7
WHEN WE GOT to the other side of the aircraft parking area, the smell hit me. I’d smelled the sickly scent of cooked flesh before, but the higher temperature of Asto’s night made it all the more noticeable.
I pushed away unbidden thoughts of that one time I’d seen this happen in front of my eyes, when my gamra employed security guard Evi—who was not Coldi, couldn’t come to Asto and was manning the skeleton staff at my apartment in Barresh—had repeatedly shot Romi Tanakan, the Indrahui war lord who had killed his family. That was a good number of years ago. I still couldn’t think of it—or eat soup with too much meat—without feeling ill.
I stopped, not wanting to give in and appear weak but not wanting to go any further. Sweat rolled down my back.
A dark figure was coming towards me.
