As if on cue the two of them stopped running, squatted down, listened to the noises around them. From ahead they could hear the horses crashing onward, not far distant. Behind them, the way they had come, all was quiet; the forest silenced by their own passage, perhaps, or because of what followed.

Something whispered.

“What is that?” Kosar said, but A’Meer did not answer. She glanced at him and then looked away, eyes downcast as if ashamed of something terrible and secret. He reached out to touch her, fingers stretched, blood on his fingertips . . . and then he stopped.

They gave me bad dreams, A’Meer had said.

And the whispers made themselves known to Kosar.

Never said sorry, never told Father why I did it, killed his sheebok, cut out its heart to take away to the woods with my friends, never admitted my guilt even though there was blood beneath my fingernails and the stink of death about me, rot in the creases of my skin, pain and guilt in my eyes when I woke up . . . afraid of him, frightened of his big hands and his angry shouts, but there was worse than Father’s rage, frightened of my friends, of the things they did in the woods, the things they did with that girl and that sheebok’s heart and those knives, those knives . . . frightened but compliant, watching them empty the heart over her breasts and cut her there, the blood mingling, watching from the trees, hard, young and hard . . . and when they came into her and she screamed they didn’t hear my own petty cries of pleasure and shame . . . but they knew I watched . . . they always knew I watched . . .

“Fuck,” Kosar shouted. “Fuck!”

A’Meer held him and whispered in his ear, trying to calm him. “It’s all right, don’t shout, let it come, accept it and let it come and it’ll flow away, it’ll hide again. Truth is only what you want to make it. They’ll leave you alone soon, Kosar . . .”