Tue Jan 30, 2007 3:40 am
She was trying to clean the blood from the mellow stonework of the long, crumbling passage, from the vista of horror. The tassled squares of carpet were soaked and huddled with bodies, and they were all weeping blood - all the eyeless faces, crying red.
"Clean," she gasped over the stubborn stains, sweat pouring from her face. There was sick, hazy light from the dirty window, dappling her cold back in cold light - plucking notes of scarlet from the long floor. "Clean!"
A shadow-shape moved in the dark margin of the room. Breathless, she stopped, raw, red hands clutching bright, leaking rags. She stared through straggles of dark hair toward a bent over shape, standing amidst this bleak infirmary of lost eyes. A woman was weeping to him softly and gently, her voice nearly lost, of how she could not see.
The man straightened and turned, smiling from his hood; he stared right at Quincy, spreading his bare, bloody hands. "Red Ink."
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Come dawn, she was already awake and sitting alone in Dias' kitchen, wrapped in a blanket and nursing a mug of rose tea; moody eyes stared at nothing. Yesterday was a long and strange day, and at the very end of it, as she'd slept and breathed in the wisps of night, secret fears had coalesced into nightmares. The past few days had been nothing but talk of Baie. The more she thought about a thing that could change its face again and again, the more daunting everything felt.
She dared not tell Dias about Michael Renne, if only because of the minstrel's staggering temper. She knew, and could not feel even a little guilty satisfaction, that he would not be able to contain himself if he found out that a knife had been to her cheek.
Her heart beat loudly as the cool breath of the silence flowed about her, feeding the endlessness of her questions. At least if she saw Zayken Perfect, she would know it; if she saw the dark angel, there'd be no question in her mind. So what of a thing that could be anything, anyone? She set her dark eyes toward the bedroom door, where he soundly slept. What if --
No. Quincy Randall did not believe. She rose and travelled from the kitchen, her cocoon of blanket trying to ambush her bare feet with tripping edges. The guest room door was left ajar as she dressed for the day.
She would never understand why so many things had to die.