My face tingled, and itched like new beard pushing through. I worked my jaw, and felt the dried cake of blood crack, but there was no pain, no stiffening in the raw flesh.

And I thought at last of the snake bite, the tattooing needles, the warrior wounds that healed clean and left no scar.

No time for more. There was a soft, insistent surging of vague movement all around me, deceptively fluid and gentle—then the clatter of the brazier going over, the red coals spilled, and from the shelter of the three silver captains, one silver-masked man staggering out with another on his back, like some play of drunks or children. But the silver-mask fell heavily, and the man astride lifted his arm and plunged it down with the almost noiseless thunk a blade makes penetrating human fiber. Presently he excavated the knife, wiped it on the corpse, and stood. As all around Prince Erran’s men were standing up from the dead guard Kortis Phoenix had left me. They had stolen in, soft as snow, and done their work like a kiss.

I saw I was to become another man’s property. Like any valuable buck ram, I had been captured, bought, sold, and finally thieved.

Erran drank wine, green wine in a golden cup. He said, “I do not pretend I am not a man, you see. I eat, I drink, I urinate, I defecate, I sleep, and on some day shall die. If my ancestors were gods, the strain has failed and I am not a god. Kortis and Nemarl and two score thousand may pretend otherwise, but I am not one of them. Which is why I have subtracted you from their guardianship. Why waste you on godly vengeance when you might be put to use?”

He had taken off his leopard’s face to drink, for the city masks had no aperture at the mouth. He was a young man with blond clever looks and little amused eyes.

“Well, you may answer, my Vazkor. Tell me. Would you not be better pleased to live than to die? You shall be a kindly treated slave, don’t fear it. Your blood is half good at least. My rival princes would chop off your limbs; I would rather put them to work. Instead of castrating you, I will send you the comeliest of my bronze and satin mask women, and you shall get me fine, strong slave-sons on them. You shall have a pleasant and not overarduous existence in my service.”

I was no longer bound. Watching him, I put my hand to my face, and felt again the whole healed skin.

“Yes,” he said, “there is always that. I am hoping you will pass on that gift with your seed, as the Black Wolf of Ezlann did with his when he fashioned you. I have been wondering. If Kortis’ dog had lopped off a hand, or dug out an eye for his sport, what then? Should you have regrown the member as you have regrown flesh without scar?” He came and looked more nearly at me. “Yes, it is remarkable. Just a coloration, pale now as if your lady had petulantly slapped you there. It will be gone by sunrise, I would judge. The wounds on your body, of course, have vanished completely.”