My feet are bleeding.
I stare at them stupidly, as if shocked by their betrayal, and force myself to take a breath.
Apples. I smell apples.
I take a step, and another. It hurts, but there's no other way. In the courtyard now. I can see the trees, leaves blowing lazily, like a courtesan shaking her hair out.
Apple trees.
I stare down at my naked body, frail and lumped with cold. There's blood on my thighs, more felt on the corner of my mouth.
I clutch a fist in my hair, and pull hard. "Help!" I scream. "Help me!" They don't come; they wouldn't. They know what happens here. "Please! He's hurt! Help him! Please!"
The trees explode with people. Men running everywhere. Some bump into me, and each other. They're not organized, but they are eager. And frightened. I am small and pathetic, shaking and sobbing, ready to collapse if a leaf falls on my shoulder.
Eventually, the panic moves, fleeing the orchard for the House, and I am left, perhaps by accident, with one uncertain guard. His pale hair is frayed, and sweat dances out along his brow, a frantic jig of fear. He is frowning, shifting on his feet, and he bites the first knuckle of his finger nervously.
I bleat harder, rocking, falling back into the shadows.
He drops back from the edge of chaos mindless, his eyes finding me. His hand raises awkwardly, gingerly reaching for my shoulder sympathetically, but stopping just short. "Are you al--"
My fist bursts into his nose, and his flesh seems to fly apart, like crushing an egg in my palm. He falls back, clutching at scarlet streamers of pain.
“Sorry," I mutter, already limping up the narrow guard's stairs.
At the top of the wall, I go to one knee, my palm taking some weight off my burning foot. “Kieroden?" I say, into the dark.
"I'm here."
It came from below. Leaning, my eyes search. As if he knows my doubt, his head and hood fall back, and there he is, suddenly, just beneath me, his brilliant eyes glowing, the yellow flickering like sun on lapping water.
So...he was nervous after all.
Lips curling, I jump.
I don't sail through the air. I cut it. I'm a blade, folding next to Kier.
"Blood?" he says.
"Not mine." Pause. "Except the feet."
He waits.
"The arboretum had Weeping Thistles. Crossed with Cisel's Roamers." I toss my eyes. "Little fuckers ran right up to me and bit me."
He chokes.
"Yeah, yeah. Let's go." I twist into a Sarsen's robe and woven togs, and we are off, feet chopping along the south wall, before dropping into the mountains.
We come into a low field, dry even as its grass is marshy. We pull out the comforts of no-home. Our copasquats are simple, clean. Kier can never be comfortable, and I, I figure the price is...too gamey.
I stretch out, my feet up, a berchu juice in my hand. It is still full dark. A sink globe is casting a nice golden glow to the circle.
Kieroden stands a few feet away, his hood up. He really is, as far as I can tell, incapable of relaxing. Sometimes, if the mood is just right, he can loom a little less stiffly.
"Harems," I muse. "Easy meat."
"The girls?"
"Meat." I know his glare will be disapproving, so I keep my eyes on the globe. "Kier," I curl my hand, watching the fingers move, cords bunching, folding, "stop feeling for meat that chooses to be bitten."
He doesn't say anything, but I know the glare is worse. In the cowl, not even very deep in the shadow, is a sweet man. If he was a man.
I feel the glow change, and stand, my feet tearing bites, hot and outraged.
A silver man stands across the globe.
The chalky grey is in his clothes, his hair, even dusted into his eyes and skin. He stands like an ash tree--silent, constant, waiting to crash and break your neck if you turn your back.
A flip in my spine. He shouldn't be here. He couldn't be here.
Taine was past. Taine was _gone_.
"Shaz," he says, in chide, in explanation.
Bumps break on my skin, my eyes spread, and a blade twirls about in my fingers, ready to pin this meat to a trencher.
A bite at my cheek, deep, and I jerk away, clutching at a...hole. "Son of a..."
Kier is on the move. I can see the flow from the edge of my watering eye. "No!" He jerks to a pierced stop and is flung up, above the tree line. Held there, like meat on an upturned fork.
"Shaz," Taine repeats, slow and crooning. If I had a spare nerve left, it would have bristled. "You'll kill for me."
"I'll kill you."
He looks up. Way up. A nice smiling glance. "I'll flay him," he says sweetly. He beams back at me, grinning. "Would you like to help?"
I twitch a lot, rocking. Looking everywhere, choking, gagging, for a way out. A way in. But there's nothing. Never. I won't go back, but I don't have to. It comes forward.
It always does.
"You have until light. You'll kill three. Darson Noh. Angl Woodlisse. Maya Orbijaca. I've made it easy for you. They're all in Suttered Pines."
"I can't--"
"Ah, ah," he wags his finger, pouting, "Be a doer, not a don'ter."
I swallow a tongue of vomit. "I need him." I won't look up; tears will fall. Taine licked tears.
"I know," he murmurs with pained sympathy, then smiles. "Go," he growls.
I turn, like a blade snapped free of its handle.
