[The refusal strikes a discordant chord of nostalgia. Painful, nagging. The image of a young boy before him: white-haired, face-scarred, neutral and sympathetic. Pitying. It isn't the expression borne by this stranger, yet it is close enough for his mind to cross the line over—to see himself there, being reached out to, being sliced across the middle and thrown down into excruciating pain. Into dark and confusing mindlessness.

Blood pricks skin, shallow, swelling to the surface of the cut on a sharp jaw. Joyd seems to scent it; the skeletal tendrils shiver, inching closer until they begin to coil themselves up that extended hand. Over and over, slithering like a pile of slender snakes across knuckles and fine hand-bones, their spines flattened to dull and harmless edges, cool as textured wicker-wood.]

It may not be up to me.

[Would it have been worse, if he had run at Tyki's order? Joyd might have given chase. That they are in public is a dim and separate awareness. He's without the other Noah, without the Earl himself, so he'll have to bear the consequences of his own actions alone.]

My suggestion is... walk away with me. I don't think I can release you so easily now that it has you. [It. As if it isn't himself, leashing this young man's hand.]