She didn’t have a club and doubted she’d able to re-break its knee with her spear. Maybe she could hack its foot off, but it was more likely she’d take a faceful of clawed toes and the venom would send her blind. But if it could stand, it might be able to reach high enough to untie the rope from the stalactite. And then it could get out, and then it might get into the city and even if it died there, there’d be more than the sixty-three dead this time. It could just sit in the plaza and sing. And those deaths, too, would be on her.

Xessa stepped within range and dropped the spear. The Drowned kicked out, its mouth a rictus of needle-sharp teeth, muscles standing out in neck and chest at the pain of movement. Xessa caught its ankle and its claws scraped the underside of her arm. Before it could pull back, she ripped her knife free and jammed it into the Drowned’s calf, sawing at the thick muscles.

Throat sac bulging, it wrenched back and its leg slipped from Xessa’s grasp, the skin smooth and cold and wet. The limb splashed down and then the Drowned slid through the shallow water on its back towards her to snatch at her ankles. If she went down it was over, she was dead. She leapt back, praying that her knife had done enough damage.

The Drowned lay on its back, gills flapping rapidly, water greening with blood, and Xessa stared at the length of it, at the thick, toughened plates like an armadillo’s that covered its stomach and chest and lower back. How many times had she seen arrows and darts bounce off those plates? How many times had her own spear clattered free or drawn only a shallow wound in the shoulders, where no real damage could be done?

You could break their limbs. She’d proven that, though she hadn’t known for sure when she’d tried it. But it took strength and leverage to pierce that armour and that meant being right there with it, not shooting arrows from a distance. Xessa’s gaze returned to its face and she jumped; it was watching her, and she could recognise both pain and intelligence in its regard. Though she knew it was clever, it was still unnerving to find it studying her even as she studied it. Slowly, it dragged itself away from her and brought its bleeding leg up to its belly and lay there, one gill in the water. Still.