They were beyond the city limits already. Outside, a great expanse of sand dunes stretched away beneath a storm of tumultuously falling snow. He hoped they would make it home before the country roads were blocked. The Angel burned in his mind with all its promise of calmness and clarity. The prospect of returning to its presence made Cornelius groan, an expression of pain and need. Why am I suffering? he thought. In this old, horrible way? This was a condition he had always associated with the sins of shore leave. In the first weeks back at sea, he had always suffered thusly. Cornelius had accepted it then as his penance for the debauchery of land: the well deserved scourging of his body after yet another blue-eyed boatman had caused him to give in to weakness, and days of opium indulgence had silenced the ensuing guilt. But why was he like this now? He searched his memory for something he might have done – some lapse of body or sin of the mind that might have— A light touch on his bare hand startled him and he jerked to life, already in the process of unsheathing his sword-cane.
