At a murmured aside from their captor Pigeon was taken in hand by one of the Favored. She was about to protest, then realized that although the boy was desperate to stay with her, being separated from her was his best hope.

“Ssshhh,” she said, and then told him an awful lie. “I’ll be back. Everything will be fine. Just go with them and do what they say.”

He was not fooled. As he was led away he wore the shocked, disappointed look of a dog tied to a tree and left behind by its master.

The Leopard officer who had now taken charge of Qinnitan and her captor asked if he wished to make either himself or his “gift” ready to be received.

“I was told to bring her to the Golden One with all speed,” the hunter said. “I am sure he will forgive me if I take him at his word.”

The officer and one of the more important of the Favored looked at each other apprehensively, but the courtier bowed. “Of course, sir. As you say.”

Qinnitan took a shaky breath as they were led down the long, surprisingly wide hallway of the rocking ship. She felt nothing, or at least nothing she could recognize. If she had fallen into the water this moment, as she had imagined doing earlier, she knew she would sink straight down. She felt cold and hard and dead as stone.

They paused outside the doorway of the ship’s central cabin while the Leopard officer discreetly and almost apologetically searched the man who had caught her. The chief of the Favored did the same for Qinnitan. The eunuch’s breath smelled of mint and something sharper and fouler, the stench of a rotting tooth, perhaps; at any other time she would have been revolted by his touch, but now she just stood and let herself be handled like a corpse readied for burial. There was no point in feeling anything. No use caring.

The Favored led them through the door and across the broad cabin toward the tall man seated on a plain chair at the center, legs spread, booted feet planted firmly on the ground, examining the documents Qinnitan’s captor had given to the courtiers.

It was not the autarch.

“All hail High Polemarch Ikelis Johar, Overseer of the Armies!” said the Favored, striking his staff three times on the cabin’s wooden floor.

The general looked up, his heavy-browed face turning from Qinnitan to her captor. “Vo, is it? Daikonas Vo. I think I have heard the name before—your father was a White Hound, too, am I right?”

So the empty-faced man who had taken her had a name, Qinnitan realized—not that it mattered. Soon she would be beyond remembering any name, even her own.

“Yes, Polemarch.” The man seemed a little taken aback, although his face was still stony and indifferent. “Forgive me, Lord, but can you tell me when I may see the autarch? I was given very specific orders…”