It’s market day in a tiny hamlet when Cehmai sees her, and he would have walked past unknowing if her hands weren’t dripping blood. She’s thinner, now, her midnight hair silvered. But with her crimson-streaked apron and upraised butcher’s knife, she looks the picture of a vengeful ghost.
Vengeance makes him think Idaan, makes him look closer, makes him see the past in her age-worn face.
“The price for the goat?” he asks inanely, throat dry.
She recognizes him, too. Her fingers tighten--then let the knife go.
“Too high.” Her smile is bitter. “You know the price always is.”
the follies of our younger days may yet bear some strange fruit, Long Price Quartet, Cehmai/Idaan
It’s market day in a tiny hamlet when Cehmai sees her, and he would have walked past unknowing if her hands weren’t dripping blood. She’s thinner, now, her midnight hair silvered. But with her crimson-streaked apron and upraised butcher’s knife, she looks the picture of a vengeful ghost.
Vengeance makes him think Idaan, makes him look closer, makes him see the past in her age-worn face.
“The price for the goat?” he asks inanely, throat dry.
She recognizes him, too. Her fingers tighten--then let the knife go.
“Too high.” Her smile is bitter. “You know the price always is.”