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Lightning flashed, so the thief finally let go. A second of bright light meant two more of blindness for the guards below, unless one of them had blinked. That would have to be chanced. Felines dislike water under the best of circumstances, and the thief had been hanging by his fingertips under the ledge of a roof in streaming rain for half the night. While the leather jerkin was sturdy and quiet, acclimatized over the years to every curve and swell of the thief's compact and muscular frame and so dark and dull as to be as invisible as his black pelt... warm, it was not

The thief landed, not gracefully and not in his usual alert crouch. His unfeeling legs folded farther than he'd have allowed, had he had say in the matter, and all that saved him from grunting when he tumbled face-forward onto his hands was the numbness of them.

He crouched quickly, pressing his back against the tower wall, burrowing into the safety of its shade. Rain meant fewer torches, which was to the thief's advantage, but consequently also more alert guards, which decidedly was not. He rubbed his paws together for warmth, not as a weak-hearted noble seeking comfort, but as a craftsman readying his tools for use. It had been a brilliant stroke, his leaping for the guard-tower during the changing of the guard at sundown and hiding under its roof to wait until past nightfall, but the wait had taken its toll on his fingers and he'd soon need them in their best shape. He held them in front of his muzzle to catch the warmth of his breath and hide the puffs of fog it made in the chill autumn air from view.

Anxur was the thief's name, and he could count on his tingling, slowly reviving fingers the number of people who knew him so. None now lived who knew his name in its fullness, Urfa-ni-anxur, and the thief rather liked that. If the day came when even the name Anxur was not known among the living, his heart would not ache.

His fingers now did, which was a good sign. The illusory thickness of the leathery pads and the pain throbbing in his claws evinced the imminent return of full sensation, so the thief bent his attention to the next leg of his approach, and the most hazardous. When planning this operation, he'd pondered this part-from the tower to the door-for the better part of a day and decided there was no solution, and that he would trust the Anxur who would be there that night to be clever and agile enough to best the challenge.

Now he was that Anxur, and confidence fled him, and he felt no loss. Determination kept him company in its absence, and that was all he'd needed to survive since he'd been a cub. The thief never thought to himself, you can do this. All he would ever say to himself was persevere.

There was half a heartbeat between the spawning of an opportunity and the passing of it, and the thief had pounced it without a second thought. A guard passed a scant dozen feet from him, making his rounds of the courtyard the thief now had to cross, and it was a stag who carried a lantern at the height of his breast.

A massive shadow was cast against the outer wall, a silhouette as of a towering giant, thrice a man's height. It might have been the shadow of Stag himself, and Anxur thought, perversely, that he might sneak into the city's heathen church tomorrow to burn for Stag some incense, if these gods liked such things.

Lashing his tail around his cloak, making it into a bundle tight against his thigh, the thief walked with long strides to stay in the guard's shade, staring fixedly at the door he was to take, and nearly froze at the sight of something that would sign his failure or his doom unless he found a solution in the space of ten paces.

While the guard seemed to be making a circuit of the wet-cobbled courtyard and would indeed pass by the door on the far corner, whose unlit alcove would harbor the thief long enough for him to best its lock, that path would also lead him past another such alcove which had been beyond his sight before. Under its protection huddled two guards, both canids, who passed between them a bundle-an old soldiers' trick; a coal stolen from a noble's fireplace, kept in a pewter stein and wrapped in cloth could the paws of all who held it for a full night, even on as chilly an autumn night as this.

But while he'd not begrudge a hard-suffering guard the simple comfort of warmed paws, the thief did rather cherish his life. He kicked a stray branch, it hit the wall, the stag swung the lantern around and Anxur engaged all his race's speed to follow the sweeping slash of black shade around the stag's back and to the copse of leafless trees at the courtyard's center.

The thief had less opportunity to reach his target now, but he'd long held as his guiding principle that the best way to make a flawed plan work was to live first and strategize later. He might be trapped, now, crouching amid the sparse cover of a small colony of tamed trees, surrounded by guards with lanterns and swords and low opinions of his life's worth, but he was alive, and having less than a minute to plan his next move meant he'd probably live at least another minute, something to which Anxur never objected.

