Theres a couple of things you'll need to know before you read the next bit. Of course this next chapter should have been cleverly inserted into the former, but the flashbacks that i saw these seperate incidents in didn't always come in the right order. I can equate it to my subconscious mind knowing what was coming and protecting my psyche by holding off this kind of evidence as long as possible.
It really was a very long time you see before i could accept the fact that Gar D'jon of Babylon wasn't a very nice person. He wasn't a nice person and i grew to hate him for a while.
He did things that I as a person wouldn't be able to live with myself for. And it didn't seem to bother him much at all. he certainly didn't lose as much sleep over this and the next few chapters as i did. Oh no. not nearly so much.
I was returning from my duty along the cliff road. It was dark and the sky purple. Far off a rumble could be heard rolling through the distance. A chill wind had picked up and I could feel the hairs on my shoulders and arms spring up in defense of it. I had dispatched the criminal efficiently and had felt no need to visit a temple to purge myself. I felt rather than saw her. Hiding behind a large rock to the right hand side of the path was a woman. I changed my direction slightly so that I would pass right by the boulder. As I did so I leaned over and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up. It was Cyrana she let out a long low breath as I lifted her like she had been holding it in case I heard her breathing. And there was fear in her eyes. What was happening here. I didn�t understand but then she told me herself by saying something that couldn�t be true. She told me she�d been sent on an errand to Sippar. That would never be true. An armed contingent of soldiers traveled a circulatory route between the outlying towns and any errands or messages would be given to them. No one would ever send a whore to do an errand to a city that would take her three days to walk to through dangerous country. That�s a job for a soldier. So I asked her again why she was hiding behind the rock and she said it was because she heard me coming and didn�t know who I might be. And was afraid. The alarm was going off in my head at this point she was being very evasive and I could clearly see that it was me she was afraid of not some imagined attacker. I took her by the elbows face to face and walked her closer to the edge thinking that the cliff edge approaching may scare her into being truthful. And then I had a thought that chilled me.
What if she�d recognized Suan as the walking dead. Who might she have told about it. What might already have happened. Who might be waiting for me for that offence. This damned woman could have destroyed everything. Standing there in a long purple dress her belly chain clinking gently in the breeze, her big blue eyes open in an honest expression but one I could see through. See all the way through to the core of her being and I found I could read her easily, that her innermost thoughts were open to me and that she�d betrayed me already in her mind and probably more than that. I could be in big trouble but first things first I released my grip intending to gain her confidence so that she would tell me exactly what she had done and stupid stupid stupid the first thing she did when let go was take a step backward to put some distance between us. And something stopped me from reaching out and catching her. Something inside me had decided that this girl should die and that by not acting was the best way to go about it. And who�d ever know I had been involved. She probably would never be found at the bottom of the cliff until many years had passed. In the time I had thought this it was too late for me to act as she was gone. I stepped forwards and saw her looking up at me as she fell silently to the rocks below, she seemed to be reaching out for a hold but the bushes jutting out from the cliff face wouldn�t hold her weight and they were out of her reach anyway. So she fell and I caught a last glimpse of her eyes looking up at me and they had no fear in them at all. Just acceptance. And that really worried me that she felt that she had done something to me that deserved death for her. So I turned and almost ran all the way home terrified that Suan would be in trouble but when I got back it seems I was wrong. Everything was normal. It was so strange and I blamed myself for a short time afterwards for not finding a different way to resolve the problem but by then of course it was too late
And i bet that up til this point you were starting to warm to the fellow. Having to struggle through all that adversity. Compared to some of his victims. he had it easy