XIII | Black Hole
He had arrived slightly early, he knew, but was about to enter the brightly-illuminated tent anyway when he heard a pronounced and prolonged sniffing—and stopped dead just outside the open door-flap, after which he turned away slowly, delicately. He wasn’t sure what the sound had been; but he could see his master’s shadow far beyond his own on the deck before him, and Shekalane’s, too: she knelt between his gondola and the ignudi cage while the prefect again lingered by its door, and this time, Dravidian was quite certain that Asmodeus was reaching into it, at least until he moved away from it at last and appeared to circle Shekalane slowly.
“Fear not, dear woman,” he heard Asmodeus tell her. “We are not as harsh as we look.”
Dravidian stared forward as the River breat
