Broken Sword

Broken Sword

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Broken Sword Copyright © 2004 Emily Veinglory Illustration Copyright © James McPartlin All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Torquere Press, PO Box 4351, Grand Junction, CO 81502. ISBN: 0-9749923-2-1 Printed in the United States of America. Torquere Press electronic edition / May 2004 Torquere Press eBooks are published by Torquere Press, PO Box 4351, Grand Junction, CO 81502. http://www.torquerepress.com.

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BROKEN SWORD by Emily Veinglory

ONE Deon answered his ruler's summons with alacrity, although in truth he loved Lord Carn better in his absence than his presence. That Deon was called to meet Carn in the stables suggested an urgency that could not bode well. He took the servants' stair; its narrow coil was as dark and confining as Deon's incipient fears. Yet when he emerged into the great catacomb that had been converted into the keep's stable, he found Carn waiting for him quite casually. There was no tension in Carn's tall frame as he stood waiting in the central hall, eyed by a ring of stoic horses that watched over their half doors. Carn wore the stiff silk coat of his office, black cloth emblazoned with scarlet embroidery. Formal garb in this setting made little sense and did little to settle Deon's alarm. As leader of the garrison he half-suspected that the Bastion's forces would be called upon. He was satisfied at his men's readiness, but knew of nothing brewing in the land that would call on them so suddenly. "My watch will pass soon," Carn whispered as he gestured for Deon to draw closer. "So that I can sup, and I must confess that I am tired of the thin blood of peasants and criminals. It is for that purpose that I have been saving you." Deon felt the wash of fear pass through his body. A high Lord had the right to treat any of his vassals as he wished. The six high Lords were all vampires, sorcerers who needed blood to sustain their use of the magical Arts, but they rarely put one of his station to such prosaic use. Deon commanded over two hundred soldiers and ruled far more men and women from the civilian classes; he had thought himself immune. Deon stood, still in a stretched moment as Carn watched him. He seemed calm and supremely confident in his waiting, like a cat with cornered prey. Deon battled with his honor, his fist clenching upon the hilt of his blade. His life belonged to his Lord; it was so sworn for good purpose or ill, and what better purpose than to sustain a high Lord's life and abilities? It was the Lord's ability to wield men that held back the jealousy of other nations at the Sea States ever-increasing borders. The Blest could sway a man's mind, move as swiftly as the wind and shatter iron with a touch. Deon noted that Carn's skin shone pale, though there was little light entering through the small high windows, and the great doors of the stable were completely closed. His fine grey hair writhed and floated even though the air was completely still. Carn was obviously at the height of his powers. He was the one of the Six currently most starved, and thus strongest in the Art. For although blood

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created the blood power within a Blest lord, the power was like a sleeping dragon: it took starvation to draw it out to act upon the world of men. Carn smiled, satisfied at some hidden signal. "Ah, Deon," he said. "It is not always a deadly honor to serve me so." As he spoke Deon felt the same sense of nagging familiarity he often experienced in his Lord's presence, but it was quickly swamped by absolute fear. Carn sometimes seemed almost a friend, but never at the expense of his office and its power. Carn stepped forward. His hand rested on Deon's shoulder and then he lifted his finger to delicately fold down the collar of Deon's tunic and pull it away from his neck. Deon barely breathed; parts of his mind beyond rational control demanded that he fight or flee, and only by the strongest will did he suppress them. Carn looked at him contemplatively, taking in Deon's hand which still twitched upon the handle of his sword. Deon carefully unwrapped his fingers and removed them from its hilt. Deon had offered up everything else to his Lord without any regard for his own judgment. To balk now would be to make all he lived and strove for false. He lived as last in a long line of servitors and soldiers, subsuming himself entirely to the will and glory of his Lord. As had his father and his father's father, and back to the first of their line lost in the mists of time. To risk death, or to lose all that defined his life and honor. It was a poor choice either way. His honor was the honor also of his family and his garrison; his honor was to obey. Deon wanted to close his eyes but could not make himself do so. Carn chuckled, amused by what he saw. He walked around Deon as if judging a prize animal, his hand brushing over the close-cropped beard on Deon's chin and toying with the strands of his sable hair. The Blest Lord taunted his prey, and every moment that he did, Deon came to think that although his Lord was due the obedience of his vassals he scarcely deserved it in acting so. This was not the behavior of one that regretted the cost of his power and paid it only so that his realm would be well defended, but a man who reveled in the taking of blood, as he did with most other carnal luxuries. Carn stood behind him and Deon took care to stare straight ahead rather than turn to keep Carn in sight. He would give his Lord no extra pleasure by twisting on the hook. A finger traced a line from Deon's nape and along his shoulder, drawing the cloth of Deon's collar gently aside. Deon trembled, envisioning his nephew and his father, and all the long line of his family that had held their land by honor, and would lose it if that honor failed -- if he failed. Through war, famine and all that circumstance can ask of a man the line of DesCarn had served well and prospered. He would not be the generation to lose them their place and patronage. But when he felt that breath on his unguarded neck, hot and wet, he could think of nothing but to defend himself, his disgust was too great. He whirled and drew his hand's-breadth blade, bringing it up to guard him. His body shook with the revulsion of his current peril and all of the past use Carn had made of him. All those secret times he tried hard not to think upon once they were over. Some deep sinew of his soul called, finally, enough.

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Carn seemed not distressed but rather pleased, as if he had been baiting for this response. "I almost thought you would disappoint me," he hissed. "But I knew, in the end, you would not fail me." He stalked forward and Deon backed away, praying that all the staff of the stable were well away from the area. His heel hit the far wall and Carn reached for him. Deon brought his sword down overhand and Carn leaned eerily out of reach of the certain blow. He evaded several more strikes with contemptuous ease, before losing patience with his game. "I thought, given your mother's line, that you might know better banes than a mere sword against one such as I." Carn sighed and caught the blade of the sword, barehanded. It bent and sheered off beneath his grasp, releasing a startling spray of glittering shards. Deon dropped his broken weapon and darted under Carn's arm to run, hopelessly and desperately. He wove through the small passages between the musty bails in the hay store, coming finally to the other end where he fumbled for the correct door key with sweat-slicked hands. Carn followed slowly, if at all, giving Deon time to burst out into the fallow pastureland beyond. It was a cold time of year when the grass grew tall and ragged, bowing down under frosts and passing snows. No one ventured outside in the dark hours, which were just beginning, and the whole landscape seemed hollow and watchful. Deon ran insensibly. The ground was too black to see, bar the small silver puddles that reflected the moon. A great purple sky hung overhead where the last birds flew to roost. Deon ran as if in a nightmare, daring not even the moment it would take to glance behind. In the valley the deeper grass caught and broke across his shins and he could hear the passage of another not far behind, closer and closer. He fell as his feet betrayed him and, exhausted, he lay pressed to the ground. He gasped for breath but strove no more to flee. Like any prey run to ground, he lay still with exhaustion and frozen by fear. Carn's feet broke the dry stalks of the overgrown pasture with a sound like a crackling fire. He knelt by Deon's side. Carn's strong hand reached out implacably and turned Deon over upon his back. Deon looked up at Carn's face, pale against the waning day and imprinted with an expression that managed somehow to blend predatory satisfaction with tender concern. He was such a riddle, this Lord of his, such a deadly riddle. Deon closed his eyes and reconciled himself to death.

*** Lorn grimaced as he walked beside the mayor. He was too used to his old privileges as a witch of the Iseult Order, to ever really settle to following in some petty ruler's wake. Yet he hid it well out of respect to Thea's

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honest abilities and his own much reduced status in semi-exile. He could not entirely hide the irritation in his voice, however, as he protested Thea's latest demands of him. "But Lady Thea, by using me in this way you reward the good Captain's actions and confirm her suspicions," he protested. "Perhaps this prisoner of hers is a spy from the Sea States," Thea replied. Her defense sounded a little false, as if she said it as much to annoy him as because she thought it likely. She led the way through the crowd, slim as a girl, but tall. The mayor carried herself with a grace that spoke of old money and easy power, and people scuttled from her path. "You cannot allow your guard to detain people simply because they are Statin," Lorn insisted. "It is rankest prejudice and by having me inspect the man before he is released, you just confirm it." Lady Thea sighed. "I will not argue with you Lorn, the Iseult Order doesn't answer to me, or much of any one. If you so disagree with my request then you can refuse it. You have had no trouble refusing my repeated requests that you hire yourself a guard, or take one of mine. Or, better yet, to move into the castle. Hard times are coming and they will be harder if our Statin friends eliminate you before the conflict even erupts." "If it does," Lorn insisted. "Oh, it will," she said grimly. "We are destined to be the next Sea State, and no mistake. With all the other city-states of the Free Territories lined up like dominos behind us." They entered the guardhouse side by side. The jailer was expecting them and took them past the day-cages to the stonewalled cells. He opened the one nearest and stepped aside to let them enter. A man crouched within. He was slight, with long dark hair falling unbound over a watchful face dominated by great brown eyes, and covered with a wispy, unkempt beard. His clothes were threadbare and, in several places, seriously torn. He looked back at them with feigned disinterest and incongruous disdain. "What is your name?" Thea asked. "My name is Dee," he replied in a voice more mannered than Lorn had expected. "He would not give a second name," the jailer said. "And he was carrying a knife."

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"A Statin adult bears a surname indicating who they are vassal to," Thea said patiently. "If they are not a vassal they do not have one." She turned back to the prisoner. "Why did you come to this territory?" There was silence for a while, and then came the considered reply. "For no reason but that it was the quickest way to leave the Sea State. I had not given much thought to what I would do once I was here." Thea glanced to Lorn, who shrugged his lack of advice. She asked, "Are you a spy against us?" "No," he replied, and Lorn, fingering his talisman, nodded that he spoke true. "Do you have a trade?" she asked, unwilling to loose a vagabond up the streets even if he were he not a spy. "I can use a sword," Dee replied calmly. "I can farm after a fashion, I can work horses to ride or draw and I can keep accounts." "And why would anyone hire you?" the jailer interjected with scorn. Dee turned his impassive gaze on him and shrugged. "Because I am honest, and skilled and would strive my best to serve him -- but who am I to tell a man who he should hire?" Thea shook her head. "You will not find work, and I have no wish to see you starve, beg or thieve upon my streets. We will put you on a boat across the strait tomorrow and let your own nation bear the cost of your keep and the consequences of your freedom." Dee answered merely by looking to the ground, but Lorn knew something of his real response. The Art sometimes chose strange and unwritten ways to tell him things he rather would not know. It told him now, that the morning would find this man a corpse, be it in his cell or in the cold sea of the strait. He would never consent to be returned to the land from which he had so recently fled -- something very powerful had driven him from it. "The sword, you say," Lorn said brightly. "How would you serve as a bodyguard?" "I would guard my charge with my life and to my death," Dee replied and Lorn felt the utter sincerity of it. Honesty to an extent he could hardly credit but could only trust. "Release this man," he said to the jailer. "I shall hire him myself."

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"What are you doing?" Thea exclaimed. "Following the suggestion you have recently reminded me of," Lorn replied wryly. Thea shook her head with gentle disapproval, but did not demur. She trusted his Art to protect him, rather more than perhaps she should given its reliability, but he did not disabuse her of her faith. He turned his mind instead to practical matters. "You will need some better clothes." he mused. "And a sword," Dee replied. "That too I suppose, and we must go to the market, there is no food in the house." The jailer looked to Thea first for confirmation as he reached for his keys. The old metal restraints gave up their captive with a grating protest. Dee stood, rubbing his wrists. He cast Lorn a look that bore much more suspicion than hope. It made Lorn wonder what might drive a man to leave his homeland so precipitously, especially a man whose words rang with such unambiguous sincerity. Lorn shrugged off his thoughts. He, of all men, ought to know that the world rewards compromise more often than principle. He ushered his new charge outside, not missing how Dee discretely stepped out from beneath his guiding hand. Thea sighed and looked dismissively at Dee's slight frame. "As you will," she said. "Though what a witch wants with a Statin I don't know." She strode away through the crowd. Lorn turned to see the jailer correcting his admission books; he glanced up and gave the lady mayor a quick approving gaze before quickly concealing his expression. Truth be told, Lorn had not given much thought to the reputedly witch-hating ways of Statin. He turned to Dee and found the man watching him with dull disinterest. Nothing of hate radiated from the man and very little of any emotion, just a will to endure. His thin face, torn clothes and haunted eyes spoke of his dire need for that kind of stoic will, just to have survived. Lorn bit his tongue, knowing that questions would not be welcomed and he had nothing more than curiosity to justify them.

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"Come along," Lorn said. "First we shall make you presentable." *** Dusk found Deon renamed, washed, clothed and armed. Lord Lorn had not waited for him but equipped him with an incautious amount of coin and directions to the establishments required, and to Lorn's own abode. So Deon stood before a small stone building near the port. It was unmistakably his final destination, from the basilisk carved above the door, to the herbs and weeds growing rampantly in the small yard out front. The front door stood ajar and Deon pushed quietly though into a large kitchen-like room. Stairs ascended to the second floor, and another room on the ground floor was evident beyond a large arched doorway. Lord Lorn was in the further room, sitting upon an upholstered chair with charts and books strewn all around him. A half glass of wine stood at his left hand and he was quite obviously asleep. This, Deon concurred, was definitely a man who knew little about assuring his own safety. He put his packages from the market on the kitchen table and briefly scouted the rooms upstairs. An antechamber at the top contained a small, dusty pallet that could serve for him, and led into a large and cluttered bedroom centered on an outsized mattress quite smothered with cushions and throws. It was a defensible room at least with the one entrance and small, narrow windows with sturdy shutters. He would have to do something about the vines upon the outer walls, however. There being no other servant in evidence, Deon set himself to preparing a meal. His mind firmly on the task at hand, he felt some kind of peace. He was dishonored and broken off from his life-that-was. By observing the Code of Honor, he had done what he could to preserve his family's safety. He had left them and his State by the fastest possible route, and taken nothing with him that was not already upon his person. With a rough-cast dagger and barely enough coin to replace his torn and bloody uniform with peasant cloth and pay the ferryman, he made his old life nothing more than history. Now, he had employment and a task more honorable than his circumstances should warrant; it being always within Code to act to protect a noncombatant. That the man was one of the Iseult witches was disconcerting, but hardly his concern. Even those who spat at any mention of magic found little to complain of in the conduct of the Iseult-sworn. Deon prepared the meat as best he knew and the strange vegetables as the grocer had described. He broke the bread and washed the grimy-looking crockery he found throughout both of the lower rooms. That done, he returned to the living room. Lorn's head still lay lax upon his shoulder. His long, sad-looking face was partly shrouded by hanks of coarse hair half mixed with blond and grey. He looked not old so much as hard worn; perhaps the Art had that effect.

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Deon had no way of knowing and put it from his mind. He laid a plate of food on the table beside the long neglected goblet. "My Lord?" he said, and touched Lorn on the shoulder. Lorn came awake blinking. "There you are, and waiting upon me." He laughed. "I did not hire you as a cook, being quite able to look after myself." Deon could not help but feel vaguely skeptical of that. His employer's house was devoid of the proper servants and wildly disorganized, nor was the robe he wore entirely clean. "I was not otherwise occupied," he replied. "And this 'my Lord' business will not do -- it will quite go to my head." "It is what one's employer is called," Deon replied. Lorn gave an exaggerated sigh. "Sit," he said. "And eat with me. We should discuss how matters stand." Deon sat on the most distant part of the sofa. "I have already eaten, my Lord." Lorn considered him for a long time and finally forbore to argue. "My stipend is brought biweekly," he said. "A part goes into the brass cabinet upon my desk, as security. Do not touch the cabinet; I use the Art to seal and fix it. The rest I place into the stone jar on the mantel. You are to draw one silver a week for the jar as salary and use what remains as you see fit towards your costs or those of the household. But I will not have you acting as a body servant to me. As Iseult, I am not given to such airs." "As you say," Deon demurred without sounding entirely convinced. "Nor am I used to company," Lorn continued, "and will not pay any particular attention to you. When I go out, you will accompany me and otherwise, I suggest you entertain yourself as you see fit." "Of course, my Lord," Deon agreed. He stood and placed what remained of the funds he had from Lorn into the great granite urn, retaining small coins to the value of a silver, and returned to the kitchen. He sat for a while at the kitchen table, staring at his hands as they lay upon its surface. His mind drifted to memories of his lost life. Even now he could almost hear the sound of final bugle as night fell and the patter of

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people's footsteps always passing along the corridors of the keep. His mind contained strangely vivid remembrances of the smell of sage and sweet rushes on the fire and always a few callers in the evening. The junior officers liked to spend what time with him they could, and there were a few particular (but chaste) friendships. More often than not it was Selene that saved him from loneliness; she was his second in command and normally accompanied by a few of her cronies or her current beau. Selly, as her friends called her, was a mercenary who drifted by a few years or so ago. He had put her on a contract to teach archery, in which she excelled, and somehow she never left. Not a few good mercenaries had joined up since, following her lead. The pay would not overwhelm one, but the living was good and they pulled mainly safe, instructional duties. Deon wanted a crack troop and it seemed a cheap way to do it. Occasionally his father or grandmother came by though it was more usual for him to go to them, whenever he had the patience to be chided over his lack -continued lack -- of a spouse to continue their name. It was not as if the line was in any great risk of tapering off whilst his sister had anything to do with it. Deon smiled to think of Hetty and her brood, but the room was empty and cold and his drifting mind quickly fell on fouler matters. His memory snagged somehow on his last encounter with Carn, his late Lord's hands upon him and the sound of flesh hitting and entering flesh. Their last savage encounter, blood flowing slick and warm across his body... his body; though his mind seemed hardly to own it. Since he was barely adult, his High Lord had been pleased by it -- pleased in a way that the Code forbade one to act upon, but what is a vassal to do when Lord and Code take different paths? Of ill acts between a Lord and vassal, the Lord was always presumed innocent. Was always innocent. How could he doubt it now, when his false obedience had not encompassed surrendering his life to one who owned it entirely? What Carn had done, and how, might have been how blood is usually taken, or a punishment for that reluctance. Perhaps even the asking had been a test, perhaps his survival has been an accident, perhaps, perhaps it was moot now; that life was over and best put out of his thoughts. Deon stood, compulsively searching for any act to distract him from his unwholesome contemplations. His eyes fell upon an old rag lying long unused upon the dusty counter and the stack of books and papers lying askew across the better part of its surface. Deon set himself the task of putting the room to rights.

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TWo Lorn woke surprisingly early, having gone to his rest earlier than usual also. He had discovered his impulse to hire a guard bore with it unexpected consequences. The irritating man would not go to his own rest until he was sure that his 'Lord' was safely in the bedchamber beyond his own. Rather than suffer the guilt of keeping Dee up half the night, he had taken the more crucial schematics up to his room, only to discover that he could not muster the will to study them further. He had been working hard on wards to defend the city, the keep and its more crucial personages; all of this made him more dreadfully tired than he liked to admit. What had woken him, however, was Dee leaning over him. "You have a caller my Lord, a lady by the name of Bethany." Lorn could not help but note that his guard was a decorative item despite being rather stern and dangerous looking. His plain white shirt was demurely laced and his long hair tied back sternly, yet simplicity only drew more attention to his sound, lean body and pleasingly symmetrical features. Yet there was also the edge of a puckered scar on Dee's straight collarbone, barely visible through the shirt lacings, another fainter mark under his jaw that receded into his hairline. Lorn could not imagine what would cause such injuries and he wondered what other tales Dee's body would tell, if more of it could be seen. Even this faint concern was foreign to Lorn's usual way of thinking these days and he frowned as he pushed it aside. "Ah, do show her up," Lorn said, breaking his eyes away from Deon's lithe form, "Whenever she should call." "Of course," Dee replied, in a way that did not fail to reflect the impropriety of this request before he slipped back down the stairs. Bethany bounded noisily up and threw herself onto the bed beside him. She was the city's Captain of the Guard, a middle-aged woman whose puckish nature often seemed out of tune with her serious duties. She had been Lorn's friend since he first came to the city, originally rather against his will -- but whomever Bethany befriended became, and stayed, her friend. Lorn had enough sense to realize he was fortunate in that, despite the fact that her views often lay counter to his own. "Lorn," she said smugly. "How will you restrain yourself?" He had no doubt of what she meant; her words were an overt echo of his own pallid musings.

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"I shall recall the Statin penalty for love between men," he replied with false flippancy. "Having no wish to part with that particular organ just yet. Besides, I'll take experience over aesthetics when it comes to the bedroom, anytime." He prayed his protestations were true and swore to himself that it would be so. It had been painful enough to love, to lose love, and to foreswear love. The only thing that could hurt him further would be to recant on that vow. For with a man in his constant presence any affection of bodies would quickly leach into his parched heart. No, Lorn knew that such a thing could not be contemplated. Brief, anonymous and fumbling encounters sated the body and risked nothing, but more enduring relationships must be kept chaste. Apparently he had successfully disguised his grey thoughts with blithe words. Bethany laughed and slapped him heartily on the arm. "Well, get yourself up, my boy. If you're to check out good mayor's wall-wards today as planned, I best come with you. Our good Lady Thea sent me to be sure my guards don't re-arrest the lad, and as I must visit each post to do so, and you must do the same in your duties -- well, we may as well go together." Only by the perspective of an extra few decades could Bethany call Dee "boy" or "lad". She lay atop his stillwarm bed whilst he assembled clothing and followed him downstairs attentively as if watching a play that particularly pleased her. Lorn knew she thought him somewhat easy to-bed, but he felt no guilt at taking what pleasure he could, now that the fires of love were long cold. Such things did not come twice in a lifetime. Nor would he wish them to. Losing Lauron had put a strain on his heart that seemed to have put its finer functions beyond any inclination for further use. And what harm then in satisfying the wants of the less demanding parts of the body? His justifications rang false even to himself but he was not strong enough to be fully chaste. On the way down the dark stairs, Lorn fixed a habitual expression of harmless goodwill on his face. It would not do to have friends, old or new, see his mood; nor were many people comfortable in the presence of a powerful and noticeably unhappy witch. The state of the kitchen stopped his pointless and circular musings in their tracks; it was a scene of quite unwarranted order. The flagstones gleamed, wetly spotless, and every shelf had its items strictly ordered, if not yet entirely clean. The hearth had been swept and kindled and Dee was demurely pouring tea. A little of this must have occurred the previous night, but he had not noticed. The rest... and surely he did not even own the brush, broom or teacups in this cosy domestic scene? "Would you care for some tea, my Lady?" Dee asked whilst obviously assuming she would.

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Bethany raised her eyebrows at the title. "Oh, I like him," she said as she sat herself at the glistening counter. "Dee," Lorn said grimly. "I do believe that I told you I was hiring you as a guard on the mayor's advice, and not as a servant." Dee remained silent. "Lorn," Bethany interjected. "Have you considered that your guard here may not want to live in the squalor that that you seem to prefer?" "It's not that bad," Lorn replied with a slight tone of defense, but had to recognize that he was not a meticulous person at the best of times, which these were not. He turned to another topic. "And where did these tea cups come from?" "Your neighbor's maid has lent me a few items on the understanding that I will return them in a few days," Dee replied. "She also rather insisted on lending me a few gardening tools." "My neighbors are forever torn between the honor of sharing the street with an Iseult and their horror of the way I lower its tone," Lorn snapped. "If you can tell me how a few weeds prevent you from guarding me from Thea's phantom assassins, you may do as you will." "The few weeds are rampant and tall enough to provide cover for a small army," Dee replied. "Whilst the vines would give them access to the roof and the second floor, plus the roof-weed are plentiful enough to collapse the thatch given its time." Bethany nodded and met Lorn's eyes in mute support of a point well made -- having said as much herself on many occasions. Lorn conceded defeat in sullen silence. The tea, he noted, was excellent. He would have to take great care not to become dependent on such consideration. Lorn was well aware of the underlying laziness of his nature, but firm in his oath to the Iseult, and oath to render aid and service, not receive it. *** Whatever gives these people the idea that the States are poised to attack, Deon considered, they are poorly prepared to defend themselves. He followed on the heels of Lorn and Bethany, with Bethany's aid beside him. The assistant was a talkative young man called Verity, who was little deterred by his companion's silence. The wall they walked was wide, if

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not particularly high. Its great low, mortarless back snaked through the rolling, yellow-grassed terrain and only Verity's prattle saved them from the silence of its largely untenanted length. Houses shrank as far from its inside as trees did from its outside, with all human and natural life seeming somehow distant from this great grey, corroded spine of defense. Together they seemed to be in the process of walking the circumference of the city. At irregular points guardhouses reared up like merlons on a giant's rampart. The large, square towers would prove statelier than those within. At the first guardhouse, the guard was nowhere in evidence. Bethany searched high and low and found nothing in residence other than a few spiders and a bleary owl. "Still drawing his pay, I'd warrant," Bethany muttered blackly. The stern set to her face gave Deon a clear glimpse of the steel beneath her easy manner. This was a woman who would give him pause if he met her upon a field of battle and great confidence if she were by his side. Bethany met his gaze and he quickly looked away. Lorn took the long, winding stairs to the basement. Deon sat near the first landing and waited while Lorn walked the rest of the stair and examined the device within with patient care, just as he had at all their previous stops. Eventually, Lorn emerged, pronounced it acceptable, and they proceeded doggedly on. The walk between guardhouses was long. Not tiring marches by any means, but too far for proper defense if that did, in fact, come to be needed. Lorn and Bethany walked briskly, while Deon and Verity kept a respectful distance. The sun was bright and the breeze pleasantly cool; the day was perfect until Verity decided a proper introduction was necessary. "Hello. I'm Verity and I work for Bethany. You're the new guy, right?" "Yes." "Pleased to meet you, Dee. I-" "Our talking might disturb Lord Lorn," Deon observed. "It never disturbed him before. They talk; we talk. We don't bother them, they don't bother us." Bethany turned, giving some lie to that assertion. "If only we could expect that much from the States," she said.

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The next guardhouse was staffed at least, although by a man so old and frail as to make it little more than a token gesture. Nor were his eyes notably sharp as he peered at them suspiciously until Bethany stood directly before him. His countenance brightened. "Captain!" he said. "Well met!" Bethany set about her little task, catching up with the sentries and notifying them of Dee's new role. Lorn made his arcane adjustments in the cellars beneath the post and Verity talked. Deon ignored him largely, as he took up a post on the cellar stairs, watching Lorn at his work. "So what do you think of the city so far?" Verity continued agreeably. Deon shushed him with a wave to where Lord Lorn crouched on the dusty floor and considered a grimy device that stood there. Lorn himself nullified that defense. "One must not allow any sensory distraction, but must find that power within oneself, not by the hindering of those senses." Lorn did not look up and spoke with a solemnity of an oft-repeated lesson. He adjusted a round red pebble upon a small platform, for what seemed the hundredth time, and squinted at the new arrangement whilst idly rubbing the small carving he wore about his neck. Verity looked at Deon expectantly and seemed like he might continue to do so indefinitely if not given a reply. Deon didn't bother to wonder who Lorn was quoting, but had to assume it meant they were free to talk. Needless chatter was never an occupation he had been much given to and Verity's puppy-like insistence irritated him. The sheer stupidity of this guard system, however, rankled his sense of good military order, and having spent the night before last in jail, these factors conspired to make him speak without his usual tact. "I think the walls are too rough to repel climbers and the guardhouses are too widely scattered. Whatever the wards do withstanding, I could take this city with less than a hundred men and although I haven't seen the castle closely, it does not look like much more of a challenge." That effectively silenced Verity, but earned him a startled look from Lorn, quickly concealed. Deon felt sure that Bethany would not contradict his assessment. No doubt years of peace had made the civil authorities complacent, robbing the guard of necessary resources year by year until only the skivers and the dregs would take the meager pay and the walls were left to fall into disrepair. Such poor foresight and ill discipline was

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exactly what he had been led to expect of the city-states of the territories. That was why they needed an honorable government to give them discipline and stalwart defense. If the Sea States ever did come here it would surely be only to the good. The day wore on with each post yielding up men too young, too old, sleeping, slacking, or simply absent. Some were competent and some able, but very few were both. Bethany grew increasingly grim as the inspection went on. "Worse than I thought," she muttered. "Thea would not hear my warnings, but I could surely have made them louder and more often." Lorn, for his part, made no comment, but Deon suspected that matters of magic were only slightly more in hand. After all, Bethany had a guard, rag tag as it was, but Lorn was alone. *** Lorn relaxed before the fire. There was little light left in the day but Deon had gone outside to make best use of it by starting to tame the garden. Verity had returned home and so Lorn was left in Bethany's familiar company. He settled into his soft armchair, and his good friend's confidence, with great relief. "It was not what he said," Lorn mused. "As much as the truth with which he said it." That chilling certainty made Lorn shiver. It had been the cool certainty of a man who has thrown his men into battle and lost them there, the calm calculation of a seasoned commander. How he felt the lack of those same qualities in himself and felt it with dismay given the times that seemed to lie ahead. "We all know it's true that the city's poorly defended," Bethany replied. "The talisman doesn't measure absolute truth, Bethany. There's no way it could. It measures how a person feels about what they are saying. It was merest chance that I was touching it when Dee spoke but it told me that he spoke with certainty; the kind of quiet assuredness that comes from experience. Given a hundred men he would have assaulted the city with every confidence of success." Bethany nodded at that. "Oh, I would not be surprised to find that he had held a command once; he didn't miss much today. However, I trust your judgment as to his loyalty and have no particular misgivings for myself. These Statins can fall from rank quite suddenly, at some Lord's whim. He's just fallen farther than

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most; besides," she said with a laugh, "he got Verity to shut up for several consecutive minutes which is quite a feat." She cast a look out at the swatch of graying sky the window showed and stood to excuse herself. "We'll finish the rounds tomorrow if you will, but not 'til near noon. Lady Thea wants me in the morning, to discuss sending out a few spies of her own. I suspect that lad of yours gave her ideas." Lorn watched her go and spent a moment contemplating the fire before his worries caught up with him again. What he most needed was another Iseult to lend their strength to the defense, but the Iseult would never show such favoritism as to send two members to one place, having little enough legitimate reason in sending one. The Iseult were meant only to advise, anyway. But how could he stay to such a role? Having lived in the city for years, he would hardly stand by and see it overrun. He stood and walked to the narrow window. He could see Dee raising the hoe and striking down at the soil, and then yanking back, pulling at the deeply entrenched roots of the weeds. He worked with short, powerful movements; with a soldier's efficiency. Lorn watched dispassionately, noting the way Dee's shirt adhered slightly to his dampened skin, outlining his small, lithe body. The beauty of a body well designed and well employed. Lorn imagined running his tongue along that dampened skin, salty and warm. With effort he cast his musings off. Lorn smiled. After all, if he had a 'type' this would not be it. Bethany had noted how the gentlemen, and occasional lady, that found their way into Lorn's bed tended to be tall and quiet, his 'gentle giants', she said. They were echoes of Lauron, he supposed. Lauron so tall and gaunt, with wild white hair, was the very storybook image of a magician. He had been Lorn's teacher also. Lauron had always been tormented by the impropriety of their relationship, yet Lorn hoped he had gained more than he lost by it. Lorn watched Dee continue his attack on the garden. Not my type at all, he thought. Yet it took all of his considerable willpower to step away from the window and return his thoughts to his duties. If only his powers ran to storms, then he could block the channel and wreck the Statin troop ships as they came. Let their own armor drag the soldiers to the bottom, that would be fitting. Alas, his power did not run to such things. He pondered the many unknowns. What could the Statin blood mages do? How many troops would they send and how soon? They were unanswerable questions, yet unavoidable problems. His mind drifted back to the Statin closer at hand; a riddle in his own right. A strong, martial man, yet a wounded one. He provoked such a curious range of responses. He treated Lorn with indifferent care, untouched by either disdain or awe. Somehow that detachment made him attractive, unthreatening.

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Lorn shook his head and paced the room. The brink of war, the brink of disgrace, and he very much feared that he was beginning to fall in love with a man he hardly knew, and who was hardly likely to be delighted at the prospect -- falling in love for the worst reasons and at the worst time. Was he so incapable of living a simple life? Lorn stopped abruptly and laughed. So be it. It was interesting to learn that his poor heart had not been killed entirely by the loss of Lauron... merely dormant. But he chided it for fixing upon such an inappropriate object of affection. If he did not act upon the impulse it would surely pass. He heard Dee coming into in the kitchen, having apparently given up on the swiftly darkening day. Suddenly Lorn remembered a passage in a scroll he had not consulted in a long while, a passage relating to the conservation of aether when working multiple wards. Hardly something that, as a callow student, he thought he would ever need to know. He strode towards the row of trunks that held his sundry unbound papers. As he walked the world seemed suddenly to float and sway around him and he felt a strange vertigo and fast upon it a piercing pain throughout his veins. His hand made a vague gesture of warding, as Lorn reached for the power to rebut this attack. His mind darted in all directions, wondering who was bespelling him and how. A movement at the corner of his eye made Lorn turn; a man stood, poised in the doorway. Sword drawn. He was dark of feature, like Dee, but with an incomparable coldness of expression and an incongruous strand of blue-flowering borage dangling from his hair. This distraction stole the moment he needed to slam down his defenses, before his senses deserted him.

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three Deon stood for a moment, stretching the tired muscles in his shoulders. It had been a long time since he had worked the land and even a few minutes with the pruning hook had strained the underused sinews of his shoulders and arms. It was surprising how different were the muscle that drove the swords from those that wielded less sinister tools. He was quick to regret that moment of pause, as he turned to secure the door only to find it flung emphatically open. Two men crowded into the room and failed in slaughtering him immediately only by impeding each other's efforts. Deon was pleased that he had kept his own weapon to hip, regardless of the inconvenience. Fighting on two sides, he was quickly backed against the table and barely saw the third soldier get past him into the living room. Fear for Lorn's safety added strength to his arm, but he did not let it shake his focus -- he must defeat these two before he could follow that other. Otherwise he would be a corpse before he took two steps. Deon cursed everything except the man who picked these men. Neither of them had much experience with a sword. They expected to carry through with youth, strength, and enthusiasm, exactly the qualities least valuable in a mission of covert murder. Precious seconds passed as he cut at their faces to break the twopronged attack long enough for him to deal with their individually weak defenses. He took the risk of lunging for an opening on the left, cutting across the young man's throat so that in an instant he was standing dead and the room half painted with his blood. His unseasoned colleague missed the chance as he stood shocked at the outcome of his incompetence. The lad was quickly dead himself anyway, upon the backstroke. Deon vaulted over their fallen bodies, already sickly certain that he was too late. He would have been, had murder been the goal. The third man had sheathed his blade to gather up the limp form of the fallen witch. He tried to back away but was too slow in releasing his burden to save his life. Deon speared him with swift efficiency and watched the life swiftly evaporate from his eyes as he fell. The house was instantly quiet but for Deon's harsh breathing. He almost dropped his sword, but knowing it might not yet be safe, he pushed it into the upholstery of the sofa where he could quickly grab it up if the need arose. He bent to disentangle the pile of limbs before him. Deon was not entirely sure Lorn was not dead except that there was little profit in carrying off a corpse. It came to him that mercenaries might do so as proof of their success, but at the same time he assured himself that Lorn was still warm and breathing, if entirely too still.

