He woke up screaming, ’course. He always did now. You could hardly call it a scream anymore, his voice was worn down to a grinding stub, gravel in his raw throat.

It was dark. Pain tore at his face like a wolf at a carcass. He thrashed free of the blankets, reeled to nowhere. Like the iron was still pressed against him, burning. He crashed into a wall, fell on his knees. Bent over, hands squeezing the sides of his skull like they might stop his head from cracking open. Rocking, every muscle flexed to bursting. He groaned and moaned, whimpered and snarled, spat and blubbered, drooled and gibbered, mad from it, mindless with it. Touch it, press it. He held his quivering fingers to the bandages.

“Shhhh.” He felt a hand. Monza, pawing at his face, pushing back his hair.

Pain split his head where his eye used to be like an axe splitting a log, split his mind too, broke it open, thoughts all spilling out in a mad splatter. “By the dead… make it stop… shit, shit.” He grabbed her hand and she winced, gasped. He didn’t care. “Kill me! Kill me. Just make it stop.” He wasn’t even sure what tongue he was talking. “Kill me. By the…” He was sobbing, tears stinging the eye he still had. She tore her hand away and he was rocking again, rocking, pain ripping through his face like a saw through a tree-stump. He’d tried to be a good man, hadn’t he?

“I tried, I fucking tried. Make it stop… please, please, please, please—”

“Here.” He snatched hold of the pipe and sucked at it, greedy as a drunkard at the bottle. He hardly even marked the smoke biting, just heaved in air until his lungs were full, and all the while she held him, arms tight around him, rocking him back and forwards. The darkness was full of colours, now. Covered with glittering smears. The pain was a step away, ’stead of pressed burning against him. His breathing had softened to a whimper, aching body all washed out.

She helped him up, dragging him to his feet, pipe clattering from his limp hand. The open window swayed, a painting of another world. Hell maybe, red and yellow spots of fire leaving long brushstrokes through the dark. The bed came up and swallowed him, sucked him down. His face throbbed still, pulsed a dull ache. He remembered, remembered why.

“The dead…” he whispered, tears running down his other cheek. “My eye. They burned my eye out.”

“Shhhh,” she whispered, gently stroking the good side of his face. “Quiet now, Caul. Quiet.”

The darkness was reaching for him, wrapping him up. Before it took him he twisted his fingers clumsily in her hair and dragged her face towards his, close enough almost to kiss his bandages.

“Should’ve been you,” he whispered at her. “Should’ve been you.”

Other People’s Scores

That’s his place,” said the one with the sore on his cheek. “Sajaam’s place.”