Durzo cursed. He grabbed Azoth’s hand and practically dragged him out the door.

“Are you ready to obey?” Durzo demanded.

Azoth nodded quickly.

“See that boy?”

“You call that a boy?” Azoth asked. The young man the count had called Logan Gyre wore a green cloak with black piping, fine black leather boots polished to a high sheen, a cotton tunic, and a sword. He was twenty paces from the door and was being shown in by a porter. His face looked young, but his frame made him look years older than Azoth. He was huge, already taller than Azoth would probably ever be and thicker and wider than anyone he knew, and he didn’t look fat. Where Azoth felt awkward and clumsy in his clothes, Logan looked comfortable, confident, handsome, lordly. Just looking at him made Azoth feel shabby.

“Start a fight with him. Distract the Sethi until I can get out.”

“Logan!” a girl cried out from upstairs.

“Serah!” Logan called, looking up.

Azoth looked at Master Blint, but he was gone. There was no time to say anything. It didn’t matter whether he understood or not. There were mysteries he wasn’t allowed to understand yet. He could only act or wait, obey or disobey.

The porter opened the door and Azoth stepped back around the corner, out of sight. As Logan stepped inside and looked up the stairs, a smile curving his lips, Azoth stepped around the corner.

They collided and Azoth landed on his back. Logan almost tripped over him as Azoth rolled to the side and caught Logan’s foot in the stomach.

“Oof!”

Logan caught himself on the banister. “I’m so sorry—”

“You fat ape!” Azoth staggered to his feet, holding his stomach. “You clumsy guttershite—” he cut off as he realized all the curses he knew would mark him as coming from the Warrens.

“I didn’t—” Logan said.

“What’s going on?” the girl asked from the top of the stairs. Logan looked up, a guilty look flashing across his face.

Azoth punched him in the nose. Logan’s head rocked back.

“Logan!” the Sethi man shouted.

But Logan’s mild expression was gone. His face was a mask, intense, but not furious. He grabbed Azoth’s cloak and lifted him off the ground.

Azoth panicked; he threw punches blindly, screaming, his fists grazing Logan’s cheeks and chin.

“Logan!”

“Stop it!” Logan shouted in Azoth’s face. “Stop it!” Azoth went crazy, and Logan’s intensity flashed into fury. He shifted his hands and held Azoth off the ground with one, then buried his other fist in Azoth’s stomach once, twice. The wind rushed from Azoth’s lungs. Then a fist the size of a sledge flattened his nose, blinding him with instant tears and pain.

Then, amid distant shouting, he felt himself being spun in a tight circle and—briefly—flying.

Azoth’s head slapped against hardwood and the world flashed bright.

14

L ogan had insisted on going upstairs to help the countess take care of young Kylar Stern. He was mortified, and apparently not solely because he’d lost his temper in front of Count Drake’s pretty daughter. For Solon, it had been an instructive ten seconds.