He found himself climbing the nearest tree before he could even think about it, and as he climbed it occurred to him that he had not been close enough to a tree to touch it for well over a year. Traveling between the nations of Tephos and Ferrenis-which to him meant traveling between the cities of Divalia and Caril-had been lucrative, but lacked variety and while he'd made sure most of his proclivities were satisfied during his visits, his race's love of climbing branches and bark with naught but claws and grace had gone sorely untended.

The tree was high, as if jealous of the towers in whose company it had been planted, branches mostly reaching up, which made for good cover, but poor opportunity. He climbed amid them, rather than clinging to the trunk, so as to hide his shape among their hypnotic sway. Anxur had no love of rain nor wind, but lightning was a brother to him. Another spark from heaving to earh, another two heartbeats of blindness for all who regarded it, blindness to the sight of a dark feline figure streaking across the void between the branch-tops and the Academy walls, arms outstretched, claws unsheathed, casting all his aim to the task of clinging to the wall if he reached it and leaving none to ready himself for the fall if he didn't.

But Anxur's was the luck of tavern tales and bawdy songs, and nimble fingerclaws found unpainted timber to sink into, strong footclaws brittle mortar. No breath was wasted on relief, nor seconds neither; the thief pulled himself straight upward with all his race's tree-climbing prowess and whispered another prayer to his family's stars for a few seconds more of going unnoticed by the guards below, for no shade nor shapes now masked his form, exposed and plain to see like spilled black lamp-oil on the wall, though creeping up, not down.

Muscles bunched under supple, damp leather as he pulled himself up to the window above him and poured his supple body into its hollow so gracefully one might think an inspired carpenter had wrought him into the windowsill and while his gaze was fixed below, darting to and fo to absorb all he could about the guards, their numbers and races and movements and weapons, his claws found their way between one hinge's pin and its sheath, pulling one from the other and then lifting one window-leaf fully from its frame.

Anxur spilled into the half-window gap and the room beyond, pulling the window back into place with his claws sunk deep into its wooden frame. He nudged the locking-bolt that protruded from one side into its sibling's cavity and pulled the pane so securely in place that the missing pin on the outside hinge would go unnoticed until the window was cast open for airing, which, given the weather, might not be until next spring.

Someone awoke in the room Anxur found himself but before he could utter so much as a cry, Anxur had swept across the divide, braced one foot against the foot of the bed planted the other against the headboard and with flat of his paw delivered decisive strikes to throat, chest and chin and unconsciousness overtook a mind that had just been roused from sleep. Whoever it was that had awoken-a rodent of some sort, to judge by the twitching of the thief's whiskers, had a bedmate of the opposite sex and Anxur smiled at the unbidden intuition that this pair would make beautiful babies. He considered saying a hail in their favor, but held his tongue-he was fast running out of prayers, and his mission was not yet over.

Anxur went to the door and opened it without pause. A scribe's door, after all, would be well-greased and no creak disturbed the stillness of the hallway beyond. He smelled herbs, here, and it was an old scent, deeply drawn into the smooth-warn masonry of the walls, lit by candles at intervals and interrupted by doors. A servants' wing, this was, for those whose tasks were loftier than mere sweeping and cooking-powder-grinders and ink-brewers, needlesmiths, all peons of a scholarly bent. Anxur was in the right place, at least.

He passed through the hallway like a shadow, noting scents and drawing conclusions, piecing together what the hallway would look like in a few hours. Who would rise first? Who would walk where, dressed how? These buildings had been designed for uses they had been put to effectively for long ages and fathoming what those uses were would teach him how the building worked.

Whiskers twitched and silent footsteps halted as a scent struck him, a single high note amid the din of a clashing olfactory cacophony: sulfur. That foul-reeking substance that served no useful purpose to anyone but an alchemist, and it was this scent he followed. It led him to a stair, and he abandoned this interesting corridor without regret, soundlessly scaling the stairs two, three steps at a time, the meager effort of it scarcely hastening the feline's breath. He cast no glances at this floor or that, none could yield interests as singularly useful as this powerful scent-trail, which led him higher and higher up the winding stair.

He broke into another hallway when the scent led him there, passing through an archway to leave the staircase and his sensitive footpads stepped on crude, coarse burlap, mats of which were strewn across the floor. The thief smiled, his heart quickening at his own cleverness as he surmised its purpose and hurried to satisfy his racial curiosity. Burlap and scent both led him to a door lit by two covered oil lamps and smoothly the cat slid onto his knees, drawing lock-picks from his belt with the grace of a noble swordsman drawing his foil. Smaller locks he enjoyed picking with his claws alone but these larger ones required cruder tools and, closing his eyes to more keenly sense the lock's anatomy, the expensive and carefully-wrought picks became extensions of his paws, seeking out tumblers and tempting them into compliance.

