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Whatever Lenk had to say in response was suddenly drowned out by the sound of a heavy breathing, heavy footsteps and a heavy stick being dragged through the sand It was hard to ignore the sight of Bagagaht i roach he dragged by its antennae alongside his stick

‘Okay, cousin,’ he gasped, pulling his twitching prize before Lenk ‘Ol’ Bagaga, but runt, he hurled the insect forward ‘Eat hearty’

‘That’s … nice?’ Lenk said ‘But there’s soht Rude’ The Owauku’s tiny h above his head and brought it down in a shrieking splatter of foul-srin to slurp up a glistening gob on his , eh?’

‘I was thinking the sa,’ Lenk said as he turned his sau’

Nineteen

MEN OF VIRTUE AND THE

NOOSES THEY SWAY FROM

He crept quietly through the city’s backstreets, hood drawn up, cloak held tightly about hiated them quickly, quietly, the sins of his memories still embedded in the stones when he walked without webs on his feet, when he could bear the sensation of earth on his soles He once had done so He once had walked ahbour

And what do they call ht Monster? Heretic? Betrayer? De about before sliding through the sunlight and back into shadow And what slurs I could level at thenorant masses that feed themselves into the furnaces stoked by the lies of the Gods and their servants If they want it so bad, they deserve to die They deserve to--

No, no, he chastised hilanced down at the vial in his pal with a nebulous life all its own Mother’s Milk The gift of Ulbecetonth The agent of change

Change, he ree needed to lift the blinders froods were deaf and uncaring It would be violent, he knew People would die More would live, guided by a matron that heard them and spoke to them in return But they would never understand

They would call him a monster

He called himself the Mouth

But before that, he had called hi else, he recalled He’d had a name He’d had a home He’d had memories; he still did The Prophet was cruel to keep hi absolved of the Perhaps he needed to remember why he forsook name, home, land and sky alike

And so, when he ca abandoned, when he felt his heart begin to ache as he laid a hand upon the splintering door e to turn away He pushed it open He went in

Shadows greeted hi tirained into the wood of the house itself They had seen all They rehtless testi floorboards

He walked past a doorway; the shadows told hih totable; the shadows spoke of three bodies seated there, breaking a single loaf of bread to share He walked to the decrepit stairs at the edge of the house

And the shadows asked him to turn away They remembered what happened They told hiain

But he went up, regardless The stairs knew hi the same creak of complaint they had offered hi at a barren spot upon the here the shade was a tad lighter than the rest of the decay A holy sy wave of Zaainst the woes of life and an invitation for the goddess’ boon

He re it up He remembered when he had taken it down He remembered when he had screa He reotten to stoke it that night Someone else usually did that

But there had been no one else left that night

He glanced back to the door, frowning A lesson learned, he told himself; he knew that the Gods were iained fro …

But he went, anyway The shadows la hallway he had once paced back and forth across They warned hi to the room at the far end But he went, anyway

And he saw the shadows in a small, decrepit room And he saw the shadows of a s, one that he had built hastily when the girl who lay in it grew too big for her crib

He smiled The shadows did not have to remind him of when he sat beside that cot and told stories He reme Gnash, How Zamanthras Stained Toha’s Sand Blue He reirl who lay in it and he would go to Toha one day and she would see the blue sand, how she would one day captain a ship that would dwarf his little fishing skiff, hoould build her a bigger bed in a few

But it was only a few days later that the girl who lay in it stopped growing altogether

The shadows didn’t have to tell him that He remembered it all on his own

But the shadoere not silent The shadows spoke of the healer who had knelt beside the little cot The shadows spoke of heads that shook, eyes that closed, condolences offered and arrangements advised The shadows spoke of threats, of pleas, of prayers he had offered to the healer, to their Talanas, to his Zamanthras, to anyone ould listen

No one answered No one ever answered

The shadows spoke of the day when that little cot lay empty The shadows spoke of the day when he sat beside it and cradled his head in hands The shadows spoke of the day when he pressed his hands against his ears to drown out the sound of the waves The waves that the girl lay in

That here their memory stopped That here his stopped That here he was no longer neighbour, no longer father, no longer slave to the Gods

He narrowed his eyes; that was the day when, in the silence, he had heard the voice of Mother Deep That was the day when he forgot his name That was the day the Mouth had left the shadows and the wood and the city behind entirely, swearing he would not return until he could change the world

And now, he had And now, he could

He stared down at the vial of Mother’s Milk, narrowing his eyes This hat it had coed The Mother would be free But for Her to reign properly, to guide mankind from their blind darkness, She would need a consort

The Father must be freed

And this was the key, this ould draw Daga-Mer from the prison he had been so cruelly cast into This ould call to Mother Deep, to free Her froh theh hia-Mer’s prison lay; he heard the Father’s call, he heard the distant beating of his heart as he slumbered He closed his eyes, let the memories slip froe waiting to happen, fill his thoughts