The beach was littered with corpses.

From where she stood, just where the land sloped and smoothed and gave way to the sand, Sarka saw them only as dark human shapes interspersed with flotsam from the wreckage. Living men milled about, examining the scene.

Perhaps they were officials from Deynaport. Perhaps they were scavengers.

Sarka began to walk on feet she couldn't feel. Her gaze darted from one still form to another, recognizing familiar figures, but there was a barrier between her eye and her mind: this could not be; it was a dream; it was delusion.

As she crossed by a boulder, something caught her eye: a slash of colored silk lying wet on the sand, obscenely bright in a gray landscape. Following the sash with her eyes, Sarka saw a tangle of red hair and a face as white as the underbelly of a fish.

Sarka fell to her knees and scrabbled over the sand. "Captain." She pushed the woman's salt-crusted braids back from her face, revealing blue lips and eyes that did not see. "Captain?"

Her gaze slid down from Etza's blank face to her still shoulders. No breath.

With trembling fingers, Sarka pushed Etza's head back, revealing the vulnerable stretch of her neck and the mottled black-and-blue bruises that ringed it. A wave of nausea swept over her.

"Did you know her, child?"

She jerked round to see who had spoken, lost her balance, and fell to her rump in the sand. "Go away."

Konn, the priest, had followed her. He stood a few paces away, his calm expression touched with sympathy as he searched Sarka's face.

"Go away," Sarka said again.

"You do not need to bear your grief alone."

"I'm not grieving." She did not know what she was feeling, but these were not tears of grief. They were hot on her cold cheeks. They burned her throat, her eyes. It hurt to cry, and her head felt full. Her chest, too. One or the other would surely burst, and she would bleed and bleed and die.

The priest watched her for a moment, his hands hidden somewhere in his sleeves. She could not trust a man with no hands. His feet squelched in the sand as he took a step toward her. She drew back. His face blurred before her eyes as he said, "Sarka."

"Go away!"

"I know who you are. I know whence you come, child."

The fear came over her, a shock, even through the grief-but-not-grief and the tears. She struggled to stand. She had to get away.

"Sarka."

She screamed, "Look at her! Look at her! She died!"

"Yes, child. She's gone. What happened? I can help you."

The tears caught, scratched, burned, clawed. She struggled to swallow them now. "She helped me. She helped me and she's dead. Go away."

"I can help you."

"No one can help me. You'll die, too. Just shut up! Shut up and leave me alone!"

Konn did shut up, but he did not go away. Sarka's legs felt weak. She slid down to sit on the sand again, breathing in unsteady gasps and looking first at the corpse of the captain, then across the beach at the litter of bodies and wreckage, all that was left of a ship that had been buzzing with life and purpose just a few weeks ago.

There was only one explanation for what had happened. With her escape, Sarka had drawn Etza into Kogoren's web. Etza had not been punished when the others had run, but no one else had made it as far as Sarka had. By overcoming her terror, she had sealed Etza's fate.

Sarka sat there for a long time. Konn lingered, wandering a little way down the beach. He paused now and then by a prone figure, extending his hands over the bodies and bowing his head. Sarka watched him, detached. A long time later, with the light beginning to fade from the sky, Konn came back up the beach toward her, his hands folded into the sleeves of his robe.

"Where will you go tonight, my child?"

"I don't know. Nowhere."

"You must go somewhere. Will you go back to the tailor's?"

"I hate him." Sarka placed a hand on her satchel and looked out across the ocean. "He's a thief and a liar."

"Come with me, then. Let me give you a place to sleep for the night. You can take refuge in the temple of my lord."

Sarka didn't know which god Konn served, but she didn't care. "Damn him. Damn him and all the gods."

At last, a flicker of something other than mild concern crossed Konn's face, and seeing it-that spark of anger-made Sarka feel a little more human. The priest schooled his expression to calm in the space of a breath, though, and said, "You do not know mercy, Sarka. My lord can show you. You are not alone..."

Sarka looked away from his face to save herself from the hateful kindness there. He was still talking, saying something, explaining, but she did not hear him. She had seen something: a stark, pale face hovering in the air just behind Konn's hip.

At first glance, she thought it was Tayo, so she did not scream. The glowing eyes, lit with a fire from within, were Tayo's eyes, but they were set in a different face. This was one of Kogoren's Beloved, but it was one she did not know.

The creature opened his mouth and let out a hiss, and then he leapt through Konn's body and threw Sarka to the beach. Her head bounced painfully off the hard, damp sand.

"Sarka?" Konn cried.

The Beloved seized a hank of Sarka's hair and yanked, then threw her head against the ground a second time. Sarka bucked beneath him, trying to strike him, scratch him, bite him, but his flesh gave way when she touched him. His hands, though, were all too solid. He whipped her head forward and slammed it back again and again.