Click, click, went the lock, each small sound a triumph until all tumblers had been pressed in place, then turned, and after slipping his tools reverently back in place the thief opened the door to expose a glaziery.

Barrels of oil stood stacked in one far corner, with a furnace on the other side whose one small opening still showed a faint red glowing from the embers inside it. Long, oft-burned metal pipes hung on racks above jars filled with glass beads of different qualities. Work-tops stood, widely spaced, sporting unfinished glassware projects of astonishing precision: fine hollow spirals that looked so fragile that a whisker's brush might shatter them, needle-thin tubes, round bowls and straight jugs with notches in them, all splintering the furnace's faint red light and painting a spectacular landscape of colors on the walls for the feline's keen night vision.

He regarded the baubles with the lust of a life-long thief; any one of these items even in their unfinished state was worth more than all the furnishings in the scribe's quarters, so finely were they wrought. That explained why a glaziery would be built so high in the building; a burglar would have quite a challenge getting these delicate items back to the ground without breaking them.

As that thought struck him, Anxur's attention was snapped away from the shiny marvels surrounding him: a glaziery whose works were so fine and so fragile, and that was so well-protected, would not be far from the place where its products would be of most use. The laboratories would be nearby. The burlap mats continued toward he far door where there was hung a rack holding burlap-soled slippers which ensured that none would slip and break a work of fine craftsmanship. Beyond this door the scent of sulfur was strongest.

If the glaziery had been a spectacle, the laboratory was pure madness. Oil-lamps hung on the wall even at night and were smashed by the arts of masterfully-wrought glass into shades of royalty and great wealth (purple, gold and blue) and the colors of nature and illness, anger and purity alike. But it was not only the mysteries of glass and crystal that gave occasion to these hues; the worktables here, all irregular, with their own purpose and design, were strewn with the works wrought in the previous room and put to their purpose. Fluids, powders and jellies filled containers, frothy foams coursed through the spiral tubes at which the thief had greedily marveled. Anxur strode through a playground of medicines, a harem of potions and poisons alike, none of which he could identify. Even the sulfur that had led him here was lost in the din of scents, all alien and unnatural and all very, very strong.

Anxur pulled the front of his hood over his snout, letting the waterlogged fabric behind him ensure it would remain taut, giving him some measure of harbor from the odors. He glanced about in wonder, these strange devices bringing out the cat in him, and quickly he quenched those urges: the laboratory itself was not, after all, his goal. He glanced around, seeing only one other door, which he surmised led to the apprentice alchemists' dormitory, among other places, which was the route he'd originally intended to take before getting waylaid by unforeseen circumstances.

He spied a board on the wall which struck him as too similar to the ones around it; some artisan had outdone himself in making that one blend in with its neighbors. It was, of course, a secret cabinet, its lock hidden in the side of the plinth and from here the work became disappointingly straightforward.

He picked (with claws, this time) the lock, opened the cabinet and pulled the scrap of vellum from the back pouch on his belt that was his only clue as to his target. Having never learned his letters in the first place, nor feeling much regret over that fact in his adult years, Anxur was not intimidated by the code with which all the scrolls and reams of parchment in the locker were covered. He simply searched for one with markings that matched the one on his little scrap of paper, the one item his employer had given him and as soon as he found his target he rolled the parchment back and forth a few times to uncurl it before carefully folding it over, inks on the inside, and tucked it into the pouch, buckling that securely. The scrap of parchment he immediately took into his mouth and chewed on, for while being discovered in possession of a valuable state secret was grounds for prosecution, being found with evidence of his employer's identity was downright unprofessional.

He closed the locker with a sigh more of regret than relief and spent a moment simply leaning against it. It was done, the excitement was over, the danger, and the cleverness that brought out in him. Now there was simply the running, which his kind were built for and not a single one of his instincts had any doubts as to his ability to make a safe egress, given that no bodies were yet discovered, no alarms sounded. His ears folded and his tail drooped at the prospect of a dull egress, and with a sigh, he jogged to the far door to make good with his quarry.

