I had already fathomed enough of him to know it was not the acquisition of Demizdor that had tempted him to my rescue, but a desire for power over his fellows. A fledgling of my father’s ilk, maybe, he wanted me for his pawn. And now he did not parade Demizdor as an acquisition, but to see how much of a hold he might gain on her by owning me, how much of a hold on me by possessing her.

“That was generous of the lady,” I said. “No doubt she has mentioned how I raped and degraded her among the tents of the shlevakin.”

“No doubt she has. Do you think she asked me to spare your life in order to bring you ease? She wishes you to live that you may endure slavery. She desires that you grovel in the bowels of Eshkorek twenty years or more. When your spirit is smashed she will draw her breath in peace. So she asserts.” His voice and his smile indicated that he, too, assessed her motives differently.

There was a certain way he looked at her, a certain inflection when he spoke of her, that told me he had had her. It did not even rasp on me. I thought, You have bought a dry bed, Eshkir prince. She will not be for you as she was for me.

Her enamel face was aloof, cool as morning.

Erran said, “Demizdor, my sweeting, I must disappoint you, just a very little. I am planning to breed mighty boys from this one. He shall rest soft for today and tonight, for he has had two hard nights of it.” At that she came alive, turning to him wildly, but he clapped his hands and a bronze-mask came in. “Take my guest to his apartment,” Erran said. “See he has what he wants, except, of course, a silver woman, or the key to the doors.”

“My lord,” Demizdor cried. Her color was up and her coldness all gone. “Am I to see this vileness every day about your palace?”

“Do not be importunate,” he answered. “Perhaps he will not take to luxury, your royal tribal barbarian. Then I shall have no choice but to send him below. You can always hope for that.”

He waved me toward the bronze-mask.

Having no option, I obeyed him and followed his soldier-servant into the frescoed passageway. As we went, I heard him say to her, in that winsome, smiling tone of his, “Come, Demizdor, it is nothing. Imagine your gown was muddied and now it has been cleansed. Do you see this pendant of gold? It was my grandmother’s, but you shall have it. Look at the gold, and forget him, pretty Demizdor. You have not necessarily been foolish, coming to the house of the leopard.”

The dawn was burning up behind an apricot window when the door of my new prison was shut on me.

It was the best lodging I had had for some time.