“He’ll be cut to pieces,” Xautan added. “I hear Roturra will arm its knights with new steels at the next court.”

Taul snapped his head up. “And where did you hear that? Roturra is our enemy, is it not?”

Xautan’s eyes widened and his face, like a stiff mask, bobbed in agreement.

“What will you do if the Son of Hosmyr shows his support?” Taul asked. He was furious with Zaknil, with himself, with everything. If it wasn’t for all the trouble he was facing, he would have placed a bet and laughed at the doomed Zauhune champion, because that was surely what he was.

Like all of them.

9

When he was younger, not five years into his training, Ren had a priestess for a lover. She’d belonged to a low-ranking house struggling to rise higher.

What was her house name? He slipped on a new silver-gray vest. All he remembered of that priestess was the tips of her long white hair and how, over time, the light had gone out of them.

She’d said it didn’t matter, but he knew better.

The woman in the bed was no priestess, more like the servant of a crater priestess. She’d dressed herself higher than she ought in a long, sleeveless, gossamer pale-gray slip. A heavy coat sat on the edge of the bed. She shivered in her sleep, her nipples painfully hard under that threadbare cloth, her skin like gooseflesh under gray stain. Ren felt as if he’d bedded a whore from the South Reaches. He spent his nights with these dingy women in the only dingy streets in Vaidolin. He couldn’t go any lower than the streets of Outer Halkamas. Even Outer Relkamas wasn’t so degraded. Say what they wanted of Ilor’Daushalan, first high house, but Outer Dalkamas was clean and productive. The Voice wouldn’t tolerate any rot in her territory.

Within the crater, in Halkamas proper, Mornae did everything according to ancient customs and to honor the goddess. There the Mornae visited luxurious pleasure houses, not whore houses. Chits didn’t change hands there. Guests bedded each other freely, and usually it was just trysts between consorts. In the Lowkamas, as the low-born called it, it was more like in the border camps. Here, desperation choked pleasure from every room, hall, and crack where bodies writhed for three wood chits.

He looked away from the woman’s gray streaks, marring what would have been an otherwise pleasant figure. She’d tried too hard. The woman was desperate to save herself and her house.

Ren was plain desperate. Money wasn’t his problem. He’d no future except to earn chits. I’m a whore, too, he whispered to the shadows. What did he hope to get out of coming here? He’d known love with that rank-climbing priestess. At least for his part it had been love. She’d left him when the attraction for him grew and the desire to consort began changing her blood. He must have looked Mornae enough, but without a good name, he was inconsequential. There wasn’t a house backing him to help build hers.

Lurking in the shadows, he laced up his vest, something he’d picked up at the gate market. He could afford to buy inside the crater, but dread rippled up from his groin. There, Mornae wouldn’t tolerate his shadow games. Their games were far too dangerous for him. Men like his master ruled there, and priestesses who could consume him in blue fire with a mere look. He shrugged it off. It wasn’t the clothes that made him or anyone Mornae, anyway. Wisps of shadow rippled along his fingers, and he relished their dance.

Was his dark gift why the women of this place lined up to be with him? They had consorts, of course, but probably not properly bound, only regular men. So they came to him looking for a taste of something else, what used to be. They wanted to crawl back into the crater, and he knew deep down that if he wanted something more for himself, eventually he’d have to rub shoulders with his betters.

He finished dressing, walked over to where she slept, and inspected her hands. Small calluses bubbled up on the inside. Pretty enough face, though. Clumped strands of her hair left traces of silver paint sparkling on her face. Her real hair was a mousy gray.

Lor’Paelune owned this pleasure house, and she’d paid them ten silvers just to enter. What happened after she entered was not Paelune’s business. Ren placed a marble chit worth a hundred silver on the table by her silver-plated bangles and a sad little ring with a cluster of garnets.

He didn’t need to know any more about her, nor did he want to. There were dozens like her. He wanted more than what she offered. Now that he was rising to prominence, his duties more important, he thought to ask his master for a proper consort. Even a valley matron would do, so long as she was legitimate. He didn’t think there were many true priestesses anymore, or if there were they weren’t showing off and they’d be too noble for him. They were all hidden away in the crater’s great fortresses.

Shadow licked at his fingers, beckoning him to call, to do more than he had done the last time. In these quiet moments, he considered doing dreadful things, and the Dark encouraged him. Heat braced his skull like a vise.

She stirred and smacked her lips. Ren melded into the dark, vanishing from common view.

Her eyes popped open, and she sat up. She looked through his shadowy form to the dead fireplace.