The handoff had gone without a hitch. His Tephossian contact in Caril was punctual, as those anonymous and frequently-replaced figures always were. This one was a ferret, and he visited the tavern they'd agreed to return to after his mission just as the barman called time. In the groggy shuffling of drunk and unsatisfied patrons, the exchange of a piece of paper for a cloth-wrapped gem was easy to miss. A few days' wait, spending the last of his Ferrennian coin on lodgings and food in different inns, surrounded by different people, making no conversation with any of them. Half-heartedly Anxur kept telling himself how much he was looking forward to fencing his gem, a splendid green stone, cut to highlight the red impurity at its core. With that money he could...

The day came soon enough and he donned a neat but terribly old-fashioned set of robes, a hood, and affected both a limp and a squint when he went into a back-market jeweler's shop and acted the part of a doddering old fool who'd dropped an heirloom and fancied he might keep himself in cups and comfort for his few remaining years by selling what broke off. Anxur got a far lower price from the jeweler than he might have had from a proper fence, but the prospect of dealing with such a self-important little snot so bored him that he couldn't bear it.

Even this money was hard to spend. With his purse fat and jingling he'd adopted airs of enthusiasm, forcing a smile so as to hopefully fan the fire of his own spirits, and pondered, as night fell, what luxuries he'd reward himself with after enduring hardships and risking death once again. He decked himself in finer clothes, to begin with. A bag tailored to easily stow his cloak and jerkin in came first-almost as fine as the one he'd lost in a mission at sea not a year earlier-and after that was taken care of, he strode boldly into a tailor's shop and spent an hour perusing the fabrics before settling on black velvet, a style he'd favored once in Divalia, some back-and-forths ago.

His suit was ready within a day, and showed the price he'd paid for it. It was of a very unusual cut, straight and angular, the tunic beltless and double-breasted like an admiral's uniform. It was a fad, that style, the pinnacle of Carilian avant-garde, but sure to lose its luster within months. Anxur had no illusions that the clothes that now wrapped his discretely muscular form would be ruined rags well before their cut went out of fashion.

Some rings, some earrings, nothing too exorbitant-these were always handy to have, as they could retain their value over time and across borders. Anxur looked a fine gentleman in all but the satchel he carried under his rakish cape-a true noble wouldn't be caught dead carrying possessions from place to place. Folk took him for a merchant on the up-slope of his fortunes, and that image suited him well enough.

But the pleasure he took in his fineries was a dull one. He slept in more comfortable beds-some occupied by warm, sweet-smelling bodies he'd paid a good price for-but neither the comfortable mattresses nor the comforting ladies he procured truly brought a thrill. Some delight, surely, as there isn't a cat without at least a smidgeon of a hedonist in him, but all his experiences were ones he could take or leave.

It always went this way, after the mission, and turning his hindsight forward, Anxur knew he'd tarry in Caril until his purse became too light, then seek passage out of and back into the city and make some ruckus in a different district, as if he'd newly arrived in town, and reach out to his Ferrennian contacts to see if the good nobles of Caril, perhaps, had some business an independent contractor like Anxur could facilitate in Divalia. Then some travel, a fresh burst of adventure, and this emptiness again. This dreadful, reasonless emptiness.

It happened after his feigned 'arrival' in Caril. He always acted the part of the mercenary, in good fortunes, arriving in the city to spend his money too quickly and too carelessly. He had poured coin into the tavern he was staying, buying a night's drinks on the house and this caused thrashing waves of good cheer. Ale brought out the bard in men, songs rang till deep in the night and in all that good company, gazing at all those drunk, ecstatic, friendly and grateful faces, Anxur felt ever more ill. He slunk through the stinking, crude bodies and found that too many of them blocked the route to the main exit for him to bear. He turned, surprising himself with the care he took in avoiding stains to his fine new clothes, dodging sloshed ale and hurrying past those who wished to clap on the back the man who'd bought their night's reverie. They were sickening to him, these dregs of a society he already found nauseating and a powerful shuddering overtook him as he sped out the door and into the alley beyond.

He'd have liked it to be dirtier, but the autumn rains had passed and the cobbles were cold but dry. A sliver of light streamed in from a street-side, yellow and flickering form a street-lamp. The thief wanted to leave, then and there, turn his back on the city and never return. But Urfa-ni-anxur knew full well there was nowhere in the world where he would feel otherwise.

