White text on a black background reading: "Sighing, taking another painfully small sip of his three-quarters empty flask, K'aekniv traded it for the piece of paper in his uniform pocket. The one over his heart. K'aekniv tried to imagine his voice in his head as he stared down at the faded black and white photo on that flimsy, creased paper. Tried to remember the smell of his cigarettes and the hundred things he put in his hair instead of rotting bodies and damp. Get it together. Are you telling me you dragged me all over Zarmeei for nothing? It wasn't nothing. But it was so hard to drag up the good when the bad was right there all around him, all that graveyard bone dust and cold stale air and stupid fucking silence that buzzed in his ears like too many flies he could never bat away. It was hard to remember what the sun felt like. What he felt like, warm and soft with all that hardness, all that strength underneath, ready to jump to life if he touched him the right way. The way he swore he could hear him in his head when he clung to him with both arms and legs after they'd finished, that little bird song that said mine mine mine. In the Emperor's dead city, K'aekniv felt like no one and nobody's. Just like he always had on the worst contracts, like he was a machine some spirit had wound up to bring a curse down on some prince who didn't deserve it. A killing thing that had no choice, no voice. It didn't matter who he was. All that mattered was that the Zarmeeians had asked with lashing tails and flattened ears to bring their bell book back, and he was the bastard who owed it to them."
Sorry Canticle comrades, this will be another Monday with no new chapter -- health problems are absolutely decking me lately. But! Here is an excerpt from the 30kish story that'll be posted on May 15h from the Niv/Yule arc for #WIPSnips! Behold, the psychology of Niv, lol. #mmromance