Sarka's head struck a rock. Stars exploded across her vision, lighting up the gloaming. Hot blood dampened the back of her head. She had no argument for this creature to win him to her side. Indeed, she had no words at all. She made an idiot, slurring sound of panic, unable to make her lips and tongue work as she fumbled for purchase on a body that was both there and not there.

Then, the weight of the strange Beloved was dragged from her. She felt his jerking knee strike her ribcage as he was wrenched to one side. When she turned her head, still making a warding gesture with one arm, she saw Tayo locked in hand-to-hand combat with the stranger. They grappled and wrestled across the beach like feral cats.

Sarka lay on the ground. When Konn knelt at her side, she flinched away from him. His hands hovered over her as if he were afraid to touch her. "Sarka? What is it? You were jerking around-you had a fit-"

"No, no, no," Sarka said. She rolled onto her side, pushed herself up to sit, and cradled the back of her head with a hand. It came away dark with blood. In the fading light, it looked black. "Tayo is fighting it. Stay..." Dizziness threatened to sink her, but she fought it.

Tayo was fighting it. Tayo was defending her.

"Tayo?" asked Konn.

"Not now. We need to..." Go? Go where? The Beloved would find them anywhere. Sarka stared, watching the two ghostly creatures grapple with claws, teeth, fists, and knees. Sarka looked down at her bloody hand, feeling detached, as if she were looking at someone else's stained fingers, someone else's body. Someone else's life.

"Sarka, you have to tell me how to help you. You aren't making sense."

"No," Sarka said in a voice that was dull and distant. "They'll find us. We can only wait."

Konn hesitated. Then, he reached for the ash-walker's scarf Sarka wore around her neck and unraveled it. "Here. Put pressure on the back of your head. You'll pass out, and I am not as young as I used to be. I cannot carry you."

Sarka pressed the balled-up scarf to the back of her head. She raised her voice. "Tayo."

A grunt and a hiss came in return.

"Tayo. There's no sense in fighting. The others will come. It's over."

Tayo momentarily had the upper hand; his palm was over the other Beloved's face, his thumb digging into the soft, ghostly flesh of the other's cheek. And when he looked at Sarka, his eyes were burning like the pits of hell. "No."

"It's over. They will all come. You cannot fight them all."

Tayo hissed, and even though her fear had temporarily taken leave of her under a wave of comforting numbness, Sarka felt that wretched sound scratch down her spine in a repulsive shiver. "It is not over," he said. "You have given me your word."

The other Beloved laughed, jerking his head to free his snarling face from Tayo's hand. "Your mercy is misplaced if you have made a pact with she who betrays our Queen. Your fate will be worse than a thousand deaths, Tayo of the fickle heart."

Now it was Tayo's turn to snarl; he turned the full force of his rage on the interloper, seizing him by the throat. "I have no fickle heart, Caol. It is she who has the fickle heart."

She. Kogoren, or Sarka? Sarka winced, moving the makeshift bandage against the back of her head. It was damp and warm. "Tayo, please-"

Sssilence!

The quelling command sliced into Sarka's mind. When she opened her eyes, he was crouched before her, Caol forgotten. Tayo's face was a hair's breadth from hers. She flinched back from him. She could feel the heat of his breath and the chill of his skin.

"You promised me your help in exchange for your life. I will keep you alive to see your oath fulfilled, Absssconder. If you fail..."

Caol said, "Your lapse in judgment is more than soft-hearted foolishness. You defend a defenseless sssinner. This treachery-"

Tayo gave an animal growl and shouted, "I lived my vows faithfully for two hundred years!"

"And would have lived them for a thousand, thousand more, but for your weak heart and wandering eye. Each of the wicked mortals here was driven to death by one of the Beloved." Caol gestured, indicating the beach, the tortured corpses. "By punishing them, our brothers have crossed into the Opal Realm. You, though? You have sacrificed your chance to stand in the Queen's presence ever again-all for a human with half a face-"

"She promised me freedom," Tayo said. He looked at Sarka. He must have meditated long upon the offer she had made him; the wealth of what she had undertaken to give him in exchange for his mercy was audible in his voice. In his eyes, Sarka saw the fear of a desperate man, a man who stood to lose not just what he had hoped for, but everything he had.

And she saw the boy he had been: a boy who had made a marriage vow he could not possibly have understood.

A boy who'd loved a goddess who could never love him in exchange.

A boy who'd grown up too soon and would never die.

Tayo had bartered his life and hopeless love for a chance at the freedom he'd been forced to give away many lifetimes ago, and now he could never return home.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and she meant it. "I'm sorry, Tayo. Too many have died. Because of me."

"You aren't dead."

"I know." Sarka met Tayo's eyes. "But I should be. I had every intention of keeping my promise to you. But I can't. They will keep coming. You cannot fend off every one of the Beloved yourself. I should never have dared to run."