The Salt River flowed through the heart of the Kingdom of Night, a wide, muddy vein crossing the border in the north and emptying into the sea in the south. Towpaths ran along either side, trafficked by heavy horse towing cargo barges and riverboats upriver, while sailed crafts, keelboats, rowboats, fishing punts, and the occasional ferry played about midstream.

  The trees lining either side of the Salt changed little after the initial switch from twisted swamp oaks to tall hardwoods. The forest let the occasional rocky bluff or glimpse of the king’s highway shine through, but other than that there was little change to be seen. The people and the crafts that populated the space between the banks, however, provided endless entertainment for Pretty.

  She loved watching the sun set on the river, the twilight fall and the fog rise like smoke to fill in the spaces between crafts, sometimes growing thick enough to enclose each boat in its own tiny world. The crew was especially careful at night, slowing the horses to a crawl while the water traffic was highest and the visibility was lowest. On rainy or foggy nights, Pretty wandered the wide deck of the barge, listening to the boatsmen sing out their position or blow it on a cow’s horn. Answers rang out up and down the river.

  Keil chafed at these sluggish periods, pacing and cursing, one hand on the hilt of his longsword. The soldier had been the one to bring the contract to Seleketra on behalf of the warlord whose name he still refused to speak, though he had showed the demigoddess all the deference he could muster.

  The deference of a common fighting man, however, seemed coarse and rudimentary alongside the silken worship of the servants who staffed the barge. Seleketra could hardly lift a finger in their presence. They bathed, perfumed, and dressed her with enough familiarity to bring an embarrassed flush to Pretty’s tattooed skin. Nightly, the maids combed, oiled, and arranged her long hair, as if preparing the demigoddess to attend the most lavish of feasts. Daily, they uncoiled, rinsed, and combed her hair again before tucking her into bed.

  Wherever Pretty went on the barge, she was flanked by a pair of armed, hulking eunuchs from the Silent Sisterhood, gifted to her by Athalia. Like the Daylily’s own guards, the eunuchs had given up not only their manhood but their tongues to serve. They were tall, towering creatures, carrying a layer of fat over powerful muscle, and both were as bald and smooth-faced as mudpuppies. Pretty had been shown their names on little wooden amulets when she received the Sisters, and afterward, the amulets had been tossed into a fire. The taller of the Sisters was Anesha, and the one with the narrow, grooved scar across his hairless left brow was Tiri.

  The crew of the barge took their cues from the Sisters and stayed well clear of Pretty, but she overheard the captain more than once laughing at Keil’s impatience and telling him they were traveling faster than any fool who tried the roads this time of year.

  At every major city along the Salt, they tied up where floodwaters allowed, and while the boatmen visited whoring houses and taverns, Keil disembarked to ask for news of his lord. Seleketra was not allowed to leave the barge—a demigoddess did not mix with the rabble at riverfronts—which was just as well to Pretty. Seleketra was fearless and indifferent toward the human world, but underneath it all, Pretty was still the scairt little close-rat. She was happy to stay in the luxurious cabin and play strategy plaques with Sister Tiri or watch the riverboats come and go outside her curtained windows until the barge untied and towed on to the next city.

  At Siu Rial, however, Keil returned to the barge dripping with rain and wearing the first smile she’d seen on him since leaving Athalia’s townhouse.

  “We’ve finally outrun them, your worship,” he said, kneeling beside the game table. “They’re preparing your apartments. The servants will begin bringing your things ashore immediately. We’ll await my lord here in Siu Rial.”

  Pretty’s heart tried to climb her throat, but she put on Seleketra’s haughty stare, which always seemed to look down on people from the height of deity, no matter how much taller than the demigoddess those people were.

  After a satisfactory passage of moments, wherein the wet spots beneath Keil grew by drips, the demigoddess dismissed the soldier to his duties with a bored wave and returned to her plaques, playing an excellent run of sparrows that had Tiri scrambling to block her with a worthless line of brambles and a single precious owl.

  Keil bowed himself out. Pretty could hear him on deck, ordering servants to begin moving the demigoddess’s possessions to Castle Sangmere.

  Pretty was going to stay in a real castle, just like a king or a lord! If only Brat or Athalia could have seen her.

  ***

  The streets of Siu Rial packed as the royal procession wound toward Castle Sangmere, surrounded by Royal Thorns. When they had set off early that evening, Izak and his men had cleaned and brushed their uniforms and mounts, and rubbed boots with charcoal, all in effort to be as sharp as possible for their first parade.

  Of course, the ground they had covered between sunset and the first light that day was had undone a good deal of their work, but the greetings from the fairer members of the crowd were no less enthusiastic. Some threw early spring flowers, some blew kisses. One heart-faced beauty exposed her breasts as the crown prince’s Thorns rode past, calling to them to remember where her whoring house was.

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  Rake cursed happily. “Strong gods, I love this job.”

  Izak made a show of laughing, nodding to their admirers, and joking with his brothers in arms, but it all rang strangely hollow in his head. There was something about being desired as a Thorn that left him slightly disgusted.

