More Tales From the Ninth World by Monte Cook & Shanna Germain

Author:Monte Cook & Shanna Germain [Cook, Monte & Germain, Shanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 26171857
Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Published: 2015-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

A SENSE OF HER DEATH

by Shanna Germain

The man in front of her had been dead too long. His insides had split open hours ago, and his skin gave off an acidic stink that stung the back of Anirr’s nose.

His brain couldn’t be far behind, the lifepaths already beginning to unthread themselves into the bitter scent of broken blood and cells.

She dropped to her knees and put out a hand until she found the man’s chest. Under her palm, the fabric of his shirt was stiff and tacky. Not crusty enough to be blood. Something that released a hint of stickweed and burnt ballyberries when she ran a finger over it. A spilled drink at his last supper? Vomit? His death in liquid form? It didn’t matter now; what was done was done.

Anirr ran her hand up the man’s neck to the bone of his jaw. She barely had to touch a body to connect with it; putting her palm on a corpse’s foreheads was just an excuse to walk her hands across its face, to catch a tactile glimpse of a too-long nose, a broken tooth, maybe the indented, waxy reach of a scar. It was her one indulgence, her one indecency.

If you didn’t call going into a dead man’s brain without asking an indecency.

His face was caved in. Nose almost non-existent, cheekbones concave. Too squishy and broken to be bad genes. More likely a bad end. That’s why they were here. When someone died a slow death, they already gave away all their secrets to family members, friends, even enemies. It was the one truism of the slow death, that those who saw it coming needed to confess.

Those who died fast deaths, violent, unexpected, they held tight to what was precious. They were the ones with secrets. They were the ones the Dioshen wanted.

Behind her, Meshar shuffled his feet and leaned in. His shadow fell cold and dark across the bare skin of her back, making her shiver even in the heat of the falling afternoon.

“Well?” Meshar asked. He always was the impatient one between them.

Anirr was tempted to make something up, to say that she’d already tried and gotten nothing, let them move to the next corpse with no time sloughed off her hands. But she didn’t do that anymore—lie—even though the instinct was still there. Falsities once came so easily to her, always tastier than the truth. Lies tasted like Cross-eyed Jacks, burning with a sweetness that made her miss her youth. But now they cost her even more than talking to the dead. Meshar had made sure of that with his tweaks to her insides.

“He’s been dead a long time, Meshar,” she said.

She knew from the click in his throat that he’d like it better if she called him Dio Meshar. But she’d have to respect him, even just a little, to use his proper title. And they’d given up that charade the moment he’d had his scions open up her skin and turn her insides out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.