A woman stood against the far wall. She wore a black cloak, and held a shuttered lantern in one hand. He caught flashes of violet from within the cloak: a royal lining. Her face was hooded, but he had lived long in the dark, and grown strong stalking even the quietest shadows in the forest depths. He could see the delicate features of her face, and the slim silver collar on her neck.

“You are not the Lord of Games,” Ulrem said. His hard granite eyes flashed dangerously as she eased open the lantern.

“No,” the woman said in a flowing voice pitched to catch his ear. One fine hand rose, drawing back her hood. Her hair was a copper red, an uncommon color amongst the Collanian stock. She wore it piled up behind her head in a plaited comb, pinned with golden sticks. She was beautiful, her skin smooth as cream, but a rich bronze that spoke of eastern blood. Her green eyes shimmered like ancient emeralds in the half-light. “I am Shiara.”

“One of Dardano’s concubines. I saw you today.” Ulrem moved to the door of his cell, his bulk filling it. He sensed no one else within, but his ears pricked, hunting for the sounds of feet on stone. Waiting for an ambush.

“I was trained in the holy houses of Aasteo,” Shiara said, eyeing him. “I know the six secrets of a man’s heart, and the twenty four points of pleasure along his limbs. I danced the bahadati joiishi from—”

“Pretty words,” Ulrem interrupted. “But I prefer plain talk. What do you want, woman?”

Shiara bowed her head, hiding a grin that flashed white teeth. Then she came forward. Though Ulrem wasn’t quite sure how she did it, the cloak at her neck came unclasped, sliding aside like river water. She was bare as the night under it, he saw. Long legs slithered forward, her belly undulating with a dancer’s grace. Her breasts hung free, the tips tracing circles as she closed the gap between them. Her green eyes held his, and before he could draw a breath she was standing before him, close enough to feel her heat spilling across his skin. One of her hands slid up and over his chest. Her nails left a lingering sharpness that brought a flush to his sunbattered flesh. The scent of her came after, a honeyed wind, spiced with something exotic and sharp. Her hand trailed down over his belly, finding the jutting bone of his hip beneath the kilt.

“Did he send you to me?” Ulrem said, catching the woman’s hand in his own. She gasped at the strength of his grip. He was not gentle with her.

“Prince Dardano was impressed by your battle prowess, outlander,” she said, trying but failing to free her hand. When he did not let go, a little fear entered her eyes, but that melted into a piqued interest. Some part of him stirred at that, rising in his blood. He liked the look on her. “I am his gift to you, to reward a fight bravely won. For tonight, anyway.”

“And what debt shall I incur?” Ulrem grunted. He reached out, brushing her neck, trailing his fingers down over her breasts and the curve of her waist.

Shiara laughed at him, her voice deep and warm. “Another fight,” she said. “So I’d better not wear you out.”

Ulrem raised a brow as she stood on her tip toes to press her mouth to his. He allowed it, and his hand found the back of her head. He crushed her to him, savoring their mingling heat, leading her backwards into the cell. She was eager, her kisses mixed with playful nips at lip and jaw and ear that made it hard to think.

She raised her hands to draw out the sticks in her hair, but he stopped her.

“No,” Ulrem said, voice so raw and deep it was little more than a bear’s growl. The man in him had fled, leaving only the animal. “I like it. You have a queen’s jaw. I would taste it.”

Shiara laughed and arched her neck, inviting him, her hands kneading at his arms and back. Ulrem’s strength rose, as did his blood. He pressed her to the wall, ignorant now of the hundreds of names scratched into the stone, oblivious to anything but Shiara’s intoxicating scent and the feel of her beneath him. She worked at the belt that cinched his leather kilt until it fell away, and they collapsed onto the stone shelf together, coiled in one another’s arms.