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Deon froze for a moment. Lorn lay still upon his back. His pale face seemed peaceful, like a bewitched prince awaiting only a kiss to return him to wakefulness. Deon's thoughts scattered in all directions, but he gathered them up again by concentrating upon their immediate peril. Deon swept his eyes across to the door. He could stay barricaded in the house but Lorn was wounded or poisoned and might well die before morning, let alone noon when Bethany would return. As little as he liked it, he would have to take Lorn out of here. He flung Lorn's limp form over his left shoulder and hefted his sword in the other. Knowing that no better plan would occur to him, he strode through the carnage in the kitchen and out into the trammeled garden. His memory reverberated with another dusk-dim flight but the need for action burst through to the forefront of his mind. He turned to the house on the left, on the flimsy basis that he had met one of the servants there. At the front door he banged heavily with the hilt of his sword and leaned against the balustrade. He held one foot ready and when the door opened, he wedged it so that the resident's squeamishness would not deprive him of a bolthole. A rather callow liveried youth answered, which made his job easier. "Open for Lord Lorn," he said, and kicked the door open. He staggered through with his burden and at the first turning found a small, prim parlor. He dropped Lorn onto the day bed and, seeing no obvious wound upon him, wasted no further time bringing his lack of expertise to bear. "Have you a man-at-arms here?" he barked at the lad who followed him nervously, without even shutting the front door. The boy looked blank and the arrival of several other people did little but confuse, until an older woman in a dove-brown dress appeared at the doorway. "Order!" she bellowed. "You, what are you doing here?" "My lady," Deon bowed. "There has been an attack against Lord Lorn. Three men that I know of are dead, but possibly others and Lord Lorn cannot be woken. I needed a healer and to notify Guard Captain Bethany and could not leave my Lord undefended to find them so I brought him here." "Admirably precise," she said shooing a maid out of her path. "You are perhaps fortunate in choosing us, as I am a healer. Blanchard here will get you a horse so you may report to Beth yourself."

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She put aside her mantle and knelt by the side of the couch. "Becky, my traveling case. The rest of you, out!" Deon paused for a moment, unwilling to leave his charge but knowing he could do little to help. Finally he pulled himself away. As he strode out into the yard, Deon could feel his heart still beating hard and fast. The immediate danger seemed past, yet he knew he would not feel at peace again until he saw Lorn open his eyes. In his mind's eye he could see Lorn's great sad eyes. He mounted his borrowed steed and urged it forward urgently. The quicker this duty was completed, the quicker he could return. Be all right, he urged Lorn silently. Be all right. The dark city passed by him on both sides. The horses staggered often in the dark but at the urging of their dogged riders, continued on. *** On consideration, Lorn felt entirely awful; a pitiful combination of stale mourning and new pain. He had some time to consider both during the period in which opening his eyes seemed all together too much to venture. He could not help but hear the sounds around him. The blunt but greatly muffled sounds of a great stone building, the mayor's keep. The pain, widely distributed yet all the more acute for it, spoke of a subtle trap. They, whomever 'they' might be, must have been some sly coil of the Art, planted in his house awaiting the command to strike. He had been foolish to think of his little home as somehow sacrosanct. It was the latest in a long list of mistakes. Lauron had said he had a renegade mind, strong in the abstract aspects of the Art because he made no assumptions and wasn't bound by what the text said could or couldn't be done. The new deacon of the college had seen things rather differently. He had called Lorn a fool, and little short of a rogue, as he sent him on his journey of exile. In all honesty, Lorn wasn't sure which of them was closer to the truth. His somber contemplations were broken when he recognized Bethany's voice. "He's better away. Anyhow, despite my best efforts, the guard don't trust him. The rest here are even worse with their snide remarks, and there's damn all I can do about them." It was Jule the healer who replied. "Cannot Thea do something?" "She keeps them from open persecution, but to be honest I think he would cope with that better. Now he is exposed to rumors and jibes; most have him a spy, Lorn's lover, or more commonly both. Somehow Lorn never comes off worse than a dupe. Too many people are fooled by his see-no-evil approach to the Petty Court, they think him rather innocent about such matters."

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"Innocent," Bethany snorted. "They haven't seen what climbs out of his bed the morning after a festival." Lorn gauged that Jule was assembling her materials from the rustle of cloth and the clink of glass. "You needn't tell me," she said. "I am his neighbor and my servants are quick to inform me of anything I miss. All I can say is that his tastes are not entirely refined and certainly do not reflect a desire for bonds with any kind of permanence. I could wish it were otherwise, witches are unsteady by nature and often enough it is a spouse or committed lover who acts as anchor. I only wish that sensible guard of his would take an interest, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards." Lorn decided that it would be both safer and more politic to stay still at that point. He was friendly enough with Beth, but in that shallow 'hale fellow, well met' unspoken way that soldiers often have. He did not want to deal with the embarrassment of turning her gossip into the type of conversation she never intended to have with him. The two women were moving towards the door as Bethany replied. "You mean because he isn't languishing around here?" she mused. "In Dee's mind 'his Lord' is well enough guarded without him and anything more than that is a private matter. Statins are peculiar like that. It's as if they think love is some secret curse, which nobody should be allowed to guess, and the higher the rank the worst they get on the matter. Not like the frivolous puffs you find on this side of the strait, where intimate affairs are discussed as indifferently as the passing weather." The rest of the exchange passed beyond his hearing as the door scraped shut, leaving Lorn alone with the burden of his consciousness. He considered that he should perhaps have said something. How exactly, for example was Dee 'away'? He found the thought disproportionately alarming, given an acquaintanceship of barely two days and a heart he thought permanently broken. His resolution to neglect his incipient feeling for his new guard seemed to be off to a poor start. Perhaps it was as Lauron had eventually conceded, that the rational mind simply cannot control such inclinations. That was a dismal thought indeed, for love for a Statin from a military family was bound to be most unwelcome. Whilst not moving a muscle, he let his thoughts roam freely, remembering his years in the city. His life was supported by a dense constellation of acquaintances almost like a bed of nails. Those slight contacts will support a body if they are numerous enough, but he felt hungry now for more than that. It was a sudden pang and he dwelt upon it, having little else to do but feel curious about the events since his collapse, and thought alone would not illuminate that. It occurred to him that he missed the deep, quiet companionship he remembered from his days at the third Iseult College. The years that he had studied there, and the years in which he taught, even after Lauron was

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gone. He knew few people then, but knew them piercingly well, like suns a cloud could never cover, not like his current panoply of limpid stars. Well, no. It was not a failing of their light but of his sight. He had never wanted to come here. He had resented the posting and determined not to enjoy the place. A bitter little city perched upon a promontory surrounded by flat, ill looking land and tenanted by loud and undignified souls. He had come to like them anyway, but never to entirely break free of the distance he maintained in those early days. This disdain they took to be magely dignity and all his capers since had never entirely broken them of the notion. He finally opened his eyes and looked at the high and dust-draped ceiling. He had refused to leave this city when Lord Carn began to machinate for its downfall, but he had been little use in staying. The best he could hope to be was some kind of sacrifice to draw the Iseult in, and for that to work it must be done soon. Early intervention could prevent an invasion and keep the straits as a fixed barrier between the greedy reach of the Cabal, and the peaceful, fragmented communities on the other shore. But after Carn had stepped across the straits even Iseult opposition would result only in a pitched and bloody war. Lorn could not help but think it might have been better if the attack he had experienced had been more definitive in its results. There was really only one thing that made his soul rebel at the thought of his life's end. The thought, the hope, that a new friendship bore the seeds of something deeper. Could it truly be so, and should it be? Why court new pains when even life itself was uncertain in these times? He desperately wished for the return of the somber swordsman, all the same Dee had never known him in the gloom of his early exile and to be perfectly honest, hardly knew him now. He mused about the possibility of correcting that. In the absence of familiarity any outcome was possible to one who hoped, as Lorn found himself very slightly inclined to do. Which pleasant if somewhat speculative thoughts bore him back to the comforting oblivion of sleep. *** Deon looked disconsolately about the wrecked room. He was told the device was in here somewhere and still active. Thus anyone within who had the slightest natural potential for the Art would be rendered insensible by it. It had been Sheritt, the mayor's far-speaker, who had observed with some surprise that Deon seemed to have not even the slightest trace of that talent and was thus quite safe. So here he sat with a box in his hand to contain the magical token, should he ever find the damn thing. At which point Sheritt would come in to tell him the room was safe. They assumed that he would somehow know which objects in the room were old and which ones had been recently introduced, not realizing, perhaps, the short duration of his employment.

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He wasn't in a hurry to see what would happen after he found the device. The guard leader would be able to drag out the bodies and determine where they had come from when they lived. No great mystery there -- hair and stitch they were of the States. Not from his garrison though, perhaps not soldiers at all. He did not like to think he would ever be called to oppose real Statin soldiers. The Six were not his masters now, but for so long they had been. He had grown up under the shadow of their rule and filled his life with their wishes and the safety of those over whom he commanded, in their name. Should he face one of his old guard across some battle line, he did not know what he would do. Maybe the city guards were right to mistrust him, one way or the other he would be a traitor to somebody if the two sides met. With that thought, he had a sudden inspiration. Whatever had been in the room must have been of some value; the last man would have retrieved it. He searched the stale body with distaste and finally found a small wire cage half filled with dried herbs and small stones. No sooner had he locked it within Sheritt's box than he heard the man call out. "At last!" Sheritt burst impatiently into the house and a lull suggested that he paused palpably upon seeing the unpleasant scene in the kitchen. Dee smoothed the smirk from his face and stood to face them as they entered. Sheritt came through pale-faced and looking for some target to take out his discomfort on. The scuffling sounds beyond him suggested that the guards were already removing the bodies, and another accompanied him into the living room. "A pretty hopeless lot they must have been," Sheritt opined looking Deon up and down. "To be cut down by a stunted item such as this." The guard laughed sharply and stooped to look at the third corpse. "That's foreigners for you," he said without any particular emphasis. The old guard's discomfort marked him as a basically decent man. Sheritt wandered about the room with his eyes roving from object to object amongst the clutter and his hand occasionally following. It occurred to Deon that a lesser witch might well find something worth acquiring in the workroom of a greater one. He attempted to keep his suspicion from showing in his face or stance but when Sheritt's hand fell on the top of the old brass cabinet he could not contain himself. "You had best not touch that, sir," he said, meaning to explain that Lorn had placed a ward upon it. Sheritt cast him a scathing look and before Deon could speak further, moved to open the drawer. A smell reminiscent of brimstone and burnt hair filled the air. Sheritt swore and clutched his hand against his chest.

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Deon restrained himself from offering any aid, feeling that a man with Sheritt's delicate sense of pride would not appreciate the gesture. Indeed after a few moments to gather himself he spun and took exception to something in Deon's expression, though it was the guard who was having difficulty concealing his mirth. "You did this on purpose," he snapped, closing his undamaged hand upon Deon's collar and pushing him back against the bookshelf. "Everyone knows what you are up to, you little catamite." Small burrs of light sparked in Sheritt's eyes and uncanny energy crawled along his arm and across Deon's chest. "Steady on," the guard said tentatively. "He did save the Iseult's life." "Did he?" Sheritt sneered. "Or were these men sacrificed to secure this one's cover? Admit it, you spy for the States and you entangled Master Lorn in your treacherous web." Deon felt the energy crawling over him turn itself towards some purpose. Not to have him tell the truth, but merely to compel his agreement with Sheritt's scenario. He felt himself upon the cusp of a false confession with the guard to stand witness on it. The impulse quickly grew almost impossible to resist and Sheritt's fingers had clutched his shirt tight as a noose across his throat. Deon threw out his arm to break Sheritt away from him and was numbly aware that the far-speaker's body sailed away from him, arcing over the mutilated sofa and hitting the floor heavily on the other side. He gasped and fought to clear his vision whilst the guard stood startled, his sword drawn. After a moment the old guard put away his weapon and went to help Sherritt. Once he was satisfied that Sheritt was merely stunned, he turned to Deon with a rueful expression. "Best you make scarce," he advised. "I shall see to it that the house is locked up when we go." Deon appreciated that the soldier was trying to avoid a scene and the balance of his intuition was to trust the old man's judgment. He nodded. As he stepped out of the house, he was still half dazed by the after-effects of the Art and surprise at his own unexpected strength. Was it merely some side effect of the spell, or his fear of it, that allowed him to throw a man across a room like a doll?

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It would be a long walk back to the keep and he was in no particular hurry. He was coming to understand that the prospect of war might be more than scare mongering. The possibility that he might meet his former comrades and vassals across a battle line was becoming very real. As much as he would rather deny that the force he built in the Sea State bastion would be turned to such an acquisitive purpose, it did not go against what he knew of Carn -- the only of the Six Lords that he had ever met. Nor would it be sensible to stand against them here, where the defenders were most likely to play the losing part, at least in the shorter term. This promontory had been in State control before, for the lesser part of history but enough to justify the cry to 'liberate' it again. His feet took him to the wall where it overlooked the sea. He stood and looked at the unquiet waters, and felt the wind twine its fingers in his sleeves. Half-healed wounds itched on his neck and across his torso whilst his mind conjured visions of the invasion that might come. The crumbling walls were not sheer enough to repulse waves of well-drilled soldiers who had been tempered in battles with the hinterland rebels and the pirates at Tance. He stared grimly down the screestrewn slope to the boulder-studded beach. There was ample cover there, were there enough defenders at the wall to compel the use of it. Suddenly his considerations were broken by the image of Lorn as he had last seen him. His pale face was somehow more beautiful at rest than awake, as he normally buried it behind unbrushed hair and guarded levity. Jule said he would be well again. The device used against him aimed only to incapacitate and should do no permanent harm -- given proper rest and recuperation, the latter being far from a certainty in her opinion. It was proper that he did not want to leave his Lord, his employer, when danger was so close. But it was no more than a contract of employment, which Lorn would surely release him from if asked. It was clear that Lorn would need to take greater precautions now that the threat against him had been so tangibly realized, and a mercenary of dubious loyalties was far from advisable in that. It was as if he finally emerged from the fog in which he had spent the last week of his life, to find himself without honor and only the most tenuous of employment. He had been a Lord and Commander and was now merely a liability to a witch with a doomed mission of defense. Deon examined his reaction to the term 'witch'. Even given his recent experience, it was rather lackluster. The reputed evil of witches seemed unlikely to cast his own Lord's abuse of him in the shade. The Art, he decided, is how it is used -- just like a sword. Anything could be like that, an art, a weapon... a touch -- in honorable employment, in self-defense, to plunder, or to cause pain and terror. He waited to be shocked by his own thoughts. Meeting only emptiness, he shrugged. He had lost his honor, broken like his family blade in the hands of his former lord. He could think of any terrible thing and feel no obligation to protest it. He needed only to discharge his bond of employment with Lorn and he would be free.

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*** "I should not have been brought here," Lorn repeated. "And I cannot stay here." Thea replied just as mulishly. "If you leave, then do it under your own power. I shall not lend one of my carriages to the task. You are not safe in your home and I will not hurry you to your death." "That is my problem, Lady Mayor. I am of Iseult and not of the Petty Court. My welfare is not your concern. A moment ago, you were actually suggesting you could charge Dee with assault against Sheritt. Dee is a bonded employee of Iseult and it should not even have even crossed your mind that you had any direct power over him. I have been blurring the lines too much, lines that may be important should the city be attacked, or worse yet, occupied." "I doubt the lad did any such thing," Bethany interjected with pointed look to Thea. "So I dare say we can let that be, but if you're so separate from court, why work the wards, Lorn? Even I can see they're wearing you thin and they don't serve any Iseult purpose, only that of the city. Yet, you work on them ceaselessly. I greatly doubt that an attack of this sort would normally knock you back this hard." Lorn had been sitting back against the bedstead and now he swiveled to put his feet tentatively on the floor and cast around for some clothing. "The States are beginning to use the Art, as I have often explained to you both, and the Art is Iseult's business wherever it occurs. The wards store energy from my self and from the aether to nullify such attacks, and that is all they do. I was simply careless in not taking such precautions with my own abode." "Lorn," Thea said wearily. "Your hands are shaking, you are hardly up to such a task tonight. Forget what I said about Sheritt, perhaps I paid him too much heed." As she spoke, Dee arrived in the doorway. "Well, let us clear that up," Lorn proclaimed waving his guard closer. "Tell me, Dee, how did Sheritt manage to break his arm?" Dee showed no signs of nervousness. "It may have been when I threw him across the room," he replied. "Or it may have been when he went against my advice and tried to open the drawer of your brass cabinet."

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"Ah," Lorn exclaimed with satisfaction and somewhat select attention to what had just been said. "My house is not much protected, but my treasure chest is. It seemed likely to me that I am the actual agent of the gentleman's injuries. Now Dee, fetch me a carriage, I am sure they can be rented somewhere in the city." Lorn levered himself to his feet with the aid of the windowsill. It was a motion that made him feel quite lightheaded, something that was apparently quite evident as Dee rushed to take his arm rather than to follow his instructions. "Damn it," Thea snapped to Bethany. "Get this man some transportation and some guards to keep him safe until he can see to bolstering his own defenses." Before Lorn even opened his mouth, she rebutted him. "They will stay on the street before your house if you are so inhospitable as to require that, the streets at least are most certainly under my jurisdiction." She stormed out, drawing Bethany in her wake and leaving Lorn leaning openly on his guard's arm. Dee guided him to sit on the bed again. He then turned to looking for Lorn's clothes and boots in the cupboards and helping him assume them. He was mercifully silent about the wisdom or otherwise of his Lord's decision. When Bethany returned the two of them helped him down to the courtyard where a demur wagon waited, attended by half a dozen mounted soldiers. Bethany said what Dee would not. "We're all but carrying you, Lorn. Are you sure that this is wise?" "It's necessary," Lorn replied tersely. Bethany sighed and closed the carriage down. Lorn was grateful she did not accompany him any further. He was left in the silent company and solid shoulder of his Statin protector. It was scarcely believable that this man had walked into his life, dominated his thoughts, saved his life, and now steadied him with a firm arm around his shoulders -- all within the space of a few days. There really would be no lasting harm from the hidden charm. It simply acted as a shock to his system, swamping his sensitive perceptions in such a way as to render him insensible. He had then suffered the pain of returning consciousness, something like pins and needles except more in the order of daggers and swords. Then finally, the exhaustion from over his over-tried system, which a night of sleep would largely correct, though not until after one final trial.

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He heard the grinding of the wheels on the coarse, damp soil of the roadway and the solid plodding of the guard's ponies. It seemed easier to close his eyes and let those regular sounds set the tempo of their short journey. He was more tired than he thought and came sharply awake as the wagon jerked to a halt. The day seemed too bright even though the sky was overcast, as if some confused part of his mind thought it should be already night. Lorn took a deep breath and mustered the strength to walk to his own door, looking something other than completely decrepit. His hand fumbled at the gate so that Dee leaned past him to open it and then rushed to get the door. In the center of the kitchen, Lorn stood a moment. "My apologies to the Mayor's guard but they are not to come into this house. Nor the grounds unless it would be a real hardship, and I am sure as soldiers they will manage to cope with life upon the verge. Do go speak with them." Dee hesitated but went, leaving Lorn to his last task of the day. Nothing too complex, but he must assure the safety of the house from the Art. He had no useful focuses in the house so he resorted to the oldest practice of all. He took a small knife from the countertop and cut a scratch in the palm of his left hand. It had to be scored over several times before much blood welled out. He watched it with a disinterest symptomatic of his overdrawn state. Then he moved to the inside corners of the house, starting with the floor of the bottom story. He was laboring up the stairs when Dee returned to his elbow. He watched Lorn without comment, but with a palpable lack of approval as he completed the task by anointing the four corners of the low ceiling on the second floor and spoke a few simple words. "It will last a few days at least," Lorn said with grim satisfaction. "Are you quite done?" Dee snapped. Lorn nodded and was taken mutely in hand. Dee guided him to his bed, stripped his clothes and settled the covers over him. He came back with a cloth and a basin and took Lorn's hand to clean it of the drying ribbons of blood that ran across his palm and down his wrist. Dee's touch was cool and comforting. Most people who touched him experienced an unsettling feeling; it varied in how they experienced it. Sometimes as cold, or pain, or tickling. Some found it novel enough between the sheets, but they always tired of it soon enough. What they were feeling was the potential in them to perform the Art, calling to what was awakened in him. Lorn always felt it as heat, but Dee's hands were sure and cool. He remembered Thea relaying that Sheritt had said as much; Dee had not the slightest potential for the Art. Most people had little enough to be of any use, but to have none at all was startlingly rare, if of no particular

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importance. Lorn began to realize how badly he had over stretched his abilities when he felt his hands begin to shake. He felt waves of mundane heat and cold wash over his heavy limbs and the world seemed to spin dizzily. "Should I get Jule?" Dee asked. Lorn felt his hand close over Dee's. "It's just a kind of magic hangover," he said. "I may feel like I'm dying but I know from experience that I'll be fine in a day or so. But I beg you not to leave me, every time I close my eyes the room starts turning around." Dee did not pull away. "I don't know what I can do," he said. "Talk to me. Tell me about yourself." Despite his words Lorn felt his eyes closing. He tightened his grip on Dee's hand as if it was all that anchored him to the world. "I do remember you saying you would take no particular interest in me and that I was to act only as a guard." "Oh, so I am inconsistent? Don't be so cruel as to remind me now. Tell me a story, anything to keep my mind occupied with something other than contemplating my own nausea." Lorn knew he sound pitiful but could not muster the pride to care. He clutched Dee's hand to him like a talisman. When he felt the bed settle as Dee sat on its edge, his heart sighed with relief.

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Four Deon had worked through any number of fables and children's tales and honestly was not sure that Lorn was even listening, but whenever he would think the man asleep and try to leave he would be pulled back. Lorn's face was wreathed in disarranged hair and his skin was flushed as if with fever. It was dark now and Dee was hungry but knew that Lorn was in no state to consider food. He tried finally to pry Lorn's long fingers from his hand, but even as he stepped away he saw Lorn reaching out weakly in his direction. Deon stood a moment and then surrendered to the urge to go back. He reached out to touch Lorn's reddened face and was surprised to find it was not warm. Lorn's skin was like fine-grained alabaster beneath his fingers, cool and smooth. The sensation beguiled his fingertips and sent a shiver down his spine. Lorn leaned his cheek into Deon's hand and reached up to grasp it again. He seemed at least half asleep now but restless like a sick child who felt no need yet to show his strength through stoicism. The last lamp guttered and died, and in the darkness Deon pondered on the vulnerability of the sleeping form on the bed below him. In the gloom he remembered his own many surrenders upon the harsh silk sheets of Carn's bed, cast out of that selfsame bed once Carn had exhausted himself. On no other occasion had he been anything but alone in bed. Nor had he ever wanted it otherwise. It seemed wrong, to lie open to all harm, so deeply asleep, and not to be alone. He had no interest in that kind of closeness and no use for it. Yet what if he left and Lord Lorn became ill, or needed him but was too weak to call out? Deon finally gave in. He put aside his boots and coat and lay down carefully on top of the covers. Lorn sighed and leaned into him without reserve and Deon steeled himself not to pull away. It did not seem such a small thing to be so close together when soon they would be forever apart. He already felt his resolve on that matter weaken. Should he leave behind a man that would accept support from no one else? Surely not, until he at least saw that he had others to protect him. Satisfied with that delay, Deon drifted off to sleep, lulled by the strange yet comforting touch of another man's body against his. Lorn was safely shrouded in blankets but for one hand resting on Deon's waist with only the cloth of his shirt between them, and a face so close to his neck that he could feel Lorn's slow breaths washing across his skin. After a long moment, he put has arm protectively across Lorn's body and settled himself down to sleep. *** Lorn awoke feeling remarkably refreshed and deliciously at peace. The effect of touching an Iseult mage such as himself was not generally compatible with lying in an embrace as relaxed and comfortable as this. The magic

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within him had a way of making itself felt, be it as a glow in the dark or a tingle on the skin, and disturbing his partner's rest. Lorn opened his eyes tentatively to see the morning was still very new and the sky mostly dark. He extrapolated by touch that one of Dee's arms went under his own body and he could see the other one lying over his waist. Lorn's own hands also rested on Dee's body, as if by long acquaintance. He blushed slightly as his presumption, but immediately began to wonder how much further he might presume. But before he had formed much of a plan, it became apparent that Dee was now awake. "Feeling better?" Dee said softly with a hint of amusement in his voice. "Can't complain," Lorn replied. He moved his hand further behind Dee's waist and drew him a little closer. His heart was beating hard and he was surprised that Dee made no move to stop him. "No?" Dee said, their faces now only inches apart. "If you continue with this you might find you have something to complain about. It's not an area where I have can claim much skill." This rather self-deprecating response was not what Lorn had expected. A cold refusal perhaps or open outrage, Dee merely lay still but relaxed in his arms. Lorn's fingers wandered almost of their own accord, insinuating themselves under Dee's shirt and across his back. "If you want me to stop, you need only say as much," he whispered as he closed the small distance between their bodies. He moved slowly. With hours still until full dawn he was in no hurry and if Dee had very little experience, as he'd admitted, he didn't want to push things along too quickly. His upper hand stroked across Dee's shoulder, around his ribcage and across his chest. He felt Dee's nipple under his fingertips and then encountered the spare hair of Dee's torso. Lorn watched Dee's expression closely and saw neither rejection nor full acceptance. A disturbing thought crossed his mind -- Statins saw many matters differently than those on this side of the isles. He dare not overleap the possibility for misunderstanding, regardless of the immediate prize. "Dee, I wouldn't want to think that the fact that I employ you is influencing you now." Dee remained silent but Lorn pressed on, "Can you tell me that it's not?" As the silence stretched on Lorn's felt his blood turn cold. "My obligations are never far from my mind, at any time," Dee replied carefully.

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Lorn stilled his hands but did not yet remove them. "But would you feel I have the right to touch you like this just because I employ you?" "I don't see any harm in it, my Lord." Dee seemed to be bemused by their conversation but to Lorn it was chillingly clear. He paused a moment letting, his head fall back on the pillow and smelling the warm heat of Dee's body, so close that he could feel his eyelashes lightly touch the other man's skin. "My Lord," again, is it? he thought wearily before carefully untangling his reluctant body and levering himself out of his suddenly unappealing bed.

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five Deon knew he was derelict in his duties to allow Lorn to go downstairs alone, but he was momentarily too confused to move. He had been entirely willing to go along with the suggestions Lorn's hands had been making. Somehow, though, he could not imagine Lorn would be the kind of callous lover he had known in Carn, although lack of experience meant he found it hard to imagine how else things might be. Things must be able to be otherwise, surely, or who would ever fall in love? He had been on the point of surrender when suddenly Lorn was gone, leaving Dee with his thoughts of the past... Young Deon's nervousness could barely cover his inner misery. Who was this Lord, who could not give him a full day to mourn the death of Kotana desCarn, his own much-loved father? The throne room was lavish in red, thick carpets and thicker draperies, accented with rosy marble and courtiers chattering around ancient statues of naked men. Deon readjusted his shirt and stepped forward, hand falling unconsciously to the handle of his sword for comfort. Without a thought, he traced the simple spiral design on the pommel and the grip of the handle as he approached. Then, it hit him -- the words. What am I supposed to say? Isn't there a ceremonial dialog for swearing allegiance for the first time? "Who enters my presence today?" It wasn't a question, only a ritual opening line. "D-Deon." A whisper in the crowd prompted him. "Son of..." "Son of Kotana desCarn." "Who proudly served his liege..." "Who proudly served his liege for as long as his life allowed." Their Lord intoned, "But that life has passed and another must take its place." "I would wish..." Deon's mysterious helper prompted, but Deon didn't begin, still unsure. "...to serve such a magnificent Lord..." Deon licked his lips and repeated, "I would wish to serve such a great Lord." He stopped, his head reeling and fear coursing though his veins as though he had no other blood in him.

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A slight tone of anger slipped into the feminine voice of the prompter. "...as Carn of the Blest Five, but I find that I am unworthy." "As Carn of the Blest Five, but I find that I am unworthy." "You are. Nevertheless, Deon, son of Kotana desCarn, will you obey me with your life and entitle me to your death?" "I will." "And will you swear by the blood in your veins, before these witnesses, that your obedience and trust are absolute, so long as I let you live? "I do swear, my Lord." "Then rise, Deon desCarn." Deon stood, lightheaded, and was shocked to find that Carn no longer sat. His new Lord's heels floated a few inches above the cushioned seat. He drew a sword such as Deon had never seen. It was significantly longer than traditional two-handed weapons, but thinner, with such perfect smoothness that would have been dazzling in sunlight. It reached just to Deon's shoulders for the gentlest tap upon each. Clearly, he was accustomed to taking oaths. "Thank you, my Lord." Carn only nodded. Wine went around as Deon introduced himself to the men and women assembled. "Neerifen, Lord of the Western pastures," a large burly man bellowed. His handshake was crippling. "Pleased to meet you." "Jio-que, Lady of the Southern Shores," one said with an almost parental tone that irked Deon slightly. "Commander Drummine D'Isle, fourth swordsman's brigade." That is the voice! That's the one who helped me save face when I forgot what to say. "I cannot thank you enough, Lady, for-"

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"You aren't the only one who forgets! Let it not be spoken of any more." Deon smiled and nodded, locking her face into memory as a friend and automatically connecting his hand to the next for yet another handshake. "Pleased to meet you, sir." "I am Lord Jillie of the Peninsula." Ten minutes of handshakes with people Deon couldn't possibly distinguish between was leaving him slightly annoyed at the custom. Why do I have to shake hands with everyone in the royal court? "Eju, of the royal guard. And this is my son, Merrick." Deon shook hands with the father and smiled at the son. Perhaps I can get some relief from all this handshaking. "Hello, Merrick. Would you like a ride?" "I don't know you." Eju seemed dismayed. How could his son refuse any suggestion from such a rich lord? "It's okay, Merrick." "Yes, I would! Yes, sir!" Deon lifted the boy, who had probably half a dozen summers, onto his back, and walked a little more quickly than casual through the crowd. Nobody shook his hand, just talked, and gossiped amongst themselves. But what was that look in Carn's eye? It looked first like recollection, but now a simmering rage. "All others leave." The command echoed with such force that it did not seem natural. Without a question or shrug, the room emptied. He dropped Merrick to the floor and pushed him towards his family. Two liveried servants gently shut the great front doors and left Deon and Carn alone at the end of the echoing receiving hall. The Blest Lord sat forward in his throne and stared Deon in the eyes. "Boy, what does the Code say about trusting one's Lord?"

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"It should be absolute. And, when it cannot be, then a vassal should act as though he has complete faith nonetheless." "Very good. I want you to demonstrate your faith in me. Remove your clothes." Wordlessly, with astonishment and shaking hands, Deon unlaced his shirt and pulled it off, then his belt, letting his sheathed sword clang on the ground. Deon removed his pants, leaving only his undergarment for modesty's sake. Carn waited, but seeing that Deon was not inclined to bare himself, he stood and paced to Deon's left. Deon watched Carn's face, trying to get some sense of Carn's reaction, or a clue about the nature of this test. The face did seem familiar, somehow. It couldn't be the black eyes, grey hair or pale skin, but something in the features seemed to conjure memories of his childhood. Is this just one of the tricks the Blest use? As Carn stepped behind Deon, doubt burned in the vassal's mind. Does the fairness of my skin suggest that I have not practiced adequately? Do my lack of scars suggest that I am careful in swordplay, or that I am inexperienced? He looked down at his own body for a second, and instead of the gangly body of his youth, the training of the last ten years left thick muscles in all the right places. But do they look like enough for me to enter battle in defense of my Lord? He caught Carn's eye again as the powerful Lord reached Deon's right side. He finished his circle, and stood before Deon, again silent for a moment. "You do not trust me fully, do you?" Deon wondered what he could possibly do but deny this cage and hope to be believed... "No, say nothing. You do not obey fully, either. I said, 'Remove your clothes.' Did I say 'Remove some of your clothes?'" "No, milord," Deon mumbled, as he stood, petrified. "Well? Do so." "Yes, my Lord. I am sorry, my Lord." Deon slid off the last piece of cloth, and stood silently, trying to hide his self-consciousness. "Very good." Carn took a step closer, with the thin smile of a predator about to pounce. "Very good indeed. There are many ways to serve, you know. Serve me in this way and perhaps I will delay asking you to serve in others."

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Deon comprehended little of what his Lord was saying. With his Lord standing behind him, his Lord's body pressed against his bare flesh, Deon could feel Carn's pulse through his pants. But the Code forbade... this could not be.... But my honor lies in the faithful service of my Lord. I obey every word and wish, no less. Thus, Deon's mind was on the days he spent with Father, reviewing the Code, and the emphasis Father always placed on obedience. The force with which he had pledged his own service, although Deon thought that fervor had waned somewhat since Carn's ascension. He could almost hear Lord Kotana declaiming: "It is my job, my honor, my place in life. And it will be yours, too. Obey completely, properly, respectfully, and you can never be disgraced." When it was over, he had not raised a groan of protest, nor shed a tear. Now, he would not let on that he was in pain, or confused or felt dirty. Lord Carn traced the lines of muscle along Deon's back, sighed and rolled away from the violated vassal. Then, as Deon began to stand, Carn stood, too, grinning with more than fleshly satisfaction. "Ah... I have waited so long for this. Well," Carn paused, grabbed his randomly discarded garments and tried to act lordly, "I suppose you are free to go, Deon desCarn." "Thank you, my Lord. I take my leave, then." From that day he had said nothing about Lord Carn's occasional attentions. He hardly even let it cross his own mind. It was not so hard to ignore the matter, to pretend he was not even in his body as it was thus employed. Deon shivered at the memory, curled up and sat amongst the crumpled bedding. His service in Carn's bed had not disadvantaged him, and with his noble blood had exempted him from servicing his ruler's other need, for blood. Until the last of course, when Carn's two passions had somehow combined into... Deon's hand wandered to the place on his chest where Carn had last touched him, torn his flesh. His questing fingers found nothing. Deon froze. He moved his fingers, searching left and right and still found nothing but smooth flesh. Where yesterday he had been only half healed, today he was entirely whole. It was impossible. Deon's mind was already fogged with more thoughts and feelings than it could comfortably encompass, but all that was wiped clean by a new and more dreadful suspicion. What if he was becoming one of the Blest? It was said that they healed remarkably. A blessing indeed to have such powers, although they were what his grandmother had quietly and bitterly called the cursed; the vamphiri.