Frustration boiled in his veins like the dazzling concoctions he'd seen in the laboratory and the whining headache that had been overshadowed by the tavern's noise now grew to unparagoned intensity. An ache set in his jaw, itching behind his eyes and under his teeth and his stomach tightened as if to expel the foul, foreign nourishment he'd eaten.

"A twelfth for a ride," said a light but wholly unsavory voice from the shady depths of the alley and instantly the thief's body restored itself to full readiness. Anxur straightened and partway lidded his eyes like the gentleman he made pretense to be, and turned, leisurely, to the speaker. "Half that if you fancy my muzzle. Didn't eat much tonight, and I could use the practice."

From the darkest shadows stepped a slender figure. Canine, judging by the silhouette of the muzzle. Lupine, by the gait. None of this was surprising. Outside the fine brothels there were plenty of young lads and ladies that plied the oldest trade in tavern alleys, catch as catch can. Dangerous, to be sure; any client might be a cut-throat-or worse, a pimp with designs on long-term exploitation. The surprise was the young male's attire, in particular its shocking similarity to Anxur's.

Where the thief had fitted his jacket properly, the shirt tucked into his pants, this young scamp had seemingly gone to lengths to lead his fine clothes to ruin by the swiftest route. The jacket was worn open, scuffed and muddied in places and revealed a tattered shirt that left his grey-furred belly exposed. The pants were worn high and lacked both belt and top button, no doubt to accentuate the lad's more profitable features and give hints as to their easy availability.

The boy was patient-not quite a boy, but no man either. He waited while Anxur approached, showing something far closer to acceptance than fearlessness. The thief had a quick suspicion, and leaned forward to sniff beneath the boy's ear to confirm It.

"You're a charmer, mister, but I ain't offering a dance. Just a ride."

"You shouldn't be out here," said Anxur, walking around the lad, whose back straightened, tail lashing slightly.

"Why's that?"

Anxur was entirely unsure why, but he felt compelled to touch the young wolf. A paw laid on his shoulder was enough to satisfy this urge of his, but It seemed to electrify the boy. "Your father will be most displeased. Or is that the point?"

A shocked look, deep brown eyes showing whites as the wolf's head whipped around over his shoulder, ears pinned as he regarded the thief, who for his part was trying to fathom what he was feeling. Superiority? Cruelty? He wondered what his Intentions were with this youth... did he mean to scare him? Kill him?

"So you've lasted a week In the city on your own and you fancy yourself quite the rogue," Anxur continued. The lad was riveted, panting with fear and excitement. "You may last another, but no more. Men-even boys-survive these places when they have something to live for, at least a little while, but you don't have that. Winter is fast approaching. Death will find you well before then. A knife, for the sake of the coins you ask. An unthinking claw in the heat of the passion you sell," the thief said, extending his claws to prick through the velvet covering the boy's shoulder and the young wolf gasped at the sharpness of them. "Hunger or cold. Perhaps a sickness. You have limitless options in your quest for a death away from home."

The wolf spun, then, with the speed of the light-bodied and Anxur raised one hand to easily block the strike he expected, but none came. The wolf clasped the thief's wrist, and his shoulder, and stood on the tips of his toes to crush himself against the feline and bring their lips together-for an instant alone, for Anxur pushed him away with force that sent him flying, knocking back against the tavern door and then onto his knees.

"There are deadlier things than kisses, boy," the cat said with fury at the boy's insolence, and strode toward him, claws unsheathed, having no clear mind as to his intentions but feeling no inkling of restraint, whatever they were.

And then the boy, kneeling in the dirt, looked up with those deep brown eyes, still rimmed with white. "Name one, and I'll die a sage," he said, his voice bereft of the guile and false accents he'd affected, refined and soft and tender like a well-bred noble before he's broken In as a leader of men. "Tell me a secret you'd kill me for, and I'll love you as long as I live."

Anxur became aware of his heart in the most direct way. It was not the drink that addled his brain, nor lust for the lad. Shapely as he was, Anxur's tastes lay with females, but the person that the boy was mattered to him no more than the person he was mattered to the boy, each simply saw something in the other they very much needed, and all else could fall to rot and ruin as long as they could taste each other. "I am a thief and a spy, and I hire my services out to men like your father and their Tephossian counterparts alike."

