Those eyes, that scent, his own hungers, rekindled after so many years. Ammas did exactly what she demanded of him, clutching her waist first hesitantly then fiercely, draping himself over her back, joining with her again, harder and more savagely, and for both of them the pleasure was even greater than it had been the first time, and again Ammas found himself wondering if Othma Sulivar's dark invitation had not been turned on its head; if he were not the tame one. And in that moment, he did not care a whit if he was.

They both dozed after that, and there were no tears from either of them, only a blissful slumber. Neither of them woke until moonrise, when Ammas felt Carala's body quivering all over, her breath coming in short, pleasured gasps not at all unlike those she had made with him, and he held her to him as the wolf consumed her, unafraid.

The sleek she-wolf curled against him, resting her muzzle on his throat, her breath hot, her tongue soft as it lapped at him. He wondered if she would make another demand of him, one made only with snarls and gestures. If she did, he would give her what she wanted, perversion be damned. But she only lay beside him, content to lounge with him, showing no desire to roam, pleased to lay with her pet cursewright. And in spite of a lifetime of training, decades spent having it drummed into his head how perilous such creatures were, he drifted off to sleep, cradling the wolf in his arms, knowing in his deepest heart she would never hurt him, nor would he hurt her.

He woke once in the small hours of the night to find himself alone. Carala-the-wolf was not on the bedroll with him. For a moment he was alarmed, then he saw her, standing tall and fierce, pacing slowly from one end of the cell to the other, her tail whickering behind her. At first he thought she must be growing weary of confinement; that soon she must clutch the bars and howl, gnawing at them, snarling to him until he let her roam once again. The smell of the Swiftfoot wolves was everywhere in this city, after all, and he did not see how she might resist it.

Then her amber eyes turned on him, and she sank to all fours, loping to the bedroll, once more resting her body against his. And he knew at once that what she had really been doing was keeping watch. Ammas tumbled into sleep again, the softness of the creature pressed to him comforting rather than terrifying.

When he woke again it was to a sleeping Carala beside him, though the smell of the wolf lingered. The torches out in the cellar proper had guttered nearly to nothing. Ammas cursed under his breath. Barthim and Casimir would be arriving around eight o'clock, and he had no idea of the time. With a gentle kiss on Carala's temple he stretched up from the bedroll, tugging on his breeches and pulling his shirt over his head, leaving the cell unlocked as he headed upstairs to check the daylight.

As he stepped into the entry hall he heard the city clocks tolling six. Plenty of time to compose themselves appropriately before the others arrived. Ammas breathed a sigh of relief, uncomfortably aware that he positively reeked of what he and Carala had been up to before moonrise. At least they would not be seeing Denisius until later in the day.

A stab of guilt twisted his belly at that, but he knew that Carala could not have lain with Lord Marhollow without possibly infecting him. That did little to alleviate his guilt, for he was fully aware that had nothing to do with why they had come together. Perhaps it didn't matter. If Carala were cured, this became a one-time dalliance, and when she returned to Talinara and perhaps Marhollow, that would be the last Ammas ever saw of her. And if she were not cured, regardless of whether she meant what she had said, she certainly would not be marrying Denisius, or any other noble of the Anointed Realms. To his surprise he felt a dull pain in his heart and belly when he considered the former . . . but was totally unsure how to feel about the latter.

Ruminating on such long thoughts, Ammas wandered upstairs, his feet unconsciously carrying him to the modestly sized bedroom where he had slept from the time he was just out of his clouts until he had left for Sailor's Crown, and intermittently after that all the way up until the dissolution. The room seemed enormous with no furniture, no toy soldiers, none of the board games he and his mother had liked to play and which had utterly confounded Senrich. (Chess had not been one of them.)

A smile touched his lips as he leaned against the tall window where his bed had once stood, running his fingers over a crude carving of a mountain rising from the sea, a pirate ship broken on its roots. That was the emblem of the House of Mourthia, and he had carved it with a pocketknife himself when he was no older than seven.

Slowly the smile faded. Ammas had become aware of a figure down in the courtyard, a robed and hooded figure staring up at his bedroom window. These windows were too dark to be seen through from the outside, and there was no light within anyway, but the figure gazed up steadfastly at him. No face was visible beneath the hood, nor was the color of the robes easily determined in the dim light of the early morning. Before Ammas's very eyes, the figure dissolved into a thin smoke and then nothingness, far more silently than the misty form of Othma Sulivar had vanished at Autumnsgrove.

A shudder ran up Ammas's spine, slowly becoming a shake that rattled his whole body. Lightly he slapped his own face, sure he must have drifted off and suffered a brief nightmare. He knew too much about the Veil of Ravens and the worlds beyond to dismiss the idea of a ghost, but he had known since he was a boy that the Hangman of the Harbor was a myth, and unless he was very much mistaken that was exactly what he had seen roaming the old house's courtyard.

Shaking his head, he turned and headed back toward the cellar, preparing to wake Carala, and hoping she did not regret what had passed between them.