It was a familiar fear however and I quickly set it aside, kicking at the sheets and wishing for a thicker cover as the sweat chilled my skin in the too cool room. I pushed myself up onto my elbows and looked about. Pale starlight revealed crowded rows of gambrel roofs outside the window, which surely meant I was in Arkham. The industrial green sheets and sterile hush placed me in St. Mary’s Hospital. What fresh mistakes had brought me here? I considered whether I had been admitted for an overdose, but the protocol for drug users was to send them to the Asylum, a fact I did not like to dwell on. I twisted around to confirm I was alone, and felt a disagreeable tightness a few inches above my pelvis. I rested my hand on a ridge of scarred tissue. The wound was long-healed and painless, but a lump pressing into my hip provided another distraction. I reached beneath me to grab hold of a coiled leather belt that, for some reason, triggered the flood. Isobel’s face flashed in my mind’s eye, and Erik, Ajer, and my crewmates on the Asphodel, then Zij and the ports of the Southern Sea. I lay back, my end approaching with the speed and implacability of a freight train, and experienced again the thrust of jagged metal which had severed me from my friends and, so I had thought, my life.
