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Damon blinks. For a moment his brain won’t take it. He’s here with Trysta. Are they still in Jur-Mattan? Are they making ready to march on Pellex? Was it all a dream?

No. This is Sanvicta. He is in the keep. This air is sharp, not the treacle-thick warm air of Jur-Mattan.

“You’re here? How are you here?” Memories of when he last saw Trysta, real, true memories, come back in jolts. The last time he saw her. “The Pleasure Night. You were there. You saw?”

“I saw Endrew die,” says Trysta evenly. Damon cannot tell what she thinks about that. She has every reason to loathe any member of the Darek bloodline, but her voice is quite neutral. “And I saw Lyr being dragged out by the guards. And you, fighting like a cornered dog. I tried to help you but,” she looks down, “I saw your signal. It is a stain on my honour that I stood down as you wished and let them take you.”

“No,” says Damon. “No. There were too many, even for us both. You would not have survived if you had tried to join that fight. They imprisoned the whores who were there that night. I thank Zai you escaped.” He looks at her and he hopes she knows how much he means it. “A good soldier chooses her battles, Trysta,” he says to her like he’s still her commander. “Where have you been since then?”

“Opeth got us out of there. Me and her and Razelii. She suggested that in the chaos we run, and we did. Three runaway slaves.” Trysta takes a breath. “I did not know the details of what had been done to you before that. I heard about the flogging, but not this. I would have come sooner.”

“You owe me nothing, Trysta.”

“Damon,” says another voice. Another voice he knows. He looks across the room and sees Opeth, tall and pale and elegant as ever. She looks like a queen. She is wearing a short grey chiton that is smeared with blood. Her hands are bloody too. Before Damon can ask her any one of the questions that rush to his mind, she says, “I killed one of your sheep. You need a proper meal.”

He can smell it now. Mutton stew. His stomach growls. He is amazed to find himself still human, with a human body and all that it needs, after all.

Trysta has him drink some water and brings him more water to wash with before she allows him to leave the bedchamber.

Eventually, he descends the stairs on shaky legs. He moves slow. He is still loose. Sofi in his blood. The kitchen is somewhat restored. It has been swept and the broken furniture has been repurposed as firewood. The table is upright and in place of chairs are the water barrels. One of which, Damon can’t help thinking, hid Lyr when he came to save him.

Lyr saved him. He could have run. Or did he only follow him here because of his mission to take Damon to Jareleezi in Ismagaar?

His head hurts trying to think about what was real and what was the work of that Hevelikar witch.

Lyr had never suggested they go to Ismagaar. He had wanted to run away from Azuria. But never to Ismagaar. And the thought of having to see Jareleezi again if she was captured seemed to terrify him.

And he made Damon promise not to go to Jareleezi when he told of where she was.

When he thinks that, and thinks of Lyr, his throat aches with loss. And he wonders again, what is the truth?

The table is set. Despite everything churning through his mind, his stomach growls for food again. He thinks of King Damon, going insane in Vashti, trying to live off nothing but the salt water of Miracle Lake. He sits at the table and Opeth gives him stew. He feels stronger for it.

“Why did you come here?” Damon says as he finishes his bowl of stew. It’s one of the best things he’s ever eaten.

“We ended up in an Attar pillow house,” says Trysta. “After we ran.”

Damon raises an eyebrow. “You work in a pillow house?”

Trysta grins wide. “Pillow houses need security. Opeth and Razelii work there in the more conventional way. And you find out a lot of interesting things working in a pillow house in the jewel of the empire.”

“Especially,” says Opeth, “if you are someone like me. One of my regulars was one of Atticul’s bodymen.”

Damon takes a single juddering breath. “One of the ones he brought here?”

“One of the ones he brought here.”

“Did he tell you Lyr was here? That they took him?”

“He did. That was how we knew something was wrong,” says Opeth.

“What do you mean?”

Trysta leans forward. “Damon, you took a punishment stead for that slave. You were flogged half to death in public. He found a way to escape the dungeons and get here to save your life. And after all that, you let Atticul take him. You didn’t fight at all, the bodyman said. You let it happen. Something was wrong.”

“Something was wrong alright,” Damon says darkly. “Did this bodyman tell you what Atticul told me?”

“He wouldn’t. He said it wouldn’t be worth his life.”