Ecko Burning by Danie Ware

make it all fit, somehow. To make it fit with the tales of the daemon Kas Vahl Zaxaar, with the blight, with the rumours of hostility to the north - but she was no damned scholar, by the rhez, and all she could think of was the empty look in his eyes, the disfocus of his pupils, the lax wet of his mouth...
    The fact that she should’ve come sooner.
    Ress had not even known her - he’d looked straight through her, barely noticed she was there. He’d scribbled on the wall, tried to cut himself, pissed his trews, screamed wordless and terrifying. She’d felt like nothing, a phantom; she’d felt like railing at the sky, like shaking Jayr until her teeth cursed-well rattled...
    How could he be so broken?
    “Dear Gods.” In the thin light from the windows, Triq’s hands were cracked and dry and pale. Her words caught in her throat. She lowered the cup and blinked at it stupidly, her eyes almost as unseeing as Ress’s. “But Jayr. How could you let him...?”
    “I didn’t let him.” Jayr seemed oddly subdued, in helplessness or guilt. She leaned forward over the filthy tabletop, her own cup still untouched. “I’ve told you, it was only bits, I could barely read it. It made no sense, time and light and this and that, I don’t even know what it said.”
    “Ress taught you to read.” Triqueta blinked, confused.
    Jayr glanced about them, lowered her voice. “Lord Nivvy’s done everything she can, but her lot can’t even touch him, they’re worse than hopeless. Unless your clever apothecary friend - Amethea - can pull an esphen out her arse, I don’t know what else to do. He’s screaming crazed, and if I didn’t force feed him, he’d be in the long ditch by now.”
    “Gods.” Triqueta’s mouth shook, she put her head in her hands. “Poor Ress. Oh my Gods. I should’ve come sooner, I should’ve -!”
    “Something I can help you ladies with?” The male speaker was casual, grinning and masculine, handsome and fully aware of it. His eyes flicked over Triqueta and her unlikely frock, dismissed her, moved to scan the breadth of Jayr’s heavy shoulders and the swell of her breasts under the leather vest she wore. “I’d be only too happy to... lend a hand.”
    Jayr eyed him briefly and snorted, not even bothering with a response.
    But something in his stance, his arrogance, in the way he’d spoken - or in the way he’d dismissed her - sparked a flash from Triqueta’s liquor-sodden temper.
    “And how’s... how’s that your problem?” Drink-addled or not, she could still put a blade in her tone.
    The man grinned. One of his back teeth was missing. Still addressing Jayr, he said, “You’re an odd pair, aren’t you? You together?” He met Triqueta’s gaze with a smirk. “Or does this ol’ lady just barter for you?”
    Old lady.
    The phrase caught, stuck. Around her, the noise of the tavern retreated to a dull buzz and she stared up at the confidently grinning, gap-toothed man. Her face was still streaked with tears, but her grief was rapidly congealing into something else entirely.
    “What did you say?” she demanded.
    Jayr hadn’t reacted - Triq could only guess the scarred girl hadn’t quite understood the implication. Moving through an odd, unreal fog, her motions unfolding before her eyes as if performed by someone else, Triqueta picked up the pottery carafe of spirit.
    It was cold against her itching skin.
    The man laughed outright at her. Her age. Her dress.
    “Put that down, love.” There was a long terhnwood blade at his belt. “Before you hurt yourself.”
    Jayr said, “Triq? What’re you doing?”
    Triqueta stood up, swaying. She didn’t know quite what she was going to do, whether she was going to put the carafe down, or smash it into shards on the filthy floor, or slam it in the man’s smug face...
    Jayr said, warning, “Triq...”
    But the man’s hand had strayed to the blade at his belt. His voice tinged with mockery as he said, “C’mon love. Don’t embarrass