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Damon holds Lyr close as the ship rocks and recites the whole thing through again. Over and over.

Over and over.

Damon holds Lyr’s shaking body and when the waves of the foribunda take him, Damon listens to Lyr beg and beg for Damon inside him, sometimes in Artemian, sometimes in Magaar, until eventually, after what feels like half the night, Lyr’s words grow slurred and he falls asleep.

Damon untangles himself from Lyr’s body and goes to sleep on deck. He finds his spot and lies down under the stars. It’s a warm night, but he doesn’t sleep a wink.

He thinks about Lyr’s naked body. He thinks of little else.

He packed his desires away when he was caught with Plumillar. That showed him there was too much at stake. It was too dangerous. Desire, sex, even love, could never be worth throwing everything away for. Since then he has kept things simple. He has resisted most men who wanted him, drunkenly flirting inspired by rumours. Wanting his body or the favours they imagined he would be able to give his lovers as a General or as a Darek.

Even Markle had been nothing to him. He’d felt little when Markle died, except irritation that he’d lost an easy route to pleasure.

He thinks of Lyr smiling, Lyr begging for him. Now he has that in his head, his desires will never leave him in peace again.

6

LYR

Lyr wakes alone in the cabin. Damon is gone. He realises the ship is not moving. They have docked.

Lyr’s head is heavy as he gets up and pulls on his white alit. His memories of the night before are hazy. He drank a cup of strange wine. He didn’t care for the taste but Damon had left it for him and he assumed it was simply some kind of Azurian liquor.

But it was foribunda. He knows that now. Jareleezi had given him foribunda many times to create her strange magics. But the memories of the night before are not sour, as they were when he woke in his tower room after a night of Jareleezi and her drugs and rituals. Last night comes back to him in fragments. And it is sweet and painful.

He gasps as one image forms with a hot rush of feeling. He remembers lying naked in the cot with Damon, shirtless behind him, holding him and whispering poetry in his ear.

But where is Damon now?

There is no sign of him in the cabin. But there is a carafe of fresh water on the table and a small cup. He drinks most of it and wonders what he should do.

He looks around. Damon had told him so many times not to leave the cabin, but he isn’t sure that still applies now. They are docked. Damon is gone.

Lyr walks through the cabin door and up on deck. He is hit instantly by a sudden wave of light and sound and smell. He is used to small dark places. His tower room in Blackstone Castle, the tiny cabin.

But now he is in Attar.

Attar. The Shining Jewel of Azuria. The home of the empire.

The greatest city in the world.

The ship has arrived at Attar’s docks. On deck people scurry back and forth, moving crates of goods off the ship and onto the dockside.

Lyr looks around. There is no sign of Damon. The docks are loud and bright. This is the biggest and busiest place Lyr has ever seen. Ships great and small, loading and unloading, extend for what looks like miles all along the dockside. Beyond, a city rises above him on a swell of higher land, buildings covering a collection of hills. So many of them.

Lyr rarely ever had a chance to see what lay outside Blackstone Castle. But Attar is clearly more than ten times the size of Pellex and makes any city on the islands where he grew up look like the tiniest village.

Towering over the docks Lyr can see shacks and slums and great manors and taverns and temples, all crowded together.

Highest of all, set on its own great hill is a palace. A huge complex of pink and brown stone with a tangle of uncountable intricate columns and turrets reaching into the sky. So vast it is almost a city unto itself.

Lyr knows this must be the Rose Palace. Even on Klish, he had heard of it. The greatest palace in the world. Under the Hevelikar, it was a magnificent Artemian temple. When Sarelik Darek took control and declared that Azuria would follow the new faith of Zai, the Rose Temple was demolished and rebuilt as the Rose Palace. Now it is home to the Rose Court — Emperor Selim and all his advisors and his line. It is strange for Lyr to realise that Damon must have lived there as a child.

He is looking up at the palace, wondering where he should go, when a tall thin man comes up to him. The man looks him up and down. “You Lyr? From Jur-Mattan? Slave property of Master Damon Darekul?”

Lyr nods at the man. “Yes,” he says, supposing that is, indeed, who he is now.

“He told me to collect you. Come with me.”