Page 228 of Hunters and Prey

He stared at the clear-eyed seer, shock rippling his light, but the other male didn’t seem to notice at first.

“Well, now everything makes a fuck of a lot more sense,” the male mused, still clicking to himself. “But how did you get here, brother? Where is your wife?”

Black could only stare at him, his heart back to jackknifing in his chest. Then his mind clicked on for real.

“She isn’t here?” he growled.

Revik shrugged, stirring food with a long, sort-of wooden stick with dark, ash-gray wood. “Not that I’ve seen. I haven’t seen your wife in at least a week.”

“A week?” Black frowned.

Thinking about this, he continued to frown up at the other male.

“How many times have you seen her?” he said. “Here, I mean?”

Revik pursed his lips, thinking.

“Five?” he said. “Maybe six?”

“Total?”

“Yes,” the other man said, shrugging. “Maybe over the span of a year? Maybe a bit more than that. And I might have missed a visit or two. She tends to come to my wife most of the time. To go wherever she is, I mean. Sometimes she’s here a few days… or a week or two. Once she was here a few months.”

Black stared at him blankly.

Just as blankly, he stared down at the table in front of him.

“She’s been visiting you for over a year?” he said, his voice bewildered. “Are you sure?”

Revik nodded.

He switched off the flame while Black watched, pouring the vegetables and the dark-red, meat-looking substance into two bowls, both of them the same gray color as the utensil he’d been using to cook. Everything was covered in a lime-green sauce, so bright, it looked like it had been dyed with highlighter ink.

“She said time works differently there,” Revik explained, grabbing more utensils out of a drawer and pushing it shut with his hip. “She said it’s faster here.”

Black could only nod.

He watched his cousin, the famous––and infamous––Syrimne d’Gaos, or Sword of the Gods, walk two bowls over to his own kitchen table, along with pronged, fork-like utensils and a skin-like bag full of some kind of powder. Placing both bowls down, one in front of Black and one in front of the adjacent chair, he set the bag down between them, along with a spoon.

“It’s a spice,” he said, gruff. “It’s damned good. You should try it.”

Black nodded, but he wasn’t really listening to him.

“Miri’s been coming here for about a year. She’s been here roughly six times… maybe more. Once for several months?”

He didn’t know why he needed to hear it again.

His cousin didn’t strike him as the type of seer to be imprecise.

“Yes,” the other said simply. “That surprises you? Even with what I said about the differences with time?”

“It surprises me a lot,” Black said, frowning. “For a lot of reasons, brother.”

Revik only nodded, his face showing nothing.

Sitting on another of the squat, bench-like chairs, a dark orange one, instead of the light-blue of the one where Black sat, Revik picked up his utensil, pausing briefly as he made a hand-gesture over his food, another thing Black remembered from the Old World.

Once he’d blessed his own meal, Revik didn’t wait, but stabbed the implement into the food in his bowl and began to eat.

---