“Just my luck,” she said hoarsely, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and rubbing her face. Silver dye smudged her cheeks. She glanced at the window slits to judge the hour by the starlight trickling in. She started dressing and let out a gasp. A pretty little squeal followed. She took the marble chit in both hands and cradled it to her chest.

Had he saved her from ruin? A secret joy rose in him. A good deed had come from all this effort to be more than a thug, a thief. Could she be more to him than a passing pleasure?

“Baur,” she whispered. “Finally.”

He sunk into a deeper shadow and waited for her to leave. This Baur must be her consort or the one she hoped to consort. Had Ren saved them both?

She gathered her things quickly, not even a thought for the one who had been with her. She had what she wanted, and it wasn’t him.

A dark thought crossed Ren’s mind. He should punish her for her ingratitude. For not seeing him as anything more than a marble chit or a handful of silver. She’d tricked him with her silver laced hair.

His knives sat heavy at his thighs. The Dark urged him to succumb to it.

Is this what it felt like to be soured? Is this what his lord and master felt all the time, consorted to the ancient Hosmyr matron?

She slipped on the coat and stuffed the silver bangles in a pocket. Shivering, she cursed him for not keeping the fire going. He sneered in the shadows. A true priestess didn’t need yellow fire to keep warm. Not here, so close to the crater.

Ren waited in the shadows, contemplating her fate. So easily could he cut her down, slice her into a thousand pieces. And who would say anything? Lor’Paelune? It owed so much in taxes that he could silence it with a single silver bar. All that silver piling up in the vaults with nothing to do might have a purpose in the end.

Before he could pass judgment on her, she slipped out the door and left him to his darkling thoughts.

He could buy her, or him—whoever he was. He could buy this Baur’s place, but that would not satisfy. She’d sour him in a year.

Where had that priestess from his youth gone? She must have a consort and now mingled with the greater houses.

The shadows faded, and with it, his godliness.

He felt tired, spent, used. He stewed in his bitterness, bemoaning his fate.

A tiny spark of joy lit in his chest as he remembered the new task set before him. All was not drudgery and loss. He could still make something of himself, unlike those that aged quickly with sagging skin and creaking bones. The power to live for a cycle or more was in him. The Dark would carry him into that long future. His teacher always told him that the long-lived need not look back or worry over the past when the future beckoned endlessly.

He rubbed the steel blades at his thighs, the comfort of them, the surety. They were common steel stained black, but they were sharp enough. And then there was the Dark, his constant companion.

He’d make something of himself yet. A sad fact to be upset over thirty years of standing still when a thousand more lay before him. There was time for him yet.

10

Taul raced from the shop in the upper market near the Velkamas bridge to the Lor’Toshtolin estate. A servant ran behind him, calling out that it was too late. He needed to see for himself.

At the corner, apron blustering, he slowed and turned onto the compound’s main street. He’d had to fill in for a shopkeeper and cursed himself for not sending someone else.

Gossipers packed the main gate, all shaking their heads, no doubt bemoaning the ill-fate of Lor’Toshtolin. They gave him dour looks as if it was his fault. No one would want to blame the matron. It must be because of the consort, and him only the second son of an insignificant Hosmyr branch.

One of Ryldia’s handmaids broke through the crowd and rushed to his side, her face mottled pink and marked by tears. Taul untied the apron and shoved it into her chest. He fixed his gaze on the gate and walked toward it, avoiding the looks and comments of the onlookers. How quickly their neighbors circled their misfortune like vultures.

Inside would be worse. His father had told him he could be the cure to solve this middling house’s problems. His stomach flopped and he rubbed his chest.

He pushed through the crowd huddled just inside the gate and into the atrium. The gallery was full of milling relatives, so he walked across a maze of small gardens to the matron’s villa sitting on the western half of the compound. Ryldia had prepared so many rooms and they sat empty, the furnishings covered to keep the dust off. It was all for the family she had wanted more than anything. Two girls and a boy. Two boys, even. One for Lor’Nevtar in repayment for Taul, and another for Hosmyr. That had been her dream. And there was room for their daughters’ families. A manse fit for a healthy, flowering Toshtolin tree.

“It is… too… late,” the first servant said behind him, breathing heavily.

And indeed, it was.

Ryldia sat up in her bed. Crimson splayed out from between her legs. She stared out through the slits in the wall, the goddess-light filtering through. A child that failed to be born under the goddess’s gaze could not be called Mornae. It was not worthy of her power.

A clutch of priestesses stood in a corner of the chamber, and he noted the disapproval in their faces. The goddess had judged this house. Would one of them become matron next? She’d send him back to his own house, respectable but lower in status, and the bond with his consort would become a gaping wound in his chest.