The Skybound Sea by Samuel Sykes Page B

course. But she hoped Naxiaw was a little more accepting of incoherence.
    And how could he not be?
She chastised herself
.
What with that stirring performance of stuttering excuses and half-concocted logic, it’s amazing he’s not here beside you right now to give you a teary hug before he sends you to a human, the kind of breed that he’s sworn to kill and you are, too
.
    Were
. She corrected herself. She
had
been sworn to kill humans, or so she thought. She had listened to the old logic that told the old reasons that supported the old story. The one that said humans were a disease that threatened shict and land alike, hence they must die.
    And for as long as she could, she believed them.
    But that time was over. The old story had never resonated with her as it should. The old reasons had never carried enough weight. The old logic had brought her nothing but a distinct pain in her belly that grew sharper every time she looked at Lenk and he looked back at her.
    And they both remembered that night, when he had looked into her eyes with a blade to his throat and called out for her.
    And she had turned her back on him.
    But this isn’t about him
, she told herself as she crept into the daylight
.
No, no. This is about you, and what you know is a shict and who you know you are and who you have to kill and what you have to do and how many times you have to tell yourself this before you finally believe it
.
    It was getting easier, at least.
    Daylight met her with the sun rising higher in the sky as dawn was left behind and a bright, angry morning took prominence. Coming from the darkness of the forest, she was nearly blinded as the sun cast a furious glare off the sand.
    It wasn’t enough to blind her to the flurry of activity, nor to the dread welling up inside her at the sight of work at the shoreline.
    The center of the scene was dominated by the restored companion vessel they had salvaged, trying its hardest to appear seaworthy and aided ably by its scaly attendants. The lizardmen known as Gonwa worked diligently: sanding out its roughness, testing the sturdiness of its mast, securing its rudder. There was a vigor to their work, a frightening eagerness to get this vessel and its passengers to sea.
    Considering said vessel was to deliver them into the maw of an island whose location was known only to the flesh-eating serpents and skull-crushing lizardmen who dwelt there, Kataria suspected she should feel a little insulted.
    Not too late, you know
, she thought as she began to trudge across the sand toward the worksite
.
You could still kill them all and run. They’d never see it coming. Well, Lenk might … I mean, you did want to kill him only a week or so ago. But only two people know that
.
    And one of them just seized her shoulder in a heavy hand with heavy claws.
    Granted, given all that Gariath
could
do with his claws, she suspected she ought not to have snarled at him when he effortlessly spun her to face his vast chest. She had to look up to meet his black eyes.
    And when he looked down at her, it was a harsh gaze set beneath a pair of horns that traveled down a snout brimming with sharp teeth in a bare snarl of his own.
    At the best of times, Gariath didn’t need a reason to kill a person, even one that approached his vague definition of “companion.” Given that he had a slew of reasons, ranging from her abandoned plot to kill the only human he respected to her witnessing him talking to invisible people, she had to wonder, not for the first time, why he hadn’t done it yet.
    That wasn’t the sort of musing one did vocally. And when he did no more than thrust an arm at her, she counted herself lucky.
    “Here,” the dragonman rumbled.
    He let go of the long object in his hand, leaving it to teeter ominously before collapsing against her. She buckled under its weight, struggling to keep it up.
    “What’s this?” she asked.
    “What you asked for.”
    She looked down at the object. A spear … or a