The lord took up a needle, sharp as a stiletto blade. ‘Whether you find your father or not, you have a family in this Order,’ he said quietly. ‘Whether you speak with the Muslim lord or not, you have no lord but me. Whether you travel with the woman or not, your heart is given to your work and to the mapping of fears and the tracing of the end of days. Whatever else you see on your journey, my command is that you look into the very jaws of hell itself and tell me their measurements. Will you do this?’

He pressed the point of the needle to Luca’s skin, inside the forearm, halfway between the crook of the elbow and the wrist, and Luca recoiled as he saw the blood well up and felt the sharp scratch.

‘I will,’ he gasped. He clenched his fist against the pain and watched as again and again the little blade cut and then scratched, opening up the skin, marking him lightly with a tickling sharp pain, making a shape, an unmistakable shape on the pale skin.

The pain deepened, as the cuts took a form. It was the tail of the dragon, exquisitely drawn by a knife on soft flesh. That was all: the first marks of the Order, the scaley tail outlined in the scarlet of Luca’s blood.

Luca looked at the drawing in blood, the detail in crimson, then the lord dropped his hooded head to Luca’s wound. Luca gasped as the lord’s soft mouth came down on his flesh. He felt the prickle of the stubble on his lord’s chin and upper lip, erotic as a kiss against his sensitive flesh. He felt the man’s teeth nibble the inside of his arm, felt the touch of his warm tongue on his raw skin. Luca felt the blood well into the lord’s mouth, as he sucked the flowing blood from the little wounds, then he felt the cool wetness of the man’s saliva as the lord raised his head and pulled his hood forwards over his face so that Luca only glimpsed for a moment his mouth, stained red, and the gleam of his black eyes.

Without comment, the lord lifted his head and took a tiny brush, dipped it in the pot of ink, and painted, with meticulous accuracy, over the lines he had cut, the wounds he had sucked. Then, he took a linen napkin from inside the box and pressed it against the red marks, now darkened with black ink. He raised his head and looked into Luca’s face. The younger man was pale and his brown eyes were darkened, his breath quick and shallow. The two of them stood in silence, as if something very strange and powerful had taken place.