"My name's Kenton of Westermarch," breathed the young wolf, clinging to the feline like a supplicant to his cantor, pleading for forgiveness. "I think I might be yours forever."

It was something more raw even than lust that drove their ravenous passion for each other. Kenton had enough experience with the mechanics of the love between men that any barriers to their bodily hunger. The spilled back into the tavern in a tangle of limbs and bruising and kisses and a cheer rippled through the drink-addled crowd at seeing their benefactor so taken with a new lover. Ignoring the cheers the followed them up the stairs, the pair threw clothes aside, tore buttons from each other, knocked over vases and scratched varnished handrails before Anxur broke the kiss for a breath and a kick to one of the doors, throwing his young wolf into the room and slamming the unlocked door behind him.

That it swung back open didn't matter to them. That the room happened to be unoccupied didn't strike them as fortunate; it had a bed and that's all they cared for. Velvet tore, buttons ripped and more naked bodies pressed together as if yearning to fuse. Claws scratched to the point of tearing, fangs clacked and pinched and drew blood from neck and tongue and wrist and all was a dazzling spiral into oblivion and the sublime at once.

Anxur awoke to a naked body, warm sun and a cool draft running between the open window and the open door. The room was a wreck; the basin and water-jug were smashed, along with a mirror, porcelain and glass shards littering the floor. Ripped sheets, stained with sweat and streaked with blood lay strewn about and the bed was a ruin of carpentry. One leg had fully collapsed and a sharp spring jutted out of the mattress just beside his neck that would have cost him all the blood in his body if he'd rolled over it

The fates, it seemed, had smiled on him. And speaking of smiling, he felt a curl tugging at the corners of his lips, and saw it matched in the face of the young wolf he cradled in his arms, one eye dark and one lip split, but smiling regardless with the guilelessness of sleeping youths.

What this was, Anxur couldn't tell. Having never felt the slightest stirring when regarding even the finest of the males offered at the brothels he visited he'd been all but certain he lacked such proclivities, yet here he was, embracing a lad as naked and as male as he was, by the feel of that early morning firmness against his thigh. And judging by the pleasant glow of his own sheath, he'd sated whatever lusts the lad had fanned in him in the boy's body quite adequately.

The thief was puzzled to no small degree. And, clothes or no, he was long gone by the time young Kenton of Westermarch woke to a cool bed, an open window, and a purse of coins on the bed's other pillow.

"Young master, this really won't do," said the old ram as he helped Kenton lace up a fresh shirt while being jostled on the carriage's hard wooden seats, leaving him to tend to the lacing while he smoothed the linnen pants' legs down. "Your father has been worried sick, and all these days you were in the taverns, drinking and gambling?"

The young wolf's fingers wouldn't find the laces, nor tug them in the right directions. His vision was blurry and his hearing, while dulled, rendered sounds far too loudly for his battered brain to endure. The ride was agony to his aching body, and being denied the option of snoozing through it gave him no deep sense of friendship toward his aging valet. "I may have drunk a little, but it wasn't gambling that I made my money with."

The ram's head whipped up so swiftly that, had his horns been straight instead of curled, Kenton's throat would have been pinned to the carriage's backrest. "It's gambling you'll be telling your father about, if you have half a brain, young master. This, this... dallying with common folk don't befit one of your station, nor any other Church-blessed cub neither!" the ram barked, his village-bred accent breaking through the refinement he'd taught himself as he ascended to servanthood of ever greater stature, as it usually did when he was suitably outraged.

"Don't worry, Farthing," Kenton said with a sigh, leaning back while the goat grumblingly tugged the strings at his collar to straighten his shirt. "I've had my fun, I've tasted the wine I hungered for and while I haven't had my fill, the memory of it will last me a while. I'll bear my father's fury and play the part of the hedonist until his rage is tempered and he calls me to his study to share with me a snort of brandy and ask me of the girls I've bedded in my 'ramblings'. There'll be peace in the house by Feliday next."

Loath though the ram was to admit it, this was a gesture for the old servant's benefit, and he knew that full well. Young Kenton was a trouble-maker, had been since he'd been so small as to fit in the ram's palm without effort, but whenever he sought to soothe his father's feathers after ruffling them with a vengeance, it was less to ensure peace for himself, and more to ensure it with the long-suffering ram. It was no secret that Farthing craved nothing more than a regular household to tend to, and whenever the rakish young wolf restrained his contrary nature, it was affection and generosity for the ram who'd cared for him for years.

