Page 5

“No. Stay there. And don’t call me so.”

“Master?”

“Damon.” Damon pauses as if he’s thinking about this. “Call me Damon.”

Lyr nods. He looks at Damon. He’s staring. He can’t seem to help it. The sweat on his skin. His strangely-long, dark eyelashes. The sword scar across his cheek. He didn’t expect to feel sorry that he wasn’t going to be taken to bed as a pleasure slave. But it seems that this big man really isn’t planning to have him warm the bed. He says, “My name's Lyr.”

“I know that. Where are you from?”

“Here,” says Lyr.

Damon smiles. His teeth are very white. “Before that. Where from before?”

Lyr blinks. It feels for a moment like a strange question. Where was he before? Who was he before he came here to Jur-Mattan? “I’m from Klish,” he says. “The islands.”

Damon nods. “How old are you?”

“I believe I am twenty-five summers. I tried to keep track.”

“How long have you been in Pellex?”

“Seven years, I think. Perhaps a little more.”

Lyr watches Damon’s face. He’s calculating something in his head. “You look younger.”

“We do. On Klish.”

Damon looks at him quizzically again, there’s a moment that Lyr can’t describe. Damon’s face is soft.

But the strange moment breaks when, behind Damon, the tent’s fabric door flaps open and someone shouts, “Damon Darekul!”

A woman stands in the opening. She is like no woman Lyr has ever seen. She’s almost as tall as Damon. Her head is shaved completely bald. Lyr has to look twice to be sure she is a woman. She smiles brightly and exclaims, “Renrel said you were back.” She speaks in Artemian. But she is not from Azuria, Lyr is certain. Even if she wears the black leather armour of the Imperial Army and the Azurian sigil on her breast.

The same sigil Damon tore off. Tore off to protect him.

“I am,” Damon says as the woman crosses the tent to embrace him firmly. They embrace like men, straight-backed. This woman is not his lover, Lyr thinks.

“I thought you would be revelling in the ruins of Pellex all night,” the woman says into Damon’s shoulder. She has a distinct accent. Definitely not Azurian.

“I decided not,” Damon says, pulling back from the embrace.

The woman frowns and touches the torn place on Damon’s jerkin where he ripped off his badge in the Grand Hall. “Where is your sigil? Did you lose it in battle? Surely that is an ill omen.”

“No. Nothing like that. It was not torn from my breast by a Juran fighter, I took it off myself. I am done. My last promises to Emperor Selim are honoured.” He smiles slightly. “I threw it at Atticul’s feet.”

Trysta rolls her eyes. “How dramatic. You did not think it would be better to wait until you were home in Attar to behave in such a manner?”

“I had my reasons. I did not want to spend a moment longer under Prince Atticul’s command as the worst General Paramount Azuria has ever known.”

The woman raises a dark eyebrow. “Then thank Zai, you are here now.”

“You are pleased I am not revelling?”

“I am pleased you are here and whole.”

Damon smiles warmly at her. “You thought me dead in battle?”

“It was your last campaign. I thought Zai might find it amusing to strike you down.”