If I was their god, I’d leave them that way. For ever.

Oh, this is a cruel span of night, to imagine an uncaring god, an indifferent god. Suffer a father’s dismissal, a mother’s, a brother’s or a sister’s, or even a child’s, but suffer not the same dismissal from a god. A better fate, to be sure, standing frozen, for ever and timeless, with all the modest ambitions a doll might possess. Frozen, like a memory, isolated and going nowhere. A scene to make playwrights tremble. Poses to make sculptors shy away. A breath drawn, forever awaiting the song.

Some questions must never be asked. Lest the moment freeze in eternity, on the edge of an answer that never comes.

Kharkanas the Wise City belonged to the night, now; to darkness. Its poets stumbled on unseen words. Its sculptors collided with shapeless forms. Its singers pursued down every corridor some dwindling voice, and the dancers longed for one last sure step. Its common denizens, then, waited for a dawn that would never come, even as the artists fell away, curled black like rotting leaves.

She realized that someone was padding softly at her side – lost in her thoughts, she had no idea how long she had been accompanied by this stranger. Glancing across, she saw a young Dog-Runner, yellow-haired, wearing a cloak of hides – narrow, vertically sewn strips, multihued and glistening, that left tails dragging in his wake. Red-ochre rimmed his light blue or grey eyes, with a single tear tracking down each cheek, ending in the wisps of golden whiskers on his jaw.

He was handsome enough, in that savage, Dog-Runner way. But it was the soft smile playing across his full mouth that caught her attention. ‘What so amuses you?’ she asked.

In answer, he made a series of gestures.

She shrugged. ‘I do not know that manner of Dog-Runner communication – your silent talk. And please, do not start singing to me either. That, too, means nothing to me, and when two voices come from a single throat, why, it’s unnerving.’

‘I smile at you,’ the youth said, ‘with admiration.’

‘Oh,’ she replied. They continued walking, silent. Damn you, Korya, think of something to say! ‘Why are you here? I mean, why did you come? Are those tears painted on your cheeks? Do you hope to find someone? Someone dead? You long to bring him, or her, back?’

Tentatively, he reached up and ventured a touch upon one of the red-painted tears. ‘Back? There is no “back”. She never left.’

‘Who? Your mate? You seem young for that, even for a Dog-Runner. Did she die in childbirth? So many do. I’m sorry. But Hood is not your salvation here. This army is going nowhere. It’s all pointless.’

‘I have made you nervous,’ he said, edging away.

‘You wouldn’t if you answered a single cursed question!’