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“There is shelter here,” Galva agreed, her eyes closed, her nostrils flaring.

The birds had stopped chirping, and all I could hear was the wind in the hollows of the temple walls. I backed up to one of these walls, unslung my pack, bow and arrows, and slid down to sitting. It felt wonderful.

“Good idea,” she said and walked over next to me. She set her gear down and slid down beside me.

My mind was forming pleasant images, the way it does when you’re heading into a nap. Here was Bully Boy as a stray cat again, blind and saying rao at a butcher’s market-stall in Cadoth. The dam at the stall trimmed a bit of pork fat and threw it to him with a wee smile. I had all the time in the world—to run after him, to scratch behind his ears, to walk with him sitting on my shoulder as he loved to do. There was no Guild at all, no one was running after me. I felt myself smile, drowsy and warm and pleased.

Something hit my arm hard.

“Get up,” Galva said.

“Why, you cow? I was just about to have a sweet bit of sleep.”

“It will be your last,” she said.

“S’fine,” I said, smacking my chops, still smiling, hoping she’d go away.

Now she kicked me, right in the side under my ribs, not so hard as to break a floater but hard enough to hurt like kark.

I waved her off, angry now, but keeping my eyes closed.

Here came the booty toe-tickle in the floaters again.

“Fuck,” I said and stood up all furious.

She sneezed, grabbed her pack, and started moving fast away from the temple.

I followed her, meaning to give her a slap, but then I doubled back and grabbed my pack before giving chase.

“You vile fucking thing,” I said. “You can’t even let us have a lie-down after getting punted over the mountains by a weird cave god, can you? It’s always march, march, march and fight, fight, fight with you. In between moaning all night with goblin dreams. Fuck.”

“That’s right,” she said, plugging first one nostril and then the other, blowing unlovely snot out of each in turn. “Come and slap my cheeks, blacktongue, I deserve it.”

She was almost at a run.

I had almost caught her.

That was when we both noticed the carpet.

It glittered with fine colors, mostly metallic, mostly green, though here and there purple, or pearly, or such a bright, friendly yellow it made your eyes ache. Its splendor called treasure to mind. There was red underneath it, but I couldn’t yet understand what that was. The scene had no cousin in my memory. The colors moved and writhed and chittered, because the carpet wasn’t made of wool or linen; it was made of birds.

And then, as if one of our footfalls had reached too close and touched some alarum-string, the carpet lifted with a great flapping, and a sort of rain fell from it. I felt then saw drops, dewy on the back of my hand. Garnets rather than diamonds. Not water but blood. A great squarish puddle of blood lay where the birds had been, fringed with birdy footprints. And in the middle of the puddle lay the slick bones and tendons of I knew not what beast, but a big one.

“What in the hot squinny of…?” I said, having not enough brains to choose and besquinny a deity at that moment, what with a tent of blood-raining birds lifting off in front of us. Galva, as wide-eyed as I, lifted her shield slowly, backed up a step. I backed up as well, not for the first time coveting her mail and her shield.

The birds, now a tent, now a cloud, now a loose triangle, darted about, seeming to consider us and our fate. One of them, a purplish beauty with a lavender belly, no bigger than a finch, dove at me now. I batted it away, but the second one struck me, and snicked a cut in the outer wing of my left nostril as clean as a razor. I said, “Ow fuck,” and sneezed at the same time, misting blood. I had seen Galva move, though barely, from my eye’s corner. She was so fast in times of trouble you could miss the what of her doings. If her motion had been a blur, the result was not. The feathered prank who’d nipped my nose cutpurse-quick tumbled across the stones in two parts, coming to rest with one side twitching here, the other dead-still over there.

If the flock had been asking their bloody birdy god for a sign as to whether we were threat or prey, they had it. They fucked off smartly, up past the ridgetop and gone. At least, most of them did. I noticed now a few, their bellies heavy with meat, struggling to fly. These made their way with much dropping and rising to a scatter of the flowers clinging to the rock face. They each approached a flower and harfed up a crimson gobbet into it before moving on to another. This they did until they were all light enough to fly proper. I wondered at this, at how drowsy and dream-caught both Galva and I had been. As if reading my mind, she said, “I think these flowers intoxicate beasts to lie here, and these jilnaedu birds come and strip the flesh from them. Look.” The point of her spadín cast my gaze at piles of bones here and there. Some few of them clothed or armored.

“And then the birds feed the flowers,” I said.

She nodded.

“I love this place,” I said. “I’m so glad we’re here.”

“As I love sarcasm,” she said, flicking blood from her sword, then wiping and sheathing it. I kicked the bird as we went past.

Half of it anyway.