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Damon looks at the tiny space again. There’s only one bed. A narrow cot built into the wooden wall under a small porthole that shows a view of mostly grey seawater.

“And where is my slave to sleep?”

“With you. I am sorry, Sire, but the Prince was very clear that this cabin was for you and your male pleasure slave, and only one bed was required due to the fact that Zai overlooks any sin committed by soldiers at sea or on foreign soil during wartime.”

Damon turns away from the page and walks into the cabin. “I see.” Lyr follows him. Damon closes the cabin door and points to a chair. “You. Sit there,” he says to Lyr.

Lyr sits down. He hasn’t spoken for a long time. Despite the growing Juran heat he is still bundled up in Damon’s cloak. He looks small in it. Damon likes the way it swamps him.

“Do you need anything?” Damon says in Juran.

“Perhaps some food,” Lyr replies in Artemian. “And I still speak Artemian, Sire.”

This makes Damon smile. He likes this slave. He is enjoying him more and more. He thinks of the night before. This slave, with poetry on his lips. In Artemian, he says, “Stay here. I need to talk to Atticul.”

“I don’t think it will go any better than it did on the dockside,” says Lyr.

Damon ignores this and marches out of the cabin. He stamps back up the steps to the front of the ship and the door of the captain’s cabin. He knocks.

Atticul comes to the door and rolls his eyes at Damon. “What now, Bastard? I have much to do making ready for the voyage home.”

Damon looks past him. The tall woman sprawls in Atticul’s bed, half-dressed.

“I can see you are busy. This will not wait. My cabin is not appropriate. Move me to the front of the ship.”

Atticul sighs, “I am sorry. I did not expect you to be on my ship. You left the Imperial Army rather abruptly.”

“Don’t think I don’t see through your pathetic schemes. You want everyone to believe I’m fucking a male pleasure slave on your ship.”

“No one is forcing you to fuck him, Damon. You have only your own depravity to blame for what you do with that creature you are so enamoured of.”

“You’ve practically told one of the ship’s pages I am going to fuck him. I know what you’re doing. You will be speaking to Doroth Zain — accusing me of sins of the body.”

“Which Doroth Zain will have to forgive. A soldier is allowed comforts at sea. Even Zai understands the needs of fighting men.”

“Don’t think I can’t see through your plans to create suspicion about me that follows me to Attar.”

“I couldn’t create them if you weren’t what you are, Damon. You’re disgusting. You might have fooled Endrew and our father and even the Emperor himself. But you don’t fool me, you disgusting luxorite.” Atticul looks Damon up and down. “I know what you are. I know exactly what you are.”

And he does.

Damon was nineteen when Atticul saw him. He’d been away in the army five years. After the retaking of Pluma-Ferris, he’d been allowed a visit to the Rose Palace in glory. Damon had been so happy to be home. To see his family after so long. And to see Plumillar. The youth who worked in the stables. The youth who had become a beautiful man in the five years Damon had been away.

And Atticul had been watching.

Damon is in a foul mood when he returns to the tiny cabin after a walk around the deck and a visit to the galley failed to calm him. The ship has begun its journey out of the Pellex docks and towards the Mortingale Sea. Lyr is obediently sitting at the table where Damon left him.

Lyr looks up as Damon puts two bowls of fish and cabbage stew, two cups and a jug of ale down on the table. “Eat that,” he says. Lyr picks up the spoon and obeys. Damon sits opposite him and starts to eat his own meal. He watches Lyr. The way he moves is rather graceful. The stew makes his lips glisten. The ship rocks gently. After a couple of mouthfuls, Lyr says, “How long is the journey to Azuria?”

“Four, perhaps five nights at sea with fair winds. We are bound for Attar, the capital, on the southern coast.”

Lyr nods. “Attar? The biggest city in the world. Is that where you live?”

“It is where I will live. Emperor Selim has given me a manor house. Sanglora. That will be my new home. And yours.”

Lyr pauses, thinking, then says, “Emperor Selim is your uncle? And you are the son of the Crown Prince, Rafus, the Emperor’s younger brother,” Lyr says this knowledgeably. Has he picked this up, or did he know it all along? Damon is unsure, but he is struck by Lyr’s brightness. His Artemian is fluent and he speaks Juran and Magaar. No one would waste lessons on a whore. He must simply have a sharp mind.

“Yes.”