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.Did he have goodbyes?Where had that thought come from? Not goodbyes.A lack of hellos.He wantedAlicia asleep in their bed before he took to it.An hour? Or she could be back and sleeping already.He'd have to check with the Net or ask Kori eventually.Goodbyes?The thought was persistent at least.He had no feeling of Ulanda being nearhim, and despite his snagging one pattern line, no sense that any action wasbeing directed against him.He felt as invisible as the warding found him.And the timing of his being here? That thought he recognized.From theposition of the stars it was only minutes from when both the earlier visions hadfaded.Pulling his knife from the sheath in his boot, he held it to the stars, turning it this way and that, looking for the sasi markings along the white ceramic blade that would make it an honor knife.There was no transformation.He was very humanly confined to the body andmind and memory that honestly belonged to him.And the senses, Stromincluded.If he let himself notice, the fire of overpattern was all around, the same Laurel Hickeywww.2morrow.bc.caEye of the Ocean – Book 2: Alisimas it had been since Ulanda and his shared version of the world-altar.And now?Just his, nothing of Ulanda that he could sense.Bracing his left arm against a bent knee, he put the tip of his knife under thebraid encircling his wrist.He hadn’t removed it after leaving Endica, hadn’twanted to force the Xintan to take notice of the split between him and Ulanda.The oath band separated and fell away.The tip of the knife stopped against thefleshy base of his thumb, splitting the skin in a tear an inch long.Clumsy.Thewine.The poor light.He thought about pouring the last of his drink into thewound to clean it.Pain is a prayer.That wasn’t him.He hoped.With a hand sticky with his own blood and thesweet wine, he picked the glass up and threw it as hard as he could over the edge of the drop.“It's not,” he said out loud.“This isn't.Not a prayer.”He felt suspended, time as meaningless as the emotion that had made himthrow the glass into the dark.The blood on his hand was drying, pulling at theskin.Half an hour? More? Above him, more and more in his consciousness, wasthe fire.The sky burned, cracked with explosions of sound, twisted as though the fabric of space would tear apart.And still no sense of Ulanda.No battle over who lived and who died.No war ofwills.No weaving in and out of who controlled what or whom.Just the fire around him.“What happens now?” he said to the night, the human night of wind-blownshadows and starlight.Apparently nothing.If Ulanda was trying something, she was failing.And theloom-master.the world-pattern wasn't lethal to his kind.Not yet.He pushedwith one hand to get up and only managed to skid his arm outwards with the hiltof the knife still in his hand.He had thought he'd sheathed it after cutting the oath band.From the amount of pain, he'd managed to scrap the new scabs off theknuckles he'd skinned while climbing the rock face.He left the knife on theconcrete and straightened.And found the knife still in his hand, the tip pushed into the flesh of his other arm just under the oath tattoo on his wrist.Pain is a prayer.The fire around him echoed the unspoken words.He tried to let go of the hiltand felt the movement in his own flesh through the blade.Blood that seemed toocool ran down the slope of his leg, soaking the cloth.He let go of the hilt.Again.The knife fell, flicking blood onto his face.He was sitting in a pool of blood,much more blood than a small cut or stabbing wound would make.Laurel Hickeywww.2morrow.bc.caEye of the Ocean – Book 2: AlisimApparently reality followed its own course here.His choice?Freedom.What use was freedom if he was dead? Suddenly, the reality of his death waseverywhere.In the human night, in the stars, and in the pattern lines and in the fire, in all the lines of what he understood as probability.His sight fractured along those lines, growing smaller with each division, like following the branches of a tree to the tips.“Do I know you?” he heard.“No,” he answered as he had before.The wind moved in the branches like a song, Rit felt he could fall asleeplistening.There wasn't much left of him now that was aware, he was sitting at the base of a tree, a pine like in the garden Ulanda had created at the Holding.He was wading in water, clumps of reeds along the shore he was facing andthin grass beyond those.Trees in groves in the distance, shimmering from theheat, not the wind.They weren't pines, but looked more like poplars.It wasstunningly hot.“Do I know you?” The voice came from behind him.She was on a flat rock,sitting carelessly, one knee bent and held with her hand, the knee practicallyunder her chin.Brown tunic and pants, boots the same color.A knife sheath wasstrapped to the scarred leather.Brown gloves covered her hands and went highover her wrists.She smiled.“Of course I do.”The water was sand, he was drowning in it.The dunes and a skin of moistureover top that he couldn't break through.The ocean was near, he could hear itcoming from the sand in a slow rushing sound.He stopped struggling, still facedown and holding onto the sand.Water splashed, he'd slipped, his head was under the surface.Rit got upslowly, feeling for his balance and then shook like a dog.The water he spat outtasted of algae, warm as soup in the shallow where he stood and cloudy now.He looked at his arm, the one the knife had cut.Unmarked skin.The tattoowas gone.She wasn't looking at him but picked at a thread on her sleeve while hummingtunelessly.He watched her for what seemed like a long time, watched until thewater around him was clear, a quick settling of the sand, more gradual for thelighter particles.Cloudy water spread downstream slowly as it cleared.Hecouldn't feel the current.All the things he could say.“Am I dead?” he whispered.“Do you want to be?”“No.”“No?” Cassa started to laugh and he cringed at the sound, expecting madness.But it was a laugh such as a woman would make to a lover, as gentle in part as it Laurel Hickeywww.2morrow.bc.caEye of the Ocean – Book 2: Alisimwas sad.“No, of course not” she said, lifting her head to look at him.Her eyeswere Eunni's eyes as her laugh had been.“Everything you've done has led to me.Everything I've allowed to happen has led you to me.”When he didn't respond, she shrugged and looked away, her eyes going to thenearest stand of trees, grayish green against a backdrop of sand.“Do whateveryou want, there's no difference.”“There is to me.Whatever happened on the roof, I wasn't there to kill myself.Was it your intention that I die there?”A look back to him.“It's no difference to me.”“And Simitta?” he said, sitting heavily.His words sounded stupid, trivial, evenas he spoke them.No difference.He took a deep breath, remembering the feel ofthe Zimmer's skin under his hand.“You were his god.Did it make a difference tohim?”She sighed.“What do you want from me? I don't have anything that you don'talready have.How could I?” The white blade was in her hand; he hadn't seen herdraw the knife.Sasi blooms showed along the bloodline as she turned the surfaceto catch the sunlight.“I need to know what is possible.And if that does mean my death.” He shookhis head.“I need a choice that doesn't include the kind of slavery that Empiremeans even with whatever difference Ulanda brings to the Unity.I need a choicethat allows.people like me
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