The first breath hurt more than Simon expected — a dull, deep pain that ran across his ribs like a shock, tearing a cough out of him that left his eyes watering.
Corin's hands were pressed against his stomach, a faint greenish glow pulsing softly between her fingers, filtering through the fabric of his torn shirt. Simon slowly brought her into focus, the world still blurry at the edges, the little square reassembling itself around him piece by piece.
"What..." he tried to say, his voice hoarse, broken in half by another fit of coughing.
"Don't talk," Corin said, and Simon saw her for the first time with her cheeks streaked with tears, her eyes red and swollen, her voice trembling under a tone desperately trying to stay steady. "Just shut up. It's a miracle you're still in one piece, idiot. A real miracle."
Simon stayed lying there a few more moments, letting that green warmth wash over him, slowly easing the stabbing pressure against his ribs. Then, once he could finally speak without every word costing him a stab of pain, he asked the question that had been circling in his head since he'd opened his eyes again.
"Why did he attack me?" he said, quietly. "I thought Beastmen were an honorable race. Isn't that what you told me?"
Corin sighed, a long, tired sound, her hands still working silently on his stomach. "Most of them are," she said. "But you had the luck — if you can call it that — to run into the worst exception there is. Fenrik Wildmane. One of the most brutal mercenaries out there, and for him honor only counts among his own kind. With people outside the pack, with strangers, with humans like you — he doesn't have any code to follow. None."
Simon absorbed that in silence, then looked past her shoulder.
The Beastman he'd been playing dice with lay slumped on his side a few yards away, motionless, his empty eyes fixed on some vague point on the pavement.
His stomach tightened again, this time not from physical pain. "And him?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly. "Why did he kill him?"
"For Beastmen, lying to another Beastman is considered a sin against the pack," Corin said, quietly, as if the words cost her effort to say. "Not against the individual you deceived. Against the entire community. Fenrik asked him for a name, he lied — or maybe he just hesitated too long, with Fenrik the difference barely matters — and by their rules, that's enough to justify death. Not for humans. For their own kind, yes."
Simon slowly pulled himself up to sit, ignoring the lingering pain still pressing on his ribs, his eyes fixed on the motionless body nearby. Something stirred inside him — not fear, not anymore, but a dull anger he couldn't quite explain to himself.
It was in that moment that he noticed it.
Something had changed. A small click, a new sensation that had settled somewhere behind his eyes, similar yet different from what he'd felt when Corin had taught him Honest Whisper.
"Something weird just happened to me," he said, frowning.
"What?" Corin asked, immediately alert, her hands stopping on his stomach.
Simon closed his eyes. He focused on that new sensation, letting it grow, and perceived it clearly — something like a small switch just waiting to be pressed. He pressed it.
Corin stiffened instantly. Then, without a word of warning, she leaned toward him and sniffed at his neck, one nostril flaring as she inhaled deeply.
"What the hell are you doing?" Simon said, instinctively pulling back.
"Quiet!" she hissed, without stopping.
After a moment that felt endless to Simon, Corin pulled back, eyes wide, staring at him with an expression somewhere between disbelief and something closer to alarm.
"Where the hell did you learn the Altered Scent skill?" she asked.
Simon blinked. "The what?"
"Altered Scent," Corin repeated, slowly, as if repeating it might get her a more sensible answer. "Your body odor just changed — masked, altered, exactly the way that skill is supposed to work. This doesn't happen by chance, Simon. It has to be learned."
"I have absolutely no idea," he said, still confused, instinctively bringing a hand to his own neck as if he could feel the change on his own skin. "All I know is I felt something click inside, I pressed it, and now apparently I smell different than before. Works like a skunk, I guess. Extremely useful, I'm sure it'll save my life multiple times in the future."
Corin didn't laugh at the joke. She kept staring at him, her look growing more serious, almost worried. "It's a basic skill," she said. "Used mostly by Beastmen, to mask their trail while hunting or when they want to move without being tracked by scent. I've never seen it appear out of nowhere in someone who's never studied it, let alone in a human."
Simon didn't know what to say to that. He sat there, his mind circling an unanswered question, while a dull anger kept simmering inside him, closer and closer to the surface.
"I want to smash his face in," he said finally, quietly, his eyes fixed on the direction Fenrik had disappeared. "That bastard."
"No," Corin said, flatly, grabbing his arm with a grip that left no doubt about how serious she was. "You really don't want to do that. He left you alive, Simon. A kick to the stomach against someone like Fenrik is almost an act of courtesy — if he'd wanted to, he could have cut you in half without even changing expression. He chose not to. Don't waste that luck chasing revenge."
Simon clenched his teeth, but didn't argue. He knew, somewhere beneath the anger, that she was right.
Corin helped him up, slipping an arm under his shoulder to support him while his legs still trembled. "Hurry," she said, her eyes darting nervously toward the entrance of the little square. "The guards will be here soon, and the last thing we need is to explain why we're standing next to a corpse in the middle of the night. Move."
They hurried away down the dark alleys, Simon leaning heavily on her with every step, his breath still short from the lingering pain. It was only after a few minutes of silent walking, with the noise of the little square now far behind them, that the memory of the conversation with Fenrik resurfaced in Simon's mind with its full weight.
"Wait," he said, slowing his pace. "Fenrik said he was looking for whoever gave someone some Climbing Goats and an Ash Bat, found at the Isle harbor. And the man he questioned before gave him the name of that dead guy, who in turn gave him Renn's name as the contact. Renn was smuggling illegal creatures, Corin. Renn's the one who got us on that ship."
Corin didn't seem particularly surprised. She shook her head, with an expression more tired than shocked. "Doesn't surprise me at all," she said. "But let it go, Simon. Renn does what he has to do to survive, like everyone who lives on the margins of this world. It's not our problem, and we don't need to make it one, not tonight. We've already had enough trouble for one day."
Simon didn't answer, but the thought stayed there, wedged somewhere between the anger not yet spent and that new, unexplainable skill still faintly pulsing behind his eyes, like a question neither of them yet knew how to solve.