"All right, Master Cursewright. I savored it. Better than any meal in my home." Her tone was angry, nearly defiant. But even this was not unexpected.

"And the meals in your home are better than most," Ammas remarked. Carala smiled a little, but the whole turn of the conversation still seemed to unnerve her. The cursewright's next question came in a voice of studied calm. "Did you hunt any humans?"

The princess looked shocked, then glanced at the weathered mosaic floor, the somber tiled portraits of the Saints of the Graces regarding her in silence. Keledemos, Nicostris, Tarnalos, a dozen others. "No." Her voice was barely audible.

"No?" repeated Ammas in that same calm tone. "Not even one?"

The princess said nothing.

"Your highness?"

Still she was mute as a statue.

"Carala, then."

At last she looked up. Her eyes were wounded. But she did not speak.

"Carala, if you did something, hurt someone, the law is unclear on what is to be done with a werewolf for crimes committed before that werewolf is cured. And forgive me for saying this, but your father is the Emperor Somilius Deyn III. You would not spend so much as a single night in the stocks, much less lose your head or be broken on the wheel."

"I know that!" she spat, her eyes still pained but furious now. "Great gods, Master Cursewright, do you think I am blind? Do you think I am soft-minded? Do you forget my brothers are Silenio Deyn, Ursus Deyn, Vetilius Deyn?"

What Ursus and Vetilius had done, Ammas had no idea, but he knew from bitter personal experience all too much about Silenio. "My apologies, your highness," he said softly. "I misunderstood. It is of your own conscience you speak, then. Your guilt."

Still furious, she nodded.

Ammas's voice was gentle. In both his hands he took hers, the anger pulsing through her veins a palpable presence. "I cannot cure your guilt, Carala. That you must leave to your own heart and the advice of whatever people in your life you trust. A priest of the Graces, a deacon of Othillion, your mother, your brother Perseun, if you are close with him."

"I am." Perseun's name had softened her eyes considerably.

"Then you must rely on them to see you through this. What I can do is leech the wolf's blood from you, and not at all judge you for what you might have done while in its fever."

Slowly she nodded. As the fury in her eyes faded, tears began to form within them, glassy and bright. But it was some time before she spoke. "There was a boy. A boy a little younger than your apprentice. I had -- I had just changed. My horse had bolted. I was hurt. Not -- not physically. She was a nag I took from some farmhold. Left a necklace in exchange for her. But she wasn't afraid of me, the way I heard some animals would be. Until I changed in front of her. She panicked. I never saw her again. For all I know, she drowned in Lake Baithe."

Ammas did not press her. This was something she had to bring up in her own time.

"I knew I would have to move as a wolf, on all fours, if I were to make up for the lost time. Reach another village before dawn, hide in the woods. The horse hadn't run off with all my possessions, and I had a satchel I could carry in my -- my jaws, I suppose. I kept to the forest. It's a thick wood there and I wasn't expecting to see anyone -- no people, I mean. But -- " She exhaled a long shivering breath. The tears began to trickle down her cheeks. "I saw him. A little boy. Commoner clothes, ragged ones. Ginger haired. Normally I wouldn't be able to tell such a thing in the dark, but -- " She shrugged. Ammas merely waited. "He had a basket under one arm and a lantern in his other hand. He never saw me, came within feet of me, never saw my eyes or . . . or anything. He was distracted. He was, I do not know exactly, picking mushrooms, plucking worms from the ground -- I thought he might be -- a fisherman's boy, looking for nightcrawlers. And I -- I -- "

Now she tore her hand away from his and hid her face in her quaking fingers, her whole body shuddering. "I wanted to leap on him, tear open his throat, feed on him. Because he was small and weak and unaware of me. And that was all it took to make me want such a thing, that and because I was so very hungry, I had eaten so little since I'd fled the city -- "

"I'm sure you were starving," Ammas said gently.

"I -- I was. It -- oh gods -- it took everything, everything I had, to run off into the woods, and I was howling, howling because I was angry at myself, not for fleeing, but for leaving behind a -- something I could have eaten. I was so furious, I felt I had gone mad -- until I saw the hare. And leapt on it. And killed it. Ate it."

Ammas could not deny his puzzlement -- not at her actions, but at her consuming guilt. Few werewolves he had treated (or killed) ever possessed such consciences. He reflected that never in his career had he treated one so soon after their infection, and perhaps this was the distinction. "Is that all?" he asked mildly.

On Carala Deyn there now rose an expression of disgust and loathing at the casual dismissal of a child's possible butchering which had certainly never troubled her father's face. "How can you even think that?"

"You hungered for this boy."

"I did!"

"You thought of tearing him open and devouring him."

"Yes!"

"But you didn't."

She said nothing.

"Did you or did you not turn away and eat a hare instead?"

"I did turn away." The tones of fury had lessened, and now she sounded subdued.

Ammas shrugged. "Then your guilt is a useless thing. Don't let it trouble you. Be proud instead that you felt a wolf's hunger and rejected it. Take comfort that your will is strong enough that your human heart is fighting the wolf's blood. Remember your pride in knowing that you spared a fisherman's boy so he could keep gathering mushrooms by Lake Baithe. Guilt is a wonderful tool for improving the self, your highness, but when not appropriate it's a burden no one needs." Carala wiped her eyes on her sleeves. Again she had not given into childish sobbing, and again Ammas was impressed by it. In a softer voice he murmured, "Do you think I have never felt a temptation to misuse my abilities, your highness?"

He recalled the ragged garden, perhaps only an hour ago now, and how he considered whether he should seat his blade in her throat or her brain. Carala sniffed, but only once, almost fully composed again. "I -- I suppose not, Master Cursewright."

"No, indeed. Carala, do you know what is most difficult in curing the wolf's blood?"

The princess shook her head.

"Only the werewolf's own desire to remain as he is. The longer the wolf's blood festers, the more they come to enjoy their nature. No elixir or potion or rite, no matter how potent, can cure a werewolf who has no wish to be cured. And that is the greatest danger a woman in your situation faces." Ammas reached into his cloak and retrieved a fresh handkerchief and offered it to the princess, who accepted it with silent gratitude, gently daubing her face. "Your resistance to the wolf's hunger tells me the last thing I need to know. Let me confirm what is in your blood, and then we can begin the process of curing."

Carala nodded, a shivering and depthless sigh of relief in her throat. "How long will it take?"

"To diagnose? Not long. It's not a pleasant process, I warn you."

She shrugged this off. "Not the diagnosis. The cure."

Ammas looked perplexed. "Why, however long it takes you to drink it, I suppose. I advise slowly, or you may vomit and I'll have to brew a new dose."

Again on her face appeared that expression of almost beatific hope, curdled with skepticism. "Drink it? That's it? No -- no exorcism, or the lash, or -- "

Ammas laughed. "Merciful gods, what boys' adventure stories of my trade have you been reading, your highness? There is nothing like that involved, not in this treatment. The drink is a trifle bitter, but I have some sugarloaves I could crumble into it."

Carala shook her head and allowed herself to be led to the altar. "You make me feel like I'm waking from a long nightmare, Ammas."

They stood now at the edge of the chancel, the altar directly before them. They looked like a bride and groom in this ruined house of the gods. Ammas was even dressed in black. "Now, your highness," Ammas began. Abruptly he cleared his throat, suddenly dry. Though he had known this would be a difficult moment to address, this was even more awkward than he had expected. "The treatment is not difficult. You may like the diagnosis less."

"You told me I would have to strip to my smallclothes. I know, Ammas."

"There is more than that."

She arched an eyebrow upward.