Chapter 32 Full Price

Jin cut before the red fold could close.

The knife bit into soft flesh. He drove his elbow back, opening the wound as the creature turned toward him.

Then the pull vanished.

His brace had already faded. There was nothing beneath his feet except the wrong side of the beam.

He let himself fall.

The blade tore free. His empty hand caught the railing below, wrenching his shoulder as his weight came down.

Dessa seized his shirt before his fingers could slip off the rail.

“Move!”

He swung his feet onto the dais beside her.

The tiltjaw's mouth opened again.

Both of them slid uphill along the broken boards toward the teeth.

Jin stabbed his knife through a gap between two planks and held on.

Dessa caught the hilt with him.

The blade bent.

“If you break that,” he gasped, “I am getting a spoon.”

“Keep pulling.”

Together they hauled their weight around the planted knife, edging behind the head where the feeding cone couldn't reach.

The open gill worked above Dessa's shoulder. Red water spilled down its edge.

She lifted the cleaver.

The flame that ran along it was almost white.

“Kessa!”

An arrow struck the opening fold, its shaft wedging between two ridges of flesh. The gill tried to close around it.

Dessa swung.

Her edge struck the wound Jin had opened and drove deep. Fire burst through the wet slit with a sound like steam escaping a furnace.

The tiltjaw heaved.

Its fins tore through the dais. Wood buckled beneath Jin's knee.

He pulled the knife free of the boards and scrambled after Dessa as she wrenched her cleaver out.

The huge mouth closed.

The world settled.

For one breath, it seemed the creature might drop back into the river.

Then its remaining whiskers spread.

The mouth opened a finger's width.

Jin felt his weight start to slide.

“No,” he said.

He climbed onto the folded fin, drove the knife into the torn gill from above and put both hands over the hilt.

A source check points to NovelPhoenix, where the author publishes this chapter; the copy here was made without their approval.

The creature jerked.

His knee nearly went off the slippery flesh. He hooked his other leg around the fin's root and pulled the blade down through the fold Dessa had burned.

Hot blood washed over his hands.

The mouth opened wider.

The pull caught the broken boards below him.

Jin kept cutting.

He couldn't go through bone. He didn't try. He followed the yielding red channel around it, dragging the knife toward himself with his whole back.

The blade came free.

The mouth sagged.

The pull stopped.

Jin slid down the creature's side and hit the dais beside Dessa.

Neither of them stood immediately.

The vast fins scraped the paving once, twice, then stopped.

All around the square, things fell.

Pots. Lantern frames. A table. Somebody's hat.

One hunter caught the hat and sat down with it in his lap.

The body dissolved above them in a long sweep of pale light.

Ordinary arrows dropped out of it. Jin caught one across his forearm and barely noticed.

He stared.

Five.

He spent the twenty-five: ten Strength, eight Agility, seven Endurance.

Heat raced through his shoulders. His fingers closed around the hilt without the exhausted tremor they'd had a moment earlier.

But when he pushed himself up, the broken railing came with him.

He looked at the piece of timber in his hand.

Then at Dessa.

She started laughing.

Jin put it down with as much dignity as he could find.

“Full price,” he said.

She laughed harder.

Kessa climbed onto the dais and took his face between both hands.

For one startled heartbeat, Jin stopped breathing.

She turned his head left, then right.

“Still ugly,” she said. “Good.”

Then she let go and sat down beside them.

The boy from the ribbon appeared at the bakery window, waving both arms. A woman pulled him back, kissed the top of his head and waved one hand herself.

Jin lifted his knife in reply.

Calder pointed at the bloody blade.

He lowered it.

“Working on that,” he muttered.

A man in a clay-stained apron came running across the square with a water jug banging against his knee.

Dessa stood before he reached the dais.

“Jory, I'm—”

He put the jug down, took the cleaver from her and peeled the scorched wrapping away from her palm.

She stopped talking.

He poured water over her hand. She watched him, her grin reduced to something small and tired.

“The bowls?” she asked.

“Still there.”

“Good.”

“So are you.”

Jin looked away and found a remarkably interesting piece of broken railing to inspect.

By evening, the guild had brought the promised two gold in silver: forty coins. Dessa counted four aside for Calder's lost bait, then split the rest into three piles.

Twelve apiece.

Jin added his remaining silver to the pouch.

Thirteen.

He checked twice. Nobody corrected him.

“I need to get home,” he said.

Kessa stood with a groan.

“Two hours to your tree.”

Jin looked at the purse. At the pin on his collar. At the bent knife and its wooden sheath.

One object.

Calder called them back to the fountain.

The three severed barbels lay coiled on its rim. Gold light pulsed inside their cut ends.

She set a copper beside one.

It rose.

“The head's dead,” Calder said. “The cut tips haven't spent their charge.”

Jin watched the copper turn above the stone.

Then a second coin slid out of Calder's fingers and rose beside it.

Both moved together when she nudged the severed tip.