Slickwalker moves to her side. ‘No sense of timing, have they?’
Crowkisser twists her lips. ‘No.’
He kisses her cheek. ‘I love you.’
She taps his jaw lightly. ‘I couldn’t have done this without you.’
Slickwalker turns to a small circle of worried faces. Shipwright and Shroudweaver gradually move back-to-back, adopting old, familiar stances. Roofkeeper leans Quickfish against one shoulder, while the blackbird-eyed little girl slings her arms over his neck, leaving the axe loose in his free hand. His face is white with pain, waxy and drawn, but there’s something in his stance. A little bit of iron still upright in the fire. Skinpainter crouches a few feet in front of them, inscribing a rough semicircle before the arch. Ink sputters and lurches from their skin, each twist of their hands wrenching their body forwards.
Slickwalker watches them through narrowed eyes, places a hand protectively in the small of Crowkisser’s back. ‘Let’s go.’
She shoots him a lidded glance. ‘We’re taking them with us.’
‘Why?!’ A low, shocked hiss. He can’t help himself.
Crowkisser studies him coolly, her eyes flat. ‘Leverage. Appearances.’
She half-turns from Skinpainter’s ritual, and runs her eyes over the group. ‘Hostages, if need be.’
Slickwalker catches her shoulder, spins her around. ‘Our people are clear.Leave them.’ His voice lowers, hardens, threaded with desperation. ‘End this.’
She reaches up and rests her palm on his for a moment as the dead yowl beyond the arch. Her grip tightens.
‘I will, and this is how I’m going to do it.’
A little harsh, perhaps. As she catches herself, her fingers loosen, tracing over his knuckles. She smiles at him, blood lingering on her lips.
Slickwalker’s shoulders slump as he looks from the group to the prowling dead, and back. ‘OK, OK. How are you getting them out of here?’
She coughs, something thick and retching, her back curving, shuddering, little movements under the muscle. She grins up at him. ‘Crows.’
He frowns. ‘For this many people? Is that even possible?’
She shrugs. ‘No choice. We’ve got minutes, at best.’
Slickwalker leans in close to her ear. ‘Come on now, I wouldn’t say no choice at all.’
The first of the advancing dead test Skinpainter’s barrier, stagger back in a welter of red light.
Crowkisser watches them with half an eye, whispers a reply, her lips light against his cheek. ‘He’s my dad.’
Slickwalker snorts. ‘Technically. He’s not been around for years.’ He pauses. ‘Time was, you’d have killed him without breaking stride.’
‘True,’ she says. ‘But I want to knowwhyhe ran. Does he strike you as someone who abandons his family without good reason?’
Slickwalker watches Shipwright and Shroudweaver, back-to-back, hands entwined, and laughs grudgingly. ‘I suppose not, but I think he found a good one.’
Crowkisser shoots him a venomous look. ‘I can always kill him later. The blonde bitch too. But I want answers first. And we’re close to dying in here. I have to get them out.’
Slickwalker looks at the ragged little group in front of them, at the other wounded soldiers, at an elderly man cradling two crying babies to his chest, at a toothless woman grimly steadying herself on a shattered spear.
He sighs resignedly. ‘Fine, but you’re going to need time.’ He tips his head at Skinpainter. ‘And they’re not going to give you enough of it.’
As if on cue, the dead hurl themselves against the thin inked lines again. Geometrics pulse weakly against their skin, then sputter and fail. Skinpainter sinks to one knee, clutching their side. Blood seeps from under their robes, thick and black. The dead barely a heartbeat or two from them. Slickwalker utters a curse and begins to run, shadow gathering around him like a thunderhead. He turns his head back to Crowkisser, face ribboned in blackness and flashes a grin she hasn’t seen in months. ‘I’ll see you on the other side, love. Don’t leave too many lights on.’
A brief twinge in Crowkisser’s heart, perhaps affection, perhaps regret. She reaches out a hand, gathers a few wisps of trailing darkness, and presses them to bloody lips. As Slickwalker runs,the edges of his body slide into shadow, faster and faster, until his feet are a blur.
The dead are already at Skinpainter’s face, ink and rags weakly lashing at their grasping hands. Slickwalker leaps, hits the first two-footed and flows off again, pulled into the curves of the mountain. Battering, brutal, joyous. Every strike hissing with a wet, black fire that eats down to the bone.