***

AFTER IT WAS done, and Ulrem was spent, they lay sweating in the cool dark of the cell. Shara’s hooded lantern had gone out, and only the dim flickering of the oil lamp in the corridor shed any light at all. Without it, they would have been utterly blind. Ulrem did not mind that. Indeed, with the fiery urge withdrawn, the ancient hunger of man satisfied, he had little more ambition than to slink into dreams. Shiara stroked his head and hair, occasionally planting a kiss on him. His skin tingled with the gentleness of her touch, but there was something else to it. A release of tension in his neck and jaw where her fingers caressed him, like a slackening of great hawsers.

Unable to sleep, he stroked her in return, his fingernails dragging lazily along her flank, up along her back, until he found the collar. A slim band of silver, tight enough not to rattle. Finely crafted. He found the rivet at the back and tensed his fingers, testing it. He could snap it, he thought, if he drank of the ring’s power. Not so great a task as others he had performed.

She pushed his fingers away and sighed.

“Why does he make you wear it?”

“Why do men cage beasts?” Shiara asked, her voice quiet in the dark.

Ulrem grunted. “He is a fool to cage you. You are wondrous. I have never known such a woman as you.”

She made a playful noise. “I suspect you are not a man of many generous words; those few are like desert water, no? But the prince…” He felt her hesitate, stiffen under his hands. Something about the woman made Ulrem want to curl his arms around her, shield her, as one might a candle in the wind. “He has darker interests.”

Ulrem’s eyes narrowed. “Does he hurt you?”

She was a long time answering. “At the Sokh, I was trained as a priestess. We often comforted pilgrims with touch. It was a holy duty. The prince…he bought me. I was traded like chattel. The High Priestess told me to serve him as I would any penitent, to bless him with the knowledge of my body.” She sniffed, shifting. Squirming closer to him. She hugged his arm. “But we served in other ways, too. Pilgrims came to the Sokh seeking wisdom, and so my sisters and I learned many things. We studied the ancient histories of the Eridesh and Founding, and the myths of the Starless Age. Under our mistresses, we learned the accountings of stars, and wars, and learned to read the winds.”

“Strange, to seek wisdom from a pleasure house,” Ulrem said, though his interest was more piqued than he let on. A woman who could read the winds was a rare thing; but he had always known them as crones. His blunt fingers found the jagged mound of a scar one had cut into him as a young thief. That scar, and the name he was known by, were the gifts she had given him. He had buried her beside her slouching timber hut.

Shiara could not see the pensive look upon his face. “The Sokh at Aasteo was no brothel,” she said defensively. “The training of its priestesses in love was famous, yes, but also they came for feasts, and blessings, and teaching.” Ulrem yawned. He was exhausted, not only from the fighting, but from Shiara’s attentions. Yet, her story was not spent. “It is very different in Collane. House Manahati is but a small branch of the city’s royal family, yet their pockets run deep. They control the slave markets, and hold the bond of thousands,” Shiara said. It is their brands you see on cheeks at every corner. And not just the men and women: House Manahati trades in children, too. That is how they pay for this extravagance.” Shiara’s voice dripped with venom, and her emerald eyes flashed like daggers in the darkness. Hatred simmered up from some deep part of her, with the force of a secret long kept silent. “Fathers are sold into debt to feed their children. Mothers auction off one child to buy medicine for another. This city…”

“It is diseased,” Ulrem finished. “Leprous and rotten, as most cities are. I have seen these things you speak of. They imprisoned me for killing a fleshmonger in the low city.”

Her voice grew small. “It was Prince Dardano who ordered your capture. I was with him when he pressed his seal to the parchment.”

Ulrem stirred. That was interesting, though what difference it made seemed trivial. “Then Dardano is a masked lord? It seems I owe him a debt indeed.”

“You have a peculiar way of accounting things,” Shiara whispered. Her lips drew near his own, and he could feel her breath. Her nose traced the hard edge of his jaw.

“I told you before, speak plainly, but do not try to circle me with whispers. I hear what you fear to say. You want me to kill him? I will, if that is what you wish. One gift for another,” he said with a dark grin.

Shiara was very still for a moment, her warmth pressed close against him. “Can you do it?”

