny what she’s seen, as much as she wants to.
