Sarka could not permit herself to sleep. She went abovedecks for a time and tried to make herself useful, but it was all she could do to stand upright. At last, she set her work aside and focused on staying awake. She paced the deck, resting now and then where she could feel the mist of the salt brine on her weary face.

By the time night had fallen, fear had settled into her gut with a vengeance. By the time she went back belowdecks to face what was to come, she was shaking. Maybe it was fear, maybe exhaustion-probably both. It was late, later than she usually came down to sleep, and the sailors on their rest shift were snoring. She skirted past them, watching where she walked to avoid tripping over boots, and made her way to the corner where she had been sleeping.

When she looked up, the creature was sitting calmly on her canvas bed. There was precious little light to illuminate him, but his moon-pale features seemed to glow. He was crouched there like some wild creature, his hands and his feet on the ground. His eyes were twin flames, fixed on Sarka.

The shock of seeing him suddenly there, so real, took Sarka's wind out of her. Her knees threatened to give way. She frantically mustered her wits.

"You did not jump," the apparition said in that frayed, faded voice, an echo from another world.

"No. I didn't. You will not have my soul."

"Perhaps not this day. But sooner today than yesterday." Sinuously, the creature crawled out of the corner. With instinctive disgust, Sarka connected the feline movements of the muscles beneath the skin of his naked back to the rolling, predatory steps of the wildcat she had fought in the ashlands.

She stepped back from him, groping for any sort of weapon, but there was nothing at hand. Even if there had been, she knew she could not overcome this creature with strength; a weapon would not help her. She had to fight back with the only weapon she had: her mind. "Wait. Please."

The ghostly thing stopped, its splayed toes and curled fingers lightly resting on the planks of the deck, and looked up at her with smoldering eyes. Did she see something human there? Suspicion?

Sarka filled her lungs with air that was redolent of unwashed sailors. She forced her feet to move and closed the distance between herself and the creature. Watching him, she sat on the canvas bed.

The creature turned, crouched, to regard her. His face was impassive, but his gaze flickered over her as if he were searching for something.

"Are you the one who killed the others?" Sarka asked. She whispered, although even the commotion of being nearly strangled the previous night had not woken the sailors nearby. It seemed her interaction with the Beloved took place outside the space and time of normal men. She was in some kind of private hell.

"They killed themselves. All of them. As you must." He looked her in the face. "But I did not drive them to it."

"Why must it be like that-suicide? You could easily kill me, if you truly want my soul." Sarka lightly touched the ring of bruises around her neck. The skin, the muscles, her throat...everything hurt.

"You must make a sacrifice to undo your betrayal."

Sarka resisted the urge to rub her exhausted face, to push her disheveled curls back from her brow. She sat still, willing herself to be calm. "The others-why not you? Who did Kogoren send, if not you?"

The burning eyes narrowed and the creature hissed. "No more questions. Focus on your sins, Absconder. Cleanse your spotted soul with tears of regret and make the sacrifice. The Lady is merciful."

Sarka bit back the urge to make a fierce rebuttal, to insist that "merciful" was the last word she would use to describe Kogoren. Breathe. Breathe and use your weapon.

She softened her tone as best she could. She was not a soft woman. Her mind raced ahead of each word she spoke, seeking the next step, the next strike. "Please. You do not understand what it's like to grow up as I did, godless in a barren land. I never knew the goddess. I know nothing of her mercies. How could I do anything but run? Now I see the error I made, but...before I go into the water, I want to know more. I need to learn. Learn what my mother never taught me."

There was a long, breathless pause. Then, the creature lowered his haunches so he was sitting crouched on the deck, regarding her with an air of expectant patience, like a cat. Sarka shivered. The creature said, "You recognize your betrayal."

Sarka's voice shook a little as she replied, and it was not artifice. "Yes. I do. Please help me, and...and you can have my soul."

"Go on."

"Who did Kogoren send to-to counsel the others before me? Not you?"

"No. Others of the Beloved."

"And the Beloved, they are her husbands." Sarka knew this, but she asked it anyway, trying to build a facade of naivete, a dependence on him. She did depend on him, in truth; her life depended on him.

"We are."

"And she has many-yes? Will I see them when I'm dead?"

"No." The creature's mouth curved into a malicious smile. "You have betrayed my queen; there is no place for you in her Bone Kingdom. Your soul will go on into the realm beyond realms."

Neither living in Kogoren's realm of the dead nor passing out of existence entirely appealed to Sarka. "But you live alongside the goddess, don't you? You must stand at her right hand. You're one of the Beloved."

An expression flitted over the creature's face at last. It was a flicker of pain. Just as quickly, he regained his calm. "No."

She let the silence draw out deliberately, seizing upon that moment of pain. It was a way in. She could use it. After a couple of slow, measured breaths, she prompted him in a plaintive voice. "I don't understand."

"We are separated from Our Lady."

"Separated? Why? I thought you were her husband."

"I am. We are." A defensive note had entered that ethereal voice. She saw discomfort settling around the creature's shoulders. For the first time since her inaugural night on the ship, she felt a faint spark of hope somewhere deep inside. It was enough to shake the cobwebs from Sarka's mind. She felt more alert; she listened intently as he continued, "When she left the world of men, she cast us out. But tonight, I redeem myself. I bring her a soul. Your soul."

"I see. So the others who came before you...the ones who drove the other absconders to their deaths...they are with Kogoren now."

"Yes. The blessed few."

"I'm confused. You did not betray her, yet she cast you out. And she calls you her Beloved when she has treated you so cruelly?"

"Kogoren is merciful. you know nothing, Absssconder," he hissed.

