He didn’t seem to hear her at first. Rin crossed the room and slowly knelt down next to him. The smell was nauseatingly familiar: opium nuggets, sweet like rotted fruit. It gave her memories of Tikany, of living corpses wasting away in drug dens. Finally, Altan looked in her direction. His face twisted into a droll, uninterested smile, and even in the ruins of Golyn Niis, even in this city of corpses, Rin thought that the sight of Altan then was the most terrible thing she’d ever seen.