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His mother's line, as Carn named it, might have taught him the proper bane. He stood and paced to the window wishing his child self had owned the sense to heed his woman-kin, witches every one. The guards camped in the front yard, the smoke of their morning fire already curling upward. Yes, he remembered, they had said it would be a particular hardship to stay out on the street and he had been in no mood to argue. Deon straightened his clothes and went down the stairs. He, as a child, had spoken a few thoughtless words about his grandmother's practices to a friend. That friend had passed them to his father, a superstitious but powerful councilor. The twin outcomes were that his grandmother was nearly burned for her black arts and she never spoke freely around him again. Nor had his mother or sister in their turn. He toyed with the idea that Lorn might have healed the wounds but he hardly felt able to ask. He prayed that was the answer, clinging to a hope that he did not expect would prove justified. Lorn had stoked the fire in the living room. He sat huddled upon the torn sofa and stared into the flickering grate. Deon mistrusted his ability to speak to Lorn without somehow making matters worse. Somehow, this confusing man thought that the honor a man bore his employer tainted whatever other things they could be to each other. Whilst he was not entirely sure it was proper to be such a thing at all and frankly had other matters to mind. With the city crouching under threat of war he had greater choices to make than whether to enter into a liaison. He stepped quietly out of the house. The guard had changed and the man by the fire was the same grizzled veteran that had been in the house when Sheritt had broken his arm. Deon leaned against the crooked trellis. "Be here a while?" he asked. The old man grinned. "Long enough if you've something to do. Himself is still in there then?" "Indeed, and like as to stay a while. I'll be back in an hour or so, so don't let the crazy bugger wander off anywhere alone." He spoke more casually then he felt, for a rough soldier would listen better that way. The guard laughed and Deon ducked back to snatch up his cloak, quickly enough that Lorn wouldn't have time to ask what he was up to. He trotted along the pier and cut up one of the steep alleys to the market. His imperfect memory had placed the apothecary's about two doors down from its actual position, but he found it soon enough. The man within ummed and ahhed, and searched around for minutes looking for his window-tree leaves. "Not much

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found on this side of the ditch" he said, and a good deal more than hinted that he wanted to know what Statins did with the damn things. Deon placidly ignored his hints and wisely refused some cut-price album nigrum, before paying the outrageous price he was asked for his chosen herb, without demur. He had a dim memory of grandma bending over the fire making window-tree tea when she thought the neighbor had but a curse on her. Window-tree was a bane. No knowing if it would work against being bitten, and worse, by one of the so-called Blest, but it was the best he could come up with at the moment. As he stepped from the shop, he saw a sight that chilled his blood. Standing, casually in the midst of the square was Merrick, Lord Carn's envoy, the very man that had interrupted his drill to tell him that Carn awaited his presence in the main stable. Deon had spared few thoughts for the boy as he rose through the ranks of the guard. As a decade slipped by, Merrick had grown from an eager child, into a quiet and cynical youth -- Carn's own squire with all that that implied. Deon walked carefully and with downcast eyes as he skirted toward the cover of the vegetable stand. He watched through a curtain of onion strings as Merrick swept his gaze around the crowd and drifted over towards the arched close where those needing employment loitered. Deon spent a few moments telling himself that he had no interest whatsoever in Merrick's doings, before he began to edge in the same direction. He was so busy looking at Merrick and trying not to look as if he were, that he trod hard on someone's foot. He cursed, turned to apologize and found himself staring straight into Selene's eyes. His old second in command inches away and as large as life, which was fairly large in this case. He had to raise his eyes a few inches to find hers. "My lord," she said in a hushed voice and wrapped him firmly and suddenly in her broad arms. She quickly released him and looked around surreptitiously to see whether anyone was paying them much heed. "I'm watching the little bastard too," she said. "But not to worry, he's arranged to meet a squaddie of mine. Thinks Vishal's a spy of his when really he's a spy of mine." Deon closed his mouth and tucked the paper-wrapped window-tree leaves into his belt. He beckoned Selene and she followed him along a quieter street to a secluded bend in the wall, where it overlooked nothing more than height and sea and was overlooked in turn by only windowless walls. Selene looked to Deon. "My Lord Deon," she said as she went down on one knee before him. "I was so sure you were dead."

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"For heaven's sake, get up," Deon said looking nervously around. "Your 'Lord Deon' is quite dead, but what in the sky's name are you doing here?" She sighed and stood, clasping him by the shoulders. "Lord Carn stayed around when it was apparent that you were nowhere to be found. He didn't look for you too hard. Instead, he set Merrick the Weasel up as first-in and Merrick set about firing every foreigner on the staff, even the cooks and whores." "Shit, Selly," Deon leaned back against the dry rock rampart. "He is setting up for a war." Selene nodded her agreement. "I snatched up the contract-broke mercs, almost every one had crack weapons skills, and I poached a few of your best who didn't like the way things were going. We're camped just out of town, going by 'Broken Sword.'" "Broken Sword?" Selene almost blushed. She pulled a cord from around her throat and dangled a shard of metal knotted on the end. He recognized it immediately. It was piece from the hand's-breadth sword that Carn had shattered. "I found half a dozen fragments in the stable," she said. "But not the rest of the weapon. You raised a weapon to a Sixth Lord, naturally I assumed that you were dead. I thought I had no damn interest working for any else on that side of the strait." She leaned forward and looked into his eyes. "You were for real, trying to build a defensive force that would also serve to keep peace, bring justice and help in civil emergencies. I thought you were just a smoke-blower for the longest time but then..." She shook her head and Deon was amazed to see tears beginning in her eyes. "Selly," he chided; then he thought. "Contract-broke you said. They didn't pay people off properly?" "Some of us were lucky to get out alive," she replied. "You know me and my damn mouth. I told Merrick just what I thought of him and he made it pretty clear that I'd probably be dead by morning, that's when I lit out. I still figure to stay out of combat if I can. Set up a school. To get the ready money, we can hire out for a while. Bodyguards, couriers, and such. I've got a score of the best, that any one would pay to learn from, everything but a horse master," she said. Selene had always been in awe of his hand with horses. Her father's line bred fast-pacers. She hated the old man but the respect for wrangling seemed to have stuck with her. That and a bunch of dishonorable ideas that come from being raised in the isles and working both sides of the strait.

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"I haven't a cent," he said. "None of us has," she replied without pause. "But if we stick together we can scrape enough up, I'm sure, or borrow if we have to. Then we can set up in Spindlegate or Shent and train up..." "People to slaughter our erstwhile colleagues and friends," finished Deon dourly. "Is that worse than letting them sail over here and decimate these clueless civvies? Oh, Sky above, forget the school. We'll do whatever you want. You are my Lord still, and it's the same for most of them. So long as you take us away from the front. I am done dying on someone else's time." Deon blinked. Selly had written him off for dead, formed up a plan for the balance of her own life, but she was willing to call it all off on his whim. He began to wonder whether he hadn't been retaining a master archer and top field commander under false pretences. All of those evenings of comfortable comradeship began, in retrospect to look quite like something else. "I'm working a job here," he said. Most of his mind was preoccupied with wondering why he seemed to be turning down the best offer he was likely to get. Good friends and a trade he was good at; it was a new life. Opinionated instincts, however, were declaring that he had no intention of deserting Lorn and that he had some new insight why a man wouldn't want to sleep with someone under their command. He had never thought of Lorn as a commander before. He was a civvie right? He didn't wear a sword, but then, Sky knew what he could do with magic. He had hurt Sheritt pretty good whilst halfway around the city and fully unconscious, maybe he just didn't damn well need a sword. And a commander, well, the heart breaks the bonds of obedience. It wasn't a good idea to mix love and command. "So you're going to stay here and get stomped by Sea Garrison up close and in person," she said. "I like my plan better. Ah, damnation and the sea," she said. "You've already gone honor deep for some set-up here. Pull out and come with me, for once let someone else do the honorable thing." "If I had any honor, I wouldn't be here," Deon replied tersely. "Bullshit," she replied in her usual inimitable fashion. "I tried to kill my Lord."

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"Good, I never liked him much anyway, and seeing what him and Merrick are doing at the bastion hasn't changed my mind. Now, Merrick has followed us out here. He arranged to meet little Vish, you remember him, scary with a saber. Somehow, Merrick thinks he'll buckle under a little leaning, but either way there's nothing but the truth to tell. We are all getting out of the wedge. He has nothing to worry about and I'm not expecting any trouble. But what we're talking about here is whatever over-fortunate fool you've pledged to." "The Iseult." "The Iseult," she said, surprised. "If the poor fool wasn't doomed, that might even work. Those folks are very straight-arrow, just like you. But Deon, what would the Code say about abetting a witch?" "Told you I don't have any honor. I struck my Lord," Deon said tensely. The words sounded false in his own mouth and so were hardly likely to convince a woman as canny as Selly, yet her response proved him wrong at that. "You actually believe that crap," she said tiredly. "Well, I knew you did, but I for one know that the Code didn't make you what you are and losing it won't change you much. It will probably just allow you to blow off the prejudices wound through Statin so-called honor like killing weeds. So set the Iseult up with a new sword, hell, one of my lot might go for it, and come with me." Deon looked at her and knew that she wasn't asking for a business partner. Not that she would expect any more from him, but certainly she would hope for it and it seemed wrong to feed that hope when he had not the urge to consummate it. Certainly something that wasn't true of Vishal by his best guess. He opened his mouth to refuse, when Bethany came strolling around the corner. "Ah, Selene," she said slyly. "He one of yours?" "Was once," Selene replied breezily. "Would be again given half the chance but it seems your Iseult beat me to it." She turned from Deon reluctantly and assumed a benign expression, from which Deon took his cue. Bethany did not waste time disbelieving them. "Well, perhaps you will join him then," she said. "The mayor would discuss that prospect with you." Whilst Selene tried to talk her way out of the unwelcome audience Deon contrived to make himself scarce, something both women noticed but neither hindered, intent on their own argument.

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six Lorn felt listless. His day had begun more perfectly than any other had in many years. Then it had quickly tipped into desolation. The imminent war and poor prospects for an effective defense had spurred him to greater efforts. He, of all the denizens of the city, had some chance of being treated as neutral, or at least due diplomatic respects, even from the Statin. The few agencies who had deliberately killed one of Iseult's children had barely lasted long enough to regret waking Her might. It was, however, an efficacy well balanced by somnambulence. Nothing short of his death would mobilize his siblings in power. He lay upon the sofa and considered that a properly devious suicide might draw his colleagues into the coming conflict. It was not an altogether serious consideration, nor was it as light hearted as it should have been. With the Statin attack of the previous day on record, any further harm would tend to be laid at their door, thus putting the Iseult firmly in opposition to them. He looked up to see that Dee had ghosted back into the room and was perched on the arm of the old carved chair. Lorn lay across the sofa, one foot resting upon a grey flower of filler where the cloth had been cut. "How did that happen?" Lorn said, prodding the damaged upholstery with his heel, and trying to re-establish conversation on a safely trivial level. "I needed somewhere to put my sword while I checked whether you still lived," Dee replied blandly. That topic hardly served Lorn's purpose, but it did remind him that the proper basis for his relationship with this man was gratitude, not resentment. He smiled as best he could and tried to push his unruly feelings back into whatever dark recess they had emerged from. He had not thought that such passions and hope could still be found within him and could only try and slay them whilst they were still little in their ill-formed infancy. It was a grim resolve and better accomplished without temptation lying always close at hand. "I won't be hiring any more guards," Lorn said. "In fact, I think it would be best to discharge you from that service. It is a matter of days now before the Statin mainland attacks. The sea and sky are calm and with the mist, our visibility is poor. Our defenses are sketchy at best. Common sense and every portent I have cast this morning agree. If you choose to join the mayor's best efforts at a stand, then I commend your courage if not your intelligence, but there is no need for you to stay here." Dee looked back at him calmly. "You are terminating my employment?"

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Lorn found hope and despair together in the way Dee seemed so indifferent to his suggestion. Part of him had hoped that Dee would argue against him, an argument he would not have resisted with any great strength. But it was said now and accepted; it must be so. "Effective tomorrow morning," Lorn confirmed. "Take a month or two in severance, the Iseult can afford it." Dee looked at him steadily like some fool hound waiting for his master's command, but apparently, there was more on his mind than that. "Come with me then," Dee said. "The Iseult cannot expect you to stay in a doomed city." Those stubborn hopes rekindled. It was tempting to think that he could just run away, but he had greater responsibilities than those to his own irrational heart. The people of this city would need him, when worst came to worst, and there were few to stand between them and the abuses of the Vampire Lords. "They have already recalled me, twice," Lorn admitted. "I dare say that if they had a Statin notion of obedience they would have done something to punish my refusal by now, or would at least be less inclined to come to my aid when everything here goes to the wind. But the Iseult are a fraternity, they will come for me regardless. Given their combined abilities I am likely to survive." Lorn said the words grimly. Each practitioner of Iseult was based in a college that taught certain skills and supported those that traveled into the land to heal or judge. The Iseult first or fourth colleges could reach out and simply pull him to safety, as long as he did not resist them, but they would be unlikely to worry about the niceties of securing the safety of his employees. The porting talent combined with the seers of the second college and the telepaths in all five made it unlikely that the coming conflict would take his life, although, for spite, they might allow it to come close. "Why?" Dee asked, getting to the heart of the matter. "What is your allegiance to this place? Most of those that are big enough to draw fire and are free to leave have already left. Why not you?" Lorn laid his head back on the arm of the sofa. "Whilst my old teachers lived, I stayed at their side. I have an understanding of the forms that is uniquely multifaceted, I can teach almost anyone where most can only teach one out of ten that come to them to learn. For this reason I was waived my journey and my placement. I just taught, a duty many must wait well into old age to earn. Then my old mentors began, as old folk do, to die. The new ones resented my privileges and decided I need to be taught humility. They sought to show that I had no special place in the order, no special skills. They sent me out here, my much-delayed journey. A journey with no purpose, no reason but to teach me my place."

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"So what? Now you can leave." "Now I don't want to. Perhaps just to annoy them, perhaps childishly. They thought to put me out of the way, but I am still able to rankle them, even here." Lorn could tell that Dee didn't believe him, but Dee was wrong. Lorn had thought himself indispensable to the Iseult and he never forgave the new guard for proving him wrong. "I just want to make them come live in the real world. They insisted I do it. Those scheming witches, most of whom have never been out of the larger courts and safer provinces. Well, let them get their hands dirty clawing me out of here. Let them see what is really happening to these people, these people they put me with and made me get to know -- these people they won't lift a hand to help." Lorn's voice rose, he stood and found himself close to Dee. The Statin's smaller stature gave him an illusion of fragility that the blood-painted kitchen belied. "I won't leave you," Dee said. "You don't know war. You don't know what will happen when they come over the wall and it becomes every man for himself. Your lady friends; the mayor, Bethany, they may stand. Most of the guard will run, most everyone else will do what they can to curry favor with invaders or avoid their notice." Dee sighed deeply. "Which is the last thing the Statin will respect. They want to preserve local government to the extent they deem it worthy and that is the extent to which it remains coherent and mounts a defense. If the city could withstand even the first attack it might be enough for an orderly transfer and a no need to cull out the sheep." Lorn frowned. "One attack. I was sure that I was pretty much spitting at the sea here, but... just one attack." Dee leaned toward him. "Hold one wave and ask for terms from a position they can respect. They will still own the place but most everything from the mayor down can stay in place. Otherwise, you won't be counted as combatants and so the whole city and everyone in it will be considered below the notice of law; not deserving on honorable treatment as it is designated by the Code." Lorn slumped back on the sofa. "I'm a fool," he said. "I hadn't put it together. If the mayor gets within Code, then the law applies. Well, the Code, which is a kind of law. It's something, something more than blood running in the streets. They'll put her under one of these High Lords. An occupation, rather than an extermination."

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It made sense. The pirates at Tace had resisted for years, they now had their own territory and even a High Lord who was from their own kind. A little town like this would not be expected to put up much of a defense and that expectation could be used in their favor. If they could creditably stand, for just one wave, it might be enough to concede their defeat under terms, rather than have it ripped from them as a prize of war. "But how," Lorn said. "Although I can ward the Art, I don't know what a High Lord might be capable of. They use the forms in ways unknown to the Iseult and they have more power than a coven so small should be able to wield. And beyond that there is their army. The guard, even should they all stand, are just too few." Dee looked at him speculatively. "Just how much money do you have in that brass cabinet?" *** It was amazing, Deon considered, that a man could have a cabinet full of gold coins and never think of resorting to mercenaries. The mayor had certainly thought of it but he doubted the city coffers had the coin. For all that Lorn was discontented his exile was hardly a penniless one. Lorn had been set to interrupt the mayor's interview with Selene, but Deon was mindful of Merrick's presence in town and recommended a more discreet approach. Better that Carn have no advance warning if they could get Broken Sword on their side. By the time night fell, they had counted out the money. It seemed that their best chance was to offer a ridiculously high price and hope the conflict came before they ran out of funds. It would take a ridiculously high price to lure Selene out of combat retirement, enough to found a training academy, perhaps. It was tenuous, but recognizably in the nature of a plan. Still, Deon could not sleep. By sheer force of will he lay completely still, but he could hear Lorn tossing and turning in the next room. The dark hours drifted by interminably while Deon listened to every faint sound and catalogued their sources. The last caused him some concern. It seemed most likely to have emanated from someone trying to gain access to the house through the down stairs window. He was almost glad to have something else to think about, rather than how hard his narrow cot was, and how empty was Lorn's rather larger pallet. Things are getting pretty desperate, he considered, when the possibility of imminent bodily harm comes as a welcome release.

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He moved down the dark stairs, keeping his feet to the silent edges of the steps. He crept across the dark kitchen and investigated the living room. Nothing seemed amiss and all was quiet, but for the slight creaking of the lemon tree in the back yard, in the gusting winds. Now sleep was fully banished, so Deon laid his bare sword across the kitchen table and pulled the window-tree leaves out of the kitchen larder. He scrubbed out the old and long-disused pestle. He scraped the fresh ground leaves into a kettle and added a handful of tea-leaves to the mix. As it came slowly to the boil over the kindled kitchen fire, he let his mind dwell on what it might be to be Blest. Strength, certainly, and maybe something of the Art. Ease of healing and... It was all made from the blood others. He could hope that the bloodlust came as a choice not a compulsion but he suspected the Blest would not live long without it. Perhaps it was also transmitted in the blood, although he was not sure that he as much as scratched Carn during their rather one-sided struggles, except at the last. His body shook somewhat and he told himself it was from the cold. The window-tree leaves made a rather glutinous tisane, and bitter tasting. He choked it down and hoped it was not poison. Even if it was, he considered, merely a matter of what would kill him first; the tea, the curse, the war or his own amorous anxieties. He set the kettle on the hearth and sighed. Then, turning, he added another item to his list. Merrick sat upon the kitchen table. He had Deon's sword laid across his knees and his face was split by a blithe and sinister smile. "I really do not know the source of Lord Carn's fascination with you," Merrick said. He weighed the blade and turned its point casually towards Deon. Deon cast his eyes around for any weapon to turn to his own defense as Merrick slid casually off the table and glided towards him. He was not the same youth he had been when Carn had first acquired him to be his aide. His skin tones leaned more to marble now than rose, his movements were smooth and sinister and he held the heavy blade effortlessly aloft with one slender, untrained, wrist. "Have you even told Carn I am here?" Deon asked with a voice that sounded, even to him, remarkably detached. Merrick stood close to him now; the unwavering sword-point hovered barely an inch from Deon's throat.

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"Oh," Merrick purred. "I don't think he need ever know." He punched the blade forward. Deon stepped around the blow and curled his fingers over Merrick's fist. Merrick made to pull free, as if he expected the gesture to be effortless, but Deon held him. With growing confidence, his put his other hand around Merrick's throat. Merrick, he conjectured, is also being affected by the curse. He was used to the advantage that it gave him, but Deon had that advantage too, to some extent. That and years of arms training and battle experience. He twisted hard and Merrick dropped the blade, but Merrick writhed free from his grip. Deon stooped to snatch up his blade and was poised to skewer his would-be murderer when he was frozen, and bent double, by a wrenching pain in his gut. He struggled to ignore the pain but it was relentless. Merrick paused a moment, then pounced. Deon felt himself thrown through the air until he lay backwards across the table with only his lower legs dangling over the side. "Shhh," Merrick whispered. "You are already dead, but if you make a sound or another move to stop me, I'll kill the raggy little witch too and we wouldn't want that would we?" Deon heard his own breath harsh in the night quiet. His mind raced. The table had shuddered and cracked as he hit it, the sword had clattered on the hearth -- that, with their own raised voices, must surely have been enough to wake Lorn, He made sure he did not look towards the stairs, not wanting to direct Merrick's gaze should Lorn actually be there. He strove with all his might to break free but the insidious leaves were rapidly sapping his strength. Bane or poison, it was acting now at the worst possible time. Merrick smiled again, displaying his fine pointed teeth. Looking into Merrick's eyes glinting in the last low ebb of the fire in the otherwise dark room, Deon froze. Merrick pinned him securely with a hand over each wrist and a knee on his chest. One thought hammered in Deon's mind. "You'll do it anyway, won't you?" Deon rasped. "That's why you are here -- you and your incompetent accomplices. Why not use someone from the Bastion force, little First-In, don't trust them? Don't think they'd choose you over me?"

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Merrick snarled. He grasped Deon's hair in one hand and bent back his head. Deon flailed with his free hand as he felt the skin and flesh of his throat tearing. His questing fingers closed around Merrick's own belt knife and flashed to bring it to bear. It seemed that Merrick's mind was drunk on blood, unable stop his sucking even to protect himself. Deon stabbed him over a dozen times and pulled him limply loose. Surprisingly thick blood oozed from Merrick's many wounds. Deon lay on the table still, but the pain in his stomach clenched tighter so that he turned on his side, drawing his knees up to his chest. He could just see Merrick sprawled feebly upon the floor. Deon coughed and felt his neck with one shaking hand. There were cuts and gashes there but they did not seem deep or vital. His belly's protestations waned and, deeming it likely to be a temporary peace, Deon was quick to stagger to his feet whilst he was able. He skirted widely around Merrick's unquiet but feeble reach and pushed loose the bar on the door, only to find the small guard party quite occupied in surrounding the ruffled looking figure of Vishal in the midst of their circle. Deon could only surmise that he had been watching over the house or attempting to visit it, when the guard had intervened. Vishal was tied at the wrists but that did not stop him from exchanging increasingly heated words with his captors. Deon coughed again, quite involuntarily but it served to get their attention. They all froze except for Vishal who immediately stepped towards Deon. "My Lord, are you well?" he asked with gratifying concern. The four guards were immediately spurred to action. One stopped Vishal from going further whilst the other three ran to the house, having Lord Lorn's safety as their main concern. In the confusion Deon made sure to pour the dregs of his tea down the sweepings hatch, before reporting to Lorn's side. The witch had apparently finally dropped off to sleep prior to Merrick's arrival and thus missed the entire confrontation, of which Deon was very glad. *** The entire company assembled in Lorn's living room. With the guard's determination to stand, there was barely sufficient furniture. After various people had reported to those above them, the gathered crowd included Dee, two mercenaries, four guards, Bethany, Thea, Jule and an unidentified Statin -- rather the worse for wear as was Dee himself. The commander of Broken Sword had been the last to arrive. Selene D'Isle was an imposing person, tall with a broad face and close cropped hair. Lorn could almost understand the stock Dee placed in her. Reluctantly, given that no one else seemed likely to, and it was his house, Lorn took charge of matters.

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"So," he said loudly to draw their attention. "What we know is that this Statin attacked Dee and this mercenary was keeping my house under surveillance. You will forgive me if I begin with Dee's assailant. He is, or had dealings with, a necromancer of some note. He shows all the signs of being one who steals the vital essences of others to augment his strength and lengthen his life. Which is why, Jule, it would not be wise for you to go near him. You may rest assured his life is in no danger despite the apparently grave nature of his wounds. They were much worse just a few minutes ago and will probably be gone by dawn." Jule frowned her displeasure but forbore comment and the two guards took small steps further away from their tightly-bound prisoner. Lorn, for his part, channeled energy from the house ward into partially nullifying the blood drinker's ill-gotten advantages. It had been remiss of him to have the ward detect intruders by their magical essence. Dee should have been illustration enough that on rare occasions a person has no such essence to detect. "I do wonder," Lorn said heavily, "What he hoped to gain by striking against you." Lorn noticed he was not the only one who looked to Dee for that answer. Dee had about him the uneasy aura of a person who, if not actually concealing something, is certainly leaving some matters left unsaid. Only Selene kept her eyes, with apparent ease, on other parts of the room. Dee remained silent until Thea finally said, "It gives me no faith, Dee, that you take so long to answer." Dee frowned with mild affront. "It should give you some faith that though I might not answer every question posed, I am not in the habit of lying, either." He looked to the ceiling and closed his eyes a moment as if making a decision. "The man you have bound," Dee said, "is Merrick DesCarn, first in command of the Sea State Bastion, aid and envoy to High Lord Carn. He will have other followers nearby, I'd warrant." "Others?" Lorn queried. Dee looked him in the eyes, squarely. "Other than the three he sent to abduct you." There was uncomfortable stillness in the room as everyone waited to see how Lorn would react to these revelations and Dee's apparent withholding of them until now. Lorn took care that his voice remained uncommonly calm as he continued. "Why did Merrick move against you?" he said.

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Dee shrugged. "He may have seen me in the market this morning and known that I would recognize him. He may merely have come to finish what he started with you and meant only to eliminate me first." "How is it you know each other?" Bethany interjected suspiciously. Selene answered, "I know him too, as does Vish and most of my company. A person living by their sword on that side of the strait can normally find work at Sea Bastion if they've no better offer. Or at least they could, until of late." Bethany nodded as if this confirmed some thought of hers. "So mercs, especially foreign ones, are no longer welcome around the Bastion?" she asked. "Some caught on quicker than others," Selene replied with a nod to Dee. "But things sure are getting unfriendly over there for anyone who's not an abject vassal or a sworn patriot." Bethany relaxed somewhat and Thea's frown lessened as the picture became clearer to their eyes. "Very well," Lorn said. "I place Merrick in your custody, Thea. Under the Code, you would be quite justified in executing him." "What do we care about the Code?" Bethany said. "I'll come to that," Lorn replied. "Meantime how did Master Vishal come to be here?" He addressed the question to Vishal but it was Selene who replied. "I told him our old comrade was here and he thought to come by and catch up," she said. "I dare say the guards on the porch gave him pause which is why he was watching the house rather than approaching it. And if he seemed uncooperative, well your lady mayor did almost threaten to conscript us this very afternoon and I was none too polite in return." There was a silence whilst those present re-evaluated their positions and tried to guess those of others. Lorn took advantage of the lull. "Commander Selene," he said. "If I could offer you fifty gold per head for one week's duty would you reconsider your refusal?" Selene froze, her eyes flicked to Dee and to Vishal who shrugged. "I was never so against it," Vishal advised.

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Taking her briefest hesitation as a step in the right direction Lorn pushed on. "Go now and talk it out it with your company," he said. "For I will need your answer by the time it's light. The Statin may be here at any time from now on." Thus dismissed, the two mercenaries withdrew. "You have that quantity of funds?" Thea queried. In answer, Lorn stood and lifted the cloth that covered the mound on the table that consisted entirely of neatly stacked and counted coins. "For every merc," he said. "And every guard still standing come week's end. Which must not be known by those across the strait lest they outwait my resources." He gave a meaningful look to all present, which they all easily met. "And half that amount to anyone full grown but untrained who will take up uniform and stave and stand in the ranks to swell our apparent numbers." "I had heard," Thea said. "That most Iseult lived in grand style, but I had not thought... but what of your Iseult independence now?" "Do you object to my involvement?" Lorn said in a soft but dangerous tone. Thea seemed somewhat startled but not unpleased. She had Bethany command the guards to leave and to secure Merrick as deeply and firmly as they could in the keep's dungeon. Then she turned to the more select remaining company. Jule had turned to applying a few stitches and a great deal of gauze to Dee's injuries. "We still cannot hope to win, you know," she stated sadly. "Though I am glad for the chance to at least make a fight of it." "Though I would not have it widely known," Lorn replied. "We do not fight to win. We fight to surrender under terms, rather than absolutely. We fight to pass from under Territories law to Statin Code, rather than be left merely as the spoils of war." "This is not your thinking," Bethany said, running an unsteady hand through her pewter colored hair. "Though I can understand you'd not want it known as Dee's. It might seem a plot coming from him." "It might seem so coming from me also," Lorn considered, "given the rumors. It seems to me that this plan belongs to the mayor and her captain of guard, with Dee and myself merely her advisers."

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Bethany mused. "If we put the mercs and guards in command of small parties of volunteers, the civilians could act in support and use their staves to push back scaling ladders. Those so trained would turn bow and sword to best advantage -- especially around the weaker parts of the wall where the enemy will attack in strength. If they are overconfident, as they might well be, we might repel them for a time. For time enough to offer terms, but why would they agree?" For the first time, Dee spoke up, though his voice was hoarse. "Those who prove themselves able to bear arms must be treated with honor," he said. "At least until they prove unworthy of the consideration."

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SEVEN The day dawned cloudlessly and brought with it a signed contract with Broken Sword. Hardened Statin warriors and volunteers who gathered to protect their homes lingered in a great sea of faces, bodies, and dirty clothing until Lady Thea arrived by wagon. Many of the familiar faces Deon saw as much as gave themselves away to the experienced eye, in their long habit of obedience to him. The mayor had gathered everyone unable to bear a sword, but able to wield a needle, to the production of the improvised city uniform. They had worked all through the night and up until moments before the present gathering. The design was by necessity plain, but with quarters of red and white upon the front. Bold and simple as it was, it seemed the men marched proudly in them, as they had for generations. They ducked behind wagons, slipped into alleys, knocked on doors for a moment of privacy or changed in the faint daylight, but gradually the crowd of ragwearing ruffians transformed itself into a unified and proud army -- if one could call such a small force that. They waited for instruction. Somehow, Deon had become, almost by proxy, responsible for coordinating the mercenary effort, and so he ordered the preparation of the city wall. The new army's first task was to take everything from saplings to broom handles and turn them into sturdy staves, and piles of heavy rocks were assembled at the high points of the walls. Deon waved the last group to the southeast for preparation of the wall. "Dee, about stationing..." Thea, now having his attention, began drawing a simple map of the city in the dirt to explain her strategy. Selene gave Deon a wink, a wordless promise to play along with his anonymity, although neither of them were entirely sure of its purpose anymore. Soon enough, they were moving pebbles representing groups of twenty back and forth in the dirt and arguing over them heatedly. Deon might have been cheered by his return to his true profession, but he had not formally concluded his employment as Lorn's guard that morning. It was strange to already miss a bond that had been made for convenience, and had never by any objective measure amounted to much. Yet, if he was honest, he had seen in Lorn the potential for something he had never known, a friend who was not also a follower, a lover who was also a love. That this idea seemed strange cast his life to date in a poor light. He considered and acknowledged that, but there was no time now to dally with thoughts of love when so many people's lives depended on his choices. Deon stayed in his familiar role -a leader of men, but not much of a man in his own right.

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The mood of the city was also grim, but it had a spirit of its own. While some folks stayed hidden, most turned their hand to whatever helpful industry they could. Some of the decay in the wall fell under jury-rigged repair without anyone even asking that it be done. The vague flicker of the spirit of resistance came into being and persisted; pale but steady. Lorn cast for signs and said he saw no trace of troop ships upon the strait, it being still mist-bound and beyond all normal sight. He warned though, that they might conceal the passage from him, he being but one against the resources of a nation. Deon looked upon the Iseult with gentle pity. Although the day is filled with desperate enterprise, we know that little of what needs to be done can be accomplished within the time allotted, my dear Lord Lorn has little to do but wait. Most of those present were sufficiently in awe of the Iseult to resist any effort he made to contribute to the manual labor. And having checked over the last of the wall wards, he took to drifting from place to place like a restless spirit. Finally, it grew dark enough that an attack that day seemed unlikely. Thea, Lorn, Deon and Bethany met. This council of four was quickly becoming recognized as the city's new leadership despite the absence of anyone of distinctly noble blood. They determined to gamble that the assault would not come at night, not across water and unknown terrain. Besides, the defenses were substantially improved with most people sleeping at their posts or spelling each other to go to shelter nearby. It would be better that all get what rest they could in preparation for what might come upon the morrow. So much terror and turmoil for the simple greed of the rulers of the Sea States. They grasped for more land, more serfs, more power -- simply because these things were there to be taken. Deon felt nausea throughout the day but fought to make no sign of it, not least because it might seem that he was afraid. If he was somewhat less than quick or limber he had recent wounds to blame for it. Wounds and bruises, which seemed to be healing no more rapidly than they should. Deon carried the window-tree leaves in his belt pouch and when tea was passed to him as evening fell, he added some discreetly to the brew. Not half the amount he had taken the previous night, in the hope that his body might accept the dose more calmly. He stood and went out to the guard's walk, and was surprised to find Lorn standing there looking pensively into the fog-shrouded sea. "By your own words, my Lord. We had better sleep." Lorn turned to him with the haunted eyes that marked any man awaiting his first battle. Deon met them with confidence in his own.