  People claimed that the grafting drew women like rotting fruit drew flies, but Izak suspected it was something less mystical. The knowledge that any one of them could be a corpse by morrow night, perhaps. Or the legendary insatiable appetites and inexhaustible stamina. Or even the fact that they spent most of their service within arm’s reach of the most powerful men in the kingdom. There needn’t be anything magical about it as far as Izak could see.

  What would have happened if Lathe had become a Thorn? Would she have attracted women as well, or would she have become irresistible to every man who laid eyes on her? For all Izak’s mocking, the runt had been beautiful under that dirt; likely she would have blossomed into something truly stunning if she had lived.

  They were supposed to be holing up at Castle Sangmere for the next handful of nights while they gathered enough provisions to make it across the mostly empty miles to Shamasa. During one of his off-duty shifts, Izak decided, he would leave behind the uniform and visit a few of his old haunts, see if he couldn’t find a whore who would demand to see his gold before he bedded her, just like old times.

  When they rode through the gatehouse and into the castle’s main carriage yard, however, all plans for the latter part of his day fled.

  A small retinue was waiting on the steps. Flustered handmaids, a common soldier, two hulking men wearing deadly swords and in incongruously flowing robes, and at their center, the most stunning creature Izak had ever laid eyes on.

  She was small, but she drew the eye like a gold coin in a handful of crushed gravel. Her hair hung loose around her bare shoulders, silky black waves against her creamy skin. Dark symbols burned in every pale expanse of flesh, from her shoulders to the perilously low neckline of her gown. Her eyes glowed green fire, bright even in the daylight.

  The men on horseback stilled when they saw her, and the driver of the royal carriage gaped. Joking and talking fell off, and even the horses seemed to quiet. The only sound in the courtyard was the jingle of traces and the squelch of wheels in the mud as the carriage reined to a halt.

  No one quite seemed certain what to do. All around Izak, the most well-trained swordsmen in the kingdom sat slack jawed and wide eyed. She was the perfect distraction for an ambush, Izak thought idly. The only Thorn who could look away from a beauty like that was a dead one.

  It was the soldier on the steps who broke the spell. He strode forward and bowed, holding out a sealed missive.

  “Your Highness Crown Prince Etianiel.” The soldier’s voice rang loud in the near-silence. “Your royal consort, the demigoddess Seleketra.”

  Izak threw back his head and laughed.

  Etian and everyone else in the carriage yard glared at him.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Highness,” Izak said, still grinning as he gave his brother a seated bow. “I shouldn’t have laughed. There are probably some hells out there more fitting than being the Teikru-blessed Commander of Thorns to a man whose mistress is the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  ***

  Ignoring his brother, Etian dismounted and climbed the steps. A sweet, dusky, enticing fragrance filled his senses as soon as he came within arm’s reach of the courtesan.

  Izak was right, she was gorgeous, though shorter than Etian had expected. The top of her head didn’t quite come up to his chin. She was deep-breasted, with a narrow waist and wide sensuous hips, luxuriously soft looking.

  The story he’d been given in Siu Carinal was that she had stepped out of a ghost city and into their world freshly fashioned by the cunning strong goddess Eketra. From a distance, he’d thought her skin was laced with writing, but up close he realized that the tattoos were nonsense, the artistic scribbles of an illiterate trying to mimic letters and signs. Looking long enough into her eyes revealed that their otherworldly ghostlight was shadowed in places by a deep brown their colorer had not managed to eradicate completely.

  When he kissed her small, sigil-covered hand, she afforded him the haughty glance of a demigoddess slumming with mortals.

  “I traveled believing a warlord awaited me at journey’s end.” Her voice was velvety and smooth. A faint twist of humor appeared on her plump lips. As she spoke, flashes of exotic, fanglike eyeteeth added to the air of inhumanness. “Instead, I find the second coming of Josean.”

  She was good, so sensual that she made even those simple statements sound like seduction.

  Out of nowhere, yearning for his wife pierced him. He missed Pasiona desperately. The thought of the battles that had to be won before he could hold the woman he loved again—before it was even safe to see her face again—made him sick.

  This false Seleketra was nothing more than a means to an end, no matter how alluring. Skillfully prepared, well-practiced, but ultimately a disposable piece in a deadly game.

  Everyone in the carriage yard was watching them, but it was the king’s dark eyes that Etian felt most heavily on his back.

  How much did Hazerial already know, and how much more had he guessed? Could he see the feint so far ahead of the blow? How far in advance could the Eketra-blessed sovereign spot a trap?

  Etian hadn’t told anyone his true plans for the courtesan, not even Izak. Not even Keil, who had been at his right hand since his first battle in the north, and who he trusted more than a brother.

  Pushing aside all doubt, Etian escorted the supposed demigoddess into the castle and directly to his bedchamber.

  Seleketra was as skillful as her manner and reputation suggested, but the difference between bedding the courtesan and bedding Pasiona was the difference between sparring a swordsman whose technique was flawless and sparring a swordsman who relished the ring of steel on steel, who lived for the sweat and the blood and the high of battle.

  Perfect as Seleketra’s technique was, convincing as her passion was, Etian never lost sight of the fact that she had been hired to play a role.

  He never lost sight of the role he was playing, either. There was too much chance that eyes were looking through his bedchamber’s hidden view port, waiting to carry word back to the king.

  e

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