This wasn't an invitation to his rooms, and apprehensive or not Carala was too curious to refuse. They had slipped into Talinara's darkened streets, avoiding lit corners and cheerfully blazing windows much as Denisius and Varallo Thray would do two weeks later, arriving at the shadowy bulk of the Maathinhold within half an hour. Nervously Carala scanned its brooding outline, hoping Tacen didn't intend to slip through one of the many crumbling holes in the outer wall to visit the decayed central courtyard.

She found it difficult not to believe the various tales that claimed that ruin was haunted, not when she knew that hundreds of the Sidereal Reach's scholars had been burned alive there, all to the sounds of the anguished screams of the Doyenne as she had been forced to watch. Those screams had had no sense to them, as her tongue had already been sliced out at the Emperor's command. Such facts weren't in the history texts, but Carala knew them nonetheless. Silenio never tired of telling the story, not least because he had been the one to cut out the Doyenne's tongue. The only comfort Carala had in such a gruesome tale was that all of them had deserved it; all of them had known of the plot to kill her father.

But to her surprise Tacen passed by several cracks in the outer wall large enough for a man to slip through and led her instead to the grand doors of the Curate's Tower, skating his fingers over them lightly before approaching the humbler watchman's door to their side. To her astonishment he tugged from his pocket a heavy iron key.

"Where in the gods' names did you get that?" she whispered.

"Never mind, dear princess. I have better connections than you might guess." He winked at her then, and gave her a playful swat on her backside as he urged her into the open doorway.

But she was suddenly and deeply fearful, and it had nothing to do with the idea of the ghosts of burnt scholars or the demon cohort that had supposedly founded this place. A key to the Maathinhold meant Tacen knew someone with Imperial connections, or someone bold enough to steal from an Imperial connection. She wondered just what the real business of his caravan company was, and wished she had paid more attention to Varallo Thray when he argued with her father over which businesses might be fronts for the criminal guilds. Though she couldn't remember Swiftfoot ever being mentioned, that didn't mean the Chancellor -- or her father -- didn't suspect them. There were many such debates to which she wasn't privy, and, as she now cursed herself, she hadn't paid much heed to the ones she had witnessed.

Nevertheless, she was a princess of the Imperial House of Deyn, and she was not helpless. A jeweled dagger was sheathed at her waist beneath her cloak. Not once had she ever been naive enough to roam Talinara by night unarmed. Perhaps more importantly, she knew every corner of the Curate's Tower, and the rest of the Maathinold ruins nearly as well. Unless Tacen's secret connections went even deeper than the presence of that key suggestedr, there was simply no way he could pursue her through the Tower if she felt the need to escape. And if this whole affair had been nothing but some sort of plot, she owed it to her father to see if she could learn more about it.

And if it wasn't a plot . . . .

She didn't let her imagination follow that line of thought any further. Already she was blushing too hotly.

Tacen took her by the hand as he led her through the piles of noble refuse that filled the Tower, guiding her to the Magistrate's Stair that threaded along the outer wall to one of the central chambers a little over halfway up the Tower's height. She allowed him the illusion that she didn't know where they were going, partly because she found his clumsy attempt at courtliness rather charming, and partly because she was wary enough to want him to believe her to be more at sea than she really was. But when he led her to the stairway's end and forced open the stubborn door at the last landing, he -- maybe unintentionally -- baited her into showing off a little.

"I haven't seen much of this place," Tacen said softly, his voice nearly a whisper. No one could overhear them in this place, but few were not intimidated into reverence by the Maathinhold, even in its days of ruin. "But this is one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen. I bet it has a view even the Palace doesn't have." Carala knew this to be perfectly true, but merely kept an intrigued expression on her face. Not that such was difficult to feign; her curiosity as to what Tacen could possibly be up to was entirely genuine. With a flourish, Tacen got the door all the way open and bowed her into the room.