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"Your Lord no longer," was all Lorn said. My Lord always, Deon thought but did not say. It was a thought that surprised him, but seemed no less true for that. Was it just a long habit of obedience, or something more? He put out his hand, as if offering to guide Lorn to his rest. But as Lorn stepped closer in he reached instead and put it to Lorn's waist, drawing them together. In a day they might all be dead, so he wanted to pay no further heed to his fears. A kiss, however was a serious matter and he leaned away from it. "It is said that your soul is on your lips, when you kiss," Deon said. He stood still. Not drawing close, not drawing away. "A quaint idea," Lorn said, smiling. Deon shrugged slightly. "A sensible one," he said. "The body is, in many ways, a matter of indifference. But love can take, or fail, upon a kiss." Thus, he set the question in simple terms and Lorn merely waited to see it answered. It was a strange sensation to kiss a man. That gesture had not been in Carn's strange repertoire of intimacy and perversion. A simple kiss, a point of warmth and comfort in a cold and imperiled place. He felt the desperate energy in Lorn's body and felt his own react by balking somewhat regardless of the readiness of his mind. Lorn pulled a little away and reached to brush back Deon's hair. There was concern and restraint in his eyes, but passion beneath betrayed by the brightness of his gaze and his rapid breathing. "Please tell me you choose freely, now," Lorn pleaded as he stroked Deon's neck with a restless hand. "Freely," Deon said, and added with a smile. "Although we might adjourn to somewhere more private." Lorn pulled Deon close to him. Deon put his own arms around Lorn's waist and pressed his face into Lorn's shoulder, the soft cloth of Lorn's robes against his check. He knew with startling clarity that this moment made everything worthwhile. Should he die on the morrow he would hardly regret it so long as he might have this one night. ***

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Lorn's room was the closer one and by wordless agreement they went through the narrow corridors towards it. They did not hurry. Lorn walked with one arm around Dee's waist -- a simple gesture of their accord. They went into the room and Lorn stepped away just a moment to close and bar the door. The room was but dimly lit by the dusky sky where it showed through one high and shuttered window. Lorn's resolve had melted softly away, with war upon the horizon and Dee seeming willing he pushed any regrets to the back of his mind, finding the true value of the moment. "If war comes right now," he said, "They can have it without us." Deon reached out and Lorn went to him. Dee untied the laces at the neck of Lorn's robe. His fingers moved with slow confidence, but Lorn saw how they shook. Dee smoothed the wide neck of the robe apart and it slid over Lorn's shoulders , moved slowly over his body and onto the floor. Lorn was not much given to bashfulness, but he found himself standing naked before Dee who still wore cloak, tunic, breeches and sword-belt. "It seems to me that you are too much dressed," he said. He fumbled with Dee's belt and Dee dropped his cloak and lifted his tunic over his head. They kissed again, skin sealed to skin. Dee moaned, his back arching as he pressed himself into Lorn's embrace. Lorn felt the muscle of Dee's back shifting beneath satiny skin. Dee's body, slight and strong, beguiled Lorn's senses. He shuffled forward, towards the bed. Dee lay back onto the bed, pushing off his boots, one foot against the other while Lorn pulled down Dee's breeches. In the dim light each plane and curve of Dee's body was laid out before him, gilded with dusky light. He put his left hand as a light restraint upon Dee's chest and his right on Dee's thigh. His lips descended firmly and Dee cried out and clutched at the covers of the bed. Lorn stroked the length of Dee's cock slowly and mercilessly. Dee seemed both pleased and somewhat startled by this attention. After a while he curled forward, reaching out. "Come here," Dee said. Lorn slid up, along Dee's body. They kissed again, deeply and with growing confidence. It beggared belief that he finally had his prize, here in his hands. A man he had thought would never accept the touch of any man, let alone his own, and so easily.

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He did feel some tension in Dee, but it leaked away beneath Lorn's caresses. Dee's body pressed up against Lorn's questing hands like an eager sacrifice. *** The first sight of Lorn's long, pale body had struck Deon to the core. As Lorn prowled up along the bed, desire welled up within Deon. He felt so deeply and incredibly alive. His fingers wondered at the grain of Lorn's soft skin, and caught in the long mane of his hair. Suddenly Deon wanted take him, to be inside him. He hesitated, trying to reconcile the action he knew only from Carn's almost contemptuous attentions with the altogether gentler emotions he felt for Lorn. Lorn lay before him on the bed. Deon nuzzled Lorn's smooth shoulder, gripping his skin softly between sharp teeth. Deon moved slowly, carefully retraining the desires within him. Lorn turned so that they lay spooned together. Deon ran his hand down the contour of Lorn's side, the seamless beauty of ribcage, waist, hip, buttocks and thigh. It was almost incomprehensible to him. Deon raised himself on one elbow to look down on Lorn, offering himself before him. Lorn raised his upper thigh and Deon edged forward, using his hand to position himself. Deon knew from harsh experience that haste could be painful, so he eased himself forward slowly. Lorn reached back and caressed his thigh, urging him forward. The tight embrace of Lorn's body swamped Deon's senses; each fiber of his body keened with pleasure as he moved slowly within. A slight guilt nagged at him, for the mastery he felt over Lorn. It was banished by the soft sighs of pleasure Lorn made. Deon's free hand stroked Lorn's body tenderly. It was a strange, unhurried passion that led to a long delicious climax. Lorn turned immediately and pulled Deon into his arms. His head rested in the crook of Lorn's neck and shoulder. He could feel Lorn's breath against his ear. Deon edged against Lorn's body. He tried to fight off sleep, to savor this most precious, unfamiliar intimacy, but his traitorous mind kept skipping back in time. In the still darkness his memories were vivid and clear. He remembered running through the stubbled fields, as he had been running ever since from the implication of what had happened next. The harsh impact of the ground, the weight upon his back. He had expected nothing but swift death for his disobedience. Instead Carn had lifted the cloth of Deon's tunic. Deon felt the cold night air upon his skin. Carn's hand was firm upon his bare skin, pressing him down. A whisper of breath at his ear was scant warning of the bite. It struck his neck like the sting of a giant wasp. Deon started, but was too pinned to escape. A feeling of detachment washed over him. So that when he felt the unmistakable impression of a blade upon the skin of his back, he no longer sought to flee.

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A humming filled his ears and his attenuated view of earth and stalk became blurred as his eyes lost their focus. Carn cut into his skin, he felt the blade pierce and tug. At what came next, his mind rebelled and he had barely admitted awareness of it, then or now. Carn inside his body, probing, stroking. Inside his body. Deon lay, sleepless. That was when it had happened. That was when the curse had passed to him. He lay still, listening to Lorn's breaths become slow, his limbs lax. Deon slipped away from their embrace, unable to draw comfort from it. He sat on the edge of the bed and felt the cool air on his skin. How had he put it from his mind? How could he have thought that there was a place, now, in his life for love? He sat still and considered. Perhaps fate would be merciful and he would fall in battle on the morrow. Then Lorn need never know what kind of monster he had taken to his bed. Deon need never become that monster. The covers made soft sounds as Lorn stirred. "Dee?" he asked in a groggy voice. Deon did not answer. He sat undecided. He started at Lorn's touch, outstretched fingertips upon his waist. "Let tomorrow look after tomorrow," Lorn said softly. Deon's body shook with a tremor he knew from many a battlefield, a tremor of fear, facing the inevitability of his doom. "You're cold," Lorn chided. "Come back under the covers." There was a slight edge to Lorn's voice, perhaps because he thought Deon had regrets. As if anything between them needed regretting. Deon turned back to him and let Lorn pull him close and smooth the blanket over them both. He lay with his back snugly against Lorn's chest, Lorn's longer form spooned against his body. Deon tried desperately, just not to think. Just to have this moment, this happiness, until it must inevitably end. Eventually he slept.

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Eight With dawn Lorn shook off the intoxication of new love and went to stand upon the battlements. Dee seemed tense and distracted, but on the eve of war that was hardly unusual, surely? Word passed swiftly when the lookout with the highest vantage saw a tall mast showing through the fading fog. Lorn made to take up a stave himself, but Bethany and Thea between them convinced him otherwise. "You are not best used on the ramparts," Thea said. "And besides, we'll need you alive, should this gambit succeed, to argue terms." Lady Thea went with him to shelter in a room well behind the walls, on the high turret of the castle while Bethany and Dee went to command the action. Lorn vacillated between hoping for their safety specifically and praying for the city entire. Horribly delayed reports came to them, huddled in the midst of the more craven nobles. Scattered attacks were made to test the city's defenses and tempt the thin line of defenders to reveal a break. Lorn felt no use of the Art against the city wards, and then trouble came suddenly from another direction. Great hands of the Art grabbed his body, a porting spell, coming not from the Statin but, badly timed, from the Iseult. They had lost patience with him, at last, and chosen the method of retrieval that best displayed their arrogance. He could feel compensatory levitation and the dimming of the complaints that inevitably come from the scared and powerful. His mind grabbed for anything to represent and so resist, being ripped out of his place, and so a monstrous hand appeared above him, for his sight only. Lorn stabbed the pattern of the spell in its fragile palm with the dagger of his mind -- his frustration from the day, fear, and anger -- quickly and mightily, or else he might be lost in the place between places that porting passed through. He was a hair short of quick enough, managing to fall back into the room with Thea but not without taking some damage. Lorn collapsed to the floor feeling a warm wetness that he feared was blood upon his face. The Statin force contained, it seemed, a watchful mage who took the chance to strike whilst the wards stood on their structure and stored strength alone, without their creator's vigilant attention. Lorn deserted his body entirely with impatience and set his attention on holding the wards. If the Iseult took him now he wished them the joy of the soulless corpse they'd get. His attention floated free over the city, at the risk of never returning to his body at all, but the wards all held. He felt the Statin soldiers strike simultaneously at several points. The people facing them, however, stood. Stood and fought, stood and died, or even cowered behind cover, but what was important was that none ran and lost their honor in the attackers eyes. He heard the roar of the confident attackers outside the city and the moans of the dying within.

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The ward was attacked by spells that would raise wind and fire, by spells that would shake the earth, but none broke through. All that failed was the small spell that helped keep Merrick locked in his dungeon and he could only hope that stone alone would serve there for a while. *** A messenger carried the city's conditional surrender through a gaping breach in the wall. That he had passed unharmed through the enemy lines was proof enough to Deon that the lull in battle would last and terms would be argued. He stepped out of the room, as if for a moment, and just kept walking. It was as he said, once they had taken up arms the enemy was deemed honorable until they proved unworthy. A proof Deon had given as clear as lightening to his Lord but a few weeks before. He would be owed no quarter but death by the invaders and his association with Thea's rule could only do it harm. He ducked down rickety stairs to the small courtyard where he had tethered a horse. He was annoyed but not surprised to find it gone. Little could be depended upon in a time of siege. As Lorn was about to discover. So it was on foot that he sped through the still streets of the town, as it waited to learn its fate, looking a deserter no doubt. It would take what cunning he had to escape the encircled city, but he had little choice but to try it if he wanted to preserve his life. Painfully visible by the noon sun, he passed through barren ground near one of the sturdier sections of wall, where few stood guard. A scuffed footstep made him turn, hand to weapon hilt. The ragged figure following him raised its head. Merrick. "You'll not have my place," Merrick muttered in a half-mad voice, his face gaunt and his gaze fixed as a hunting wolf's. "You'll not have it." Deon stood en guarde, edging towards the stair that led atop the wall. "Nor do I want it, to be sure," he replied with disgust. "You've had it," Merrick replied. "From your youth by my Lord's side, and later, I know. You'd not have had the strength to stop me but that you'd been in his bed, but never again, I'll see to that." Deon digested the fact that Merrick spoke not of his martial position, but his bedroom duties, when he spoke with such wounded jealousy, but the pieces still made little sense. To feel jealousy, Merrick must feel love for Carn. Deon could hardly understand that, having received nothing but harsh use and little consideration at Carn's hands. Mixed feelings churned within him, distracting him as Merrick lunged haphazardly and Deon cut into him, his sword piercing the crazed man's stomach. Yet Merrick merely suffered the wound and kept coming, jaws agape. As Deon backed away, Merrick tripped and fell forwards against the stairs. Merrick lay

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against him, motionless. Blood ran down Deon's blade like molasses, strangely thick and dark. Deon surrendered his weapon as the glutinous blood touched his fingers. He and scrambled backwards up the stairs. Without thought, he raised his hand to his mouth, and tasted sweetness on his lips, the sweetness of blood. Realizing what he was doing, Deon rubbed his hand on the cold, rough stone, scraping off that dreadful elixir that was Merrick's blood, or possibly, just possibly any blood -- with what he seemed to be becoming. He fled onwards, up along the wall and down its crumbled side and none thought to try stopping him. Once again on foot, in rent clothing and carrying nothing more than a dull dagger, Deon fled, leaving behind what salvation he thought himself to have. But there was no one left behind, no matter how he loved them, who was not better off by the loss. *** Lorn lay propped in a high-backed chair at Lady Thea's left side. He knew he must look half dead, and Bethany, on the right, was little better. The stub of an arrow still protruded from one shin, keeping her in her seat also. Selene was whole but drawn, having friends to bury this night, Vishal amongst them. Thea stood firm, afflicted by nothing more than the weight of her city's bad fortune and an acute concern for her friends. Dee was nowhere to be found although he had been seen alive and well after hostilities ceased. Lord Carn himself sat across from them, surrounded by a party of staff and servants. He was a man of a carefully crafted appearance, charismatic and refined, yet ugly in that he embodied the deaths of all who fell defending the city. There would be hard times ahead, under his rule. A guard entered with a roughly wrapped bundle and came quickly to Bethany. After a quick word, Bethany interjected. "It seems we have found your aid de camp, my Lord Carn," she said, settling a bloodied weapon on the table, it's sacking cover falling away to either side. "He seems to be dead, as far as we can tell." Carn frowned and stood to consider the weapon. "I would have been within Code to kill him the moment his spying was detected," she said in a low voice. Carn smiled and replied in a patronizing voice. "It is as well you know your rights under the Code," he said. "For by your word, it's by the Code you'll be ruled from now on. I'll even allow that the Iseult witness and hold me to my word on this, but no more. If the Code does not suit their sense of honor they may choose not to take the duty of watching me enforce it here."

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He swept the room with eyes that glittered with malice. Drawing one long finger down the blade he brought a drop of half-dried blood to his lips and said a small word that seemed to glitter in the air. "Those within the Code may conduct themselves as they always have, but those who break it are mine entirely. Learn it and teach it quickly, for I'll give no quarter. So yes, you would have been within Code to kill Merrick DesCarn, but the one who did the act was Deon. Deon that was DesCarn, whose life was already forfeit for being found on land within my lien after the breaking of his honor. The first test of our agreement may well be how you respond when he is brought before me here, in chains, for any manner of death that pleases me." Carn signed the decree and left the room for the suite that Thea had ceded to him, as new ruler of the city. "I wonder what I have damned us to?" Thea muttered as she affixed her own name below. "Commander Deon DesCarn... Dee," Bethany said, looking to Selene. She merely shrugged and said, "I'll be taking my due in gold and leaving this land, and hoping to overtake Deon on the road. But for what its worth I think you did the best you could. The best any of us can against such as him." She took her leave and in the silence that followed Thea reached forward to the full formal scroll of the Code that Carn had brought. She unfurled it to its first sentence and began to read.

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nine There was no finesse to Deon's flight, he simply ran, ran far and hard with no concern for his health or comfort. He broke through bushes and shrubs, cut along and across paths, heedless of the harm his clothes and body took. A few times he saw Statin troops but they did no more than look at him in startlement and let him pass. They were awaiting the outcome of parley and not expecting further trouble. The forest swallowed him into its darkness as Deon ran on with uncanny endurance. Many hours later he burst into a natural clearing. The mid-afternoon light fell heavy and golden into wild grasses, the bobbing heads of flowers danced in peaceful, pendulous waves, while the butterflies sailed above them. It was somehow unkind to find a scene of such simple beauty while his heart was mired in such immense despair. Deon staggered to a halt and unclenched his shaking fists. He did not know what he was to do, where he was to go. He vaguely knew that the nearest town, Threshold, lay some days travel in the direction he was already taking. Yet he had not really decided to go there. Better he had taken the high path, not to outlive his honor. Better he had never surrendered it. Suddenly weariness sang through his bones and clutched his heart. Deon staggered. A small deer on the far side of the clearing started, seeing him for the first time. It froze on the point of fleeing. Deon's embattled will surrendered to the instincts that welled up at that sight. He leapt forward on the last of his strength, bounding across the deep grass and throwing himself upon the doe as it sought the cover of the trees too late. His arms wrapped around its torso and flailing legs, his teeth bitting deep into its slender neck. Deon felt the musty taste of hide and fur, and then the elixir of blood. He sucked that terrible nectar into his abused body, feeling indifferently, the quivering of the beast's slow-dying body. Once he had drunk his fill, Deon's mind grew warm and heavy. He crawled to the cover of the brush and saplings at the clearing's edge and curled to sleep within their whispering shade. In the early evening he heard the wolves growl over the parched remains of his kill. They did not even think to bother him, knowing a greater predator than themselves when they saw one. Deon's conscience re-awakened with the dawn. He wondered at the way his tired body and distracted mind had reduced him to little more than a ravening beast. There was no doubt now what he was becoming, or had already become. Could he live without blood now, without the blood of humans at least? He had no way of knowing. He walked listlessly through the woods. His clothes were ragged, his pockets torn, but miraculously they still held most of the coin he had brought with him. There was enough for a few weeks' food and lodgings, but to what purpose? His intentions wavered between life and death as he walked, absorbing him so greatly that the sounds ahead of him took some time to impinge upon his thoughts.

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A flickering vantage ahead proved to show a road cutting through the towering trees and disappearing from sight in either direction. He stood upon a slight rise and was well placed to see a traveler approaching from the direction of the City; a woman driving a hay cart drawn by a stoic old dray horse. Piled behind her were boxes and bundles and three children perched atop it all, the oldest a girl just into her teens. A man stood holding the reins and addressing the woman in tones of false camaraderie. "A woman alone, it seems to me you'd be grateful for an offer of protection fer you and the tikes." Deon had an instinct for ill thoughts and did not wait for ill actions to follow; that was the key to good discipline, men being what they were. He stepped out of cover. "Perhaps she is suspicious as to what payment you'd demand," he countered. The man was obviously a ruffian by the way his eyes lingered on the woman and her young charges. "Nothing that was not fair," he said with a leer. Deon put has hand upon his dagger, caressing the hilt slowly with his hand. "I'd prefer to travel on alone," the woman said, looking at them both with equal suspicion. She flicked the reins to urge her mare forward, but her assailant kept a firm hand on the bit to hold them back. "You heard the lady," Deon prompted. He drew his dagger, leaving the man with the choice of holding the horse or defending himself. He hoped fervently that there were no others of his kind nearby. Fortunately the man merely sneered and spat, and backed away, putting the cart between Deon and himself as he retreated into the forest. No doubt he would be able to find easier prey before too long and was not inclined to risk himself against a stalwart opponent, no matter how shabby. Deon nodded to the lady as she urged her mare forward. The cart rumbled alarmingly and she barely even looked back. Deon watched her draw away steadily. As was typical, his feet moved forward almost without his volition, down the road. Deon continued to let fate choose his path. ***

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Days passed before Lorn could free himself from a city that needed him, to search for a man he believed needed him more. Another Iseult, a dour looking lady, took over his task of monitoring the finely balanced peace of the occupied City, but only on the promise that he would return within the month to relieve her. Nor was his time entirely free, given his orders. Selly met him at the way station, having sent the rest of Broken Sword ahead to the free city of Threshold with their hard won wealth. Any place living with an invader on their doorstep would welcome arms-masters and no mistake; she thought to have a teaching post again. Meantime, she had a friend to find, and Lorn had to admit he drew a great deal of comfort from her solid and attentive presence. Lorn rode with Deon's sword bare in his hand and ignored the stares it drew. He was an Iseult, apparently armed. It was a matter of pride to most Iseult that the Art was the only weapon they needed against 'lesser' folk. It was one of the many Iseult conceits that Lorn had a new perspective on; now that he had been so long away from the confines of college. The binding from man to sword was strong enough to be followed, an association etched strongly in fear and blood, but this one... Deon had not held it long enough or valued it highly; it hardly remembered him at all. Lorn dismounted and walked some distance down the currently empty road. He closed his eyes, but the fluttering edge of whatever bond there might have been unraveled and slipped away like ribbons in the wind. Lorn cast the offending weapon into the ragged hedgerow. "Five days is all we have before I must report to the Third College at Threshold," he exclaimed. "And for all I know Dee has been dead in a ditch the whole time!" "Shouting won't change a man's fate," Selene replied implacably. She knotted their horses' reins together in the hope it would stop them wandering and walked over to where he stood questing for Dee's whereabouts. "If that won't serve, perhaps this will." She drew out from her tunic a small, dull shard of metal upon a braided cord. Lorn took it, bemused by what it might be. The moment he touched it, he knew. The small piece resonated, both with the sword it had been, and with the man who had borne it. Images piled into his mind and he dimly felt Selene's broad hands reach out to steady him. A kaleidoscope of images whirled through Lorn's mind. There were scattered impressions of light reflecting off the water, the roar of soldiers charging on the raw edge of their courage, the smell of silage, the imperious face of High Lord Carn and the certain knowledge of impending death. Lorn shuddered and put all those things aside, bar that final mood which clung to his heart. The feeling of a man who knew had he just a few breaths

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left to make and yet blamed himself. Lorn couldn't fully understand what he felt and had not the time to ponder it now. The sword shard seemed to tug in his hand, faintly as if some distance separated it from its erstwhile master. Lorn nodded thanks to Selly and gestured that they should return to their mounts. Lorn spurred his shortnecked mare ahead impatiently. Selene followed behind, her eyes vigilant; knowing the countryside was still dangerous in the wake of their aborted war, and Lorn's mind was too focused on its pursuit to pay any attention to the roadsides.

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ten With only a few coins in his pocket and the town flooded with refugees, Deon was lucky to find any room. It was little more than an old linen closet and dank smelling at that, but he could hardly complain. In his current mood a pleasant view or lush comfort would be wasted and the cramped, dark space he occupied seemed somehow more suitable. Deon left his cramped accommodations and went in search of the apothecary. The leaf was fairly easy to locate, a minor ingredient in many Statin remedies and not rare. This shopkeeper, like the other, was obviously curious as to the exact use of window-tree a ragged man like Deon knew. For his own part, Deon wished he did know for sure. He wondered about waiting by the shop until another bought the leaf, and asking her. But a woman who knew such things might know him for what he was and no good could come of that. He retreated back into the shuttered darkness of his room, a square space that the bed half covered. He could see a bed bug crawling laboriously across the straw shedding mattress. Deon was reduced to chewing on the raw leaves, sucking out the bitter sap. His fear that his condition was fully blown had ridden his mind during the long walk. Now he intended to quell it in the only way he could. His otherwise empty stomach began to twist uneasily. Deon ignored his body's protests as stoically as he was able. The fine lines of light, slim horizontal bars through the shutters, dimmed and died. Deon crawled up onto the mattress, curling around the growing pain in the center of his body. He continued chewing on the dry leaves, swallowing them whole until the packet was almost empty and the thought of trying to consume the last few sprigs was nauseating beyond consideration. He did not know how late it was, nor what he would do in the morning. Sleep and pain dueled across the battlefield of his consciousness. A thumping sound registered distantly, but he was not sure for some time whether it originated from outside, or from within his own fevered head. Voices argued, blurred beyond distinguishing, and there was the twist and clatter of a great bunch of iron keys. Deon became aware that his fugitive consciousness was caught in some drug-amber, neither asleep nor awake. His body lolled onto its back beneath a slender hand, his eyes fixed on some blurring middle distance, yet he could identify the face and a small part deep within him unclenched and unfurled to see it. He had not even realized how deeply he had regretted losing Lorn's company, the potential between them stillborn in the name of a greater good. Yet here he was, his long fingers stroking Deon's cheek, catching on the days-old stubble. And the solid ginger-haired form behind him was Selly, surely? "Dee," Lorn whispered with concern and almost pity. "What have you done to yourself?"

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Selly in the background asked for clean sheets, water, other things in that irrefusable, quiet way she had. He saw her bend and pick up a small leaf caught in the folds of his shirt and place it in her pocket. Deon wondered what denials he might make, but remained silent. Deon was so used, outside of his fealty to Carn, to being strong and decisive, and so unable to adapt to his new broken life. Finally now he surrendered. He let his eyes flutter closed, content that his friends would care for him for a while, whether he deserved it or not. *** Selene quickly acquired a larger, cleaner room. Lorn carried Deon's disturbingly limp body up the stairs and laid him on the bed. In repose, Deon seemed such a small man; he was in reality only a little over five feet tall. Something about his stern features and posture hid the fact when he was awake. Deon's eyes were shadowed, his arms and cheeks littered with slight cuts and abrasions. His eyes beneath their lax lids were glassy and unfocussed. Lorn's immediate fear was poison, his more leisurely suspicion, that it was self-inflicted. Selly went in search of a healer, happiest in having a chance to act. Lorn simply waited and fretted, kneeling beside the bed and leaning over to look down at Dee. "Dee, darling, what have you done?" Dee's eyes slid open for a moment, in response to his words. Lorn thought he saw a knowing look in their depths, but he received only silence in reply. His mind substituted another wan face, a man long buried in every place but his own heart. He wrapped his hand around Dee's limp hand and held on. He barely had a finger-hold on Dee. Their love was too new to even clearly deserve that name, a faint high note that could only be heard in the still of night. Such loves are even more precious than those more robust and fully grown. They are perfect in their faint outlines, like infant angels and not yet pitted and scarred by the mistakes and misunderstandings that would inevitably follow. How Lorn prayed to have the chance to make those mistakes. He already knew full well that a memory of love was a burden as painful as it was precious. He would rather have the man. He would rather have the man even if love was not possible and suffer even the most muted of friendships just to know that the one he yearned for most was alive and well. Selly returned with an old man in healer's green. He inspected Dee's eyes and felt the pulse at his neck. "What happened to you young man?" he said in the bluff tones that healers so often used. Dee's head lolled on his neck, his eyes fluttering.

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Selene showed the healer a crushed sprig of some grey-green herb. "He has taken this, we think." "I don't know it," the old man said. "Why did he take it?" He took the sprig and crushed it between thumb and forefinger. He held it beneath his nose. "We do not know," Selly replied morosely. "But I have seen him with it before." The healer looked down at Dee and sighed, as if it were the kind of sight he saw often and liked less and less every time. "Take enough of anything and it's a poison," the old man said pragmatically. "And wait long enough, he'll either die or not. I don't mean to be callous but knowing no antidote for this specific herb -- it is exotic and I doubt you'll find any here that will know it -- well, all you can do is care for him and hope. He seems strong and his heart beats well. Give him water and food when he'll take it and call me again if there is any turn for the worse." Lorn looked down at Dee and wondered. Why did he flee alone? If he had asked me, I would have gone with him. He asked me once before, and that was before we spent a night in each other's arms. This was no feckless rebellion Lorn considered. He would have deserted everything to follow Dee if that were necessary. There was something fundamental in his feeling of connection to Dee. It was a strangely frightening thought, but the thought of losing Dee was worse, far worse, than to lose anything else, everything else, in his life. Lorn kept his fingers curled tightly around Dee's hand as if his grip could hold in the fugitive warmth of life. The healer's eyes fell on their intertwined hands and for a moment his mask of professional concern took on a more genuine character. "I shall return tomorrow," he said. "I shall take this leaf with me and see what I can learn of it before then. I've a notion by the look of him that it might be a Statin herb, and there is an apothecary in town who comes from that side of the straits." Selene showed the old healer out. Lorn looked at Dee and wondered who he was meant to pray to. There scarcely seemed to be the god that had not already deserted them. ***

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Deon sat next to the broad window, its slatted shutters pulled in and tied back to let in the air. Selene, with uncharacteristic tact, had withdrawn. Lorn sat on the wide windowsill, little more than a silhouette against the bright midday sky. That day Deon had felt strong enough to leave his bed -- still weak but no longer looking in any danger of death. Lorn finally felt able to ask again. He'd asked each of his questions before this day and Deon had given him only sullen silence in return. "Were you trying to die?" Lorn asked. "Why did you go at all? Because of Carn? Fine I'd come with you. I'll go with you now. Anywhere." "No." "Why! Why?" Lorn prised at Deon's secret with the fingers of his will. Lorn sat before him waiting to hear, willing to hear. If he knew the truth, he would know Deon was a monster. Deon would lose what little time he had to be with Lorn, before the change took him; before he actually was the kind of monster that the blood made of a man. He could not say. He could not. He could not even see the eyes in Lorn's shadowed face, but he could feel their gaze. Deon turned his head aside and stared woodenly at the uneven planking of the wall. "You deserve better," Deon said. There was a long silence as Deon merely felt time passing with the peculiar detachment that he was becoming all too familiar with. "What am I meant to do, Dee?" Lorn pleaded. "When I don't understand. You say it is over between us, but you are still here. And I see it in your eyes -- I see that it is not your heart that has changed. What am I meant to do? What am I meant to believe?" Lorn slipped off his hard perch and knelt before Deon. He placed one hand on each of Deon's knees and looked up into his face as if searching for some answer there. Deon continued to regard the wall, seeing Lorn's face only indistinctly at the edge of his unfocussed gaze.

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"Let me go?" he said gently. "Let you go and kill yourself?" Lorn said with a shake of his head. With certainty he added. "No, No. I'll stay with you. However you'll have me. I'll be your servant if that's required. I'll be your friend. Wherever you go." Lorn squeezed Deon's knee gently. Without conscious thought Deon turned and looked down into his face. There were quiet tears running down Lorn's face, silently and without any other signs of grief except the pain in his deep, pale eyes. "I'll not drag you around the country," Deon said. "I'll go where you do. I think you'll find me poor company and when you tire of me let me know. That's when I'll go. When you'll not follow me." He tried to say it coolly and it seemed to him that he succeeded. Lorn shook his head in incomprehension. He laid his cheek gently on Deon's knee. "I don't understand," Lorn murmured. Every instinct screamed at Deon to reach out his hand and offer some small comfort, but his arm lay limp, as if paralyzed. He went back to looking out the high window at the passing clouds, trying to ignore Lorn's warm presence. It was like trying to ignore the sun.

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eleven Dee was out the back, practicing his sword passes. A few days rest and he was sure on his feet again, as if he had never been ill. Lorn bundled his few possessions together in preparation to leave. Selene came into the room. Lorn imagined she had been watching Deon and her first words confirmed it. "He's always been good with a saber, the Commander." "The Commander." "Well that's what he was, and good at it." Selene sat on the old wooden chair that overlooked the window. "There's moments when he's still like his old self," she said. "There's moments when it's like he's free to be himself properly, his new self. But mostly he's stuck in between and I'm sorry Lorn, but he'll not tell me the trouble either. It'll be Carn at the heart of it, but I don't know what he's done." "What could it be?" Selly shrugged. "A hostage maybe, his mother, or his uncle. But it doesn't feel like that's it and I don't know what else could be held over him or what they achieve by Deon's death or whatever ails him now." They sat together in glum silence. "Oh, I did like to see him happy," Selly said. "He was happy, wasn't he?" Lorn said doubtfully. "Oh yes," Selly said. "Like I never saw. He was always so alone. I wish it could have been me, but I was glad. I was glad that it was you. I wasn't surprised, really. I sort of knew he wasn't for the ladies, you see where a man's eyes go." Her voice trailed off. "Oh, we'll go to this college of yours. We'll have time, time to work this out." Lorn didn't think she sounded too hopeful, and he didn't blame her. "Yes," he said in muted agreement. "Time."

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*** Selene and Deon stood either side behind Lorn, their faces falling habitually into the no-nonsense indifference of true soldiers. Lorn explained as they went that the third Iseult college was small, specializing in the more physical acts of the mind, telekinesis, teleportation and levitation, and general training in a little of everything else. No great talents or geniuses here, just quiet competence. Deon remained stubbornly silent about the circumstances they had found him in, preferring to let them think what they thought was the worst. He watched with slight satisfaction how people fell back from Lorn as he walked, at least partly from the sight of his escort. Deon had lain weak for a day and a night, worrying that Lorn stayed by his side rather than reporting immediately to the college. He worried that he might still look frail, that Lorn might be in further trouble for dallying but neither seemed to be the case, as they were taken to the College Chancellor. The Chancellor, Cadence, was a lean man with wavy speckled-grey hair and a deeply lined and thoughtful face. He leaned back in his wool-wood chair and considered them. With one hand he indicated three chairs facing his own, which they took. Deon liked the look of him, he had an air of certainty and calm, suggestive of a good leader with good people behind him so that he need not indulge in displays of strength or temper. "You took quite a decisive role," Cadence said by way of dour welcome. "It seemed warranted," Lorn replied quietly. "Against blood magic, I must agree. Action is required; I only wish the Iseult would take your lead, go further even." Lorn had little he could say to that; he nodded slightly and waited for Cadence to say more. Deon watched them consider each other. Cadence came to the point. "March, who I sent to relieve you, taught the youngest. You in return, will take her duties. Selene, I understand, is part owner of the new academy in the eastward. I believe your other companion..." he referred to a notebook lying open before him on the table. "...Deon is rated an arms master. We would be pleased to offer him a contract of employment should he wish." Deon replied simply, "I would be pleased to accept."

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"We have but seven tutors here," Cadence said. "A few dozen students of every age. I expect things, even in such times as these, to be quiet. A student will come to your rooms at dusk to bring you to dine with the other tutors tonight and discuss how things stand. You will begin tomorrow." He made no pause or emphasis but it was clear he expected to be obeyed and that he knew that they had been in town some time before reporting. Deon read a steady certainty in the Chancellor's eyes and much to respect. Lorn replied, "I am happy to serve." It had the sound of a rote response, but seemed meant all the same. A girl in the spindly stage of preadolescence showed them to a spacious room, which they apparently were intended to share. Selene perused the quarters and then returned to their side. "I must be off to see what my lot are up to," she said, well aware how delinquent she was in her duties as Broken Sword's commander. "You know where to find me and I shall feel free to call on you whether you wish it or not." She clasped Deon's shoulder in one broad hand. "You've a place with us whenever you wish it, remember," she said forcefully. Deon merely nodded his reply, not trusting his voice, and she left them alone. The room was large and Lshaped, its walls of gold-white stone reflected light evenly throughout. Deon merely waited to see what Lorn wished. Lorn sat beside the hearth, where a pair of matched armchairs waited invitingly, and Deon joined him. "It is convenient to find employment for you here," Lorn said, looking across at him gently. "Though not unexpected given the demand for those with martial skills in these parts. I hope that you will want to stay here, when I am called to return to the City, as Iseult employment will give you some protection against Carn, should he act against you with arms or with Art. Failing that, there is Broken Sword." Deon remained silent, having little to say and no interest in prattle. Lorn frowned slightly and looked into the empty fireplace. "I would prefer to know what your life was like before and what caused you to leave the States," Lorn said without any great emphasis and, not for the first time. "I would prefer to know what you did to break the Code and cause Carn to be quite so hell bent on capturing you, but if you are not inclined to tell me..."