This latest excess broke all previous records, of course. Not merely did he attend a gambling house in the city without a body-guard, not merely did he lure a stable-hand into his bed; he'd left the house entirely, dressed in his finest clothes, with in his pockets the ale flask that was the first of many family heirlooms his father would bestow on him in time and as much precious, pungent sea-salt as his pockets could carry. Both he sold for far too little, but these material matters were not what would invoke his father's ire.

Defiance was the key, and as the carriage bore him ever deeper into the Nobles' Quarter, toward the Academy and the finest mansion beyond its gates, it was that which troubled the young wolf most. He had not only intentionally defied his father more cruelly than he had ever before done, but in so doing he'd crossed paths with a man who seemed to embody danger itself, and while the desperation and fatalism of that night had faded when he'd awoken, gratefully, to find the room abandoned, the memory remained burned into his mind. The words that had come, unbidden, from his lips. The things he had done with those same lips to please a man who could at any point in their passions have squeezed too hard, scratched too deep, and killed him...

Perhaps he had not said those things. Perhaps the drink and lack of sleep had made dreams and memories mingle, like paint on an artist's palette, and the black-furred stranger he'd bedded had been no different from the sailors and gamblers who'd lest he'd helped sate to his own degradation, all for the spite of his heritage. Perhaps he had not been that god of hazard he remembered, bunched muscles under silk black fur, an explosion of need and energy like the fireworks on Blossoms Eve.

The sun, streaming into the carriage when the driver opened it for him, did to his musings what it does to all night-time reverie and the memory dried and crumbled when Kenton saw, with his own eyes and by the sun's shrill light, his family mansion amid the Academy grounds, and striding from the doors the enraged, robed wolf whose steaming breaths were as those of a dragon.

As predicted, Duke Avery's fury passed like a stormcloud over a less imposing cloud, for while the old Duke's ire had waned and left his everyday disposition, this could by no means be called 'sunny'. Kenton once again was free to leave the house and partake of his usual pleasures-avoiding study, enviously watching young men scarcely older than he practice exciting skills like fencing and climbing, even sneaking into one of the Academy's study halls to listen to a long-winded discourse on Ferrenian architecture. The look of rapt attention on the faces of most of the audience filled young Kenton with jealousy, for nothing he'd fount in his short but eventful life had fascinated him even a fraction as profoundly as some of these students appeared to be in this lecture.

He sneaked back out, insofar as a young noble boldly wandering where his father's name entitles him to can be called sneaking. The bells would soon ring for worship and the students would march to the Academy chapel. The upperclassmen had no doubt already been given leave to pass through the gates and into the city, to attend the services in the church at the veyry border of the Nobles' and Merchants' quarters-as Duke Avery no doubt had done.

"No worship for you, jaxif-ha?" said a voice that sent a shiver up Kenton's spine as he walked the path from the Academy proper to the outlying buildings. While seeming to emanate from all directions at once, none of the other passers-by seemed to have noticed, lending Kenton a tingling fancy of magic his rational mind knew to be a folly.

He drew his fur-collared coat closer around himself as if warmth would dispel the chill of the voice he'd heard and slunk into the shade of a tree, as if secrecy would still his beating heart. "What does that mean?"

"Literally, little wolf. It's a pun, however. Hajaxifa is the word, in my language, for 'heretic'. Have you missed me?"

Kenton could swear the voice was inside his head, so intimate was its intonation, so addictive its timbre. "Since you abandoned me? Perhaps."

"You're one to speak of abandon, puhai an axfa."

Kenton snorted, feeling a swell of excitement at taunting this bodiless voice, and at once a deep regret at his disrespect, a sensation he'd only ever felt when he'd done something to make Farthing's life a misery-and even then, that was a pale shadow of the shame he felt when he said, "Another of your clever puns?"

A pause. "An insult, if you must know. Your mother's a whore."

The young wolf stifled a snarl, desiring to draw no undue attention to him as he lingered under a tree, whispering to it, caressing its bark as if the dry, cracked wood were that firm, black-silk-furred expanse of chest he'd had for a pillow when he had, that star-crossed night, enjoyed the finest sleep since he'd first opened his eyes to the world. "My mother," Kenton said through gritted teeth and slowly, as he tried to fathom what exactly his emotion was, "is dead."