The piles of junk were not yet pushed to the sides as Denisius and Varallo Thray would later observe, but Tacen began that process now, shoving larger crates and rotting carpet rolls out of Carala's way as he led her to the clearer stretch of floor that stood before the windows. "See the moons? The stars?" He slid an arm about her waist, and despite the unease she had felt ever since seeing that key Carala pressed gently against him, sighing against his warmth and the forest scent he carried with him. "I bet the astrologers worked here. That's what 'sidereal' means, right? I mean, some of them called this place the Sidereal School."

"The Sidereal Reach," Carala corrected, giggling when he shot her a surprised look. She couldn't resist prodding that look to even greater heights of incredulity. "And no, Tacen, you're quite incorrect. The College of Astrologers never even met in this tower. They kept to the Sidereal Tower, which was the oldest one and which is gone now, and after which the Maathinhold was named." She remembered this scripted lecture almost word for word from her days as a high courtier, though she had never seen a purely dumbfounded look like the one that now creased Tacen's handsome features when she had recited it. "This room was called the Judges' Conservatory, and most of the classes taught here were for the seer-magistrates. But it was most famous for being the room where the seer-magistrates' final examination was always held, a grueling test called the First Tribunal. They were expected to correctly argue and judge a vexing case before they could be permitted to serve in a legal court of the Malachite Throne. The elder seer-magistrates, and other arcane scholars from other colleges, took great delight in creating the most fiendishly difficult and perplexing cases they could possibly invent. They had three chances to argue and decide the case to the examiners' satisfaction, and nearly every seer-magistrate needed them all. If they failed a third time, they had to leave the academy, or pursue studies in a different college."

Tacen stared at her, open-mouthed. Carala giggled and kissed the tip of his nose.

"I believe I heard something like that about this place. But please, tell me what the astrologers did here. The moons are very pretty, after all."

"By the gods, she's a historian," Tacen finally said wonderingly. Carala laughed and kissed him on the mouth now, lingering.

"I am sorry, Tacen. That was probably mean of me. I should not expect you would know as much about this place as I do. I had to study this place as part of my responsibilities." Maybe it was the feel of her lips on his, or that forest scent she found so very compelling, but Carala sacrificed the advantage conferred by Tacen's ignorance of how well she knew the ruins with barely a second thought. In the end, she told herself later, it wound up not mattering very much. But on her flight from Talinara to Munazyr she would call herself a hundred kinds of fool for her behavior that night.

"No, you're right, princess. Stupid of me to think I could teach you anything about any place your father owns. But maybe I can teach you other things?" He smiled crookedly, sliding a hand to the nape of her neck, kneading there firmly.

Carala had discovered in her time with Tacen that being touched there was intensely pleasurable, nearly as pleasurable as being touched on certain other places on her body. She bit her lower lip, inhaling deeply, her fingers curling against Tacen's chest as she tilted her hazel gaze up to his. "Such as?" she murmured.

Tacen smiled that strange crooked smile and turned his gaze toward the moons. Saya was high and bright tonight, and the ominous black disk of Xai was barely visible as a slim crescent marring the edge of its twin's gleaming perfection. "Carala, what gods do you hold to?"

Carala blinked. "Why, my father is Protector of the Ninefold Vow. I respect all of them."

"Not all of them. You mean the nine faiths of the Vow. I'm sure you don't respect the ones beyond the Vow."

"I don't know enough about them to say."

"What do the nine faiths say about faiths beyond the Vow?"

Carala was among the most intelligent of the Emperor's surviving children, but at the moment she was utterly baffled. The very last thing she had expected upon venturing out to see Tacen tonight was to be drawn into a debate on religion. Still, she played along. Perhaps he was a fanatic with some agenda against her father, though gods knew this would be the first time he had ever shown any evidence of that. "It -- well, it depends on the faith. The Graces say they are heresies. The Othillic Deacons consider them just to be philosophies, some misguided and some not. I do not believe the Hethmar care about any of them, as long as they don't threaten innocents."

Tacen chuckled and ran a thumb across her lower lip, breaking off her words and making her shiver. "All right, my lovely little scholar, no need to do all nine of them." He studied her closely for a long time. "You'd pick Othillion, though. If you had a choice."

"I -- well -- I suppose I would, yes. How did you know that?"