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Lorn shrugged and settled back in his chair. Deon felt Lorn's disappointment. Each time he reached out and received only silence in return he became more dejected, yet never resentful. Lorn seemed to have decided to accept Deon's company on any basis it came and not to complain. Deon stifled his urge to comfort his strange companion. Having no honor he should not feel bound to deal fairly, yet he ached to better deserve the unconditional friendship he was offered. It was simply that all that had happened, from the moment Carn had bent to his untender ministrations, knife in hand -- that moment he tried so hard not even to think about -- his life was bound up now with horror and silence. That night Carn had a particular purpose. He acted with ritual, with intensity for all the carnal nature of the rite. It must have been that night that Carn cut into Deon's flesh with precision -- that night he had been entered by the seed of that strange power that the Blest bore, and were surely not meant to pass on to others without due ceremony. Everything from that moment was quite literally unspeakable, to any person. To speak even of harmless matters merely unbarred the door to the dungeon in which these horrors dwelt. It could not be done. Deon kept his face as silent as his voice, carefully blank, but swore an oath to himself. Should he ever, ever take human blood, he must not outlive that day. He must not become the kind of monster that had ruled him for so many years. There was some peace to be found in that binding. He had glimpsed a happier life, he had dared even to taste it for one night. It had been so sweet, with Lorn. It had been... was love. But with this contagion that he carried he must push Lorn away. Carn's use of him had not only been callous, it had reached forward through time and snatched away this chance. Already the intensity of his feeling for Lorn was fading into a dull numbness, his time with Carn loomed large in his memory so that any touch made him flinch and any caring look made him feel shame, not love. Lorn smiled faintly and stood, his hand clasped Deon's shoulder slightly in passing. Deon followed him and watched as he bent to the task of making tea with the small tea set that sat on a wide bench before the window. An iron stove held embers enough to kindle, and Lorn set himself to the task. *** Lorn leaned back, a suspicion growing in his mind. The tutors were all present; Cadence, his wife Thirza, two young women by the names of Sandy and Star whom he presumed to be twins. There was also an older woman, Shiva, and two middle-aged men who were a study in opposites, tall dark Thrall and small, jolly Jerym. The talk through dinner had restricted itself to the Art and its teaching as Lorn and his hosts became acquainted. Lorn noticed that they spoke expertly, yet with reserve, and began to wonder at the reputation of the third College's faculty as only somewhat skilled. They seemed to him understatedly expert and yet intent

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on concealing their abilities. Few had high expertise of such a broad range of the Art as he. However in their fields, he did not doubt that each person in the room could best him. He was on the point of pondering their purpose in obfuscating their talents when conversation took an abrupt turn in his direction. Shiva cradled her goblet in both hands and leaned towards him. "As we came though to the parlor, the cook informed me of her concern that your friend Deon ate almost nothing of what was taken up to him." "He has been unwell," Lorn replied carefully. "Though I am sure that a good night's rest will have him almost recovered." She smiled, a deceptively grandmotherly expression. "He is a good man," she said. "He will be able to teach the children a great deal about how to defend themselves and others, and if we can give him the shelter he needs at this difficult time in his life then that is good also." Lorn knew, as she said it, that Shiva was an empath of some note. She spoke with the inward looking tenor of that Art and the amulet beneath his fingers throbbed with her certainty. Were she a telepath then she would not look into their minds uninvited, but it was well known that empaths had no choice but to feel other emotions and could not choose not to. He felt suddenly naked, knowing that his every sadness and uncertainty had been apparent to her all of this time. Yet, she was here as a teacher of telekinesis, when empathy was a rare and valued ability. Lorn began to understand Deon's preference for the refuge of silence, he could think of little safe now to say. "You are welcome here too, of course," Thirza added. Her face was cast in a way that made it seem aloof, an effect accentuated by her backswept pale blond hair, but her voice belied the interpretation. "We will be pleased to have you whenever your duties in the City allow it. The rest of us, the students, staff and servants, and our friends from outside the compound will be able to meet you at our harvest festival picnic at week's end. You and Dee will be able to attend I'm sure." "I'm sure," Lorn echoed faintly. He was pleased to be able to excuse himself a few minutes later. He found his way through the darkened building to his room. Only then did it strike him that the room had only one bed. He fully expected to find Dee curled up on a chair or the floor, but found him blanket-wrapped upon a carefully judged half of the bed. Lorn looked down at the slumbering form, deceptively peaceful. He dropped his robe to the floor, and splashed tepid basin water on his face. Turning back toward the bed, the desire rose in him to lean over and wrap his arms around Dee, but Dee's frozen silence and haunted eyes were eloquent enough. Lorn knew Dee

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needed comforting, though not exactly what the source of his suffering was. He knew equally that such comfort would not be welcomed. Even drawing near Dee caused him to shrink away as if love and regard were gales that blew Dee before them. Lorn could not comprehend how things had changed so drastically and so suddenly, but he felt that if he pressed the matter Dee might somehow slip away from him entirely. If only he could be patient, surely the tide might turn in his favor again and the hidden forces behind them might be revealed. Lorn settled himself cautiously on the bare side of the mattress and pulled up his separate covers. He crossed his arms over his own body and listened to his heart ache in its imperfect solitude.

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twelve After a few days Deon fell into a routine. The previous arms-master had forsaken his employment some months ago, and by the evidence of the older student's competence it was not too great a loss. Deon quietly started over, with a combination of solo and group lessons. Those with particular challenges or skills he arranged to send for occasional sessions at Broken Sword's new compound in return for a few professional favors from Lorn, like laying wards into their new buildings and sand-court. Deon walked around a group of three of the older female students as they practiced simple stances and moves. One of the three was simply too tentative in her movements and he hoped that putting her into a group with the others would coax her into more emphatic efforts. He noticed the way they watched him watching them. "Keep your eyes on the opponent; repeat," he ordered. As with any of the youths and children here, the young Iseult were obedient. They were, perhaps, a little quiet and certainly not taking their arms-training very seriously. "What enemy?" one muttered in bemusement. "Imagine," Deon goaded. "If you cannot defend against an imaginary opponent, you'll have little chance against a real one." A young soldier might rankle at such a comment, but the Iseult students simply didn't care whether they became competent with their weapons. Deon shook his head. "Who would we ever have to fight?" the same mutterer said. She was a dark surly-looking girl who no doubt thought she had better things to do with her time. "With the City under Statin control, you can certainly expect to meet people with no love of witches, as Lorn has," Deon said seriously as he came around before them. "You are Statin," the taller girl said. "And I concur with the opinion," Deon said flatly. "Although I am prepared to make exception for those prepared to make an effort with the sword." Deon was amused to note that they redoubled their efforts for the remainder of the session.

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*** Trying to get a group of children to concentrate on the forms was a difficult and, in the short term, a very thankless task. Lorn was pleased to have ended his last class of the day. He met Sandy in the courtyard as the children streamed passed him and ran shrieking across the garden. Sandy had a blanket draped over her arm as she waited to walk with them to the riverbank for the Harvest festival. "Dee says he finds them a bit reserved," Lorn commented to Sandy in disbelief. "They are afraid of him." "Afraid of him?" "I didn't think you'd noticed," she replied with a smile. "He's quite humorless, he looks like he could do a person some serious harm and wouldn't mind the opportunity." "I hardly think..." "Dear Lorn, you're in love. You probably think he hung the moon and I'm not saying they don't like him. We all do, if only for your sake." Lorn knew that if she had seen Dee lying prone and poisoned she'd find it harder to see him as some glowering menace. At that moment he had seemed so fragile, and beneath the armor of his sullen silence the less tangible wounds remained. He wondered what it had been like for Dee as commander, as vassal to Carn. The blood magic was an insidious evil and, twisted by it, Carn might be capable of any sort of abuse. Yet for a short while Dee had seemed free of that shadowed past. What on earth could have caused it to reclaim him as it had? Lorn wondered if he had been right to bide his time and hope that Dee might find his way back to the love he was sure they shared. Perhaps Dee needed some light to show the way, a hand reached out to invite him back. Dee emerged from the gymnasium. Lorn was grateful, for Dee's presence saved him from having to make any reply to Sandy's faint praises. Dee smoothed back a stray lock of hair and looked over to them. Where another man might have smiled his recognition, Dee merely nodded. He strode over toward them, his left hand resting lightly against the hilt of his sword. For a moment Lorn saw him with dispassionate eyes. Deon's eyes were hard, his body taut with a tension that rarely left him these days. His stance and his manner were not only tense and restrained but almost desperate.

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Lorn thought Dee seemed worse now than he had been when they first met and Dee had been shackled in a jail. Before Dee reached them, Jerym appeared with a hamper. "The others have gone on ahead," he said. "So let's get on." Lorn found Sandy's arm linked with his own and Jerym on the other side. Dee followed on behind, silent as a shadow. Somehow Lorn had become used to Dee's brooding presence, but the thought of how others must see it bothered him. He resisted the urge to chide Dee, to tell him to walk beside them and to share in the conversation. There was quite a crowd down on the banks of the river. The Wai River was over-grandly named. It followed a wide, shallow course in which the smallest boat would touch bottom. The broad grassy banks were dotted with groups of people from the town, with those from the college congregating near the crumbling arch of the stone bridge and under a straggling copse of mulberry trees. The others went ahead, but Dee paused under the cover of the trees and Lorn lagged behind. It was already growing dark; people were bringing out candles and lanterns. The college group was attempting to kindle a small fire on the Wai's stony banks. "They're good people," Dee said quietly. Lorn walked over to his side. The dim and leafy cover seemed to give him license to venture closer. He reached over, cupping his palm against Dee's cheek. "And you are the best of all," Lorn said. Dee sighed and leaned into his hand, his eyes drooping half closed. "You don't know," he said. Lorn froze. "Nothing could convince me otherwise, nothing," he swore emphatically, hoping that Dee might finally speak about whatever was bothering him. Dee looked up at him, a questioning look both hopeful and doubtful. Lorn bent and kissed him softly. A wolf whistle from the direction of the group broke the moment and Lorn cursed his new friends thoroughly as he turned to wave to them. He gave Dee an apologetic smile and drew him over towards them. Dee was blushing slightly, which should be taking a notch or two off his apparent scariness, at least.

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*** As it grew late people became quiet and drowsy and many had gone home to their beds. The low buzz of conversation and the occasional lilting laugh filtered through the swaying grass. Lorn and Dee were side by side, the tall stalks surrounding them. Deon's hair had fallen down from its usual tight ponytail, falling like a straight black curtain down his back and over his shoulder. Deon looked down at Lorn as Lorn looked up at the stars, his face peaceful. He looked sad. The low, gusting wind played across the grass and rifled through Lorn's long coarse hair. Deon remembered a time long ago. The night before he had gone to be trained in the martial arts, before his father's death, before everything when life had not seemed simple, but in comparison with what followed, was an almost forgotten night of harvest dancing, of lying in the fields all through the night. Deon settled lower and closer to Lorn, his chest brushing Lorn's side, intimate warmth trapped between skin and cloth.. Lorn, who had been so attentive over the last week, seemed distant now, lost in some mournful musing at the back of his head. He seemed not even to notice their closeness, or Deon's gaze. Somehow this gave Deon more confidence. It was a tomorrowless night and he felt free from all his fears and woes. Deon leaned forward and put his arm around Lorn, let his head rest on Lorn's chest. His eyes closed and in the perfect darkness beneath their lids he savored the warmth beneath his cheek, the slight rising and falling of Lorn's breath. He felt Lorn's hand rest against the back of his head, stroking his hair softly and with meditative regularly. He was on the point of sleep when that hand strayed slowly down his back and lingered at his waist. Lorn's fingers moved in drowsy consideration, dragging cloth across his skin then lifting and moving on a little, resting, small points of pressure, stroking. Deon knew that he should draw back -- in one more moment, just one more. The sensation of Lorn's hands was stroking and beguiling. Deon felt a tingling, tightening sensation focused in his groin and rippling along strange paths through his chest and the down the length of each limb. He was suddenly very aware of his every breath entering and leaving his body and of every fleeting touch of Lorn's wandering hand. Deon moved his head slightly, feeling the stiffness in his neck and the cloth of Lorn's shirt sliding against his skin. His whole body shifted very slightly, thigh, chest and forearm reminding him of their contact with another body, another person. Lorn's lips brushed the top of his head, his forehead. Deon craned up. Their lips brushed. Deon fell back and Lorn rolled over to follow him. Deon felt the cold earth against his back, the whispering grass on all sides and lips lingering in that same faltering way down his neck. Lorn paused, using one hand to draw back the loosely laced collar of Deon's

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shirt, and then he continued down and along Deon's collarbone. Deon's every sense rang sharp and clear. His body was like a sleeping coal gently awoken by a soft exhalation of air. Abstract considerations of tainted blood and vamphiric curses seemed so distant and irrelevant compared to the reality of the man before him, beseeching with his hands and heart for some return of his affections. Deon stretched slowly, reaching his hands up to rest on Lorn's waist. He was used to surrendering, but not like this, not wanting to surrender, or something more than that which he could barely understand. His hands wound in the cloth and sought the skin beneath. Deon moved his hands slowly up Lorn's back. Lorn's skin was softer than any fine cloth. He shuddered as if from a chill. He wanted Lorn, he wanted Lorn in this very moment with an unreasoning urgency. Something else uncoiled from the pit of Deon's stomach, pushing any confusion or doubt out of his mind. His hands reached out more firmly, with a strangely detached certainty. His jaw ached and his eyes blurred behind a shifting grey haze. Suddenly Lorn's body beneath his hands seemed fragile as the deer's. He could hear the faint deep boom of a heart beating, a heart not his own. Even worse, he could smell blood; smell it sweet and sharp like impending rain, smell it like he was bathing in a pool of blood. It called to him like water called to a desert and only a monsoon would answer. His body convulsed in refusal of the urge and he pushed Lorn away. Deon got to his feet gracelessly. Out of his own selfish lust he was endangering Lorn! Fear tore through him as he staggered back. He wanted to explain, but he knew how Lorn hated and disdained those who were contaminated with the blood magic. "I'm sorry," he muttered as he stumbled away. After Deon took two steps, he broke into a run. The ground seemed to slip away beneath him as he ran, light and silent on his feet. The night air felt fresh in his lungs. The blood said, hunt, that is what you are made to do -- that is what you are meant to do. How easy it had been to forget, to pretend that it was not happening to him, that he was not becoming one of the vamphiri. Deon kept moving along the riverbank. His mind raced uselessly over the inescapable facts. What could he do? Where could he go? Of all the things in the world, the last thing he wanted was to surrender to those evil impulses within him. *** Lorn stalled only a moment with surprise, but when he sprang to follow Dee, the man was nowhere to be found. He had melted away into the thicket as silently as a shadow. Unwilling to cause a fuss and unable to

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think of any effective course of action, Lorn returned to their room. He was disappointed, if not surprised, to find it empty. He paced its full length many times trying to think what he should do. He wondered about Dee's sanity and then he cursed himself for wondering. Dee was obviously caught in conflicting passions, a situation that might confuse any man. Lorn feared for his own heart. His heart ached fit to burst from having paradise ripped from its hands. Not sex, but the trust and commitment it suggested, or so he had assumed. Who knew, after all, what another man thought or felt, or what he meant by what he did? Lorn paced and fretted, but could do little on his own to resolve his pain. Try as he might to accept Dee as he was, he felt a slow budding resentment at the way Dee's muted signals changed so abruptly and for no apparent reason. A whisper of air made him turn. The door was open and Shiva was standing on the threshold. "He is afraid you will find out." "Find out what!" Lorn exploded. She ignored his outburst and replied moderately. "I don't know. I don't know his thoughts, just his feelings. He wants you, he fears wanting you and he is terrified that you will discover him. Either stop looking, or find out. Anything else will tear you both apart." Having delivered that message she left him even more confused. Lorn could feel Dee slipping away from him. In his mind he saw Dee as he had been when they first met, ragged and chained. He saw Dee as a stoic servant, and fearless on the city battlements urging his inexpert forces on with contagious confidence, and lying languid with his swarthy skin contrasting with the bleached sheets, and half dead from poison, and sullenly silent about his reason for his flight and cool withdrawal from the precious intimacy they had shared. He remembered the short time before when Dee had pulled him close, only to flee with widened, fearful eyes. Would Dee flee again? Would he ever explain himself? For Lorn knew he had waited patiently in that expectation, and surely it was owed to him? Love was a tyrant, Lorn thought, to put him through these trials. And yet he prayed every moment that Dee would return to him. Even silent and unpredictable, his presence was all Lorn wanted. Even of they never touch again, even if nothing was ever explained. He looked out into the dark, and waited.

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THIrteen Deon presented himself at Cadence's door first thing in the morning and tendered his resignation. Cadence accepted it calmly and without apparent regret. He saw something in Deon's eyes that he chose not to question or detain. Deon walked directly to the Broken Sword compound. He had clothing and a sword, everything he needed, and he wasn't able to look into Lorn's golden eyes. Selly let him in. She knew something was amiss immediately and she obviously contemplated joking about it, to try and help as comrades did. Her smile faded as she discarded the notion. She let him in and showed him to a room that obviously waited vacant. Knowing Selly it probably waited specifically for his use. "Try and get some sleep," she said. Dee settled on the bed. He lay flat on his back, still and staring at the ceiling. He had resisted, but barely, harming the one person he cared for most. The monster within him pined for the taste of Lorn's blood, even now. To feel Lorn pinned helplessly beneath him as he pierced Lorn's soft skin, to feel him writhe uselessly in resistance as Deon supped upon his rich, sweet blood. Even as the fantasies arose unbidden from within him, Deon felt dead and cold with fear and self-loathing. He could run again but Lorn would find him, the man had dogged persistence and the Art. He could actually take his life. Lorn thought he had tried it before and might even be partially prepared, but no, he could not delude himself to that extent. He wanted life, even this horrible remnant he clung to. He wanted to live. He could take his one last chance here, with Broken Sword. He could work, take the leaf and stay as far away from temptation as he could. It wasn't a notion that filled him with joy, but it was tolerable. He weighed his choices listlessly and decided it was the best that he could do. As soon as he heard movement outside, he went out into the common room. The earliest risers greeted him in a surprisingly muted way. He guessed that he looked a bit haggard and consciously smoothed the frown from his face. Selly joined them over the teapot. "You have an argument with him?" was all she said. "Something like that." She shrugged. "You have a place here." "...and welcome," added young Vance, and others murmured agreement.

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Deon tried to smile in reply but his face seemed to have forgotten the trick of it. They welcomed him now for the sake of old bonds. He would have to make sure he earned the consideration. "We've a couple of new fillies in that need breaking," Laurel added. "I guess Selene was hoping you'd have the time one way or the other, as none of the rest of us have the touch to do it properly." Selly shrugged again. "They're cheaper unbroke." She was trying to be casual, to give him space to settle in. He appreciated her insight and wished the rest shared it. Deon excused himself to look over the stock. He went out through the sand court into the stable. A large loose stall housed three horses, all young fillies. They eyed him nervously, shifting their weight back away from him. Deon felt calm wash over him; he smiled faintly. Here was something he understood. *** Lorn walked slowly through the gate. Selly watched him. She took one step forward and stopped, seemingly caught between an instinct to protect Dee, and a feeling that this was something he needed to confront, to get through one way or the other. In the sand court Dee had a horse circling on a lunge line. She moved unsteadily, her eyes were fixed aslant on Dee, and his eyes fixed intently on her. Only when her ears flicked in Lorn's direction did Dee seem to notice Lorn, and even then he quickly stifled any response. Dee's eyes remained on his task, his fist clenched tighter on the rein. The mare danced back and pulled, startled by the tension in the courtyard. The main building hemmed them in on one side, the stable on another, and the court's enclosure was completed by a tall sandstone wall. The scuffed court was bedded in stale sand and cinders, making a mottled, dry surface that whispered with every step. Lorn ran one hand nervously over the ragged rabbit fur collar of his shabby robe, unsure what to do when Dee would not acknowledge him even with a glance. Dee did not turn. He frowned, slowly shortened the lunge-line and led the nervous horse back to its stall. It walked with the head-stretched timorousness of one only recently halter-trained. Lorn waited a minute or so before realizing that Dee was not planning to return. He mustered his resolve as best he could and walked into the dark stable. His eyes adjusted only slowly, revealing a dust-dancing speckled scene. Dee was pitching some soiled hay into a handcart with single-minded efficiency, ignoring him completely, or so it seemed. Suddenly, in the rustling peace of the room, Dee began to speak.

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"The ruler of the Sea Bastion has always been Carn," Dee said in a quiet measured way, almost as if he was speaking only to himself. "But not always the same Carn. The Blest have a way of looking alike with their pale skin and grey tresses. An outsider could be forgiven for thinking each Lord a single long-lived man. My Father's Lord was, for the most part, a kind one, for a Blest Lord. He dwelt mainly in the City of Wrent on the easternmost border to the State. He traveled to each fief at intervals and spoke to his underlords. I think my father liked and respected Carn, they would play checkers together and stay up all of the night discussing matters of the estate. I believe they were close, in their own peculiar way and to the extent that their stations allowed. My father was certainly disturbed when Carn came traveling with a protégé, one marked by initiation into the Blest's Art." "Blood magic," Lorn injected with disdain. He could not see how the perverse ways of the land Dee had fled were relevant now, but he hoped that the one thread offered might lead to the whole cloth. Dee leaned upon his pitchfork a moment, but still did not look up into Lorn's eyes. "Any skill, any man with it, is just a tool. For good or ill, as his will or duty decrees." "Blood magic is an abomination, an evil," Lorn replied implacably, "and you are better away from it. If they still hound you in some way, just speak of it to me. I will face them, for you, with you. I will do anything." "Maybe so," Dee said impassively. Dee returned to his work, sweeping out the empty stall and pitching in fresh hay. "What my father had expected came to pass. One evening he went to the great parlor to meet Carn, and found the younger Lord awaiting him, wearing the robes of a High Lord. He was distressed by what this must mean, he told my mother this in hushed tones that night. The young Lord looked down at him and said, 'Think carefully about what you say next.' My father bowed. 'My Lord,' he said as sincerely as he was able. He was dismissed and never spoke at length with the new High Lord Carn. Two days after I reached my majority, my father vanished while riding to meet Lord Carn's summons. His body was found deep in the woods and I took over his office. It was not long before I had to make a similar decision between conscience and duty and I made the same choice." Dee became silent. Lorn pondered this disclosure but it remained ambiguous to him. He was reaching out through the fog to Dee, but he just couldn't seem to grasp him. "I am sorry, Dee," he said. "I don't know what you're trying to tell me. I don't understand what is hurting you so much or what I can do to help you."

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"It is simple," Dee replied, as he meticulously leveled the new straw. "I have lived in such a way that the only thing I had to cling to was my obedience, my absolute obedience. In choosing that I lost all else. In losing that, I am nothing." Finally Dee stopped and looked directly at him, forestalling Lorn's immediate reaction to such a hopeless statement. There was a grey indifference and steely resolve within his eyes. "In being nothing I cannot be what you want of me." "I ask nothing of you," Lorn pleaded. "Nothing!" He resisted the urge to argue with Dee's despondent assertions, trying mere to keep his company long enough to try and help him through it. "I beg you only to let me be near you, only that." "You are a good man," Dee replied. "You try, but you cannot do as you say. I am asking you to leave. I am well enough here, I am safe and amongst friends. You must see that if you want what is best for me, you will leave now and not return. I would not be so cruel as to let things continue as they are." Dee left the stall and took up the handcart. Without further ado he wheeled it away down the isle, leaving Lorn to watch him go. Lorn shook his head, completely confounded. He stood for some time, in a mental fog, and then thoughts came to him that hardly seemed his own. Very well, he thought. Very well, if that is how it is. He wondered at his own calm deliberation. He had realized that love had come and gone for him with Lauron, and by grasping at this illusion he had merely tortured himself with false hope. It was time to stop torturing them both, and move on. In his mind he saw Lauron's last small smile. Lauron, lying weak and wasted, looked over the shoulder of his nurse, to his neglected student and secret love, lingering in the doorway. It will be all right, the smile had seemed to say. It will. But it never had been. The door slammed shut in Dee's wake as he left the stable without a backward glance. Lorn wished he could do the same. He could only try. Giving up so easily?, the bolder parts of his nature sneered. Yes, he replied. I cannot force love upon a man who will not take it. I cannot be to him what he does not want. I cannot give him help if he will not even explain the peril that drives him. I can do no more, no more.

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It was the lowest moment in his life, worse even than leaving the Iseult or than losing Lauron. Lorn turned and walked away over the whispering floor of the sand court, his feet crossing the hoof marks. They would never be together; if they were meant to be then Dee would not have turned away. If Dee had felt in return, the strength of love that Lorn had offered, he would never have walked away from it. I can do no more. *** Deon held the blade against the grindstone, striking up sparks and shrieks from the incompatible substances of metal and stone. He saw Selly striding across the court towards him and was sorely tempted to keep at his noisy task, just to stop her from speaking to him. It would, however, be discourteous to do so. Deon took his foot of the treadle and the stone stopped its spinning quickly against the friction of the honing blade. "He leaves for the city tomorrow," Selly said, looking down at him. Deon turned the sword in the light, assessing its now-keen edge. "Does he," he said, without any hint of interest in his voice. "Yes," Selly replied. "And still none the wiser as to what he did to drive you away. That he is accepting it makes no more sense to me than that you are doing it." Lorn had been meticulously absent over the weeks since they last spoke, but Selly still went to visit him. Deon had no doubt that they spoke of him often and he resented it, but protesting would serve no purpose. He hoped to ignore the whole problem into submission and barring Selly's occasional frustrated outburst, it seemed to be working. "I did tell him," Deon replied, "that the fault was not on his side." Selly took a seat by his side. "It is about time you started making a new life for yourself and stopped dwelling on the old one," she said firmly. "That's what I'm doing. Do you have any complaints about my work?"

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"Yes," Selly snapped. "You work too hard. Work alone is not a life! Even when you were commander of the Bastion you found time for a round of drinks, a game of cards -- for your friends. To have someone who is more than a friend even if it damned well isn't me!" Deon looked over to her. The leaf was being hard on him today, stealing his strength and sapping his spirits. It meant he had taken either too little or too much. It was hard to tell, no set dose seemed to work well for long. He made no reply but to sheath the sword and leave her, to return it to the armory. What could he possibly say that would not be poor and shabby by comparison with her most noble consideration for him? When he returned with another blade to work on, she had gone. Deon continued these chores until near noon when he was scheduled to teach horsemanship to a local merchant's son. The boy, Sami, arrived early and Deon spent some time putting him over some small hurdles in the court. Then he saddled one of the fillies that needed exercise and a more stolid mount for the boy and went outside of town to work with natural obstacles. Sami's father had aspirations and that included his son riding the hunt like the highborn did. He had picked out some low hedges and stiles that wouldn't be too hard for the novice or the old gelding he was riding. Coaxing them to attempt even those took a full afternoon, the boy being the nervous sort and the gelding lazy and in need of a firm heel. The filly took the rest of his attention as she developed the habit of shying at anything that moved and many things that didn't, anything to have him off. It was a miracle that he made it through the day without being tossed. They rode home in silence as the light dimmed to orange-dark. The boy seemed near tears, the gelding ambled along happily now that they were heading back and the filly had her ears laid back, still on the lookout for something to be frightened of. Just as they made it back to Broken Sword, Deon was struck by a splitting headache. "I'll see to him," he said, taking the gelding's bridle. "You did all right today." "Really?" Sami exclaimed. "Yes, really. Now be gone." Sami, who had seemed nearly ready to start sobbing moments before, ran off with a smile splitting his face. Deon shook his head; teaching children was a strange endeavor and it did not entirely suit him. It was somewhat unfortunate that the denizens of Threshold were more willing to part with gold to better their offspring than on their own behalf.

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Deon settled down the horses, the pain vacillating between a dull thumping at the back of his head and a knife-like feeling between his eyes. Recent experience suggested that this meant his dose for the day had been too small. Next he could expect his senses to become sharp and after that the desire for blood would arise. He shuddered at the thought and headed for his rooms.

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Fourteen Lorn was almost pleased to be back in the city. All of his new friends had been creeping around like there had been a death in the family. They did not believe his protestations that he was resigned to being alone again, and once the shock wore off he found them less than convincing to himself. Sure, Selly was a good friend in her own right, but that was not why he sought her out so often and that was as clear to her as to himself. Thea met him at the castle gate, her pale eyes wreathed in new lines and sleepless shadows. It was very late and he thought he would not see them 'til morning. Her manner had hardened in the short time he had been away. "Thank God," was all she said. "Come with me." Her fingers wrapped tightly around his upper arm as she drew him up the curling stairs and into her war room. Bethany was awaiting them there, with the same grim expression upon her face. "Sit," Thea said sharply. "Where is Deon?" "With Broken Sword, back in Threshold." "Good, good. He's dead if he steps foot back here and by unpleasant means, no mistake. Carn speaks of him often and I shudder at the tone he uses." Thea took to her own chair, leaning back wearily into its sagging cloth back, but she waved for Bethany to explain. "Due to our distance from the old States and our Code conduct, the Blest have decided to appoint a new High Lord. It has to be one of those who governed the defense and they have to be -- or become -- Blest." They looked at him as if he would have some simple solution within moments of hearing this news. He looked across at them, his dear friends. He would do anything to prevent corrupting blood magic being used on them. He had researched what was known about blood magic and how it worked. The thought of seeing them twisted into a person who would kill for power, for pleasure, was unbearable. In that moment he had his answer. It must be he that was chosen. The City needed its mayor and its Captain of the Guard, but any Iseult could perform his duties. It must be he, but only after he had set in motion a method for throwing the Statin forces back out of the City. Only after his own destruction in the wake of the transformation was assured. He pushed away consideration of just how that must be achieved. "It must be me," he said. "I can use the Art to stop the transformation from affecting my essential nature."

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They looked at him, and he tried to plaster a look of complete sincerity across his face while already mourning the loss of his Art. The blood would kill the true Art at first touch; he knew that. His free will would follow shortly after. "You would do that?" Thea said. "I must," he replied. He rubbed his dry eyes, "I have some further research to do, I wasn't entirely expecting to be observing the Blest from the inside." They let him leave before his composure failed. Trust the infamous Carn to discover the one thing he truly feared more than death. Bethany showed him to a guest chamber near the center of the keep. He stepped inside, set the bar of the door firmly in its brackets, squeezed his eyes closed and muttered a sincere curse. He used a lick of the Art to light the ensconced candles and turned towards the bed. What he saw by that light surprised him enough that his legs propelled him back before he could properly think. He felt his back thump against the door and felt his breath catch in his throat. Carn sat calmly on the velvet sofa at the foot of the bed, his leg stretch out along its length and his hands clasped casually behind his head. Lorn cursed himself for the frozen moment it took him to think to use the Art. He simply wasn't used to using it as a weapon, or needing to. Carn slid upright with eye-fooling swiftness. Lorn's gesture flung air and ice at him, but it fell aside as Carn crossed the few feet that separated them. Carn smiled. He caught Lorn's arms casually by the wrists, forcing them down to his side with ease. His touch was as cold and dead as stone, not a touch of the living Art. Lorn's mind was paralyzed by an unreasoning panic. Carn leaned forward slowly, savoring the moment. "It is only fair," Carn said. "For my loss of Merrick, that I be compensated." His voice was no more than a sinuous whisper, his lips closing on Lorn's skin with meticulous gentility. Lorn knew that he must be in the grip of blood magic. Nothing else would explain that despite the wild palpitations of his heart and the tremor in every nerve and muscle, he stood to be slaughtered like a sheep. Carn touched the skin of his neck with the wet tip of his tongue. Lorn flinched but his feet remained planted in place. Carn bit, twin points of sharp pain like hornet's stings. Lorn's head thumped back against the thick wood of the door. His mind fixed upon the inelegant sound as Carn sucked upon him. He felt his heart beat harder and harder, but to less effect. It was almost a relief for it to be over, for good or ill there was nothing more for him to do.

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Dee was safe in Threshold, which was one good thing he could hold onto. He felt the strength leave his legs and he slid slowly down, into oblivion. *** Deon urged his flighty mare at a mad speed down the dirt road. She staggered sometimes as her hooves fell badly upon the uneven surface, yet it seemed like speed itself kept them safe. Each time he felt her stumble his heart would be in his mouth, but she would just gather her legs under her and launch forward again with all the madness of youth and wild instinct. He had barely waited for Vance to give the news. Vance had escorted Lorn to the City as arranged and by midnight bell Lorn had disappeared from his room. Thea was near breaking point, Bethany was scouring the City, and Vance came back with the news as quickly as he could. It was break of day when he arrived and raised the house. All of Deon's carefully feigned reserve had vanished like frost in the fire. He had been on the road before a single further word could be said. He'd not touched the leaf that day and having traveled for hours, it was beginning to show. The breeze traversed his cheek like a thousand caresses bearing a thousands scents and he could have enumerated the source of them all, had he the time. His speed felt like the speed of the hunt and his pulse raced in reply. His jaw ached and he thought he could feel a trickle of blood in his mouth and a jagged edge to his teeth. It was only within sight of the City walls that he seriously considered the death sentence that Carn had placed upon his head. He pulled his horse up short. She balked, all but foundering with an excess of exertion and emotion, once momentum was pulled out from beneath her legs. Finally he pressed on, putting his fate in fate's hands where it belonged. The odds were that a gate guard would not know him and any moments beyond that would have to look after themselves. And somehow they did. He saw one guard who knew him from the Bastion and who either didn't recognize him, or chose not to, and several from the City. They all looked purposefully in some other direction as he rode by, so as to avoid the penalty under Code for not reporting his presence. He put the mare in the first empty stall and came up through servant's stair, where he passed several pairs of suddenly-blind guards. Thea was in the war room alone with scrolls and books piled high to each side. She leapt to her feet at seeing him. "You are insane," she exclaimed in a broken voice.

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"Which room?" "You have to get out of here." "Which room was he in, which room!" Thea stood to her full, slender height and met his gaze with one as strong, but she relented. "I will show you, but in return you will listen to me." She led him down a lightless corridor, and to a small room. As they walked she explained the Blest's decision, but she had no explanation of Lorn's disappearance. Deon burst into the small bedchamber, prowling the edge. His nostrils flared at the scent of musk and blood. The faint animal scent that only Carn could carry, the blood, the blood he had called to him before. That he could sense this scared him, but that emotion paled before his greater passion. "You know, your eyes are glowing a little," Thea observed. "They would," he replied, tracing Carn's sent to the sofa. The bed, he noted, was still fresh. "What most of the Blest do not realize is that making one of the four of us Blest would be somewhat redundant." He paused and pushed out the shutter to look over the City and was thus saved from seeing Thea shrink away from him. He let the shutter dangle and turned to her. "Carn has him, his scent is in the room even now. Where is Carn?" He spoke carefully, calmly. "Not so fast," Bethany said firmly from the doorway. "We are going to need a plan."