A lilting happy melody follows me, "Night is fading fast, Dear!"
I am shaking. Badly. But it doesn't help me shake off anything. I am panting, choking, and--
I stop. And sigh.
Panic will get me killed, it will get Keir converted to thin and juicy strips, and, most of all, it will make Taine very, very happy. He was probably jizzing in his robes right now.
Suttered Pines isn't far. A little wretched hovel up against the mountain. I can run there easily.
With whole feet.
I get there, limping like a spider with three legs. Squatting in a wet gutter, I consider my way.
Kier is the researcher. He knows how to talk to people, or rather, people will actually talk to him. I'm not sure why. He can loom, all hoody and dark and foreboding, but people are always sure I am the one who'll cut their throat.
They weren't exactly wrong.
But I don't have Kier, and my hands are getting raw from wringing each other.
It can't be hard. Taine wouldn't have made it hard, because he wanted me to succeed. Probably.
My spine twitches, then clenches violently, wrenching my hip and shoulder, forcing me to plant a palm in the gutter. Better than my face.
I close my eyes. There was no way to this but dirty. "Darson Noh," I say, conversationally.
There is a feeling, like a needle, sharp and pinching, in my chest. It yanks ahead, and I follow it. It goes left by an alley and right by candle shop, up a hill and down a curve, and I stay with it.
It stops.
I look about, closely. A rattered shack with half a roof, a potter's field, and pile of some truly foul rubbish. My finger on hope, I point to the shack and say, "Darson Noh?"
The needle flares hot and aching, and I curl over it gasping, fighting a scream.
Yep, he is in there.
Shaking hands rub my face. He could be anyone. He could--
Kier.
I step into the shack.
It is dark and rank, and I put the back of a wrist my mouth, gagging. He is alone. Curled up on the floor like a dog, sleeping. I poke him with my foot.
Harder.
His eyes open, just the barest flutter. It's all I need.
I morph.
They see what they're most afraid of. But I'm not just an image, a shine upon a trembling lens.
I become.
The faceless monster is popular, but not exclusive. I've been time, and hunger, and the dark. Once, I was leaves. Dried leaves. Shrivelled and crunchy.
For him, I'm water. He drowns. Surprisingly fast. Unremarkable. He barely struggles. His eyes are closed, and its almost like waves are casting him to sleep. Hush.
I drain away.
Dripping by the rubbish pile, I mutter, "Angl Woodlisse."
Again, I play follow the needle, over road and spit, board and bacon. Turning a corner, I actually bump into her.
"Excu--"
Her eyes are pale blue.
I'm something that slithers. I have claws and teeth as large as fingers, and a tail like fish. I am slow, hideously slow, but relentless.
She ran. For a while.
As I'm chewing, the back of my mind knows what I am. I'm a Quinteth. From the fairy tale. Of course, in the tale, I am little Bep's ally, but I am ugly, very ugly, and fears don't care for facts.
My teeth are strong. Very strong. But it takes a long time. She screams until the end. She screams even when her throat is gone.
Gagging, spitting blood, I stand. I grab at my hair, twisting it with fingers that don't want to work. One more. Just one more.
Kier. In giblets.
I call the needle again. It jabs me on, over pebbles and pedway, through muck and marsh, and stops before a woven house stitched impossibly grand and dark. "Maya Orbijaca," I whisper again, and my chest singes and cracks confirmation.
I hurry inside, wanting this past. The rooms loom a glowing grey, towering windows gaping them to light. Empty with opulence. I move from one to the next, and on and on, seeing no one. No light, no sign of life. But that splintered needle knows it’s certain, and so it’s here. Somewhere.
My stomach churns, an audible groan, and tears pain. My arms curl around, and I enter the last room. Small, dark, one lean window. I can see nothing.
"Daddy?"
No.
Her voice breaks into a sob. "No, daddy! Please."
"No," I choke. But it's too late. It was too late the moment she saw me. I am already what she fears most.
I am her father.
I've crossed the room. My hands are on her dress, tearing. She's begging in a frenzied cadence, frantic and pitiful, but I can't stop; he wouldn't stop.
I am crying, but there are no tears. This flesh doesn't have them.
My mind slips.
But not enough.
"Shaz."
I stop, a fistful of dress, a hand full of throat. My head rises, somehow, and, as if searching for an itch, slowly turns to look over my shoulder.
It's Kieroden.
"No."
Softly, so softly, "He wanted me to watch."
"No."
"No," he agrees.
My head is shaking, my hand clutches, and there is a squeal.
"Stop," Kier says, stepping closer. He pushes his hood, and there is an endless gleam of bright eyes.
"I can't." There's a sob. I don't know whose.
"You already have."
I blink. And again. My hand swipes my forehead, and slips in sweat. "But I can't..." I whisper, confused.
Kier takes my arm, soft but firm. "You're not meat anymore, Shazmerra." His eyes sputter, like candles with a gutted wick. "You never were."
Sitting down, falling to the floor, I stare at my hands, and then into the dark.
It stares back.
