Page 42 of The Gilded Ones

“Let’s not argue,” Surem, Katya’s uruni, quickly interjects in his calm, gentle manner. He’s the boy I once thought I’d matched with, the smiling, tattooed Westerner. “We’re almost at the armoury. Let’s just…”

I’m no longer listening to him. A sudden, panicked tingling is surging through my veins, and it only takes me a second to recognize the cause. Deathshrieks…but not the ones in the caverns under the Warthu Bera. Heart pounding, I follow my senses to the wall just beside us, where I quickly spot four horrifically familiar figures creeping down the stones, their white pelts gleaming past the mist wreathing their bodies.

Leapers: the deathshrieks that jump onto their victims and rend them apart using claws and teeth. They’re really on the walls, just as we’ve been warned so many times they could be. The others don’t seem to have noticed them yet.

They’re much larger than the ones the novices use for sparring practice, these deathshrieks; their bodies muscled and healthy, their eyes alert in the darkness. So this is the difference between captive deathshrieks and free ones. I’d almost forgotten, but now my vision is sharpening, so I can see them clearer, and my ears are muffling everything else out, so I can hear their low, isolated footsteps. I’m already slipping into the combat state, just as Karmoko Huon taught us. I don’t need a run to stimulate it: it’s rising by instinct.

I put down the extra atikas I’m carrying, doing it slowly so as not to attract the deathshrieks’ attention, aware of Keita’s eyes darting towards me. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him so attentive outside combat practice. Perhaps he senses them too, feels the cold of their mists now creeping towards us.

“What is it?” he whispers.

I flick my eyes towards the wall. “Deathshrieks, four of them on the western wall, all leapers – huge ones.”

Everyone stiffens, alarmed, but I quickly tally the odds. Six of us to four of them. But it takes three to four girls to topple one deathshriek during a raid. And usually those girls have real swords.

“We’re outmatched,” Britta whispers. “We need to run to Main Hall an’ raise the alarm.”

Keita nods, his eyes squinted against the darkness as he tries to pick them out. Like the other boys, he can’t see as keenly in the dark as we alaki can. “Everyone,” he says, turning to the others, all of them stiff and tense now after my words, “I can’t see them, so we run on Deka’s mark. And we do so silently.”

“But—” Acalan begins, bluster in his voice.

Keita sternly cuts him off. “We’re the only ones out here, and we have no real weapons and no helmets to protect us against their screams. On Deka’s mark,” he repeats, nodding at me.

I glance at the deathshrieks. The first of them is just now stepping onto the ground. When it notices me looking, it glances up, its eyes meeting mine. There’s a look in them, a predatory intelligence. It opens its mouth.

“NOW!” I shout, taking off down the path.

A blur passes me, Katya already leading the way, her eyes wide with terror. “DEATHSHRIEKS!” she screams, panic making her disregard Keita’s instructions. “DEATHSHRIEKS ARE ATTACK—”

A massive white form slams into her, sending her tumbling into the bushes. As she falls, the deathshriek goes after her, but Surem quickly blocks it, atika at the ready. The deathshriek hisses at him, teeth and claws bared in annoyance.

“DAMMIT, KATYA!” Keita growls, bolting over.

I do the same, shocked to find the other three deathshrieks splitting off behind us to head off the novices and recruits now running to answer Katya’s call. Why aren’t they shrieking, I wonder. We’re the closest ones to them – why aren’t they trying to attack us?

I barely have time to think this before the deathshriek in front of Katya moves, claws raking down to easily slice through Surem’s wooden sword. He whimpers as it falls apart in his hands. The deathshriek raises its claws again, about to deliver the deathblow, but Katya lunges up, pushing him out of the way and then darting backwards.

For just a moment, I’m sure she’s safe, sure she’s evaded the claws. She’s one of the fastest girls in the Warthu Bera, after all. But then I hear the sickening crunch of bone, see the claws protruding out through her chest.

“Oh!” she gasps, eyes wide with surprise.

Her spine rips back, pulled out by the deathshriek’s claws.

Time seems to suspend, my entire body caught in amber, as I watch Katya bleeding out through that gaping hole in her back. A strange blue colour is racing out of it – a shade of blue I’ve never seen on anything before. Her body twitches once, twice, then stills. I know, without having to ask, that she’s gone. There’s no golden sheen of an almost-death, no gilded sleep for her.

“Katya…” I whisper, my chest deflating, horror leadening my limbs.

I turn to the deathshriek, which remains where it is, watching her. It almost seems…surprised. Shocked that it killed her so easily. A low, deep feeling rumbles inside me, a heated volcano that turns my blood to fire and my breath to ash.

“GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU BEAST!” I rage, the words erupting from my mouth. My voice is layered, powerful now, as I repeat, “GET AWAY FROM HER!”

The deathshriek’s entire body immediately goes rigid, its eyes rolling in its head. It staggers away, limbs jerking as if they’re on strings. Adwapa and Asha swoop into the space it left, quickly plucking Katya’s body up. The moment they do so, exhaustion crashes over me, a wave of tiredness muffling everything around me, dulling my senses to their lowest. All I see is flashes: the other deathshrieks grabbing the staggering one and then running back over the wall the way they came; Adwapa gently resting Katya’s body on the ground as novices and karmokos finally arrive; Surem rushing to Katya’s side, tears in his eyes.

Karmoko Thandiwe gestures for the novices to pull Katya’s body away from him. “Who raised the initial alarm?” she asks, glancing around.

“Deka did,” Britta replies. “Then…Katya.” She stops, her voice breaking.

I ignore her, my eyes fastened on Katya’s corpse, on that horrible blue colour seeping from her spine. Just a few moments ago, she was darting in front of me, long red hair gleaming in the dark…and now…now… My entire body buckles, suddenly unable to hold up its own weight.

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