Daemon left the room, whistling a tuneless little song. As a butterball Warlord puffed his way down the hall toward Dorothea’s room, Daemon turned halfway to face him. “I wouldn’t go in there until she’s a little calmer,” he said cheerfully. Then he winked at the startled man and continued down the hall, laughing.

“Damn your soul to the bowels of Hell, hurry up with that!” Kartane screamed at the manservant assigned to him when he was at court. He threw his shirts into one trunk and fastened the straps.

When the trunks were packed, Kartane’s eyes swept the room for anything he might have missed.

“Lord Kartane,” the manservant panted.

“I’ll take care of this. You’re dismissed. Get out. Get out!”

The manservant scurried out of the room.

Kartane wrapped his arms around the bedpost. He desperately wanted to rest, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw the bloody sheets, heard the screams.

Away from here. And quickly. Before Dorothea summoned him, before he was trapped. Someplace where the witches were already being silenced. A place that stood in Hayll’s shadow, where they would fawn over the Priestess’s son, but not yet completely tainted with the ancient land’s decay. Not quite virgin territory, but still a maid learning Hayll’s desecrations.

“Chaillot,” Kartane whispered, and he smiled. The other side of the Realm. Hayll had an embassy there, so no one would question his appearance. Robert Benedict was an astute protégé. And there was that wonderful place he’d helped them build in Beldon Mor, that “hospital” for young, high-strung girls from aristo Blood families, where men like Lord Benedict could partake of delicacies that no respectable Red Moon house would offer. It could take weeks for Dorothea to track him down, particularly if he impressed on the embassy staff that he was there doing research for the Priestess. They’d be too frightened of what he might say about them to report his presence.

Kartane vanished the trunks and slipped from his room to the landing web. He caught the Red Web and rode hard toward the west, toward Chaillot.

5 / Hell

Hekatah flowed into the parlor, the spidersilk gown swirling around her small body, the diamonds sewn into the high neckline glittering like stars against a bloodred sky. She’d dressed with care for this well-thoughtout “chance” meeting. Despite the plebeian gallantry that made him courteous to any woman, whether she was pretty or not, Saetan did appreciate a woman who displayed herself to advantage, and even past her prime, Hekatah had never wanted for men.

But he, gutter-child bastard that he was, glanced at her over the half-moon glasses he’d begun wearing, marked the page in his book, and vanished the glasses before, finally, giving her his full attention.

“Hekatah,” he said with pleasant wariness.

Biting back her fury, she strolled around the room. “It’s wonderful to see the Hall refurbished,” she said, her girlish voice full of the cooing warmth that had once made him cautiously open to her.