Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that. . . Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.
They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.
But the people are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred.
They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn't like to look at them. They were the walking dead.
A—ris—ta?” Degan asked, sounding horse. “What is it?” “A rat bit me,” she said, once again shocked by her own rasping voice. “Jasper does that if—” Gaunt coughed and hacked. After a moment, he spoke again. “If he thinks you’re dead or too weak to fight. ” “Jasper?” “I call him that, but I’ve also named the stones in my cell. ” “I only counted mine,” Arista said. “Two hundred and thirty-four,” Degan replied instantly. “I have two hundred and twenty-eight. ” “Did you count the cracked ones as two?” “No.
