Page 27

“I’m looking for Damon. Damon Darekul.”

The man smiles as if this is amusing. “Were you expecting him to escort you himself? Master Damon is a busy man. He has travelled ahead to Sanglora to oversee his estate and his household. He has requested you travel with us. You will be taken to the manor and given a place in the kitchen where you will begin your training.“

“Training?” says Lyr. “Training as what?”

The man looks Lyr up and down again, taking in his torn white alit and bare limbs. “I don’t know what sort of duties you have been used to in Jur-Mattan,” he says as if he definitely does know and finds what he knows disgusting. “But Master Damon has asked me to find you work as a scullion. A kitchen slave.” He squints. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Lyr nods. “I speak Artemian. What kitchens? Where are we going?”

The man sighs as if this is quite exhausting. “We are going to Sanglora Manor, the home of Master Damon Darekul, One Man Army of Azuria. My name is Kres. I am the Seneschal. The keeper of Master Damon’s Household. Please follow me.”

“I see,” Lyr says.

“Do you?” Kres rolls his eyes. “Come on then.”

Lyr follows Kres through the docks and the trading posts beyond until they reach a cart, which is being loaded with rolls of cloth and chests of gemstones and other fine things, many of them with a distinctly Juran look. These must be Damon’s share of the spoils from Pellex. Spoils of which he, Lyr, is simply another.

“And who’s this?” says a red-faced woman, turning from where she is loading crates onto the cart with another woman and a stout, strong-looking man.

The other woman, much younger, smiles at Lyr. “Master Damon has brought many treasures from his war,” she says in a sweet musical voice. She wears a grey shift of roughspun, but she’s very pretty, with full lips and glossy brown hair.

“At last. Master Damon, home to stay,” says the first woman. “Bless Zai,” she adds as she climbs into the cart.

“Give thanks to Zai,” says Kres, climbing up beside her. He gives the younger woman a smile and offers his hand to her and she climbs in too.

Lyr assumes he is meant to follow and gets into the cart. Sitting down opposite the younger woman on the wooden planks.

She smiles at him and says, “Master Damon has never brought a slave home before. What is special about you?” She gives him a look that is quite suggestive.

“I don’t think he meant to,” says Lyr. “He did it to save my life.” He wonders as he says this, if he is going too far, revealing too much. But Damon had saved him in front of a hall of drunken men. The story would come out soon enough.

There's a shout from the cart driver and a jolt as it starts to move, rumbling into the bustling streets of Attar. “Kres,” says the young woman, “what are we going to do with him?”

“Master Damon suggested the kitchen,” says Kres.

“Ooh, you can work with me,” says the younger woman making an amused face, her pink mouth in a shocked circle. “If you are really a kitchen slave.” Despite the way she leaned close, she does not say this particularly quietly.

“Mina,” Kres snaps. “How could you even suggest such a thing?”

Mina shrugs. “I just thought it, because he is dressed like a pleasure slave.”

“I was a pleasure slave,” Lyr says, remembering something from the night before in a rush. Something that is not a sweet memory.

He’d told Damon, hadn’t he? He’d told Damon that he wasn’t really part of Ramel’s harem. He’d told Damon he belonged to Jareleezi and what she had done to him and after that…

After that Damon had been different.

His first thought, his worst thought is, did Damon know the truth? Had his confession been enough for Damon to understand that Jareleezi had sent Lyr to him? That she had a plan for Damon. A plan Lyr was part of?

Lyr doesn’t think so. Even out of his mind on foribunda, he’s sure he’d never spill that secret. The lost memories come tumbling. All he knows for sure is that Damon had wanted him. Damon had kissed him. Damon had been going to make love to him. Until he discovered Lyr belonged to Jareleezi and then he’d been different. Revolted. Lyr crushes down the twisted mess of feelings that causes. He has no place to put them now. In a cart in Attar, travelling to Damon’s manor to work in his kitchens. He has told Damon the truth about Jareleezi, but no one else must know. This is Attar. This is Azuria. No one must know he was owned by the last Hevelikar. He says, “I was part of Prince Ramel’s harem.”

This statement, clearly, is shocking enough to distract everyone else in the cart from any strangeness Lyr betrayed when he remembered Damon’s reactions to him.

The younger woman, Mina, nudges the older one and they both giggle. “Oh, Zai,” says Mina. “Truly?”

“It’s not surprising,” says Kres sternly, clearly he is not amused by this. “We know the Hevelikar filth fled to Jur-Mattan when Sarelik rose. Of course they brought their decadence there.” He looks at Lyr. “I hope you understand that you will not be a pleasure slave here in Azuria. Not unless you want to be gelded and executed in the Punishment Square.”

Lyr nods. “I know. It is a sin of the body.”