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“He almost died,” says Lyr. He feels strange. Shaky and tired. He isn’t sure if he wants to sleep or run screaming from the room.

“Before you are exiled, I will have these examined,” Selim says, tracing a finger down the runes on Lyr’s arm. “I promised Damon I would never come to you for more information about Jareleezi, and I do not break my word. But you display her witchcraft so publicly. I have been informed that these writings are in Ur-Ambolk.”

Lyr says nothing, but his face must have betrayed him, because Selim says, “Ah, you believed no one in Azuria understood Ur-Ambolk? We are perhaps more wise in your heathen ways than you know.”

21

DAMON

Damon remembers the pain, blacking out on the scaffold under the lash, and then…

And then…

He is on a ship. He is lying on his belly in a dim room. He is in the hold of a ship. His back roars with pain. He cannot move. Where is he? Where is Lyr?

Lyr should be here.

His head aches. His mouth is dry.

He remembers the lash. The lash, then what? He did not die. He thought he might. The pain was too much. The pain wanted to take him and he wanted to let it. But he did not. He was taken to his father’s chambers in the Tower of the Heir.

Where is Lyr? He cannot think.

He has a fever. His wounds are infected and he sweats hot and cold. An enforcer comes into the room. He removes the dressings on Damon’s back and washes them down with hot brine. Damon howls in pain, still shaking as a fresh dressing is applied. The enforcer leaves Damon wine and bread. Damon lifts his head.

“Where is Lyr?” he growls. “Send my slave to attend me.”

The enforcer looks at Damon sourly. “Your slave has been detained in Attar,” he says and exits without another word.

Damon takes the cup of wine with an unsteady hand. He drinks. He does not understand. Lyr should be with him. Has Selim betrayed him?

He will not survive in this state without help. He needs Lyr with him. Surely his father would not have allowed them to do this?

But his father was always a coward.

He had been a boy of fourteen when his father had come to his bedchamber, woken him and told him that there had been an accusation made against him. An accusation so terrible that he might be indentured for twenty years.

Damon loved his father. He was terrified. But his father explained the law of stead. A family member could offer to take the punishment and serve in the Imperial Army for twenty years as an indentured soldier.

Damon had barely understood the words. “Who?”

At fourteen, Damon was well aware that his father’s family were his wives, Karo and Ullinor, his legitimate children, Atticul, Ferra and Endrew. His wives and daughter would not be joining the army. Endrew was a babe in arms, still. Atticul?

So, Damon had asked his father if Atticul would be able to survive in the army. Atticul was a soft youth, shorter than Damon and far slighter. Damon had seen him training to fight and he knew he lacked much of the instinctive skill Damon and Lukas possessed.

Atticul, he knew, let his envy of Damon and Lukas’s skill fester. He was the trueborn son. But he still saw Damon and Lukas as his rivals and enemies.

Rafus had tears in his eyes when he told Damon, “No. It will not be Atticul.”

Damon sat up in his bed. Realising what he meant. “Please Father no, I cannot. Please do not send me away.”

Twenty years in the Imperial Army. As a lowly indentured soldier. A slave warrior. He barely knew what it meant. Only that he did not want it.

“I am sorry,” said his father. “I begged them to take Lukas but they said it had to be you. But I could ask again. We could find a way to force the issue.”

Damon didn’t know what this ‘way’ could be. He never asked. In later years he suspected his father had meant that Damon ought to sustain an injury that would make him unfit to serve in the army.

But all Damon said that night was, “If you wish it, father. If you need it to be me, I will go.”