“What is one more petty tyrant? I will send Dardano screaming to the black hells, if I can get close enough.”

“Tomorrow he has a spectacle planned. He will send four men against you.”

“I pity them,” Ulrem said, “for they have not long in this world.”

“Do you not fear death?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps you are mad, and a fool. The prince will kill you, if he can,” Shiara said.

Ulrem grunted. “He’ll send someone else to try, I think.”

She shook her head, but did not push him. Instead, she said, “Did you know, a mad priest has taken to calling you the Lionborn. Adris the Crow is his name. He has long been a lone cry against the royal family and its evils, but he is dearly loved by the people, for he trades miracles of healing and can read the stars better than anyone. None have dared raise a hand against him for fear of the people’s wrath.”

“A madman,” Ulrem said.

“Does he speak truly? Are you… the Lionborn?”

Now it was his turn to hesitate. The crone had called him that, while he was still wrapped in chains. “I am.”

“No wonder Prince Dardano wants you dead,” she cried, sitting up and drawing back from him. “Your mere presence threatens the masked lord’s rule!”

“We’ve talked in enough circles,” Ulrem said. Indeed, he was glut on words, and her sudden fervor had drawn him back from the brink of sleep. Other hungers were awakening, too. His strong hands traced the edge of her curving hip, slid down over her back, pulling her to him. “I desire you again, woman. You said there were six secrets of a man’s heart. Show me another.”

But Shiara was not done. She ran a hand through her hair, and said, “You don’t understand, do you? I told you, I studied the histories at the Sokh. Six hundred years ago, Akale the Red, the Inheritor, ruled Collane. He was the strongest man in the world, and it was said that a sword or arrow could not pierce his skin. They said he bore Fustunustir’s Ring, and with it, he was as strong as a god.”

Shiara’s fingers brushed the ring Ulrem wore. He pulled his hand away. Why did she persist? Did she not see that he was mad for her, starving for another taste of her beauty? This was no time for stories, when his heart was pounding and head hammering.

No, he realized all at once. It was worse. She knew she had him captive. He was caged, but by a force older and stronger than iron.

Lips by his ear now, fingers raking the flesh of his back, Shiara whispered, “When Akale was carried home to Collane for the last time, he was little more than a shade yet clinging to his broken flesh. He had bought grim victory against the giant kings of the far desert, where time itself runs strangely, but his ring was gone, and no man knew whence it had passed.”

Ulrem’s fingers closed over the ring on his finger. Something within it stirred: more than a memory, less than a ghost. It recognized the truth of the words, and so did he. Akale’s ring. Starforged in another age. He had heard the stories, but though he had carried it near ten years, he knew little of its true import. It warmed now, buzzing.

You hear the truth, it whispered into his mind. You hear what you could be, if you did not chase the horizon.

Shiara’s voice pulled him back. “Do you know what his last words were, when he died in his lover’s arms?”

“I hate prophecy,” Ulrem grunted, trying to pull away from her. Her teeth caught his ear and pulled until he hissed. Her breath was hot on his neck, driving him half to madness. He tried to kiss her, tried to stem the flow of her words, but she turned away. Ulrem buried his face in her neck, biting at the delicate bones of her shoulder and neck. Her hands found him, fingers cold enough to make him rise in eagerness. He shuddered when she wrapped her legs around his hips, rolling atop him with silken grace.

“The Crow has been singing it in the streets,” she said, her voice a dusky ember. “Now the slaves of Collane huddle, whispering them as prayers.”

“Tell me,” he said, the words ripped from him involuntarily. She rose and fell in time with his heartbeat.

Lips pressed to his ear, breasts kissing his chest, Shiara’s fingers wrapped around his thickly muscled wrists, she whispered, “I see a man, born of a lion!” Her voice rose in a promise of ecstasy with every word, until her head was thrown back, copper hair a roaring flame of passion. “Through his strength will you will find freedom! Find him! Let him fight beneath the open sky!”