angienano's Journal

Chunk 10
I'm still catching up -- less than a thousand words behind pace now, yay. :) In case the counter-widget is still sluggish, I'm up to 17,421.

============

Luka moved forward into the doorway as far as he could without touching Roscha. He was conscious of every draft on his bare skin, of every eye they'd passed, but he was doing his best to put his personal shame aside and concentrate on more immediate matters. Right now that was finding Tochi, if he'd understood Roscha correctly. If he hadn't been lying again for his own purposes.

He looked over Roscha's shoulder into the small room, but the only person inside was another foreigner, a younger man with around twenty-five years, with curly hair like Roscha's but a dark gold instead of black.

What he didn't see was Tochi, or anyone else for that matter.

The younger man said, "Wait, what?"

Luka realized that Roscha'd been speaking Ruvori at about the same time Roscha did; he threw his hands up in frustration and babbled something -- presumably the same questions -- in Pilen.

The young man shook his head at Roscha, looking both sad and angry, and said something back. He made a quick, angry gesture at a spot on the stone floor. Luka pushed past Roscha to look, ignoring his nakedness in his need for information. The patch of floor looked freshly scrubbed, but whoever'd cleaned it hadn't done a good job; the quick cleaning had left remnants of blood in the cracks between the stones.

Luka's stomach lurched and a clear picture flashed into his mind of the same priests going into that room and this boy -- hardly older than Tochi himself -- not being fast enough, or strong enough, or clever enough to stop them. Or just not having the rank to enforce his will, as Roscha did. Whatever it'd been, though, they were too late.

( Read more... )

Advertisement