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Lymok says, “He asks why you wish to bring your beast with you.”

“She must come with me or I cannot,” Tobi says, looking at Harok as he speaks. “I fear Cyrus will sell her if I don’t.”

Lymok translates this and Harok nods. Then says something in Ambolk.

Lymok says, “He agrees. The beast will come with us.”

“Thank you,“ Tobi says with a nod.

“Damalik,” Lymok says to Harok.

“Ga, garan, Tobi Darekul,” Harok says, then, with a strange and guttural noise he urges his horse forward in a sudden movement. Tobi cries out in shock as the huge animal nudges up alongside him. He inhales sharply and forces himself to stand his ground.

Harok leans down from his saddle. He puts a hand on Tobi’s chin, lifting it. His leather gauntlets scrape Tobi’s skin. Tobi looks up at Harok. He is really quite startlingly handsome. “Tobi Darekul kushir?” Harok says in his dark, heavy accent.

“I…” Tobi looks up into Harok’s dark eyes. “I am, yes,” he says. He sounds breathless.

“Sho,” Harok says.

4

DAMON

Evenfall on Alios Day. After his wedding to Lyr, Damon finds himself in the rowdy garden of a Luxol tavern with his long lost uncle Markus. It’s dusk, still stickily warm and the garden wild with Alios festivities.. The heavy air is scented with charing meat from a wide open fire pit. Music plays and people dance, coloured fabric flutters in the air, strung about the garden in rainbow colours. Bright birds flit between the trees. Green calcis birds and orange firewings.

Lukas entertains his Lordling by whistling until he persuades a calcis bird to perch on his hook. Damon is surprised he is successful. That trick might work on the birds in Azuria, who are mostly runaways from cages in rich manor houses, and who might remember the tricks they have been trained to do for fruit and grain, but these birds are wild, native to Luxoria.

Lukas, however, is as stubborn as he ever was and eventually one bird does as it is bid. The Lording seems delighted, petting the bird under its chin. “Pretty,” he says, sounding dreamy. “So pretty.” He turns to Lukas. Elric is silly on love, high on it. It makes Damon’s heart feel heavy with pride to see that his brother could inspire such feeling.

Lukas is drunk, which makes the feat with the bird all the more impressive. He is spilling out of his tattered shirt, half-slumped against Elric. “So pretty,” he echoes, turning around and kissing Elric messily. Somehow still keeping the bird on his hook as he does it.

“Ferra had a bird like that,” Damon says to Lukas as he emerges from the kiss. “Do you remember? She called it Verilissia.”

Lukas nods, lifting his pipe. “I always thought that a strange name,” he says, inhaling then blowing out moonleaf smoke.

“I think it’s Ambolk,” Lyr says. He’s on Damon’s lap, driving him half mad in the tiny lace chiton, all sweet soft skin, brushing against Damon as he smiles across the table at the bird. “Ambolk for green.” Damon feels like he is burning with need to get Lyr somewhere private, tear that chiton from him and bury his face between Lyr’s thighs until Lyr cannot speak for screaming.

“Green woman,” says Elric, pushing Lukas back with a hand on his face. “Veril means green in Ambolk and in Magaar. Verilissia means green woman.”

“You really do speak Ambolk?” says Damon. His brother’s lover is constantly surprising. He seems to try so hard to give the impression that he has no thought in his head excepting those about kneeling and begging for Lukas’s cock, but when that facade slips, there’s something inside him that is honed sharp as a blade.

Damon understands what he is seeing when Elric’s dizzy mask slides away. The kind of sharpness that was required for survival.

Elric shrugs and waves a hand as if Ambolk is nothing but a trifle. “You know I do.”

And Damon does. Elric tried to read the runes on Lyr’s back. Written not in Ambolk but the archaic Ur-Ambolk. A more ancient dialect. Although Elric, for all his linguistic skills, had failed at that. Claiming they would need an advanced scholar to unlock the puzzles of Lyr’s skin. Puzzles that Damon hopes will help them piece together the strange things that have happened to all of them. Why Lyr was sent to Damon by the witch that kept him prisoner. Why a strange man helped Elric and Lukas retrieve Lukas’s sword and escape a Lunatum luxoli house.

Damon is sure the Hare will be able to do it. But seeking the Hare means going back to Attar. And the dangers that will face them all in the Jewel of the Empire. Both Damon and Lukas will surely be killed if they are discovered there.

Somewhere across the garden some minstrels start to play, opening with a loud discordant flourish that sets the calcis bird flying back to the trees.

“Do you remember when Atticul killed that bird and we beat him for it?” Damon says to Lukas, suddenly struck as the memory hits him.

“He did not kill it,” says Lukas. “He lied. He set it free from its cage and told Ferra he’d snapped its neck. He wanted to make her cry.”

“He set the bird free?” says Damon. He isn’t sure if he never knew that or is only misremembering the story. “But we beat him for it.”

“He made Ferra cry, so we made him cry,” Lukas says, smirking.