The evening after Pretty’s strange attack of misery, a caller come visiting at the Daylily’s townhouse. Athalia received the man in the parlor while Orika helped Seleketra array herself in her best finery.

  When Pretty finally made it down to the parlor, the man waiting with the Daylily wasn’t at all what she had been expecting.

  Normally, callers were lords or wealthy merchants. This man had a different look altogether. Burly, scarred, hair shaved close to his head. He didn’t dress in uphill finery but the sort of roughspun clothing dockworkers and stablehands wore. He even had a sword hanging by his hip. She couldn’t believe nobody had turned him away at the door.

  “Seleketra,” Athalia said, beckoning her in. “We’re so grateful you agreed to favor us with an audience.”

  Hiding her bemusement behind Seleketra’s haughty fa?ade, Pretty took a seat where the demigoddess could look disinterestedly at or through both the Daylily and the visitor with her glowing ghostlit eyes.

  She waited. Demigoddesses did not ask for explanations. Humans gave them or suffered her wrath.

  The man swept a clumsy bow, then at her glare, he dropped to one knee. “Forgive me for intruding on your night, beautiful Seleketra, but I’ve been sent on urgent orders from my lord. He wishes to engage your, uh, services.”

  Seleketra turned her eerie green stare upon the Daylily. The minutest twitch of Athalia’s face told Pretty that Athalia wanted her to eventually agree. This offer must be much better than the one to tame the old lord’s ill-mannered son. The Cormorant must’ve heard Pretty’s prayers and sent her some invisible medicine, just like Brat used to talk about.

  “What sort of lord sends a common ruffian in his place?” the bored demigoddess asked.

  “A warlord, mistress. I know I don’t look like much, but I can be trusted. Most of the finer folks in my lord’s circles can’t.”

  Pretty could believe that. She knew a thing or two about slippery uphill folks.

  “A warlord?” Seleketra was supposed to know a thing or two about those. After all, Eketra had made her specially for the warrior god Josean. The demigoddess inclined her head imperiously. “I shall hear his offer.”

  “Thank you, mistress.” The man bent awkwardly at the waist in his one-legged kneel, then reached into his doublet and pulled out a missive. “He sent this contract of terms.”

  The demigoddess motioned. The Daylily took the contract, bringing it closer and kneeling to present it to Seleketra. Pretty caught the intense look of excitement and pride and fulfillment on Athalia’s face before the Daylily bowed her head reverently.

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  The wax closing the contract had been stamped with the royal seal of House Khinet.

  ***

  The procession left Thornfield at sundown the next night, under a pouring rain. Newly grafted seniors rode all around the carriage, one rode on top with the driver, while three crammed into what was normally the footman’s position. The older Royal Thorns laughed and rode at a distance where their mounts wouldn’t trample one another, but they remembered the urgent need to be close to their master in those first maddening days after grafting, that incessant drive to protect their king from even imagined threats.

  The only Thorn allowed inside the carriage, Alaan was the envy of the king’s newest swordsmen. He sat at his mistress’s side across from the dirter monster, barely a cutlass length from the man he’d sworn to kill. The whine in Alaan’s ears grew louder with every mile he rode staring at that satisfied smile and those frozen-mud eyes.

  “We wouldn’t dream of separating our daughter from her new Thorn,” Hazerial had said in the bailey while they readied the ugly land vessel. He had rested his cold, long-fingered hand on Alaan’s shoulder and told his outraged Royal Thorns, “We trust the pirate with our life.”

  The rain pounded on the roof of the carriage, and Kelena huddled in the corner, just trying to keep breathing between the crush of her Thorn’s hatred and her father’s amusement.

  Izak rode alongside Etian in the downpour, scanning the runnel-washed dunes for attackers he knew weren’t there and wishing his brother preferred the luxury of a nice dry carriage.

  “I rode into Thornfield three years ago stinking of wet horse,” he yelled to Etian over the crash of the storm-tossed surf. “Now I’m riding away stinking of the same. The strong gods love their symmetry.”

  “Get used to it,” Etian said. “I doubt we’ll find many bathhouses between Shamasa and the Helat imperial city.”

  The procession stopped briefly in Sandshells for the customary revelry, but the public house was locked. A dark garland hung on the door.

  “They found the publican’s daughter with her throat cut,” a regular from a neighboring home told Izak. “Casia. Sweetest thing. Can’t imagine who would do something so senseless.”

  After relaying the information, Izak climbed back on his horse and the procession rode on. No time to stop and mourn a murdered pub girl. There would be other public houses and taverns and inns.

  As his horse plodded down the sandy streets, Izak thought he saw Danasi watching from the pub’s upper window. He waved, wishing a gesture could carry sorrow and sympathy and comfort from one person to another.

  Danasi turned away. It looked to Izak as if she crumbled to ash then, but she must have fallen onto the bed to weep for the sister someone had stolen from her.

  One more death too few people cared about. One more life wasted with no recourse.

  Nothing to do but live on in the ragged hole left behind.

  Epilogue

  Thump. A lump of muscle that hadn’t been used for years shuddered.

  Water pulled and pushed. Water splashed. Water battered down from above in stinging droplets.

  Thump. The lump of muscle was weak. It hadn’t been needed in so long. It had lain silent for years, while its other half—the half the body had swallowed from its twin long before birth—pumped on.

  But the other half had been destroyed. There had been a crunch of bone, a sharp stabbing pain, and that stolen half had fallen silent. That half had died, like the twin the body had absorbed in the womb.

  Tha-thump.

  While the water swirled and pitched and shoved, Lathe’s disused second heart shook off its years of rest and took up the beat.

  Tha-thump.

  William Myrl, and for all their help whipping this story into shape. They let me stand on their shoulders to reach the top-shelf story ingredients, without which this cake would never have turned out. They're also killer writers, so you should check out their fics.

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