It's been a while but I feel rather good about this. Unusually for me, I'm writing out of sequence here. I've started this story, but this is from very near the end of the second part of it. An awful lot has to happen to get to this point. Anyway, it's a bit sci-fi, a bit portentous. I hope you enjoy it. :)
The Violet Quarter was still busy. Night had fallen just under an hour ago and the cafes, restaurants and bars that comprised the overwhelming majority of the businesses on the Ruby Path were mostly full, the sounds of murmured conversations and the occasional raucous laugh lapping around us like the waters of a tranquil, genial sea. We walked briskly, but I could feel Fey’a’s incipient disapproval of my haste. She wanted to saunter, to savour the sights, sounds and, above all, smells of this most ancient and convivial part of the city. She turned her head to the side, gazing with interest at the interior of a glass-fronted restaurant, from which drifted the bitter-sweet scent of frying goll meat. There was some sort of party going on inside. Algarish men in brightly-coloured suits of satin and koli-skin fawned over Algarish women who sat in serene indifference, sipping glasses of exquisite wine or stirring flutes of thick, rich berry tea with slender silver spoons. A human waiter walked across my line of sight, white uniform crisply pressed, an empty tray under his arm. Something cold twisted in my gut. This was harder than I had thought. Much harder.
“Let’s try The White Oleander.” Fey’a’s voice was light, teasing, but there was something in it, a dark undercurrent of displeasure, of petulance. “It has views across the harbour that are simply breathtaking and…”
I glanced up at the sky. Light pollution in the city meant I could see very little in the way of stars. I wondered how long it would be before the killing started, before death dropped down from the darkness.
“Love?”
Fey’a again, her neck cilia twitching her impatience. She narrowed her eyes.
“You’re so distant tonight.”
I licked my lips, forcing myself to look at her, to see myself reflected in those wide dark eyes. I glanced at the tattoo on her forearm. The dragon was still, but, even as I looked, its eye opened lazily. Smiling faintly, I looked away.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just the last few days…”
She bowed her head slowly, an Algarish expression of sympathy. The cold in my stomach twisted again.
“I know,” she murmured, moving in close, raising her hand to my face. “It’s been awful for you, but it’s over now. You know it is.”
I made myself smile, made myself lean in to her touch, made myself mutter something meaningless. Above me the sky was a blank void, pressing down on me with the weight of its terrible secret certainty.
Over? No. It was only just beginning.