Surprisingly, My Lord felt no triumph, no satisfaction, no anger, no remorse. As Wallick turned cold, it was as though the spark of life inside him were cooling also; an era was dying, a reason to go on; an entire history as dense and smothering as a blanket was being pulled away. What was underneath it? Rot. Nothing. He felt empty as a husk, except perhaps for resentment at Wallick for dying, for escaping and leaving him alone to face the void.

Forgive me, Wallick had said.

“I can’t, you son of a whore,” My Lord said softly. “Because if I forgave you, how could I ever forgive myself?”

On his way up from the cell, Decher tucked under his arm, My Lord heard something. There was a murmur bouncing along the stone walls. On this floor, the screams and cries were uncharacteristically absent; only the murmuring voice could be heard.

My Lord paused on the stairs, his knees trembling with pain, his armpit soaking the shoulder of Decher’s rough tunic. He was going to ask his servant what—or who—it was, but the look on Decher’s face stopped him, so he just listened for a moment, and then he knew.

It was the heretic. Somewhere down that corridor he was being held for execution, and he was talking—perhaps to his followers, perhaps to his fellow prisoners, perhaps to himself—and the whole ward had stopped its sobbing long enough to listen to his words.

His voice, guttural but soothing, swept across the stones like water.

18

Around the pious shall go eternal youths, with goblets of flowing wine. No headaches shall they feel therefrom, nor shall their wits be dimmed. They shall have fruits such as they deem the best, and flesh of fowl as they desire, and bright and large-eyed maids like hidden pearls, a reward for that which they have done.

18.1. Sixty-Forty Denton Wyle

Sitting on the riverbank under that purple-red twilight sky, Eyanna was so beautiful and so fierce she looked like a goddess, something beyond human, beyond Sapphian, beyond the laws of space and time. Denton just sat there more or less drooling at her, hoping that she had a better opinion of him than he had of himself at the moment and figuring that she must like him a lot to have braved the skalkits on his behalf.

She brought something out of a pouch she wore under her skirt. It was that photograph again. She did not try to foist it on him this time but sat with her long legs propped up, the picture between them. She spoke slowly, as if she had not spoken much in a very long time.

“I had a man also.”

“What do you mean?”

“My man. He wanted only me and I wanted only him. The people didn’t understand that. They didn’t understand why we would not go with others. That is why they sent us to the skalkits.”

Denton didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t big on monogamy himself, but it was hardly a reason to condemn two lovers to death, especially when one of them was as beautiful as Eyanna. Then again, maybe that was the point. Her monogamy must have really pissed the Sapphians off.

“I’m sorry the people did that to you, Eyanna.”

“I helped you for her.” Eyanna handed him the photograph.

“Oh.”

If it was possible, Denton felt even smaller. There was no point in disabusing her of the notion that the woman in the photo was his great love or that by saving him she had done this woman a favor. And then he thought about how weird life was. He’d given her that photograph thoughtlessly, on a whim. And if he hadn’t, he would just have died a horrible, gruesome death.

He put the photograph back in his wallet. His hands were shaking so hard he could barely accomplish it.

“How can they do it, Eyanna? How can your people send their own to the skalkits like that?”

She studied the water, her face subdued. “Everyone agrees because the person being sent away is not them.”

“But it could be them!”

“No one thinks it will be them.”

“Yeah, but someday it will be them.”

Eyanna made a gesture of indifference. “No one thinks about this.”

Denton thought that was inane. Then he thought about how polite and friendly and helpful everyone was—not just to him but to one another, too. What hypocrites! It was all such a lie!

But it wasn’t a lie, he realized. It was a clue—or it would have been if he’d been paying attention. No one could be that nice all the time, not unless the alternative was pretty severe. For the Sapphians, it was.

“Do they choose the old and sick mostly, or…?”

Eyanna made the gesture for “maybe.” “Yes, this is the way. But also, females have many children. It is known that some of them will go. Mothers choose the ones who will go. Children who are chosen like this are sent as soon as they are grown.”

Denton gaped at her, shocked. They bred children for the skalkits? Poor John, with his deformed hand. He never had a chance.

“That is terrible! Do they not understand what it’s like to die this way?”

Eyanna didn’t answer, but Denton knew. The Sapphians didn’t want to understand.

Eyanna wrapped her long arms around her long legs, huddling. “If we do not feed the skalkits they come into the gorge looking for the meat. That is worse.”

He could picture it. Oh, yeah. Sitting around the communal circle and hearing them coming through the trees, people running and screaming, being chased through the jungle, skalkits tearing through huts, ripping up pathways…

He looked around uneasily. They were sitting on a riverbank. Skalkits might come here to drink. Might? Probably. They probably came here to drink. And the swimming option seemed less reassuring than it had a little while ago.

“We will walk,” he said, getting to his feet. He pointed toward the mountains. “That way.”

She stood up, but her face was troubled. She looked back over her shoulder, toward the gorge.

“Eyanna, we can’t live in the gorge. Your people will catch us and they will send us to the skalkits again. I can’t hide in trees like you.”

“Ta zhecta,” she said, backing away. Good-bye.

“Eyanna, no.”

She was going to leave him, and then he would be completely alone. It was one thing to find himself outside the gorge with gorgeous, natively savvy Eyanna at his side. It was another to be a defenseless foreigner on his lonesome, with long cold nights and skalkits lurking.

“If you go back to the gorge they will catch you, Eyanna, and they will send you to the skalkits, and you will not get free again. If you come with me, I will find a place that is safe. I promise.”

Eyanna knew what he was saying was true, he could see it in her eyes, but she made the gesture for “no.” “I cannot leave the gorge.”

“You can. I know you are all afraid of—”

“My children are there.”

She said it in a quiet, doomed way, and he knew in an instant that, of course, that’s exactly what it was. He’d thought Eyanna hung around the village out of some Sapphian fear of the unknown or maybe a desperate need to be near her kind. But now he remembered that the times he had seen her had been in the mornings, when the women and children were in the circle alone. And she had watched from trees with such an intent, longing expression not because she wanted to be part of the group—she was watching her children.

Crap. That really sucked. He even knew which ones they were. There were two young girls with hair white-gold like Eyanna’s—pretty, shy little things. He whined in frustration, rubbed his eyes. Why did she care anyway? It sounded like Sapphian mothers weren’t exactly swelling with maternal instinct as a rule.