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Fifteen Lorn was surprised to wake, to find himself still alive. He blinked; his mouth was dry and his body cold. He rolled very carefully onto his side. The light of an uncompromising candle pierced his eyes, careening off unfamiliar whitewashed walls in flickering swathes. A slight movement disclosed a clanking of chains and there was no more chilling sound. Lorn calmed himself, contemplating the horror of captivity, fighting through at last to consider what Carn might be hoping to achieve. His throat felt dry and he could not even hold up his head to look about the room. It felt small and smelled old. He sensed that any physical attempt at escape would be eminently futile. He further sensed that the Art was entirely beyond his reach. The touch of the Blest had driven it deep within him, still palpably present yet sullenly unavailable. He sought refuge in motionlessness, conserving his strength and his sanity, feeling his breaths enter and leave. It was the wisest thing he could do. After an hour or two he fell to hoping that his love for Dee really was largely unreturned and that the peril he faced would be faced in perfect solitude. He also devoutly hoped that Thea and Beth would properly place the duty they owed the City above that owed to any one man. Yet a subtle and immorally satisfied part of him suspected otherwise. And worse than that, he feared that Carn might instead turn him into a monster of his own kind. It was not a transformation that could be avoided, in body or soul. The blood, once tainted, answered the one who made it so. At least until the acts one committed whilst so enslaved tainted the new victim as deeply as the old. Truly, for any moral man, it was fate worse than death. *** The maimed familiarity of their counsel struck Deon forcefully. They sat, each to a side of the small square table in the war-room, with one side gaping empty. "He is rarely within the keep," Thea said. "There is a house, just outside the City," Bethany explained. "His guards are seen all around it in their indigo finery." "He is rarely seen in the street," Thea mused. "He simply appears in one place or another without seeming to need to travel between them."

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"Lorn is more corporeal," Deon said dryly, giving no hint to what he felt. "He must be there." "He could be anywhere," Thea added. "It's a big city and there's wild land all around. He may have the sense to be discreet in abducting an Iseult and secretive with what he does with him. He must realize the resources they can bring to bear?" "I hate to say it, but he may simply have been killed," Bethany said in a clipped, reluctant voice. "I imagine it is a great deal easier to hide a body than a living witch and Carn had a reason or two to resent our Lorn." Deon kept his thoughts to himself. What he meant was not so much that he believed Lorn must be at the villa, as that it was the only place to look and therefore failure was incomprehensible and, in any moral or spiritual way, inconceivable. Lorn had to be alive and he had to be discoverable. "We look there first," Deon said. "I will go alone." "We must turn to the Iseult," Bethany contradicted. "Their resources..." "With their indifference to this community, towards Lorn, I don't trust them to act wisely, or to keep him safe." Thea half-nodded, but her eyes took Deon in skeptically. "You can barely sit still, Dee. Your eyes flicker with unnatural light and the air moves around you like the writhing of serpents. I don't know, seeing you like this, whether you can be better trusted." Deon took his will and, like reins, pulled in tight the terrible power building within him. "I alone can face Carn's power." He fixed Thea with a clear, firm gaze, "I must be given a chance to act alone first." He turned to Bethany, "Just someone to show me they way and 'til morning to save him. That is all I need." He put every ounce of his desperation, every measure of his need, into the words. He could feel, even now, the power and corruption growing unchecked within him. For only a short measure, he guessed, he would have the strength of the Blest, but only his own unaltered conscience to guide it. He did not have the time to plan, he was not sure enough of the outcome to endanger others and he knew deep in his heart that if Lorn still lived, it would not be for much longer. The mouse amused the cat, but only for a time. Thea looked to Bethany, who, with the slightest nod, consented.

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"'Til morning," Thea confirmed. "Till dawn, then we look for you both." But they all knew that she could not press that promise far, without endangering the City and the thousands of lives within.

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sixteen The sultry scents of the warm night seemed tangible upon Deon's skin. The world sparkled with a vibrancy that all but distracted him from his task. He moved, luxuriating in the mere sense of moving, sure of his absolute soundlessness. He flowed over the lip of a gaping window, too distracted to wonder why the shutter swung ajar. A great cobbled chamber whispered before him. It was hard to say how large it was, but the arched ceiling was high and sleepy birds shifted in the rafters. He detected, floating distantly in the restless air, the warm smell of the flesh his fingers knew, not so well as they wished, but knew all the same. Lorn. It was too distant to properly trace. He moved forward carefully, perfectly balanced, coming slowly from all fours to his feet. He closed his eyes to better hear his other senses. With a sudden snap he felt another sense, not sound, not scent, not any feeling within his crawling skin. This senseless sense told him that the empty room was not entirely empty after all. A person sat at its end, on a chair, on a dais. In a place so shrouded, in a pose so motionless, that even now he could not have otherwise known of them. He felt the man there, felt a bond to him as warm and welcoming as blood. "Oh," Carn exhaled softly. "Very nice. Better even than I had hoped." Deon froze in place, physical equilibrium the best he could hope for. The air tossed the collar of his loosely laced shirt and swirled the dust up around his feet. Carn swayed to his feet, and drifted down the length of the hall with a languid, unhurried stride. "You should not have run from me," Carn said. "You should have realized what I truly intended for you." There was that seductive snarl. That oh-so-familiar possessive, menacing tone. It crawled over Deon's skin and constricted around his mind. He felt an appalling yet beguiling kinship, a belonging. He felt a vassal again, a servant, a slave. He hated the feeling, but only dimly. It was familiar and, in its own way, safe. With great effort he rent at the bonds of that long servility. He let Carn draw close so that the faint starlight spelled out every nuance and plane of his intent and mocking face. Deon felt torn, yet still. Calm washed over him like a tepid tide, just as Carn came close enough that his hand was just beginning to rise in anticipation of touching Deon's skin. That dainty hand that wielded a knife with cool precision, that held him down, that entered into his flesh in ways more unnatural even than the casual carnal use that had gone before. Deon held that image and that

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revulsion as a shield in his mind, as a talisman. He drew his sword so swiftly that the blade sang shrilly. He leapt with the blade, spear-like before him. He felt the blade bite as its target blurred. Cloth caught and tore and flesh parted, but only a shallow wound. Carn's clothes hung from his pale shoulder; which was clearly marked with black-bright blood. Carn smiled with satisfaction; he drew his own blade with mocking sloth. Deon leapt again, his blade flashing in searing arches. Swift, yet swiftly met on every pass. Metal clashed and cried out like dragon bells. Carn gave ground, laughing. "Oh fine, very fine," he said. Deon screamed defiance. His moves became swifter and more ragged. His over-lucid eyes saw a cut lock fall from Carn's head and subtle strands drifting in the currents that surrounded them both. Another pass brushed Carn's cheek -- on the third cut, his ear sent up a thin splash of blood. Deon pulled back the sword again, poised to plunge it forth. Carn smiled thinly and ceased to defend himself. He dropped his blade to the floor where it fell with a faintly glassy ring. "Stop," Carn said simply. Incredibly, Deon swayed. His hand hung in mid-motion, his mind struck hard against a net of age-old arts and endless, unbroken law. He commanded his hand to strike. He goaded himself with horrors known and anticipated. Deon shrieked; he let his hand drop; he raised it again. His breath caught in his throat. It was no good. He could not do it. Deon dropped to his knees, sobs caught in his throat. He could not do it. He did not understand but the power in his blood knew its father and its master. He could not strike. Deon's voice fell into a soft moan, tears dripped down his face. His eyes squeezed shut, trying to block out all of this terrible reality. Betraying once, he returned to fail again, to fall again into the cruel hands of his sworn and foresworn master. Carn whispered senseless words, kneeling beside him. The satisfaction was clear in the soft tones of his murmuring. Carn's arms curled around Deon carefully and took his sword from his trembling fingers. Carn considered the battered blade and then slid it carefully back into his own scabbard. "Where it belongs," Carn said. "At last."

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*** Lorn waited out the long night and the day that followed in a fugue devoid of hope or impatience. He nursed a dread certainty that whatever followed would be no improvement upon his current purgatory. At times he reached for the Art within him, yet it stirred only sluggishly against the brush of his ethereal fingertips and did not answer. Members of Carn's personal guard came for Lorn at the promise of dawn. They uttered no word and Lorn sensed the futility of questioning them. He could walk now, if barely under the weight of iron, and he went where they led. He watched curiously and strangely calmed as they fastened his chains to a great stone embedded in the floor of a large audience chamber. The chains and the lock seemed large and secure enough to hold a team of oxen and rather excessive for one small witch. There was a smell of magic in the room, and of blood. The wards on the windows and threshold lay inactive, awaiting the word of their maker. Lorn wondered what kind of web he had stumbled into, but had little doubt about his final fate. With preparation so thorough and adept there seemed little point in struggling. Lorn knelt upon the cool clay of the floor and awaited his fate. *** Deon lay listlessly across the great bed. He lay upon his back with his head upon Carn's chest. His limbs sprawled lax, as if in great comfort, but actually from great despair. Carn stroked his hair, his face split by a meditative, vulpine smile. "I thought long and hard," Carn said. "I knew from my own most careful, research that the Blest normally die at the hands of their get -- and yet the urge... I am sure no woman's desire for children approaches the feelings the blood gives us; the urge to propagate the blood at least once within our span. Merrick was a poor choice, but then I never meant him to live, nor did I want one of the grasping, forceful get the others make. We could be all but immortal if it was not for that. That is how I know we Blest are not really outside nature, mortality finds a way, and yet I still hoped to outplay her." Light rain began to fall, whispering against the great stone walls. Deon listened to Carn's voice, to the rain, to silence, with equal indifference.

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"There was only one person I wanted as an equal, only one I could tolerate in that post, and so that we could both survive, that required a new territory. We will be Lords together eternally. Once you are lord of your own realm you will see that I was right, that it was for the best all along." Deon's unattended mind began to comprehend. Carn somehow saw his servitude as a relationship. He saw them going on in some monstrous kind of marriage. He could not imagine how such a delusion seemed plausible to the man. Yet as he lay in Carn's arms, his body was at peace with his slavery, his mind -- the extent that it could not concur -- was paralyzed. Slowly he felt parts of his self fade from railing at his fate to falling silent, certain of their eventual deaths. He told himself that his return to Carn's favor corrected his life, and returned it to its previous order. Yet he did not believe it. He could not feel that that was true. The blood chewed away at the remainder of his discontent, leaving numb emptiness in its wake. "Ah, Deon," Carn mused. "I did make a mess of things in my urgency and my avarice. I thought I saw you beginning to turn, without the true blood, like Merrick did. So I rushed to perform the ritual without even explaining matters to you, but it is not past mending, I think. Dress, Deon, there is one last thing to be done." He led the way down back to the great hall. All the doors and windows were now shut and barred, yet the light of day trickled through the slats and small gaps in the thatch. Light fell in discrete streams to dapple the dusty floor. Near the center of the room a shabby figure knelt, weighed down by heavy iron chains. It was Lorn. Deon saw Lorn's eyes widen in surprise, his quick mind struggling to comprehend what he saw. Sick dread settled in Deon's stomach. "It is the final test," Carn said with some satisfaction. "When the child is blooded and his will first starts to become free and separate from that of his parent. Only one who commanded the defense may become first Lord of the new territory and only a man. I think your good mayor has overlooked that limitation, for it is listed in a separate statute and chapter from the main. This man is your only competition for the post. It would be so very apt and tidy to combine these two chores. You become Prince as soon as he is dead." Carn and Lorn both looked to Deon, waiting to see his response. *** For a moment Lorn supposed that he had been monstrously deceived, that Dee had been a spy from the beginning. Yet, he could not fail to see how woodenly Dee moved, the desperation in his eyes. That Dee was

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Blest could not be doubted, but what it meant was still unclear. He could not help, even now, but fear for Dee who looked so haggard and frail even as blood magic flowed through him like a consuming flame. Carn's own smug announcement made some things more clear. Lorn knew that he was indeed intended to die. Lorn searched Dee's eyes to see what his would-be executioner might be thinking. Dee's labored breathing was loud in the echoing expanse of the hall. "I'll not order you to do it," Carn said obviously displeased at Dee's reluctance. "That would rather spoil the symbolism, yet I think you'll not be able to resist for long. I do council you to stay away from the doors and window as I have placed a rather unpleasant ward upon them to keep you within. It will kill any who attempt to pass with the Blessing burning brightly within them. Only by dampening it by taking blood will you be able to safely leave." Carn stepped out of the hall, and closed the great wooden door quietly behind him; they both heard the bar on the other side put in place. Lorn waited, alone with Dee. They regarded each other across heavy air, watching isolated motes of light dance between them. Lorn settled back and crossed his legs, the links of the chains clinking dully against each other. "I had understood," Lorn said. "That the blood corrupted a person. So this transformation is relatively recent, or I am incorrect in one aspect or another?" Dee pressed his back against the door and slid down slowly to sit on the floor. He rested his head in his hands and was silent for a long minute. Then he finally looked up. "As I understand it," Dee said quietly. "By leaving immediately I avoided the influence Carn has over me through the blood; that influence, in his presence, being absolute. The blood itself I hampered through the use of a herb that I know." "Then you should not have returned to the City," Lorn said. "No," Dee replied leadenly. "I should not have. I failed to see how you would be in more danger from my presence than my absence." There was something deeply disturbing in the quality of Dee's gaze. It was focused and lit by sparks of black art, deep within each pupil. Lorn fought the urge to draw back, knowing how limited any escape would be given his iron tethers. Dee seemed to struggle within himself,and finally closed his eyes and buried his face back within his folded hands.

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Lorn considered for a while and was not best pleased with the result of his thoughts, yet having resigned himself to death twice this day he saw no reason not to risk his existence again. "It is clear that Carn and I agree on one thing," Lorn said in a mild conversational tone. "That you should be Lord of the City. What I know, and he doesn't, is that your essential nature, and what herb craft you have, might make you the kind of ruler none other of the Blood could be. It seems to me that he thinks taking blood will loosen his ability to command you directly, the only influence strong enough to overcome both of those factors that weigh in our favor. Thus I can only agree with Carn, you must take my blood, and you must become High Lord." "You do not understand," Dee whispered. "Once I start to take blood I shall likely be unable to stop. I have done so only once with an animal but now I haven't the herb to stop my desires, and I have lost blood to Carn. Oh Lorn, even having taken so much blood he is able to master me easily." Lorn leaned forward intently. He had certainly guessed the risk to his life, but Dee's words told him more. That contrary to what one might expect, taking blood cause the Blest to lose power rather than gain it. "Can't you use the Art to escape?" Dee pleaded weakly. "I've lost a little blood in the process myself," Lorn replied sardonically. "It seems to put my use of the Art in abeyance, though not permanently I think. I feel like the wall that holds it from me is weakening with every minute." Dee looked up hopefully. "But how long do we have?" Lorn said more forcefully. "Carn does not strike me as a patient man." Dee's eyes burnt brightly now, with an inner, purple fire. "My will is likely to break before he becomes inpatient," Dee whispered. "It is difficult even now." There was something mesmerizing about Dee's hungry eyes. They beckoned. They beckoned especially to Lorn, whose grip on life had not been particularly strong for some time now. Habit had pulled him through his days and what little use he was to good people like Thea and Bethany. Love had been a brief beacon, but no better for him than a candle is to a straying moth. He imagined that it might be this apt metaphor was one that might carry him to his grave. Deon's hard beauty had lured him from his numb reverie and now the same man offered a relatively easy and purposeful death.

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Lorn crawled towards Dee, as far as his bonds would allow. He beckoned to Dee. "It is necessary, your blood and my mind agree. You must take my blood, my life if necessary, and use the freedom it wins you to rule this City as fairly and openly as the Code allows. This is the best solution and the only one." Lorn's outstretched fingers reached with a few feet of Dee, who moaned his denial and squeezed his eyes shut. Lorn beseeched him. "Carn means to teach you what you are, by this, and we may yet show him who you really are." "No," Deon interrupted. "The wards will not stop you, you can escape." Lorn yanked his chain angrily. "Even were I able to break these, I can not rule the City as I am not Blest, and becoming so would destroy me. It would make no sense! It is you, Dee, you that must live!" Lorn felt hope slip away as he saw a look of mulish determination settle on Dee's face. He knew that starved and strong, Dee could probably break the chains. "I'd not go, I'll not leave you here a slave," Lorn said. Dee crept forward out of his huddled position. "You'll go if I must throw you out and drive you away with stones." Lorn scrambled backwards but Dee caught him by the wrist. Dee looked at the ground, his long-fingered hands were shaking wildly as he took the shackles and crushed them as if the were made of no more than baked clay. A ragged edge of the crumpled metal scratched Lorn's wrist as it fell away. Dee ripped away the chains upon Lorn's ankles. Then he dropped to the ground pressing his forehead to the ground, his fingers dug, claw-like, into the pack earth floor. "Go," Dee pleaded in a breaking voice. "Quickly, go." Lorn wavered; he could lift the bar on the window and flee. Yet what meaning his life had possessed since losing Lauron had depended on defending the City and there was one last way he could do that. "It was, and is my choice," Lorn said. "Remember that. It is what I want."

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His own blood ran slimily across his palm. Lorn knelt by Dee, rubbing blood between his fingers. He leant towards Dee and proffered his injured wrist. Dee whimpered and tried to turn away, but at this last hurdle the blood pulled too strongly against his will. Dee trembled, his face turned slowly towards Lorn with his nostrils flaring. "No," Dee said softly, but defeat was already in his voice. Lorn leaned and pressed his broken skin to Deon's soft lips. He felt Deon startle slightly, his lips kissed the skin softly, trembling. The pressure quickly became more insistent, his hands lifting to grip Lorn's wrist. Lorn felt the last moment when he could escape slip by. Deon's grip was crushing, firm. There was a sudden twin sting as Deon bit, hard and deep. Lorn cried out, surprised, and even as he fell to his knees he felt a second wave of syrupy pleasure wash though his body. Like thick mead, strange sensations of peace and disorientation swamped his senses. He was hardly aware that he fell, but that the rough, pebble-strewn floor pressed against his cheek. He was only dimly aware and fading. Lorn smiled. For a boy who had seemed to have so much potential, he had really done so little with his life. Lorn closed his eyes, content never to open them again.

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seventeen Deon cradled Lorn's motionless body in his arms and struggled to think; to be able to think. He rocked back and forth slowly. His senses felt dull. Lorn felt warm, but it could be the fugitive warmth of the newly dead. Deon opened his eyes reluctantly. Lorn was pale and lax, the wounds at his wrist and throat wept sluggish blood; he breathed. Deon watched each breath, praying for the next, knowing that Lorn had little strength to fall back on. But Lorn still lived and that was impetus enough for thought. They might still both escape. Deon carried Lorn's long form awkwardly, draped across his arms. He nudged the bar from the window with his elbow and felt nothing more than a mild tingle as he passed over the painted threshold; the day around him seemed glaringly bright, the sunlight hot and harsh. One guard saw him, but seemed not to know what to do. "Step aside," Deon commanded. The guard ran, probably for reinforcements. Deon broke into a shambling run also, through the gate and into the lane. The was no one around as he crashed down roads and closes, across parks and yards, coming at last to the banks of the small pond that provided the city with siege-water. He stumbled on the muddy bank and dropped to his knees. On the wind he heard a voice calling, screaming his name. Carn called to him and his blood stirred listlessly in answer, but as the stolen warmth of the blood he took circulated throughout his body, it quieted. Lorn dropped to the muddy ground, his eyes open and unresponsive. He could hear Carn calling for him through the aether, yet he felt no need to respond, he was free. Then there was an incongruous sound. "Hssst!" Bethany crouched behind the bank of the river, a position that allowed a good view of the house. A squad of four harsh-faced civilian-soldiers straggled behind her. She half-crawled toward them, nothing but the desire to protect upon her face, although her helpers balked where they were. Deon surrendered Lorn's lax body to her care. His breath gasped in his lungs and the morning light ground into his eyes like glass. "Quick," she hissed, backing away. The sound of her horse fretting carried on the wind. "Quick!" Deon staggered to his feet, driven by the simple urgency of her command; he followed her. The ground passed sullenly beneath his feet. Bethany lofted him into a saddle and the horse took it from there. The calm of exhaustion settled on him peacefully like killing snow, but warm as golden fire.

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*** Lorn watched the fire flicker in the gate. "This really will not do" Jule chided. "I barely have you on your feet and now you're even worse then before." She checked the color of Lorn's eyes and then refilled his goblet with sweetened, tepid water. "And you," she continued, looking Dee's way with a much less tender expression. "I hear you've not been well yourself." "That is..." Lorn began to speak but was interrupted when Bethany returned with Thea and the wind-blown form of Selene, obviously fresh from the road. "That is a complex matter," Lorn persisted, as they seated themselves about the room. Deep down, Lorn had to admit he felt cheated of his peaceful death. It was strange to resent his friends for saving him and to resent his erstwhile lover for sparing him, but who knew better than a witch that human nature was strange? "Thea has explained that Deon is touched by what Statins called the Blessing," Jule said with ill-concealed distaste. "It is a progressive condition, with inevitable and unpleasant effects." She approached Dee with the just the faintest outward sign of hesitancy. He suffered her examination and her touch but made little concession to it. Dee sagged in his chair, the very opposite of the tortured and energized wraith he had been mere minutes before. His skin seemed dull, and his eyelids drooped. Lorn felt the lazy shadow of his own Art running sluggishly with Dee, its nature slowly changing within its new host. "Blessing," Dee said faintly. "Ask Lorn about that." "A blessing indeed," Lorn said. "A man of the blood, which is what we need for our High Lord." "As you understand?" Thea said sharply. Lorn waved one hand in an exhausted gesture. "As I know, as Carn knows, as the Code says..." "What I wouldn't give for my grandmother now," Dee moaned. "There was a witch."

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It was clear, to Lorn at least, that Dee was the one most distressed at his state and with the best reason -- but he could not help but snort in amusement at Dee's statement. The one thing he had never been accused of before was not being enough of a witch. "A witch who knew about the Blest, about herbs," Dee explained as he staggered to his feet. "But failing that I have to sleep and after that I need window-tree leaf or a stake through the heart -- you must decide which." He walked unsteadily from the room. Lorn let him go. As much as he wanted to reassure Dee, he had to ensure his safety first. The door had barely closed behind Dee before Thea turned to Lorn with an icy look. "He did this?" In three short words Lorn heard that all of her softer feelings for Dee had evaporated away. Her rough notion of friendship was deep enough in its way and it put Lorn far ahead of Dee in her sympathies. Lorn sighed, cradling his aching wrist upon his lap. "That was what Carn required. I don't understand what he expected to achieve by it. My death? That would achieve nothing but the enmity of the Iseult -- and that he could do without. The only other effect seems to be freeing Dee from his control and what he has to achieve by that I do not know. He's railed against Dee, threatening to torture him to death, just now he seemed..." Lorn shook his head; even that small movement made him slightly dizzy and he closed his eyes, struggling to hold onto lucidity. "There's a story Dee told me about the Blest," Lorn said. "About how when the blood passes the new Blest kills his maker. I wonder if that isn't really what Carn wants, to die. And that whether he knows it or not, he is goading Dee to kill him." He opened his eyes and looked across at his friends, trying to convince them by the force of his own conviction that Dee could be trusted and that he was a crucial part of their future plans. "Carn is waiting to see what Dee will do and so must we. It comes down to him and I am sure Carn will be disappointed." "You're in love with him," Bethany said. "I haven't so much faith." "Lorn's right..." Selly began.

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"And you're no better," Bethany snapped. "He's a nice enough boy, but it is us that will get us out of this. Deon has enough to deal with being Blest, I think. More than enough. I think I had better put guards at his door." "I don't disagree," Lorn said heavily. "He is a man, and Blest, and helped lead the defense -- all of which are needed in the new High Lord." "The council will be here on the next full moon to see who we propose as High Lord," Thea said coolly. "That's three days hence and if Dee really will stand against Carn, then Carn won't support him." "Carn doesn't have to," Bethany snarled. "Whoever the council majority selects, is in, or the precious bloody Code says as much. It is a fool's choice, to make my good friend a monster, or be ruled by a man who already is one." Lorn realized then that she had not believed his claim that the Art would save him. "They don't have to take Dee," Thea added. "They might allow it to be a challenge open to any child of the blood." "I thought you liked Dee." Lorn said. "I would hope that you would want to save him, not vilify him." "I liked him fine before you came back looking like this," Bethany snapped. Lorn had no real idea what he looked like, but he felt more dead than alive. The dawn light shone mockingly through the unshuttered window. "We've all been casualties of this war, one way or the other, and Dee more than anyone," he said as he levered himself to his feet. "Let's talk again tonight but keep in mind that if you're for putting a stake through Dee you better do the same to me, if you send him away I go, too and if anyone but he is High Lord, by the Code, it will be me." He left before he could see how much harm his words did to his friendships, preferring not to know.

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EIGHTeen Deon lay between cool, fresh sheets. Despite his weariness, he did not sleep. He lay still and thoughtless in the absolute darkness of his small, borrowed bedchamber. Some time passed before he felt the room breathe as the door swung soundlessly open and shut -- and he heard the whisper of a footstep. It would be Lorn, he knew. Who else would be so quietly relentless? The mattress sagged a little as Lorn sat by his side. Deon opened his eyes. He could hardly see Lorn except as a whisper of black against deeper black, but he could feel his gaze. Perhaps witches could see even in the black, stone-clad night. "How do you feel?" Lorn said softly. "I don't think I can give you an answer you'll like," he murmured in reply. "You should be asleep, you must be feeling weak." Just by sound he knew that Lorn was lifting his frayed robe over his head. The covers lifted and settled. Deon waited for a touch, but it did not come. Lorn sighed. "What will we do," Lorn said. "What will we do?" Deon stoked his sluggish mind to wonder the same. "I stand," he said. "I take the post and you stay away from me, Lorn, because I'll be like Carn eventually. The blood comes through." In reply he felt Lorn's fingertips upon his cheek, soft and unerring. Deon knew Lorn could see him then, even in the dark. Lorn's lips touched gently on Deon's own. Deon's response uncoiled from deep in his stomach. It was sluggish this time, as if the power of the blood were sleeping and more ordinary passions were able to emerge, like bright fish surfacing in a murky pond. Any thought of what he should or should not do was banished. Deon reached out, his arms curled around Lorn's smooth skin, still cold from the air of the room. Lorn eased closer towards him, into the circle of his arms. "If we... the blood moves somewhat in other fluids of the body," Deon said. "Shhh," Lorn replied. "I can protect myself from that now that I know. Wards against the Art are one of my few useful skills. Although I hope you will find that I know a few things about the low arts as well."

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Deon's forehead rested against the slope where Lorn's neck met his shoulder. He felt Lorn embrace him in return, tentatively. Deon's hand moved slowly, feeling in his palm the subtle slope of shoulder, waist, hip... a terrain both familiar and strange. His fingers curled, Deon's lips began to wander their own path along the smooth ledge of Lorn's collarbone. Lorn was motionless, as if he was listening intently through his skin. Deon felt more certain of himself. His kisses settled more forcefully on Lorn's lips; his emboldened hands pushing Lorn slowly onto his back. "You're sure?" Deon said. "More sure than I have ever been." Lorn was tall, built on strong, straight bones, but yielding and soft without a soldier's endless training. Deon leaned over him, edging into an embrace of arms and legs together, a bower of limbs that settled around his own as closely and naturally as petals pressing against each other around the center of a rose. It was almost as if Deon could feel both sides, his own touch and the echo of Lorn's responses, as one. Lorn began to reply more strongly, his tongue darting, his body pressing upwards. The balance of lead and follow tilted with easy consensus. Deon leaned back upon his knees. Lorn rose to meet him, hands stroking firmly down Deon's sides and thighs. Deon felt Lorn's hands firm on his waist and the arch of his back. Lorn's body drew away, his lips slid smoothly over Deon's cock, smoothly and slowly descending. Deon's whole body shuddered, a delicious tension washed up from his groin to his chest. Deon couldn't seem to catch his breath, yet he could have happily died of it. He stopped Lorn before things went too far. They swayed back again. Deon pressed down, his hand ran along Lorn's inner thigh, the tip of his thumb marveled at the texture of it: warm as tea, smooth as parchment, and soft as doeskin. Lorn urged him on and Deon answered. He entered Lorn's embrace totally. Slowly, tightly... he moaned, hardly believing the sensation. Supporting himself carefully with one arm he slid his free hand down to encircle Lorn's member, stroking firmly in time to his movements. A circle of sensation passed between them, growing as they moved together. Lorn came first, yet still lost in the sensation did not hurry Deon, meeting his kisses, holding Deon's body so that he felt almost as if he were floating on air. Then he collapsed, spent, into Lorn's arms. Lorn's fingers wound in Deon's hair and their bodies settled easily together. Deon hardly knew what it should feel like, two people pressed together peacefully. He had been used in bed, but never held. And Lorn held him, firmly, as if afraid that what they had might slip away from him at any moment. Very gradually his fingers relaxed into sleep. Deon's cheek rested now on Lorn's warm shoulder.

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Given a few minutes to think, Deon felt a tear welling in his eye. For all its strength, he knew this must be fugitive comfort. If Lorn stayed with him, the blood's influence would mean he was hurt, eventually... or killed. Deon closed his eyes and tried with all his might not to think about it, not now, not tonight. He lay awake well into the night, trapped in a crucible of love and pain.

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NINEteen Lorn woke slowly. His body was settled deeply in the bed, not having moved in the slightest throughout the night. Dee lay lax in his arms, an easy weight to hold. Looking down he could see Dee's face, peaceful, asleep and wreathed in hair. The movement that had woken him was Bethany. She stood, silhouetted against one window, a square of deep blue where she had swung the shutter open. Her face was lit dimly, wearing an ambiguous, nameless expression. Lorn pulled the cover over Dee's shoulder and eased himself away. Dee moved only a little, still mostly asleep. "Shhh," Lorn whispered. "I'll be back soon." He leaned over Dee and kissed him softly, easily, and with that gesture Lorn settled a small spell over him, one to protect him from any malicious use of the Art. Lorn feared he might need to leave Dee alone for a few days, but not without taking every precaution he could to keep Dee safe from Carn. His robe was dusty from the floor, but Lorn put it on unfussily and followed Bethany outside. She took him down the hall and out into the small knot garden that nestled within the keep, planted in flowers and useful herbs. Lorn read disapproval in the line of her shoulders as she slowed her steps on the cinder path. They were alone; the morning was very young yet. "You should stay away from him," she said, finally, as she stopped and turned to him. Lorn shrugged and smiled sadly. "No, I don't suppose you could," she said. "But he's going to become a monster and it would be easier to just start hating him now." She shook her head, her eyes avoiding him. "You've always danced with death, Lorn. Don't think I haven't noticed, but death in this form might just take you." She looked at him at last and her eyes were not as hard as her words. Lorn could think of nothing to say and simply looked back at her, his old friend. He knew that her sudden change of heart about Deon stemmed only from the friendship between he and she. He felt unworthy, she obviously cared more for him than he had realized, fixated as he was on his own regrets.

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"You looked good together," she said softly. "Holding him, but I don't see how we can save him, I just don't see it." Lorn's eyes strayed over the patchwork of the garden. "I might have an idea about that," he said. *** "I have an idea," Lorn said. "But forgive me, Deon, I will not even tell you of it. I have done what I may but I do not understand the blood magic well and Carn may be able to influence you yet. He must not know what I am planning." Lorn held a pack slung over one shoulder and a carriage stood waiting for him. Deon felt unfamiliar and open fear at the prospect of this desertion. "You must stand for the leadership, when the Cabal comes, and Thea has agreed to support you. Bethany will be with me. Have faith in me, Deon, I will not desert you. Have faith in yourself, be strong. We should be back within the week and with good news." Deon's hands shook as he held Lorn. In letting Lorn go, he had to be strong. He could not cling to hope of rescue. "Lorn," he said, raising one hand to Lorn's cheek. "Do not risk yourself on my behalf. And if the city's safety is best assured at my cost, then that is what you must do. Lorn, assure me that you know that." Lorn met his eyes with difficulty. "If it came to that, I would. But Deon, it will not come to that." And it was not Lorn's eyes that betrayed him, they were steady and certain. It was Deon who knew that fear showed in his eyes, knew that as he stifled that fear his eyes grew cold. By long habit, he fell back on his own experience of solitary command. He could not assume that rescue would come, he could not even assume that Lorn would return. It was only in such absolute need he found strength, as he did when battle was joined and fear became courage through that necessary alchemy in a good soldier's soul. In a way, it was Deon who deserted Lorn by watching Lorn's departure without any more anxiety or hope. He turned and walked back into the keep. He only hoped that Lorn understood. He felt, in fact, that the one chink in his cold endurance was that he felt certain of that understanding. If what had happened so far had not deterred Lorn, little would. Deon walked under the toothed portcullis and across the muddy courtyard at the center of the keep. Doors led in all directions and he had no idea where most of them led. He wondered where Carn was and what he

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planned. He wondered what Lorn was doing and how Thea had been convinced to support him as ruler. He needed time to think properly and so he looked for the carved wood door of the library. As he turned the corner a man was walking towards him. The first things Deon noticed were his eyes. They bore the fixed gaze of a hunting animal and they fixed immediately on Deon. Next he noticed the stranger's hair-fine and grey, it drifted on the air behind him. It was not Carn, but it was definitely one of the Blest. "There are three more days before the vote," Deon said with an instinctive firmness. "And how am I to know who to vote for?" the stranger replied with condescending amusement, coming to a stop before Deon. The Blest stood and looked at him a moment. Deon heard someone step into the corridor behind him and then hurriedly retreat. The Blest Lord still had a trace of swarthiness to his skin and the fine nose and dark brows of a denizen of Trance. So this must be the pirate king and most recent made of the cabal, Freyda. Freyda opened the library door and there were two people inside. One was a clerk that Deon knew in passing, one who had become a fair archer during the hurried preparation to defend the city. Both of them left the room quickly rather than meet Freyda's challenging gaze. Soldiers had become vassals so quickly when fate required it. Freyda barred the door behind them and turned again to Deon. "I have just come from Carn," he said. "His plan with you is clear though he denies it. Do you see it I wonder?" "Children of the blood kill their makers," Deon said, almost lightly. "Carn hoped to avoid that by making a new fief. So that I would take that rather than his own." Freyda smiled. "You complicated his plans, somewhat. Yet it may still work. If you had led the assault and won, the post would be yours. As Carn lead the assault and the city held back the first attack, then it must be you or the Iseult. Either of the women would be a better candidate, but the Blest stick by their rules. Given that the Iseult has just quit the city all you need do is face the Cabal and not be found wanting. Lishan is staying behind. He cannot risk the life of the blood by having us all together, but the rest will be here by tomorrow, to judge you on following morning." Deon shrugged and leaned back against a tome-packed shelf. "And you are here now because?" he asked.