"No little scholar, even a pretty one like you -- no one who loves books the way you do would pick any of the others." He sighed softly and turned his gaze to the shining moon and its shadowed brother. "I used to be like you. I respected all the nine, maybe prayed to the Graces more than others. But really I didn't think about it much." Tacen's thumb, lingering on Carala's lip, now roamed her cheek, tracing her jawline. Curious -- spellbound, really -- she arched her chin up, following the callus of his thumb. "But that was a long time ago. I hold to other gods now."

Carala said nothing. The fear had returned, black and consuming. Tacen was a fanatic. She was amazed he had persisted in his act for so long, and cursed herself for not seeing through it. Slowly she began to draw her fingers toward the hilt of her dagger, Tacen seemingly too enraptured with the night sky to notice. "What gods are those?" she whispered, simply to keep him talking.

"Older gods. Stronger gods." He turned his eyes to hers, the light of the moon washing his face and making them gleam strangely. "Carala . . . I need you. And you need me. And my gods would welcome you. I want you to join me. Share the gift of my gods."

Carala said nothing, staring into those eyes, wondering what in the world he could be talking about even as her fingers crept around the dagger's hilt.

"You don't need this," he murmured, his fingers lacing with hers; guiding her hand to the dagger, unsheathing it, gently uncurling her fingers so it dropped to the floor with a clatter. "I don't want to hurt you, Carala. And if I did, this couldn't help you."

As much as she despised allowing her fear to get the better of her, at this point she could no longer help it. Her body trembled from the thick black hair adorning her tightening scalp to the shivering toes inside her kid leather boots. "What -- Tacen -- I don't -- "

"Don't you?" he whispered, and pressed his lips to hers in the deepest, hungriest kiss he had ever given her, his tongue invading her mouth, the hand not in hers sliding into her thick black mane of hair and tugging greedily. Almost against her will Carala felt her fingers ightening against his, her body arching forward to meet him. He broke the kiss, breathing heavily against her mouth as his hand roamed her hair, restless, needful, his eyes closed almost worshipfully as his body trembled against hers. "The moon. The bright one. The wolf's moon. Wolf's moon for wolf's blood. I know it calls to you. I know you can smell it. Ever since that day in that old cunt's garden. It's why you came down from the Palace to find me."

There was only one thing Tacen could possibly be talking about, and Carala resolutely refused to believe it existed. This handsome, charming commoner was nothing but a madman, and she needed to find some way to get away from him. But if he was a madman, how did one explain the forest scent that clung to him -- that delicious woodland perfume that even now flooded her nostrils and made her imagine the most lovely images of moonlit trees and wild lands passing swiftly underfoot?

At that moment Tacen opened his eyes, and Carala gasped, at last understanding there was no lie here, and the only madness that might be here was the madness of a hungry, charming beast.

Never, not in her whole life, the life that had seen hundreds of the most highborn people in the Anointed Realms and beyond pass through her home in the endless parade of hopefuls seeking to curry favor with the Emperor, had Carala ever seen a pair of eyes more beautiful. Golden eyes blazing from that handsome face; eyes with fathomless black pupils she felt she might like to drown in; forest eyes; wolf eyes. Softly she moaned, her own eyes widening as she gazed into them, as her lips helplessly found his.

In the spell of those eyes, she did not resist when he gently slipped her clothing from her body, when he knelt before her and slid her boots from her feet and rolled her stockings down her legs, gasping for breath as he raised her bare foot to his lips and reverently kissed each toe, his wolf eyes gleaming up at her. When he guided her trembling hands to his own clothing, she undressed him not just willingly but eagerly. And there amid the sad remains of dozens of lost families her father had ruthlessly destroyed, with the soft light of Saya the wolf's moon embracing her naked body, she gladly gave her virginity to the wolf who had crept into her life, savoring the pain she felt as he thrust into her, surrendering to the ecstasy that blossomed in the embers of that pain with an almost frightening greed. No one, not her husband to be, not her mother, not all the priests and priestesses of the Graces or Deacons of the Book, not even her father, could have stopped her in that moment of pure desire as she gave herself to the wolf again and again.