And though he had given himself over to evil,
he was still capable of a kind of wisdom. Though he lived on one side
of the boundary, he never ceased learning from the other. He
understood killing and healing alike.
Forcing all else from his mind, he looked back across the pages of his
life, trying to find some common thread, some shred of lost meaning
that would make him understand.
His childhood memories remained the most vivid of his life, and though
long suppressed, it took little effort to bring them back in sharp
detail. He shuddered as he sat again on the edge of the bed,
anticipating the grim scenes which had hardened him and made him cold,
but never lessened in their stark brutality.
He had grown, a wild weed, among the wharves of London. His mother was
a sometime prostitute, his father a man he had never seen. The only
thing she would ever say of him was that he had been a sailor, and had
left her destitute when she was but a girl. He wanted to hate the man
for it,
but he knew his mother too well to trust her version of the past, or
to feel much pity on her account.
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