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"Ah," Freyda said. "If you are gone then the post falls to open vote and any currently of the Blest might vie for it. I have a true child of my own blood in tow. Like any of our kind I will not risk her life, but I would avoid the loss of my own, also." Deon saw the threat late, as Freyda still stood several long paces away and he made no physical move. A wave that felt like heat washed over Deon, a dizziness like exhaustion, but he took a deep breath and shrugged it off easily. The power of the blood roused within his stomach and Deon could feel it burning in his eyes. He felt untouched by Freyda's attack and stood ready to pour all of his strength into attack. "It is against Code to use blood magic against another Blest outside a declared challenge," Deon said hoarsely. Freyda took one step back. "You should not be so strong, so young," he said with grudging respect. Deon felt the warmth of his own strength rise within him and he stepped forward with a smile. Freyda reached for his dagger, drawing it far enough to reveal its nicked silver blade. Deon flowed forward effortlessly and caught his hand, forced the dagger back into its sheath. Strength ran through him, but in truth it was sheer skill with a blade that allowed him to hold Freyda's hand at an angle where opposition was difficult. Freyda loosened his hand from his weapon. "We need not be enemies," Freyda said with a thin and serpentlike smile. "You just tried to harm me," Deon said, putting his free hand firmly at Freyda's throat. "You are not sure what I did," Freyda said. "And I might still come up with a few tricks, but you have too much raw strength for me to risk it. You should never have been able to turn aside my spell. Tell me how that came to be and you will have my vote come the day after next." Deon took a few deep breaths and resisted the urge to squeeze. It was not something from his soul, this urge to kill, it was not something to give in to. He released Freyda and stepped back. "Why do we not call things even, as they are," he said, turning away. Deon's mind still whirled. Carn's plans, Lorn's absence and Freyda's connivings: he needed just a minute to himself, to think. He had one suspicion immediately about the source of his strange strength. The Iseult were a rare breed were they not? In the Sea States witches of any kind were few and well hidden. Strength might well come from feeding on the blood of a witch.

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He felt Freyda reaching for the power of the blood again and turned with a grim eye. "Let us call it even now," he said. "Or the child of your blood will come early to his inheritance." Freyda smiled again. "Her inheritance," he said, "but I take your point. I shall simply have to hope that the blood is more merciful in a woman's form. Or that one of the others will clear the way, with you gone there is only my Theena ready of the blood, against the rules or no."

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twenty Lorn hated the feeling of foreign clothes. The trousers hugged his legs tightly as he rode and the rough cloth combined with hours in the saddle were fast making him miserable. It was almost enough to distract him from his constant fear of being caught trespassing in the Sea States. Bethany and Selene obviously did not trust him to blend in. They rode closely on either side of him. Bethany rode at ease, but for her watchful eyes, and Selene strained forward with her gaze and heart, fretting at their need to keep to an inconspicuous speed. "How did I not think of it?" Selene scolded herself quietly. "Even when he outright said it, I did not think." "Well Lorn thought it," Bethany replied calmly. "But are you sure you know the way?" Selene sighed and sat back in the saddle. "I've been there but once, and years ago," she said, "but I know the way, right enough." After a thoughtful pause she continued. "I went to get news of his sister, Hetty, when her first was due. It was passed the expected time and Deon had had no word. The moment I saw her, the difference was clear. Her and their mother both, so calm; warm from within with something -- I knew not what -- and Deon and his father both so hard and tight-wound. Perhaps it the witchery in the women that saves them." Lorn eased his position to one side, searching for a comfortable seat. "Just tell me it's not far." "Far enough yet," Selene said, with a sympathetic glance. "I only hope Dee is right, and his kin will know this whatsit." "Bane," Bethany added. "It's called a bane. I only hope you are not chasing a mirage, or it's Deon that is the bane to all of us, and I'm ready to do what's needed even if you two will never be." Lorn looked away from her. It would do no good to argue; without Deon there would only be some other Blest put above them. And yet, perhaps it would be better to see a stranger pulled down by the blood's evil, than the man that he loved. *** They were all there, lodged within the keep's thick wall. Five Blest, even Carn, although he was keeping his distance so far. In the morning Thea would present him to them as ruler-elect. Deon could not tell whether it was hunger, passing time, or their proximity that was plaguing him as he lay, sweating and sleepless, on his

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bed. Mainly it was the waxing influence of the window-tree herb. The tea was still warm in his gullet and yet he did not feel its effects at all. His mood wandered out his control; piercing despair and wild elation, each pinned down only by the weakness of his body. Finally he passed some threshold. He was on his feet, wide-eyed and breathing harsh and deep. He had to have blood and he had to have it now. He had taken two steps to the doorwhen the bloodlust waned enough for him to think about what he was doing. He was aghast, knowing that in such a state he would do anything, anything at all. He strode to the door and turned the iron key to lock it. In the few moments that his will was strong enough he threw open the shutters and tossed the key out into the dark. Almost the moment he let it go, he tried to snatch it back. He looked out into the darkness, the sheer wall down four stories, and the flickering windows full of half-friends and almost-victims. He eyed the door. It was sound but perhaps not strong enough. Deon screwed his eyes shut. His hands groped out and latched upon the bedpost. The hard, aged oak compressed tangibly beneath his grip. The upright beam creaked and splintered. Desperate for somewhere to direct the violent predatory impulse rising from within, Deon ripped the whole beam loose from the bed. He took it in both hands and slammed it into the stoic stone walls, beating down again and again until a two-foot beam of iron-hard timber was nothing but yellow-tinged shreds and a ragged stump. Splinters tore his fingers until sluggish blood welled up. Brief calm descended as he wrapped his lips hungrily around his own wound. Deon crouched down in the corner, waiting for the madness to return. He was emphatically aware that his control could fade to nothing at any moment and his hope also faded as he felt a familiar presence behind the fragile barrier of his locked door. Carn was there; he knew it as certainly as he felt the chill breeze from the window or saw the flickering light of the fire. Deon froze and waited, feeling his breath ease in and out, feeling time slip by, moment upon moment. In the still night, and through the thick door, Deon heard Carn laugh. A deep, soft, sound. "Embrace the blood, the heritage I have made for you," Carn said softly. "For us both, together." Deon made no reply. Hugging his arms tightly around himself and leaning his cheek against the rough stone wall, he willed his tormentor to go away. For minutes Carn merely stood in the passageway, then finally the muffled sounds of footsteps bore Carn's unmistakable presence away. Deon concentrated on the sensation of his breath, easing in and out. The thirst came and went throughout the night as Deon stayed stubbornly in place. Even if he must take his own life, he would not sate this terrible thirst again, but even as he re-swore this familiar oath he felt the petal-thin slenderness of his resolve.

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*** "Fool boy," Chanriss roared. "I thought he had merely sold this family's honor cheap. And now I find he had everything, everything! Heir to the entire region and he threw it away!" The rage rolled off Dee's uncle in waves that Lorn found literally palpable. It was only with difficulty that he stood his ground and showed no outward concern. The heritage Chanriss shared with Deon was clear in the older man's wiry frame and dark tones, but his deep-lined face and stiff bearing spoke of a far less forgiving nature. Lorn could only pray that he did not see Dee's future face before him. Ferrel, Dee's mother, watched impassively from a winged seat by the fire, her still face unreadable, while Hetty hovered nervously in a doorway that led deeper into the great stone house. "Fool or not, will you help him now?" Lorn said softly, but with steel in his voice. Chanriss merely glared at him disdainfully. "I will help him, aye. By forbidding his lady mother from telling you a thing. Deon will come to his senses when the blood takes him and take his proper place as a chosen lord, as one of the Blest." He did not even look at Ferrel and she now stared into the fire as if her uninvited guests were not even present. "It won't be him, then," Lorn pressed. "The blood will wash your nephew away and take his place." "Good," Chanriss muttered. "He was a weakling child and indifferent soldier and full of fool ideas. Girl soldiers, mercenaries..." He shot Bethany and Selene a challenging look, then spun upon his feet and stormed away. Hetty scuttled out of his way as he left. From the corridor beyond Chanriss could be heard shouting, "You are not welcome here, be gone!" Lorn stood a moment considering Ferrel. He could only consider her poorly named; she was bow-backed and obviously meek to her brother-in-law's will. "Selene?" he asked.

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"I'm a fool," she replied quietly. "I should have been sure to come while he was away, but he is so seldom here that it did not occur to me that we would be so unlucky. She'll not gainsay him and Deon's uncle is a grand noble and tithe master. We must be gone from here, he'll betray our presence as soon as he may." "Tithe master?" Bethany said sharply. "A tax man! You did not think to mention before now that the master of the house is a lackey of the Blest?" "He's rarely here!" Selly repeated. "He keeps rooms in the town and from what Deon said, he never took to much interest in his brother's family." "Hush," Lorn said. He took a tentative step forward. "Lady Ferrel?" He waited a long moment. "Lorn," Selly began apologetically. Lorn raised his hand a little and waved her quiet. He waited on, looking to Dee's mother for her final word. Perhaps a minute passed with nothing breaking the silence but the popping of a green branch in the fire. Finally, and very slowly, she turned to them. "I am sorry," she said dully. Lorn sighed, his head dropping in defeat. Obedience again, these Statins choked on their virtues until they made poisons of them. "We must go," Selly urged. "And quickly." *** The housemistress tried Deon's door just after dawn, expecting to carry out her usual chores of cleaning and kindling. Deon lolled in the corner of the room, his will bolstered by the dawn but his body further weakened. There was a knock and then the rattle of a chatelaine key being lifted. The lady steeped through and paused, surveying the carnage he had made of the furnishings with some surprise. Deon offered no explanation. "Lord Freyda's room," he said, "Which is it? "The Jade Suite," she replied. "Though he is at present in the knot garden. I passed him on my way."

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Deon nodded his thanks wearily. "This lot is only fit for burning," he said as he levered himself to his feet, alarmed to find his legs trembling. He tried to smile his apology as he walked passed her, but the expression must have come out badly as it was only now that she truly looked afraid of him. She backed away and Deon could hear her footsteps pattering rapidly down the hall. No doubt his state would be widely known by the end of the day. Deon gave the matter no more thought. "You, asking after me?" Freyda said. Deon started, he had not heard Freyda approach. "You don't look so fine today," Freyda said contemplatively, his narrow face alive with a dozen fermenting plans. "You want your daughter to live," Deon said flatly, thinking fast ahead of his words. "But not out live you?" "But not murder me," Freyda said plainly. "Of course." "Carn's plan is best for that," Deon said. "She can't have this new state as the others won't tolerate a woman in the role, but more cities lie beyond this one and the one who rules here determines who may pass through his land's and beyond." "With our absent colleague abstaining, there's three of us must back you," Freyda said with an unsurprised smirk. "You, Carn, and those you influence. I wonder if that might not be enough. Not only for myself, but for Theena with all of us behind her." "You're not looking like a good bet. If you don't embrace the blood you will never hold this place long or well enough to pay me back for my support." "So you could do your part?" "If you could do yours."

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Deon looked out the narrow window, over the gabled roves already well bedded in the smoke of a dozen chimneys. "What must I do?" he said. "To prove it to you." "You're still fighting it," Freyda said with surprising sympathy. "It is pointless and it will be easier once it is over. You change, yes. Your sympathies are more focused on your own kind rather than the rabble as a whole, you need blood. But the power that comes with it, the pleasure. It is worth it. You will look back on your weakness now and wonder why you hesitated to step over into your new, long, privileged life." "What must I do?" "A little more blood will seal it. The strongest fight the longest, but become great. I will back you as soon as I am sure that you will embrace the blood. That you will be the kind of Great Lord and good soldier who can put a realm in my dear one's hands. I will bring you blood today and you will take it." Deon looked at Freyda at last, looked him in his sparkling pewter-colored eyes. He felt that Freyda was, in fact, as reasonable and as kind as the Blest could be. Freyda certainly felt a deep loyalty to his blood-daughter. Deon looked at Freyda carefully and wondered if he could bear to be the same. It seemed likely to be the best option that the city had, but a poor one at that. Things had been simpler when he had just served Carn with a pure and blind obedience, but that was not honor, that was foolishness. Real choices were rarely so simple. He was aware, also, that Freyda was probably trying to weaken him. Sating him with blood would cut his blood magic. But there were few choices before him. "So long as the blood you bring is willing," Deon said. "Have it as you will." Freyda reached out and after a brief pause Deon took his hand to seal the contract. "The blood will bind you to the Cabal's ends," he said. "But it will be a while before I am sure that its grip on you is sure and there is some insurance that I must demand." Freyda held his hand in a firm, cool grip. "We will discuss that when I return," he said. Freyda stepped back, his brocade coat swaying stiffly as he moved. Deon watched him dully. I have chosen my path, he thought. Freyda smiled thinly. "Come to my rooms at dusk," he said. "Yours are hardly fit for entertaining."

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Then he was gone. Deon knew that the blood lust would be strongest at dusk, the hunting hour. He wondered what he was doing, selling the horse to buy its tack? He sought to rule as he would not be as cruel as a Blest Lord, but he must become a Blest Lord to do it. All he had was a thin and foundationless hope that he would somehow be different, a hope that was inexorably proving false. He paced his devastated room and turned the puzzle in his mind, finding no solution. In the end he decided there were two choices only, to take no action and be damned by Carn's scheming alone, or to forge on with this plan and at least be damned by his own actions. It was grimly pleasing, at least, to have a tiller hand on his fate again, even if it was only to steer towards the falls his fate rushed towards regardless. A thrush sang out suddenly from a nearby rooftop, and children could be heard laughing in the courtyard below. Such ordinary sounds hardly seemed to belong to the same world as him now. Deon slammed the shutters of his devastated room closed and sat in the darkness, waiting. For dusk or perhaps for Lorn, whichever came first. Deon felt quite sure it would be dusk that found him first and only regretted the welcome his transformed self might give Lorn when he did arrive back from whatever mission he was on. His thoughts of his lover were already tainted with a hunger for something other than love. Deon shivered. I could never harm him... could I? *** Selly, Bethany and Lorn pulled up their horses under the cover of a small copse of birches. Only Selly was smiling. "What?" Bethany demanded. "While you were both looking at Chanriss," she said. "Hetty gave me the nod. I suspect that if we wait here, by the roadside, she come by soon enough." "That's why you wanted us away, but Chanriss..." Lorn said. "It's still a risk," Selly said. "But he must ride into Shankstown to betray us, we have hours at least. If he sends word ahead to the port we would do well to beat it even if we do not pause here and Hetty may not get away before dark. She'll want to put the children to bed or they'll see her go and give her away." "But the children?" Bethany said with a frown.

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"Three bonny girls and a wee boy, and between the oldest and their granny they'll be well looked after for a few weeks. We must keep Hetty's part a secret, but that done she can slip back home safe and sound when this is done." Bethany eased back in her saddle with a sigh, unhappy at the risks attendant upon this divided house, and the vulnerable children within it. "I like it not," she said. "But I see no other choice. Not for your precious Deon, but for us all." Lorn frowned in irritation. "You have made your distaste for Dee clear enough without any further repetition," he said tersely. "Not for him, but for what he is becoming." Lorn was tortured enough with that thought without hearing it put in words. Whatever Dee faced, for now, he faced it alone. Lorn felt an ache, like a clawed fist around his heart. His anger faded away. "Have mercy on me and speak of it no more," he said weakly as he dismounted. "It helps no one and certainly hurts me to even hear it said." Bethany pursed her lips as if to speak again, but a hot glance from Selly silenced her. They tethered their horses to the branches and each sought a comfortable vantage to wait, Bethany some noticeable distance from her companions. The day wore on, tense silence giving way to more a more listless mood. Many hours later it was growing dark and Bethany suddenly spoke. "I am sorry," she said. "I believe we may yet save him and I will do all I can to that end, but my true love is the city, Lorn. She will never be the same, she will be ruled by a tyrant, benevolent or not, and I grieve for her lost freedom. I truly love my role in protecting a city ruled subtly, properly, by her people. A peaceful place, a just one. That is over now and we can only try and minimize the evil done. I grieve for her, Lorn. And I think you know something of that feeling." Lorn did not reply. He realized that it was not on his behalf that Bethany was so suspicious of Dee. He wondered what Bethany knew of his grief, for she had never given any sign of knowing anything of his past before. He considered how she had served her lifetime in the City's defense, rising to her current post -without spouse or children, with little family and few friends. He was chastened that he had been dwelling on his own woes and quite insensitive to hers. He did not know how to reply and lost the chance.

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Selly leaned forward. "Here she is," she hissed. "We must be quick away now and by the lesser roads. There's been well enough time for soldiers to be on our trail by now."

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Twenty-one The Jade Suite was on the second floor of a round corner tower overlooking the marketplace. Deon's mood had finally settled into a dispassionate fatalism, superficially like his old command confidence, but more desperate. His many doubts were burnt and tamped down, as needless ballast should be. He presented himself at Freyda's door with a straight back and a will to do as he had sworn, not because the oath felt binding but because there was no better course. Either way, the choice was made. Whether this was resolve or despair he could not say, but it was a relief. Deon had trimmed his beard, combed his hair and brushed his clothes meticulously clean. Just as the last rays of the sun died, he crossed the fragrant knot garden. A liveried servant admitted him. Freyda waited in the receiving room, clothed in little more than a satin robe and lounging languidly on a daybed. It was so contrived a pose, it actually set Deon at ease. Two nervous girls sat on a bench opposite him. "Here he is," Freyda said. "Fashionably late." "Exactly on time," Deon replied implacably. "Looking presentable too," he said. "Though I don't think that introductions are necessary. These girls know why they are here. Pick whichever you will and waste no time on courtesies, our bargain is a simple one." Deon wondered if he meant his bargain with the girls, or the one between the two of them. The nearer girl rose nervously. She was a thin dark girl, dressed as a drab and no doubt used to selling her body one way or another. She clutched a small pouch of coins and seemed resigned to provide the service required, if not pleased by it. Deon sighed sadly and resolved on his part at least to have it over with quickly. He vowed to take no more than she could afford to give and prayed that he would be able to do so. His instincts stepped in and pushed aside any uncertainty. Deon stepped forward and took the girl's frail hand. Blood pulsed at her wrist and so no great intimacy was required. He turned her hand over, to reveal its small, calloused palm. He bit, swiftly and cleanly down to the conduits beneath the skin that bore blood to him, rich from the heart. She flinched back by reflex, but he held her hand implacably. His eyelids fell half-closed and his world diminished suddenly to a single, multi-faceted sensation. Water after days in the desert, light to a man lost in a deep cavern, love to the lonely hermit... life. He felt the girl stagger on her feet and cry out. Deon squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to push her away.

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He looked up to find Freyda standing before him looking amused and content like a cat before a warm fire. "Is that enough?" he asked. Deon shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. Freyda pulled forward the other girl. She was struggling in his grip as he wound the fingers of one hand in her curly hair and pulled back her head to expose her grimy neck. "Come along," Freyda urged. "She agreed and she has been paid." The first girl fled, staggering against the door and running unsteadily for the stairs. Freyda nodded that the servant could let her go. Deon hesitated a moment before stepping forward. Again, instinct guided him immaculately to the place were blood flowed rich and sweet. Freyda cupped the back of Deon's head with his free hand, caressing him as he fed from her throat. There was something horribly familiar about that sinister embrace. Again Deon descended into a deep, sucking tide of pure pleasure. He had to fight far harder to return and far longer. By the time her pulled back the girl was sagging to the floor. "She lives," Freyda said lightly to his servant. "Take her and leave us. Lord Deon and I must speak in private." "Not Lord yet," Deon snarled as he wiped his lips. "Soon enough," Freyda replied as he returned to his daybed. Deon pushed his own feelings aside. He sat on the hard bench, facing Freyda. He felt almost ridiculous in doing so, so primly, with blood in his mouth and his whole body shaken in the wake of the ecstasy he had felt. No wonder the Blest compromised their powers to satisfy their hunger. He found a cool manner as he often had in the heat of battle, when the men needed to see a fearless face before them. "We have a deal?" he said. "Oh, yes," Freyda agreed dismissively. "With that one caveat I mentioned." "State it." "A hostage."

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Deon considered this, a guarantee of his obedience. It was reasonable. It was horrible. "Who?" "The Iseult." "No." "Why?" "I will be isolated," Deon said coolly. "I will not be developing my alliance with Carn, he will become annoyed, hostile. I will need to use my every advantage to prevent him from undermining me. My main advantage is the Iseult. It is his blood that makes my blood magic strong, stronger even than Carn's. I need him to do what you need me to." Freyda looked unconvinced, but he considered it a few moments and shrugged. "Iseult blood..." he said. "You might not want to say, or do, anything that might make that common knowledge," Deon said, belatedly seeing the horrifying consequences that might accrue. He shut down his consideration of what, exactly, he had just given away. He needed his wits with him at the moment not straying off to future dooms. "But you need the Iseult," Freyda said indulgently. "I will take someone, whomever I choose, whomever I feel is suitable other than your witch. They won't be harmed, just held, until you fulfill your part of the bargain. But I am not pleased to hear that you might alienate your blood-father. We will need his support if our plan is to succeed." Deon thought, who else was there to act as hostage? Selly perhaps, Bethany or Thea maybe. It was another thing he simply could not afford to dwell on if his resolve was to endure. "I shall take care in how I handle the matter, but I will be a lord in my own right now, not his plaything. And if you wish a hostage, take one, but beware. After all, your daughter will be here, or near to here. So I shall not be without hostages of my own."

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Freyda leaned back and laughed. "I think you will do very well. I have deals of one sort or another with two of the other lords and with Carn, that will be enough. I shall see you tomorrow, and we shall make you a lord." *** Hetty led the way on an evil-tempered white pony. "Obey the lord, obey your husband be damned. I have a brother and I will help him. That is what the Green way, the witchhood, is meant to be all about. Besides, Chanriss did not see me, did not forbid me to come. My father would have never stopped me. He knew that honor was never an excuse for doing harm, or allowing it to be done. Chanriss, damn him, forbade my mother from helping, he said nothing about her daughter." She ranted on, seeming mainly to try and convince herself rather than anyone else. Lorn followed behind, eyeing the pony's short, slow stride with some distress. Selly and Bethany went behind, looking back frequently to see if they were pursued. "This way," Hetty said suddenly, and the stocky pony launched itself easily over a crumbling wall and started to trudge stoically up the steep, boulder-studded hill. Lorn hesitated, then decided to trust Hetty's local knowledge. Within minutes the road disappeared from view behind the broken line of a hill. Lorn began to breath a little easier, before his attention was taken up keeping his stumbling horse to the clearest path. He could see well enough in the dark, but his mare was not so fortunate and used to taking her slow gait over nice flat roads, not goat tracks. The wisdom of choosing a hill pony for a mount became clearer and clearer. For a long while he could only contemplate the sacks tied across the pony's flank bouncing and shifting as that nimble beast ambled over scree and sand. It was true dark when they came to a broad valley and Hetty turned to wander along its bottom. Lorn's mare was now irritated and tender-hoofed with stumbling and knocking her hocks on the many obstacles of their rough path. She snapped at Hetty's pony as they came abreast. "You do have a bane for the blood?" Lorn asked as he pulled his mare's head back sharply. "Not so much as bane as a bide," she said with her gaze still abstracted on the uncertain path ahead. Bethany swore and trotted up to Hetty's other side. "We must stop," she said. "My horse will be lame soon if this goes on. It's too dark to see and we'd do better to rest. Making good time from dawn we can meet the boat by tomorrow eve and make the city by dawn."

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Bethany pulled up and Lorn also. Hetty's mare took a few more paces and then stopped and turned to look back at them with an inquisitive look on its long pink-muzzled face. Hetty sighed. "True enough, it would be false haste to take a tumble in the dark." She turned with headed into the scrub with assurance. "Near the overhang here," she muttered as she disappeared between the bent and whispering trees at the side of the path. "There's good water and cover from the wind as well as from the eyes of any that might follow." "A bide?" Lorn called out. "Hush," Selly said. "There might be soldiers behind us and noise carries far on a still night." Lorn gritted his teeth over his questions and dismounted to lead his taller steed on to its rest. *** Thea looked at Deon balefully. Her face was drawn and shadowed from scant rest. Even her clothes seemed to echo her worries, a pale blue dress whose velvet fell in heavy folds about her. They sat, one at either side of the old oak table. It was bare for once of maps and treaties. "I don't know how to run a city," Deon said plainly, "and no one would trust me even if my condition were not widely known." "It is not widely known as yet." "It will be announced before all the nobles tomorrow, but that is not my point. You know how to run this city, but only I may reach for the post. I want you to know that I will take your word on any matter, but for where it touches on a deal that I have already done." Thea leaned forward in interest but her blue eyes narrowed in suspicion also. "A deal with the Blest? Not a one of them will even speak to me." "They care little, I think, for those that are not of their kind. My deal is based on the fact that the Blest normally succumb eventually to the urge to pass on the blood. Eventually their child destroys them. Carn saw a way around this in conquest -- to place the one he made in their own realm and so avoid the usual fatal

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progression and I have offered that on in turn. For Freyda's child to win his support of him and two followers." Thea looked away, running her short-nailed hand through her long, pale hair. "A slave enslaving others," she sighed. "It goes too far... I cannot countenance it and I despair for us that you can. We fought and we lost, yes, but to turn that tide to others. No. I will have no part of it." Deon watched her and wondered. Now that she said it, he wondered that he had been so callous. The next town was Threshold -- full of refugees, where the Iseult College and Selly's new base were situated. If he could turn her to some other city, where was the virtue there? Spreading the Cabal's contagion to new lands. "Perhaps I'll take my chance with whatever monster they put charge from open challenge," Thea said. "But it seems it must be you or Lorn and I see no reason for the curse to take you both. So you'll be the one regardless." "I am the only one you could propose, but any Blest might challenge once I am chosen. Unless I am protected, they will quickly succeed. Even those who are not older in the blood and better taught than me. If you do not support me in truth, defend me, work with me, this city will just become a different kind of battlefield and fall to the most ruthless and strongest Blest that assail it." Thea stood and pressed both hands palm down upon the dry old wood of the table. "So I must betray my friends and neighbors in the fear that there are even worse than you that might otherwise rule?" "Yes," Deon said calmly. "Exactly so." She had not expected so direct an answer. "What are your other choices," Deon said, "to oppose the Cabal? With what funds, what army? And in the meantime there is nothing to mitigate my worst instincts and those of whatever Blest put me out of my misery." "You don't look so miserable anymore," Thea said coolly. Deon made no pretence or denial. "So I am sliding into a callous state natural to my kind. Perhaps Lorn will find some answer, more likely he will not. I can only suggest that you support my bid for now and bide your time for a better option."

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"And if I don't?" Deon realized he had not given that option much consideration. He shook his head. "I have no good answer to that, but I act only to avoid Carn putting Lorn in my place." "Lorn can use the Art to resist the blood." "He can't and I can tell by your voice that you did not believe his lies either." Thea looked even more weary. "We are both only doing what we can, but left with so little to salvage, is it worth it to struggle on? For my part, Deon, this is all I will do. I will back you until Lorn returns. And if his plan has failed, I will make no more concessions. The only thing worse than being defeated by evil, would be to surrender and pass it on to others." Deon shrugged. "And so then what would you do? Throw yourself alone against the might of the Cabal?" "Exactly that," Thea said, perhaps too boldly to be believed. "Perhaps we should have simply fought on and been destroyed. I am coming to suspect that seeing what I have built perverted will be infinitely worse. I only wish Beth was here." "She'll be back soon," Deon said, but he realized he neither believed it, nor even hoped for it.

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Twenty-two Lorn awoke at dawn to find Hetty sitting on one of the many half-buried boulders that studded the land thereabouts. She looked up as Lorn came over and held out some small object in her hand. Lorn reached out and took it. It was a water-smooth crystal about the size of the ball of his thumb, and almost clear but for a slight grey haze near its center. "It is called a soul stone and if the stone is a true one then the spirit of the blood will go into the stone for so long as Deon is in contact with it." "So simple?" Lorn said, turning the small crystal in his hand. "My mother has kept this stone hidden in our house for many long years. I think her one small sin is to love her husband more than her sovereign Blest lord. But all Carn offered him, in the end, was death." Hetty's face became troubled and thoughtful as they turned back, but Lorn was eager to drive them forward again. "But Deon?" he urged. Hetty took the stone back and pressed it into a leather sling. "It could be tied, so, against his arm or leg anywhere so long as it touches the skin," she said. "So long as Deon still questions, still fights, what the blood is doing to him, it will work." There was still a slight note of doubt in her voice and in the creases around her small, dark eyes. "But in his spirit," she said, "Deon is not a fighter. He has physical courage, certainly but he has used his manly honor as a crutch and it was crippling him as certainly as it has my father. When he fled, I had hope for him -- and then when you told me why..." Hetty had the kind of plain, symmetrical face that shone with whatever emotion crossed it. There was fear there, but slowly resolution came to the fore. "I have known Dee only a short time," Lorn said, trying to feed that faith, "but more recently than you. He is finding his own way in the world and he will be fighting the blood, I know. If only we can help him, if only he will let us. He is becoming his own man and it is one well worth saving." Hetty curled her fingers around the soul stone and stood. "Of course he is, he always has been, underneath. I only wish he had seen Carn's plans before they went so far. I only wish I had told him."

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"Told him?" Selly said sharply. "What did you know?" Hetty looked between Selly and Lorn and over to where Bethany still slept. "Carn was taken with Deon from the first. He said nothing, but his eyes told me. I found it easier to believe it hopeless than to risk trying to... well what could I do? One cannot thwart a Blest Lord in his least will, let alone Carn's fixation on Deon, which has lasted over a decade now. I think my mother knew what would happen in the end but I had never realized. It is like an old curse repeating itself except that the previous Lord Carn was content to admire our father in the hands-off way that he would allow. I wonder if there is something in the blood of that line that that is drawn to our family's men." Selly reached out and grasped Hetty's shoulder. "Carn used him," she said as if she was only really realizing this herself. "That's why Deon was always so like he was around our Cursed Lord." Lorn felt a chill in his heart. Dee -- who had seemed so diffident at first, so unable to say 'no'. Surely the passion of their few nights together was no counterfeit, surely that was love? Lorn found that he did not doubt it. He only felt the need become even more urgent, the need to rescue Dee from the fate Carn planned for him. For the first time his distaste for Carn deepened into true hatred. Yet strangely, for the first time he truly understood why his relationship with Lauron had been forbidden. It would be so easy for a teacher of the Art to abuse his powers and his post to exploit those in his charge just as Carn had done. Lauron had done nothing at all that was wrong, but the rule protected everyone from those that were less honorable. Lorn realized that both women were looking at him now as he stood lost in thought. "Carn won't have him, the blood won't have him," Lorn said fervently. "For the city and for himself we must find a way to win Dee free from this damned contagion." Hetty searched his face. "Right," Selly said boldly, as if words could make it so. "We'll stop him." Bethany finally stirred and sat up. "We're off?" she said groggily. "Och, my back hurts, I am getting so old." Hetty was still looking at Lorn. "Ah," she said. "I see." Selly seemed nervous, but Hetty merely smiled. "That someone would love my brother truly, for who he is, that is all I could want. That alone should give him reason to fight."

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"You needn't come with us," Lorn said. "It is a great risk and you with children at home." Hetty shook her head. "Ma might have the stone wrong and there are other things to try at that juncture which only I know. I will carry on and see this through." In her resolve she was very like Dee -- almost like the same person grown on different paths by gender alone, but such different paths. Lorn felt worried at the risks she took, sucked into the same maelstrom as the rest of them. "There is one more thing," Selly said. She drew a small twist of suede from her pocket and passed it to Hetty. "I've had a bad feeling from the moment I realized that Deon was concealing that he took this stuff, sometimes to clear excess." Hetty pulled the scrap of leather open, a few crumbles of some dark leaf lay within it. She rubbed them between her thumb and finger to release their scent. "Even worse," she said. "It's window-tree leaf, also called false-hope. It has a lot of true uses, purifying ground or tainted objects. But it's also taken by a woman who has been too long in the close company of one Blessed. It slows the progression of the condition, much in the way that a dam holds back the building water. As soon as she stops taking it, the blood's even more powerful than before and takes her over even more thoroughly. It is a desperate gambit and I am surprised Deon even knew of it. We must hurry." "It won't stop the soul stone from working?" Selly said. "It shouldn't," Hetty replied grimly. But Lorn ill-liked the look upon her face. *** The great hall was still, with the five Blest, Deon and Thea at its center. The Petty Court was assembled on the benches that overlooked from the balcony, onto the wide floor below. Carn was the last to arrive, just as the town bell struck and those that watched dared to mutter between themselves at the novelty of the simple spectacle. There was little pomp or glamour, they simply met.

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Thea seemed grim and nervous in this peculiar company. Deon's mind was on what he had seen in the mirror One single hair at his brow had gone gray from root to tip. He could not see how this was possible and he could not understand why his mind was fixed on this trivial detail. "Under the Code I propose Deon as lord of the City," Thea said in a piercing voice, with each word rolling out distinctly like a pebble falling into a still pool. There was no pleasure in her voice, nor had Deon expected any. He stood and dully took in the events as they emerged. "So he defended," Keswick of Thable interjected with a sneer. "Merrick attacked, where is he?" "I killed him," Deon replied curtly. He lost all patience, all doubt. Either he would be Lord, or he would be killed and he saw no reason to delay the verdict. "Besides," Freyda added, "he was not true blood, just showing signs of use." The Blest were a line of faces uniform in their disdain except for Carn, who looked at Deon and seemed not to hear Freyda's gibe. "This 'Deon' will do for now," Keswick said shortly. "Open challenge would be better," Jillie said. "No," Keswick said. "Once Deon is installed anyone with a child of their blood can call their challenge. In the meantime we can all go home. Reject him and we all have to stay here through the challenges. It's dangerous for us all to be together and all away from our lands," he said. Deon wondered what Keswick was so impatient to return to. It was certainly tipping the scales in his favor. "Let us have a vote on it," Freyda said crisply and loud enough to echo in the empty space around them. "For Deon, I say aye." "Aye," agreed Keswick. "Why not Harild?" Jillie said quickly.

