“Shut ye heathen hole,” Iagor snapped at the woman, his reverie broken as he jabbed a dirty fingernail at her chest. “Ye speak a profane tongue, and mine ears bleed from its sound.”
“Duoloo. Duoloo. Duoloo!” she repeated, louder, words forced through her teeth.
“Dirty knave.” Iagor lurched forward, fisting one side of her dark hair and yanking her down.
“What the fu—” I started, making to stand and pry him off, Maxius already on his feet. With athud,Iagor’s head hit the wall, the woman leaping onto his lap with the speed of a wild cat, and claws to match. Dark hair fanning out around her, she swallowed him in shadow, her fingers scraping at his ruddy skin wherever nails met flesh. His muffled cries gave way to a rip, something bloodied and round slapping next to the toe of my boot.
“What in the pits is—” Roderiq’s question sputtered to nothing as I held it aloft in the candlelight, its cabbage leafed edges dripping with blood.
“Did she? Has she just…?” Roderiq stammered, jaw loose. “Is that hisear?”
I flung it to Maxius, wiping my tainted fingers down the side of my shirt. Making no attempt to catch it, the ear bounced off his chest, and with aplop, dropped into the depths of the bucket beside him, floating among the befoulments.
“Fuck.” I grimaced, feeling only the faintest beat of guilt under the urge to be sick.
Clawing, biting, and scratching, she tore him to ribbons, laughing whilst she did. Maxius and I circled them both, dodging her swipes.
“The due is rendered, woman!” Maxius implored, peeling her fingers from Iagor’s arm, only for her to latch onto his neck. “He’s a man, nay a meal.”
A sharp elbow to the balls had me grunting, eyes blurring with the agony of it. Arms looped round her waist, I hoisted her up, dragging her back to the opposite wall. She snarled and growled, fighting with everything she had to reach Iagor, who was quivering on the floor.
Clutching the hole in his head where his ear had once been, he gazed up at her, tears and snot streaming down his face. “She’s mad!” he wailed through bleeding, tattered lips. “She’s nae woman! She’s a feckin’ animal! Fetch the acolytes! Paxiams! Hel—” His cry was cut short by a large, dark hand clamping over his mouth.
“Are you so eager to meet your maker once more?” Maxius hissed. “You call them in here, we pay the price. Tis’ you who needs to shut your godsforsaken hole.”
I nodded, wrestling to keep the heathen from charging at him once more. Widening my stance, I dodged the strikes of her heels, her aim impeccable.
“Are ye blind? She be a heathen!” Iagor yelped, crawling as he searched for his ear, hands patting the stone, feeling for its shape. I hadn’t the heart to tell him. “’Tis a sin worthy of penance that we breathe the same air, let alone bear witness to that vile tongue!”
A piece of gristle shot from the heathen’s mouth and landed on his cheek, a white lump freckling the blood. She calmed. He pinched it from his skin, feeling its grain under his fingers.
“I bite other one, yes?” she said. “Then you no have to hear me.” Her accent was thick, strong, and fuck me, if I didn’t relinquish my hold. Just a little.
“Paxia—”
The door swung open, the light from the hall blinding as it flooded the room. We turned towards it, eyes squinted, Iagor’s ruin of a face glowing crimson in its beam.
No clink of armour, but the brush of skirts heralded the curves of a woman shadowing the threshold. Features hidden in the shadows of a headdress, her freckled hand outstretched. Pointer curling, she ushered us forward, her other hand bringing a finger to her lips, bidding us silent.
“We nay have all day, spared laurels.”
That voice… I released the heathen, mindful of her bruises and the way my hands shook and tensed.
“Come.”
Chapter twenty
Ashara
The Lick
Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the throat for an offering? -22:7–8 - Book of Dendralis
“Take me back,” I begged into nowhere. “Take me back!” The words rebounded inside the pit of me, trapped, unable to breach my lips. When I glanced down, there was nothing. No matter where I looked, it was always the same. Empty, empty, empty. No shadows, no darkness, no light. Only a void, alack, like water without the sky, sun, or moon to imbue it. Strange, then, that it was still warm.
“To where?” a voice asked from the abyss, its cadence layered. I heard in it everyone and anyone who ever would be and who ever was. It came from above, below, from me, and from them.
“To him,” I said, unsure of who he was. “Take me back.”
