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But he could not dwell on that His feet moved beneath him as the sun disappeared behind the sea, and already his nostrils were quivering, drawing in the scent of living things

Seven

HONEST AFFLICTIONS

No matter how hard she stared, the sun refused to yield any answers to her

It had been a long tiape and eyes unblinking If her throat was dry or if the tears had been scorched froo, dissipating on the heat

And Asper continued to stare

The sun was supposed to reveal truth to her This she knew Every scripture claiive up His body and His skin and His blood until there was nothing left for Hi was spent for His children, then did He leave the agonies of the cruel earth and ascend to the Heavens on wings heavy with laies, He left no excuses and He left no proiven His body He left but this: hope The great, golden disc that reminded His children that He had taken only His bones and breath back to the World Above, leaving His body, His skin, His blood and His great eye’

She could recite the hyue swelled up, and that used to be fine, so long as the words that were uttered were the words she had sought coh And the sun refused to answer her

Her arolden heat she raised it to Flickering, twitching cried sin beneath the red that had been her skin Each bone of knuckle and digit stretched out, reaching ebon talons to the sun, seeking to wrest truth fro that, she could but ask

‘Why?’

The sky sighed, itsblack inside her

‘I’m sorry,’ the sun answered ‘It’s my fault’

No room for pride in her body, no rooiveness She could feel the cri over her throat on red fingers and crushing her breasts in blood-tinted grip The pain shoved out all other feelings, scarring her skeleton black beneath her

She saw the ebon joints of her knees rise up to ainst the dirt The sun was hot now, unbearably so She threw back an ebon skull, cried out through awordlessly for the great eye to stop

‘I’m sorry,’ it replied ‘I couldn’t I’m sorry I’m sorry’

Her screa beneath its endless, airless droning It repeated the words, bludgeoning her to the floor and beating her into darkness

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’

Eyelids twitched in time with the breath that rained hot and stale upon her face They ached as they cracked open, encrusted with dried tears The light assaulted her, blinding

She blinked ainto view a pair of dark eyes ri vast and desperate holes into her skull as a s stare She felt leather fingers gingerly brush a lock of brown hair away from her sweat-stained broith arachnid sensuality

‘Good ,’ a voice rasped

The screaered hands snapped over herher shriek in a tide of leathery flesh Another hand was under the first and she felt a heavy thu her windpipe with practised swiftness

‘Silence is sacred,’ the voice suggested in a way that implied it was no impotent hymn

Whatever threat not ily apparent in the hands, coursing down the palers that slid across her throat Her breath caulps Her heart pounded in her chest, eyes terrified to meet the dark and heavy stare that bore down on her like a bird of prey

Breath after desperate breath passed and the light ceased to sting As a face ca over her, breath came more swiftly and confidently The s once she remenition that crossed her face, the hands slipped off her mouth and neck

‘Not that I’m not thrilled to hear your et a little tireso it for a few days’

‘A … few days?’ Asper felt her voice scratch raw against a throat turned to leather

‘A few days, yes,’ Denaos replied, his nod a little disjointed ‘You took a nasty blow to the head’ He rubbed a tender spot against her broincing in ti this way and that Hard to keep track of, no?’

‘Wood … flying …’ And wet, she re hail, herself only onein an airless blue sky Her eyes widened with the realisation ‘We were attacked Sunk! But …’ She felt the sand beneath her, smelled the sea before her ‘Where are we?’

‘Island Archipelago, htfully ‘Peninsula, coast, beach, shore, littoral … left side of an isthmus Not sure, lost the ’

‘And … the others?’

‘Lost everything’

Everything

The word echoed inside hersurprisingly light, a falanced down and saw her robes parted, exposing a generous amount of bosom, a patch of particularly pale skin in the shape of a bird where her pendant had once hung dutifully

She should have been more alarmed at that, she knew The pendant had been with her since she had first been ad, from her initiation as a novice, to her rise to acolyte, to her full initiation

It saw Taire, she told herself griface It’s seen one

Perhaps it wasn’t any wonder she was breathing more freely now

‘I don’t wear my robes like this,’ she muttered A horrific suspicion leapt from her mind to her eyes and she turned them, wide as moons, upon the tall man ‘I was out for a few days’

‘Three’ He canted his head to the side, looking to soht, thereabouts’

‘You didn’t …’ She gri, did you?’

‘Seearment ‘I’ve already seen you naked’