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"That dandy," Carn snapped. "My vote is for Deon." "I say aye also," said the final Lord, with a glance to Freyda. Jillie scowled and Deon could feel the small man's blood magic rising. "We all know that only you and Freyda have a child of the blood at this time," Carn said to Jillie. "And Freyda's choice is far from suitable. But Jillie, if Harild is not man enough to call challenge then he is certainly not fit to be proposed unopposed. He has no basis to be proposed here, he had no part in the conquest." Jillie held up his hands. "So be it," he said. "I abstain and acknowledge that the vote is carried." Jillie left the hall and the others trailed after, except for Carn and Thea. Deon could hardly believe the matter so simply settled. Instead of a quick death he was voted Lord, to await further challenges. He had thought that he would be Lord, or dead; now it seemed he would have both honors. "Making plans of your own, I see," Carn said. His voice mingled pride and contempt. "Good." Deon looked across at him. There were just a few feet of open ground between them. Deon felt fear and horrible attraction within him, peeking from the scarred indifference he had developed over the last few days. He ignored both impulses and clung to his numb indifference. "I think we're done here, my lady mayor," Deon said softly. "If she is mayor than what are you?" Carn purred. "Mayor is not Lord," Thea answered for him, her voice steeped in dark irony. Someone in the balcony tittered nervously and the nobles were left overlooking an empty hall, fully occupied with their own gossip. The world moved on swiftly about them and for once they were pleased to be redundant in such dangerous times. Deon drifted in Thea's wake, but she did not wait for him. She turned towards her own tower, the guard shutting the door emphatically behind her with Deon still outside. Within the hour Jillie had issued the challenge. The son of his blood, Harild of Jent, would await Deon in the Hall at the next dusk. If Deon refused he would open himself to less ritualized attack at any time or place. Thea remained secluded in her personal rooms and made no comment, leaving Deon to contemplate his single, unattractive option.

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*** They pressed on through the relentless day, which had dawned bright and turned hot. They hurried, knowing that there was none of the Sea States' usual mists to hide them from pursuers, pleased at least that the dry ground would not hold tracks. Lorn and Hetty rode side by side in a preoccupied silence while Bethany and Selly entertained each other with stories that grew more and more exaggerated with time and miles. Hetty glanced often at Lorn, but looked away when he caught her at it. Finally she spoke. "Take this," she said, holding out the soul stone. "Keep it safe for me." "It's not necessary," Lorn said. "But it will help you to have it physically in your hand," Hetty said. "While Deon is so far away from you." Lorn took the stone carefully, holding it in his hand; such a small thing for all their fates to pivot upon. As his fingers curled about it he felt as if it was Deon's heart within his hand, soft and pulsing quietly. "You are kind," he said. "I am ashamed," she said. "I deserted Deon. I could have done so much more. All the Green Women could, but they hide behind their own womanly obedience, just as the men bow down to our damned Lords. Still feeling so sincerely virtuous because we do not wield the swords, but we don't use the shields our Arts give us either. We let evil things happen that maybe we could stop if we would dare it." "At the risk of your own family." "To not act is to do the same, to sacrifice my brother." Lorn thought on this a while. "I often act when I shouldn't, you act now and risk a great deal. What can we do but try and make the right choices? What does it gain us to doubt ourselves now?" Hetty nodded, but still looked unsatisfied. "Dee wonders too," Lorn mused. "He thought he was doing the right thing at Bastion, in serving Carn. He was so certain of himself then, I am sure it shook him hard to change. But in the end I think he realized that it wasn't a change at all. We all do the best we can and sometimes it isn't enough, but what else is there?"

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"This time it will be enough," she said. "We will save Deon." "We will," Lorn agreed, knowing that they both, in their hearts, had doubts. *** Deon sat in the knot garden, steeping in the scents of herbs and flowers that the late afternoon heat lifted from their leaves and petals. Thea had refused to even speak with him. Stripped of his closer friends, her rebuff was a final insult to his shattered faith. She had finally deigned to speak one single sentence to him, poised at her outermost threshold with guards standing by. "Until Lorn returns and unless he can reverse your descent, we have nothing to discuss." The sanctimony! Deon felt fresh blood throughout his body; he was weak. He could see no way to win the challenge being ignorant of the blood Arts and without any strength be it by starving or by Lorn's blood. His mind threatened to lose itself in worry about what Freyda might do to others from the Iseult now that he knew of the power of his blood. He refused to concern himself with it. What would be, would be. Suddenly it struck him how much better it would have been if he had never wavered, if he had welcomed Carn's attentions and not fled. He would have been turned, but been taught how to understand his new nature. He would have lead the assault on the city and, without the defense he himself had instigated, it would have been an almost bloodless victory. He would have become Blest Lord in a way even Jillie could not challenge. His family would be elevated by the honor, not scarred by his disgrace. It would have been better. He searched his thoughts for error and found none. How had he thought otherwise, how had he thought anything but that he had erred from the beginning and the people all around him had been paying for it every since? He snagged on only one doubt, Lorn. Will Lorn...? No, he will not come. He will be safe with the other Iseult and they will be strong enough to protect themselves. Perhaps I should warn them? Perhaps I have enough to deal with for myself, without worrying about so many others! He knew that he was changing, again. His perspective and the very shape of his character were like the dunes, remade each day by whims of the tides. He knew that it was the blood and yet he did not regret it. He only regretted that he did not know how to win Harild's challenge. For that reason he was likely to be dead before the night was out and, given that, he was not inclined to worry overmuch about his fading virtues, such as they were.

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He was likely to have the advantage in skill at arms, but not blood magic, not physical strength. What could he possibly do with that? The plan came to him in a flash. Deon felt an uncharacteristically sly smile spreading across his face. He had so very little time. He stood and began to walk to the stables even as the details fell into place in his mind. He was so preoccupied that he barely detected the flicker of a tall, male figure in a distant doorway. Yet even this brief glimpse was enough to fire a vague flicker of recognition. He stood still a moment chasing the feeling to its source. It slithered between the fingers of his hand like a fingerling in the net. Carefully he cupped and considered it. Cadence. He should have considered that the Iseult might act. They had opposed Lorn's role in defending the city. From Lorn's own views he knew that they reviled blood magic and, unlike Lorn, they had no close personal regard for Deon to counteract that distaste. Deon stepped back into the shadow of the arch that led on to the cobbled court. What would the Iseult want? They would prefer that no Blest ruled the city, or failing that, they would want a Blest Lord they would be best able to undermine or overthrow. That might be himself for he was young and untrained in the blood. Yet he was also familiar with both the city's civil authorities and with the Iseult themselves to some extent. Besides that, Deon might be able to turn Lorn against them or even just to harm him. No, on consideration, Deon thought that Cadence had gone for an audience with Thea, of which Deon was meant to be ignorant,and he would strive for Deon's downfall. He could only hope that they took a little time in their plans so that he might deal with Harild first and then turn his mind to the meddling Iseult.

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twenTY-THREE Hetty took them a hard, direct way. When the way ahead was apparent, Lorn lead, setting a swift pace. At other times Hetty picked the way. Selly hung back and watched the rear as Bethany soldiered on with a halflame horse, saying nothing. The light was golden and slanting, in some uncertain nexus between late afternoon and early evening as a hill and found themselves overlooking the port. "A boat waits for us," Lorn said for Hetty's benefit. His mare pricked its ears and quickened to a shambling trot, ready to return to its stable in town, as were Bethany and Selly's likewise rented mounts. Selly was only more tense to be in town, where any sensible pursuit would seek them. "Wait up," she called. "There is a 'pothecary," Hetty said. "I must go there for a few rare herbs that might help us, plants from other shores. Best you wait for me at the boat, a party of foreigners will be conspicuous in the town proper." "I'll come with you," Selly said. "Even worse," Hetty replied. "You're known here and known as a defector. No, I'll come to the ship by dark. What is it called?" "She's called 'Deliverance'," Bethany said dryly. "May she be just so, for all of us," Hetty replied sincerely. She kicked her pony to a reluctant canter and Lorn and the others did not dare to make a point of following her. "I like it not," Bethany said. Selly watched Hetty go with pursed lips and then turned her horse towards the docks. "Aye, she's canny enough in her way," she said. "I dare say she has the right of it." Bethany followed reluctantly. "If we are pursued, they'll seek her there first," she muttered.

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Lorn followed on behind, reaching his pouch to feel the reassuring presence of the soul stone. He was abashed to realize that its safety was his first thought, rather than Hetty's. Yet of all the people he knew, Selly had the wisest way of thinking. He consoled himself that her judgment was probably better than his own in this or any other matter. He knew that there was a callous edge to his judgment, driven on as it was be the way each moment of time betrayed Dee to his infected blood -- Dee who did not even know what they attempted on his behalf. *** Deon stood confidently at the edge of the hall. Thea had driven the disgruntled nobles from the door, considering a full challenge too dangerous for spectators. Apart from Jillie and Carn, the Cabal members had dispersed back to their own lands, although Freyda promised to return shortly. Harild was also there, of course, a slim man with hair heavily slated with grey. He had the dress and hauteur of a young lord, but held his sword like a young boy held a stick -- with an aggressive posture but no skill or familiarity. Deon noted that he looked less than entirely hale and that there was an edge of desperation in his eyes, and worry in Jillie's. They must press their challenge, having made it, or Harild would be barred from ever being named a Lord. Thea came to Deon's side, her face visibly more creased with woes from the last few days. "How is Cadence?" Deon asked preemptively. "How dare you draw money from the treasury!" Thea snarled, but she could not conceal a slight start at his question even as she ignored it. Deon shrugged. "I am Lord and besides, much of that small trove of coin comes from Lorn's resources -- he would not deny it to me." "It is not his, so much as the Iseult's, and I think you would find they would." That he had even thought of warning the craven Iseult, even as they moved to betray him! Deon had hoped the Iseult would not strike strongly and swiftly, certainly it was not their usual preference. Much as he had effectively neutralized Harild, he could not hope to oppose the Iseult should they finally be provoked to overt action. He could only hope that they would still balk from openly provoking the Cabal. "Stand forward and answer my challenge!" Harild called in a quavering voice.

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He did not sound too confident in his challenge and for good reason. Deon had found a woman from the dock walks, one willing to take a great risk in order to acquire more money than she would otherwise make in her whole life in her unpleasant profession, obliging the sailors in their desires. She took a great draught of window-tree leaf tea, as much and as strong as she could stomach over an hour. Then she offered herself at young Harild's door while his blood father was away trying to parley with Freyda. By all accounts, Harild was hedonistic, impulsive, arrogant and unwise. He would need to be to risk taking blood before a challenge, just because it was offered in an attractive package. All signs pointed to his scheme having worked and having the effect that Deon had hoped for. The fate of the woman did not concern him overly. All the better if she never came to claim the balance of her fee. "Oh, I answer," Deon said breezily. "I stand." He shook the sheath from his new blade and left it lying on the floor. A few gold coins from Thea's coffers had also replaced his sword, with one almost as fine as the family blade broken in Bastion. Harild took a step back as Deon advanced and his eyes flicked to the side. Only when Deon crossed into the open expense of the hall did Deon see Cadence, seated in the otherwise empty benches. "Well, my Lady Thea," Deon said. "Is this why you really emptied the balcony? You do not want it widely known that you machinated for your Lord to fail?" "My Lord will have to stand or fall by his own efforts," she replied. She stood watching him with folded arms and a sullen scowl. Her appearance so rankled Deon that he struggled against the urge to slay her upon the spot. But Deon knew that he must focus upon the most immediate of his perils. Not Thea, not even Cadence. He knew no way of protecting himself against Cadence. If he dispensed with Harild quickly, he might give the matter more thought. He trotted forward quickly and made a battle-strike, the sword's edge punched forward without signal or warning. Harild stumbled back and so was only scratched, his clothing snagging and pulling free of the sword's tip as he flinched away. Deon felt the same dizziness that he had experienced when Freyda first challenged him. It was even stronger this time, but Deon had fought through illness, fatigue and injury when the battle required it; this was not beyond endurance. He slashed at Harild a few times to test him and was reassured by the ill skill and weak nature of his parries. He need not bother beating Harild's guard. He just slapped his blade aside, breaking his awkward grip so that the weapon was torn from him.

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Deon drove his own blade forward again in a proper soldier's attack. Given the weight of his charge his new blade slid smoothly through Harild's belly and buried its tip in the panels of wall. Harild's jaw gaped and has hands clutch instinctively at the hilt of Deon's sword. Deon held it implacably in place, ignoring the superficial scratches Harild inflicted on his hands. "Shall I quarter you or shall you concede?" Deon asked calmly, as if it were a matter of indifference to him. "Concede," Harild gasped. Deon drew his blade back swift and clean, leaving Harild to crumple to the ground. One of the advantages of the blood was that this wound would not be mortal for him. Deon looked down at Harild, writhing on the ground and wondered whether he should kill him. It was only habit that made him offer dueler's clemency; such mercies should having no place in his new life. Cadence was standing now. "How could you... how did you?" he muttered. Jillie scowled. "Now that's done, there may be no more challenges," he said. Deon felt the warm glow of triumph within him -- Carn would be proud of him yet.

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Twenty-four Lorn could not admire his own actions as he stepped off the boat. He had drawn Hetty into the fray and now that she was in dire trouble he was deserting her. It was a poor salve to his conscience that Selly had stayed behind to search for her. Another friend in danger, although at least it was of her own choice. His hand lay in his pocket, his fingers curled tightly about the soul stone. It was an uncertain cure, but the only one to hand. He had deserted two women for the promise it made, and an uncertain promise at that. His worries had deepened last night as the boat rocked on the waves as it strove forward and he felt someone attack the ward that he had placed on Deon, someone using the Art to strike at Deon killing-hard. He knew the ward had held, although he was weak from ensuring that was so. He hoped that Deon had not been so transformed that the magic attack was righteous, or his ward might have effectively murdered one of his Iseult colleagues. Lorn walked through the City, its streets half-empty and quiet. Many of the people that had fled the conflict had obviously chosen not to return. He could not blame them; times remained very uncertain. If only he could secure Deon's salvation. It might be the City's also and it would certainly be his own. Lorn was quietly sure that a heart twice-broken would be fatally wounded, in spirit if not in body. He pushed his own selfish concerns aside and hurried on. The guards at the keep admitted him but bade him wait for Thea in an antechamber near the gate. She was a long time coming and Lorn paced the small room. His most fervent desire was to run through the corridors 'til he found Dee. Deon, not Dee, dammit. But the guards had been expecting him and there must have been cause for the delay. When Thea arrived something in her expression drove every other thought from his mind. She was grey-faced and stern, the look of a woman who had made hard choices and lost sleep on it. "He is not the same man," she said almost accusingly. "I have the cure for that," Lorn replied as calmly as he could. "A cure?" "I certainly hope so." They looked at each other, desperation and shrouded hope showing on both sides. Each had found implacability in extremity and recognized it in the other. Lorn knew he would do well to avoid a direct conflict

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with Thea, who might be more than his match. She apparently thought the same and proffered the best compromise she could conceive of. "I will take you to where he is," Thea said. "But only after you have spoken to Cadence." "Cadence! What will he say to me?" Thea looked aside uncomfortably. "He will say that the Blest are always cruel and that there is no cure. He will admit that the Iseult should have backed you from the first and avoided the Cabal ever getting a toehold in the territories. One that Lord Deon is already set on expanding." "Lord Deon?" "Just so, but he's proving a little more suited to the role than I care to live with. I give you one chance, Lorn, and that's only because I've given both you and 'm'Lord' my word on that. After that the Iseult will have their way." "They'd have had it already I warrant, if I hadn't warded Dee against it," Lorn snarled. Thea acknowledged that with a raised eyebrow. "That was Cadence alone," she said. "By tomorrow he'll be ready to throw the weight of all the colleges behind it." "And have the Cabal reply in turn? Deon's one of them now. If Cadence pulls all of the Iseult into it, it will be war, war between mages and focused right here. The brave few that still live in these echoing streets will be obliterated." "You're the one who called for the Iseult to be involved!" Thea snapped in reply. "In defense, when war could be avoided, not now!" Thea took a deep breath as if she had a great deal more to say, but she held it. Lorn felt his limbs shaking with some curious blend of desperation and unfocussed anger. He fought against his emotions, seeking the calm clarity that he would need to find any kind of tolerable solution to their bind. "Go try your cure, Lorn," Thea said in clipped tones. "And if it works we'll have no cause to argue. Though to my mind the Iseult might still be a better bet, but I am a woman of my word and I still have some faith in you,

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heart-spelled as you are. But if you fail, Lorn, don't oppose me. I will back the Iseult and we will throw these monsters back into the sea." Lorn knew that there was steel in Thea, but he was seeing more of it than he wished to now. He wondered if that strength was within himself, and feared that it was not. After Lauron had died Lorn had found nothing within him but weakness and melancholy -- he could feel that pit of desperation calling him even now. And if the soul stone failed after all that had been risked to acquire it, he wondered whether he would admit defeat if he fell. Yet even then, Dee would still live and would still need him. "I'll do you this deal, Thea," he said. "If I can't cure him, I'll take him away from here and leave you to sort things out as best you can. If I'm driven to that, Cadence and the Iseult be damned; they'll not see me again." Thea looked at him long and hard, and then the edge dropped off her stern mood. "Don't speak too much in haste," she said. "The Iseult may have no truck with blood magic, by any stripe, but they're fiercely loyal to their own kind. If it came to a choice between the two they may well surprise you." Lorn merely shrugged. "We all do as our heart and conscience bids, in the end." Thea nodded her agreement to that, at least. Lorn though that she understood that the most important thing was love. Lorn's love was small and selfish thing in comparison to hers. He loved one man and she, like Beth, loved the city and everyone in it, under her care. *** Deon's rooms had been quietly set to rights while he was away. He viewed them with dissatisfaction. The bed was overly carved and there was too much plush, feather-stuffed cloth in every corner. If someone was trying to ingratiate themselves with him by this display, they had very much misjudged him. His first order of business must be to take permanent control of the finances and the guard. Bethany would be a problem there, when she returned. But for now he had to focus on the problems to hand, Thea and Cadence. He did not know what had stopped the Iseult from using the Art to make him fail Harild's challenge. It would have been a tidy way to disentangle Lorn from him and leave them apparently blameless. No doubt they would become less subtle if their plans continued to fail. However, he must have been wrong in thinking that it was Lorn's blood that had protected him against Freyda's blood magic, for its strength would be long spent by now and neither of the girls Freyda had acquired

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were Iseult. Deon had no answer to his apparent immunity and his all-around ignorance of matters of the Art could easily become a fatal impediment. There was one obvious answer. He must go to Carn. Carn was his sire and but for Deon's intemperate flight Carn would have instructed him properly in his new life. Deon found it hard to comprehend that he had been so foolish. The only problem was that there were so few of the Bastion soldiers remaining in the City. It would take some time to encourage their defection back to his command. Longer to secure his command and appoint an appropriate overseer so that he could afford to seek Carn out and he'd never last that long with the Iseult after him. Deon contemplated his little problem without any particular alarm, largely because he did not imagine for a moment that Carn had deserted him. His apparent withdrawal must have a purpose however. Was it to allow Deon to prove himself? Was it to draw the Iseult? If he had acted with more sense from the beginning Carn might have confided in him. In the meantime, Freyda was the only Blest still remaining in the keep, and Freyda had a vested interest in keeping Deon in power. There was a knock at his door and Deon smiled. He felt sure that this would be Freyda now. He strode to the door with his mind full of plans for getting as much information as he could without giving away the true extent of his ignorance. When he found Lorn standing on the other side, he found that he had no idea what to do. He had become used to thinking of Lorn as a useful delaying tactic. Having begun merely not expecting his return, he had somehow slipped into the habit of assuming that he would never reappear, certainly not at such an inconvenient time. Belatedly, he remembered that they were meant to be 'in love', and that Lorn was here to 'rescue' him from the fate of being Blest. Deon attempted to look pleased at the sight of Lorn, but could tell that the effort was too little, too late. He stepped back to let Lorn in and closed the door behind him. "I know things look different to you now," Lorn said. Lorn was holding his old yellow amulet, the one that Bethany said could read the truth of a man's words. Deon was stuck a moment, saying nothing, not sure what to do. He had to get rid of this foolish man quietly without forcing the Iseult's hand. "I am going to ask you to do one thing," Lorn said. "Just one thing." "And then?"

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"I'll leave if that's what you want." Deon looked at the scruffy witch. He was tall, with uneven features and tangled hair. It was hard for Deon to see what had ever appealed to him about such a weak and lackluster specimen. The only useful thing that the man possessed was blood. Deon did not bother to conceal his contempt. "What one thing?" he said suspiciously, waiting for the sensation that meant that the Art was being used against him. "Take this stone in your hand." Lorn proffered a small, pale pebble. Deon smiled contemptuously. "Why would I do that? You will only distract me again, from my fated path, my proper role." "Found your 'honor' again, have you?" Lorn said sadly. "Forgiven Carn for his casual use of you." "I was not Blest then, I was nothing. Now things will be different." "Now you are Blest," Lorn said earnestly. "You are strong and no one will be able to overcome you, surely? And by doing this one small thing you eliminate me as a complication in your life." Deon felt a trap in the witch's weasely words, yet the logic was sound. "How could I trust your word?" he said, "You disobeyed the commands of your Iseult often enough." "All you need to do is tell Cadence I am here and he will ensure that I am not further hindrance to you. I am not strong enough to stop them now," Lorn snapped, "and they are entirely out of patience with me." Deon knew that he did not need to take Lorn's test before he called Cadence in and Lorn's doubtful expression suggested that he knew this also; he puzzled at Lorn's meekness. Lorn was obviously convinced that this ordinary stone was powerful enough that his bluff would never be called. Deon merely had to decide how much faith he had in the blood's ability to counter its influence. The moment he formulated the question, he knew the answer. His faith was absolute. He reached forward and snatched the stone. Then he waited, feeling his heart thumping in a way that his mood did not really reflect. Nothing at all happened. He smiled.

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"Well that was easily worth it, to be rid of you. Be swift or I will take the trouble of finding a more permanent solution." Lorn watched him with obvious disappointment. Deon regarded Lorn in turn and considered whether he might simply kill the witch. Perhaps it was simply the strength of the blood -- Cadence alone could not stop him. The same might be true of Lorn, as he said. What stopped him was less the doubt he had about that, than his need to be strong. And for the blood magic to be strong he must not take blood. He looked at Lorn and considered merely breaking his neck and wasting the blood. It seemed as if the amulet did not need him to speak, to betray his thoughts. Or perhaps his eyes were eloquent enough. Lorn's face became even more pale and devoid of any expression. He left the room with alacrity, leaving Deon standing with a small pebble in his hand. He was on the verge of tossing it aside when he realized that it was not pale colored, but translucent. Almost translucent... *** Lorn felt a pang of disappointment that was as sharp as a spear through his gut. He felt faint, resting his hand against the rough bricks of the corridor. Then he squeezed his eyes shut with exasperation. What an utter fool I am! With a gesture of will, he dropped the wards that he had placed on Deon, the wards that protected him from all magic. Even, as Lorn had realized, the workings of the soul stone. He turned and looked at the closed door of Dee's room, hoping fervently that Dee had not had the time to put down the soul stone, that the soul stone really would work. He walked the few shaky steps back to the door, gripped his amulet tightly and placed his other hand on the dry wood of the door. He felt two people in the room. One enraged and entrapped. One shocked and shaken. Lorn recognized one of them, Dee... Dee as he knew him. Lorn pounded on the door. "Dee, Dee... don't put down the stone. Whatever you do, don't put down the stone. And open the door, but don't put down that stone." The Dee that came to the door was white and shaking, but far more familiar. "You know what I was thinking just then?" he asked, dazed.

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Lorn pushed him gently back into the room and closed the door again. "Not you, it," he said. Lorn pointed to the stone, now a glossy brown color like a dark garnet. "The moment you put that down it will be back, and back in control." Dee stared at the stone, where it rested on his open palm, then wrapped his fingers tightly around it. "How could I change so much, so quickly?" Dee muttered. "How could I be so pleased with the change when it contradicted all that I had thought before?" "The blood and the window-tree leaf, it weakens and confuses the will. It makes it harder to fight the nature of the blood. Hetty explained it to us." "Hetty!" Dee looked around, wild-eyed. "Where is she... that is where you went? It is too dangerous for her and the children!" "She came with us as far as the port and gave me the soul stone, but then we lost track of her. Selly is still there, and Bethany." Lorn struggled to explain quickly what had happened in the last few, crowded days. Dee stood unsteadily. "We must go there. It might be Carn, it might be..." "Together we will find her," Lorn said. "But we must speak with Thea first. I can find Hetty through your connection to her, but I must be sure that things will not fall apart here while we are gone." Dee looked at him with a tortured expression. "The things that I have said to her, the things that I have done..." "Not you, Dee, it." Dee did not seem altogether convinced, as if he could not tell the difference between the man he was now, racked with guilt, and the monster who had been considering callous murder moments before. When Dee stood suddenly and walked towards the window, Lorn was alarmed for a moment at what he might do. But what he did was open a cupboard beneath the window and pull out a leather glove. He drew it over his left hand with the stone still in his palm.

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"I best face her now while I still have the courage," Dee said. "And Cadence must be there also. We must resolve our differences swiftly, this very night. For we will be leaving on the tide tonight." The peril his sister was in seemed to be enough to put his confusion aside and Lorn had no quarrel with his approach. Some part of him still trembled, though, worried that after all this was over, he would be alone again. He had deserted Dee to be consumed by the blood, led his sister to danger, possibly death. Lorn felt that every step he had taken had been ill-judged and only prayed that they still might come through it together.

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Twenty-five So here they were. Deon clasped his gloved hands together. Thea sat stiffly opposite him. Thea searched Deon's face skeptically for the transformation he had most certainly undergone. His irritation at her had outlived its reasons and he could not muster an amiable expression to offer her suspicious glare. He had been churned as thoroughly as good butter by the late changes in his life, as well as their reversals, and it was not over yet. He clung to the moment with grim determination, still hoping to see a way through to some kind of peace. On the other edges of the table Cadence and Lorn sat likewise facing each other. Cadence was leaning forward, shouting. "Lorn, damn you. You hide from us, abet the Blest in occupying this place!" "Enough!" Deon interjected sharply. "Lorn's status with the Iseult is not an urgent matter." "You do not fool me," Cadence replied. "When you were a man I liked you well enough. But you were turned, and there is no return from that." "Don't be so bloody arrogant," Lorn snapped. "Just because the Iseult don't know a way does not put it beyond reach of the Art." "Damned right," Deon said. "The Green Women have a deep Art and they are more inclined to cure than kill." Cadence did flinch a little at that implied accusation. Deon was shaken by the shock of his recent transformation. Surrounded by bitter arguments and tangled motivations, and knowing that Hetty and Selly might be in great peril, or worse. Deon felt deeply ashamed that so many of his friends had been harmed by his actions, or their actions in trying to save him. He tried to listen to those in the room and revise his memories of the last few days and reassess them from his current perspective. The arguing was interrupted when a liveried guard came into the room and edged tentatively to Thea's side. His whispered message was not beyond Deon's hearing. "Guard Captain Bethany is here, with the mercenary and a Blest... a female Blest..." "Theena," Deon said. "Theena is here. Freyda promised that he would take a hostage to ensure my cooperation."

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"That's who has Hetty? Hostage for what purpose?" Lorn said. "Theena... Hetty?" Thea said. "Cadence, I am loath to agree with Lord Deon, but I agree that your grievance with Lorn will have to wait." To the guard she said, "Bring them hence." Of Deon she demanded, "Before they arrive I would know who they are and what is going on around here." Deon took it upon himself to give the summary needed, and keep it concise. "Hetty is my sister, a witch who gave Lorn the means to free me from the influence of the blood. Theena is a child of the blood, made by Freyda, Blest Lord of Tance. I agreed to help her invade a neighboring city in return for Freyda's support for my candidacy here." He added, abashed, "I can only say that I was not in my right mind at that time. He intended to take a hostage to ensure my cooperation, but he did not say whom. Hetty went missing just the other side of the straits, late yesterday." There was a glum silence whilst everyone assimilated the parts of the situation that were new to them. Then a woman burst into the room, her hair darkly red but for gray-streaked temples, her figure tall and spare and her demeanor confident. She had that air of arrogance that the Blest and their chosen often displayed, and which Deon knew he lacked. Behind her followed Selly, Bethany, and Hetty. "Hold up there, Red," Selly said. "This is my plan and I'll explain it." Deon met Hetty's eyes. She smiled her greeting and gestured that he should be silent. "It is simple," Selene said. "Theena is fighting the urge of the blood, to kill Freyda now that she is strong enough that she does not need him. Deon wants a life of his own. Thea needs a Lord she can work with and the support of a powerful Lord like Freyda would be advantageous. So... Theena challenges Deon, with Hetty's help we halt the progression of the blood's effects on Theena, she challenges Deon who allows her to win." She looked from face to face around the table and was obviously not satisfied with what she saw. Deon's gaze strayed with hers, and caught upon the plain symmetry of Lorn's face, quirked in a pondering scowl. He could not imagine how he had come to think of such a visage as merely ordinary. But he supposed that just as love revealed inner beauty, a hard heart found ugliness everywhere. He shuddered at the thought of the fate he had so nearly avoided. "Come on!" Selly urged, impatient with the thoughtful silence. "Deon, you would be free. Thea, you get a reasonable Blest Lord to work with. Because she did not use window-tree to fight the blood's effects her

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transformation has been slower, she is not so effected by it and with Hetty's help will not be. You can share power with her and rule well. It is the perfect solution!" Theena turned her attention to Deon. "If this one will relinquish the power." Deon could see Thea's skeptical scowl at that prospect, almost a mirror of Theena's own expression. "In a moment," Deon said. "But surely you will be challenged?" Theena grinned. "That is the beauty of it. Only a child of a Blest Lord, of the true blood, may challenge any post. And the right of challenge is what the Code is built upon. Harild has already challenged this post and may not do so again even when it is I who fills it. A declared challenge will trump the issue of my sex -- no matter how it irks them. Challenge is the first law, limitation to males only a later footnote." She made no effort to conceal her pleasure at the prospect of being Lord and Deon could not help but think that she would do better in the role than he. "I think Selene is right," Deon said. "I would support this plan. There will be problems in time, from Carn, from future children of the blood, but none of them are immediate." "But still leaving a vampire running the place," Cadence snapped. "Whether it is one of them, or another, what does it matter?" "Not a vampire," Lorn said reasonably with a glance at Theena. "Not in the true sense. True, we do not know what kind of woman Theena may be, but given that Hetty's plan freed Dee from the blood's more evil effects I feel sure she can do the same for Theena." He did not choose to mention that there was only one soul stone and he hoped that Hetty's silence reflected that she knew another way to affect Theena's cure or was confidant that she could find one. "I would need to speak a while alone with Theena. To be sure we could work together," Thea said. "I know you well," Bethany said. "And have talked this over long and hard with Lady Theena. I think the only difficulty will be in how similar the two of you are, that'll lead to a bit of head-butting, but I think it'll work out." Thea gave her old friend a long hard look. "We'll see," she said. "But for now I am satisfied."

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"So be it," Cadence said with obvious regret. "Without the major support of this 'Lord' the Iseult have no cause to be further involved. So if I may harp back to an old theme. Lorn you will return with me. You wanted to teach and so you shall. I shall stay here as observer, you have done enough. That you aided Thea, well enough, but to run off to the States without even letting us know!" Deon sat back in his chair. This might actually work out, he dared to think. And whatever Lorn chooses to do I will be with him. *** Lorn tied the soft leather bracer tightly to Dee's wrist. The stone was held firmly to Dee's skin, on the back of his wrist. Hetty had promised a way to permanently separate the stone from him and the blood's influence with it, but Theena was currently her main concern. "Such a tenuous hold to have on my own soul," Dee said as he flexed his hand. "I am well-pleased not to be in a role where I control others, whilst a little stone is all that keeps me in control of myself. And pleased to have some one around who will know if I am not myself." Dee reached out to stroke Lorn's talisman with the tip of his forefinger. They were both standing before the great bay window in Dee's room. Dee's comments and small gesture encouraged Lorn. He reached out tentatively and placed his right hand on Dee's shoulder and stepped in a little closer. He had no idea how things really were between them and little chance to find out as the arrangements were made well into the night. He was infinitely relieved when Dee leaned into him and wrapped his arms around Lorn's waist. "What will you do, Dee?" "What will you?" Lorn sighed. "By preference I will actually do what Cadence wills. He is right; it is what I want to do, as I always have. I only hope I can settle to it, after all this. I can only hope to have the chance. I will not desert Thea if she still needs me." Lorn felt the pressure of Dee's forehead on his shoulder, his voice muffled and soft. "Then I will go, or stay, with you. If we return to Threshold I doubt I shall work for the Iseult again given Cadence's attitude. There is still Selly's company, although no doubt in shambles by now but not irretrievably so."

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"You won't just follow me surely," Lorn forced himself to say, although the prospect appealed to him, he needed to feel sure of Dee's reasons. Dee raised his head and regarded Lorn calmly. "And why not?" he said. "There is nothing wrong with following, so long as I choose who I follow, and why." "And why?" "I think I love you, Lorn." Lorn closed his eyes. "I hope you do," he said. "For I surely love you." "We've come to it by a hard road, haven't we?" "We surely have," Lorn replied. "Perhaps we are owed a little ease now." As he bent to Dee, his lover reached up and their lips met in easy accord. Dee leaned back and looked at him. "Between now and Carn trying to exact his revenge, you mean. Or until the Blest learn that we have made a woman Lord. Freyda might not be pleased with Theena's cure either and Hetty might not be able to produce, which is bound to take a little time. Then there is what Chanriss might do when he discovers that Hetty has effectively defected. I dare say Hetty will want someone to go and fetch her children... and then there is what Cadence will do when you get entangled in these matters rather than coming immediately to heel." Lorn rolled his eyes and while he took each threat seriously he was weary. "Do you think that all of those things might just what until tomorrow to occur?" he pleaded. "I think perhaps they might," Dee conceded wearily, and not without amusement. Dee drew Lorn by the hand towards the sumptuously draped bed. Suddenly, somehow, those worries seemed far away indeed.

End