World's End

Page 51

The sound of the wind filled me with a homesickness for places I've never seen. I even thought of sleeping out; the cool night wind and the open sky were paradise, after the stinking closeness of the rover and Ang's snoring.

Suddenly I came upon a primitive animal trap, half hidden among the rocks and scrub in a small open space. In its jaws was something shriveled and black. I didn't know what it was until I'd gotten close enough

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ay 40.

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WORLD S END

to touch it. It was a foot, the limb of some creature that had been caught in the trap long ago. In its frenzy to live and be free, some animal had gnawed off its own foot.

I crouched there for a while, without the strength to move, before I unfastened the leather wrist guards that hid my scars. I stared at the welts on my arms. And then I opened my belt pouch and laid its contents out in the dust: the picture of my brothers, the trefoil, the picture of Song. Her hair was like the night sky, glittering blackness.

Her wild dark eyes gazed into mine like the soul of this place. / know you, they whispered, /

know your secret heart. I know why you 'we come.

I turned away from her image, to the faces of my brothers, and looked away from them. . . .

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And I remembered how I had looked away from the inspector's gaze as she handed me the message transcript that had followed me to Tiamat from Kharemough.

"Sergeant," she said, more hesitantly than I'd ever heard her speak, "I'm . . . afraid it's bad news."

I felt my face go numb, and my mind. I took the transcript from her with nerveless fingers, knowing before

I even looked at it what it would say. "My father is dead." I spoke the words to the naked, ancient wall of the hallway. And I killed him. I put out a hand to steady myself.

"I'm sorry," the inspector murmured to my turned back. And then, in her native language, she said, "May he live forever in the space of a thousand hearts."

I nodded slightly, all I could do. Finally I looked at what she had given me. The transcript was a brief, cursory message from my brother HK. It said he was now head of family, and included a copy of my father's will.

I crumpled the transcript in my fist as though I could crush it out of existence. It sprang back into perfect form