Filis felt a yank on his hair and Immer’s fingers running over his scalp. “No scars here, that I can feel. But—how interesting. Your ears—”

His brothers had teased him about his ears when he was a boy.

“Very distinctive shape. So. Enough easy marks for your father to recognize.”

Filis did not flinch. He’d known from the first he was going to die in this place. His father probably knew it, too. If they sent his father his body, that would be no worse.

Immer sat down again in front of him, smiling pleasantly at first, as he had before, as a host might smile at a welcome guest. He said nothing, merely looked at Filis. The black eyes shifted again from the lively sparkle to flat opacity—first one then the other, several times, as Filis struggled to make sense of it. With that change came another; Immer’s expression changed with the eyes. Why? What was happening? Then, past the hunger, the fear, the wine, and whatever had been in it, he remembered the story his father had told them, of the Fox Company sergeant blinded by a demon trying to invade him.

Something was inside Immer. Something … someone? Another memory struggled up through the thickening haze of wine and magery: stories from the north, of the Verrakaien who could move from body to body, taking over …

“No,” he said, his voice shaking with sudden terror. “No!”

The flat cold gaze lay on him now like snow. “No,” Immer said—or the being in Immer said. The voice had changed along with the eyes. “You do realize what I am … but no, I have no desire to move from this body to you. He is stronger even without me than you are. You will be spared that … but not the knowledge that you will never be able to tell your father—or anyone else—what you know.” Immer’s hand touched his knee, almost a caress. “Your father will have proof of my power, but not that knowledge, when he unwraps the present I will send him.” Immer’s expression changed again to the more lively one. “You know you want to ask, Filis. Every man wants to know at such times.”

He did not want to know; he knew already it would be more than he could bear, but pressure filled his head again, forcing his mouth to say the words Immer wanted to hear. “What present?” he asked.

“A work of art,” Immer said. “Leatherwork.”

Cold sweat broke out on Filis’s body. He could imagine his father’s face … his father’s reaction … his brothers’ faces. He told himself it was no worse than any other death. But he could not believe it, not with Immer’s satisfied smile in front of him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Chaya, Lyonya