Sarka hesitated, seeing that she had overstepped. She backtracked into meekness. "I pray she is merciful." She drew a breath to give herself courage and extended her hand. "My name is Sarka. What is yours?"

For a moment, she thought the creature would ignore her hand, but he finally reached out and closed his strangely insubstantial fingers around her wrist. She let her own fingers fall naturally into place, encircling his wrist in the traditional greeting of Kogorian people. Her thumb rested just where a pulse might beat, were he alive.

"Tayo," he said.

Before Sarka could slip her hand out of his grasp, Tayo strengthened the grip of his fingers around her arm and pulled her forward. She fell onto her knees, narrowly preventing herself from falling face-first onto the deck by catching herself with her free hand. The creature's face was suddenly an inch from hers.

Are you ready for oblivion, Sssarka? This voice came inside Sarka's mind. Tayo's jaws swung open, and Sarka felt the prickling heat of the fire that burned within him. Again, it seemed a part of her was snaking up from somewhere deep inside, slipping through her parted lips and leaving her body behind.

"Wait. Please." Sarka tried to pull back away from him, but his grip held her fast.

Your resolve weakens. You are worthlesss...You haven't the courage to make good on your compact.

"Is it I am who am worthless? Who am I that your queen and your wife sends you out from your homeland to chase me and bring back my wretched soul, when she does not even allow you into her presence? Who is worthless, Tayo?"

"You know nothing," Tayo snarled, speaking again with lips and teeth and tongue. He used his grip on Sarka's arm to push her roughly, letting go of her so she was thrown to the side. She fell onto the dirty canvas where she'd slept, knocking her head against the floorboards.

Dazed, and still feeling that queer sensation of strength being drawn out of her body, Sarka nonetheless recognized that a barb had found its mark. She continued, her voice taut and quick with fear as she turned onto her back, shielding herself with an arm. "I know you had a life once. I know you were a young man with a future ahead of you that did not look like the one you are living and I know-I know-"

Now he was crawling toward her, now over her, his clawed hands easily supporting his weight and suspending his body above hers. He drew his knees up underneath him so that he could crouch over her torso. He raised his right hand. Sarka seized his arm, trying to push his hand away, but her hands simply slipped through the ghostly flesh and bone that threatened to strangle her as if it were so much smoke. Even so, his all-too-solid hand closed around her bruised throat, defying logic, defying reality itself. Static recollections flickered through her mind of choking, feeling her throat being crushed beneath those inhuman hands, and panic turned her words into a breathless, trembling whisper.

"Tayo, you are not beloved to her! If you were, you would be at her side, but instead you are here chasing a worthless wretch across the ocean in hopes of gaining her favor and finding a way back to her-listen to me-please-"

Claws pressed into her flesh. Strong fingers closed with deliberate, aching slowness, as if time itself bent to this creature's will. She saw his grim expression, saw a malicious smile creeping across his face. What was an unimaginable horror to Sarka was a twisted victory to Tayo, and delicious to the starved palate of his heart. He lifted his other hand and closed it around her neck, too, his weight coming fully to rest on Sarka's chest.

"Tayo, I will stand by you!" Sarka gasped. She scratched wildly at his hand with her fingernails, but as her fingers passed through his hands, her nails found purchase on the vulnerable skin of her own neck. She continued to plead, her voice beginning to crack as he cut off her breath. "Please-on my honor, I am your ally, and I-wih-f-free-y-...pl-"

The moment was endless. She lay there, struggling for breath and not finding it. Her eyes closed as she focused all awareness inward, desperate to find some way to survive. She was not watching his face; she did not see the calculation there, the surprised consideration.

Then, suddenly, Tayo let go.

The stinking air flooding into her starved lungs was the most exquisite taste she had ever experienced. She drew several harsh, gasping breaths, feeling the air rattle down through her burning throat. The release of the pressure of his hands caused the cool air and her own sweat to sting where she'd scratched herself

What did you sssay? Tayo's fragmented, shivering voice echoed in Sarka's mind.

She breathed in panicked stops and starts, each gasp scratching her throat, but she forced the words out. "I-wih-free-yh-"

Already, she knew this was a promise she had no way of keeping. She did not know if it was possible to free one of Kogoren's consorts from his eternal vow, from his fate as a shadow in her endless train. It was a stupid promise, an oath made out of desperation. Yet, as she watched him, she could see the war in his mind playing out in his expressive face. Loyalty warred with despair, love with loneliness, and fear with hope.

"How?" he asked, sounding almost human.

Sarka's voice was a croak. "I do not nh-know. I wih-make it mh-my quest. To free yh-you."

She felt weak, as if every muscles in her body had become suddenly useless. She lay limp on the floor, looking up at him. A few moments passed and she struggled for control of her breath before continuing. "If you want this...to stay fuh-...to stay forever as a shade, then kill me. If you want something more, spare me. I have nuh...never done anything to you. You're fighting for a goddess who abandoned you, juh-...just as she abandoned me."

"I cannot abandon her."

"Are you afraid of her?"

Tayo did not say anything, but she saw it written clearly on his face. He was from an era when Kogoren had ruled without challenge. The goddess was real to him in a way she had never been for Sarka. Indeed, as her consort, Tayo must have given much of himself to her.

Sarka reached out slowly. Her hand fell to rest lightly, very gently, on Tayo's forearm. The sensation of his flesh underneath her hand was repulsive. Her instincts rebelled.

Slow. Calm. Use your weapon, said one part of her mind.

I have no time for pity, said another.

This is not pity. This is partnership, and it is your only choice.

"So am I. But I don't want to be afraid forever. I'm leaving. Come with me, Tayo. Let us be allies. Whatever tomorrow brings, face it not as a ghost, but as a man."