‘Yes. But know this, K’rul. I still preferred you as a woman.’

* * *

It had begun with a conversation, in the way that the uttering of words, on easy breath, lodged like seeds, grew and then ripened in the minds of all who would later claim to be present. A conversation, Hanako reflected, to elucidate the absurdity of everything that followed. This was the curse among the Thel Akai, where only silence could stop the onrushing flood of those things, countless in number, upon which the battered survivors might look back, nodding at the signs, the precious omens, and all those casual words slipping back and forth.

But silence was a rare beast among the Thel Akai, and from this tragic truth, the lifeline of an entire people trembled to a thousand cuts. Surely, before too long, it would snap. Even as he and his kin tumbled down in helpless mirth.

Too often among his kind, laughter – unamused and disabusing – was the only response to pain, and this notion twisted Hanako round, once again, to the clear-eyed affirmation of the absurd.

He sat upon the sloped side of a boulder, streaming blood from more wounds than he dared contemplate. His heaving chest had slowed its frantic gasps. The blood he had swallowed – his own – was heavy in his stomach, boiling like bad ale. From the huge boulder’s other side and so out of sight, Erelan Kreed was working his knife through tough hide, humming under his breath that same monotonous and tuneless scale of notes, like a cliff-singer slapping awake his vocal cords, making the sounds of stretching and tightening, bunching and tickling. Kreed was known to drive village dogs mad whenever the fool was busy at something.

The hand with the knife had a voice. The other hand, pulling away that rank skin of fur, answered with its own. The sob of sagging muscle and folds of fat made a wet chorus. Of all creatures known to Hanako, only flies could dance to this song, were any bold or desperate enough to brave this chill, mountain air.

Before Hanako, on the roughly level terrace that had marked their camp, Lasa Rook was only now gaining her hands and knees, her fit of laughter finally relenting. When she lifted her head to look at him, he saw the thick glitter of tears in her eyes, the wet streaks that ran down through the dust on her rounded cheeks, and the now dirty mucus tracking down from her nostrils. ‘What,’ she asked brightly, ‘still nothing to say? A pronouncement, if you please! The moment begs for a word, if not two! I beseech you, Hanako! ‘Twas but a slap or two from the Lord of Temper, and still you bridle!’

‘I could but wince,’ he said, sighing, ‘at seeing the stitch in your side.’