"As is mine. And my father. And my sisters. All my family, in fact, and all the families I'd known as a child, all dead. Do you want to trade pities?"

"No," said Kenton, ears folded, pressing his forehead against the tree, his palms as well, ears folded and tail drooped as if in supplication to Wolf. "No, please. I want you."

The pause was agonizing. Kenton felt an itching in his gums and a turning in his stomach, his paws were clammy and his heart would not slow its gallop to a march. He looked up into the tree's brown-leaved canopy. "Are you there? Did you hear me?"

Had Kenton had claws enough, he'd have scaled the tree in a blink, so affrighted was he by the paw laid on his shoulder-a paw which was equipped with claws for climbing. "I heard full well. I've missed you also, jaxif-ha, though it took me some time to plumb the depths of my feelings."

"I wouldn't mind feeling you plumb my-"

"Don't be vulgar," said Anxur, letting Kenton step away to turn and gaze upon the figure he now cut; he'd spent the remainder of his coinage on fresh clothes, to replace the ones he'd ripped off himself during that raw, pure night, and he looked more a merchant than a gentleman now. A dark brown leather tunic and pants to match and a feathered cap perched atop his head that made the cat look wholly foppish, a far cry from the deadly creature he'd been in the dark.

But Kenton wasn't fooled. In those slitted eyes there smoldered-dimmed, but not snuffed-the hunger he'd seen in them that night. That night, that night, that night...

"We'll be late for worship," said the cat, and strode in the direction from which Kenton had come.

Seeing Anxur-Kenton had been surprized at how forthcoming the black cat was with his name, after only minimal prodding-sit among the congregation, mostly students and housekeepers and teachers and the like, was comical, horrifying and pitiful at once. Anxur was a foreign spy, after all, sitting in the midst of this nation's spies-in-training, which was both an enormous joke to Kenton and a source of anxiety. Was he a pawn in some larger game? Had he been lured here for a reason?

These were the thoughts that occupied Kenton's mind as he utterly ignored the cantor, even failing to join the congregation in song, while Anxur did a passable job of murmuring along without knowing the words. In his heart, he knew these worries to be follies, but they captivated him. Was Anxur here on an errand for Ferrenis? Had he infiltrated the Academy and Kenton's affections as the spearhead of an invasion? Or, perhaps, a more modest goal. Assassination? Was he setting young Kenton up to take the blame?

As drink to a drunkard, these thoughts occupied Kenton's mind such that Anxur's brow furrowed as he nudged the lad's elbow. "The loud-mouthed hajaxifa in the robe has ceased singing. We're free to leave, I believe. What has you so preoccupied? I thought you'd be pleased to see me."

"I am, I am," said Kenton hastily, slipping out of his seat, staying close to Anxur as they joined the congregation in shuffling out the chapel doors. "I feel like a cub at Blossoms Eve, tossing and turning in bed, the fieworks still ringing in my ears and flashing before my eyes... trying to sleep and at once hoping to stay awake, perhaps to catch Wolf himself trotting through the walls of my room, a present between his jaws, for me to open in the morning with the other cubs..."

"As do I," said Anxur, his tone now more one of equality than mystery, and a note rang through his voice that showed the worry that gnawed on him. "I've felt most... peculiar since our meeting. The food tastes better and life is finer than it was before, but not so fine as during. Do you know what I mean?"

They passed, slowly, through the hallways of the Academy's public building, where assemblies, public addresses and sometimes student performances were held to demonstrate to the lords and ladies whose coin indirectly funded the establishment that fine works were done within its walls. Being a public building, of course, it was a place of pomp and posture, with glass display-cases lining the walls, showing awards, icons, trifles and weapons. None had so much as a plaque or a nameplate, inviting the interested gentry to catch a passing student and inquire about a piece's history-and, to impress the nobles on such occasions, the Academy's students were drilled at length regarding the display-pieces' histories.

"More or less... When we met, I plunged myself into the deepest well I've known, far as I could get from that which I was born to... but it doesn't seem so terrible to me, now. I feel no great urge to escape it-at least, not so great as before." Kenton snorted, smiling to himself. "You could say that life, to me, seems finer than it did before. Though, as you say, not as fine as..."

Anxur was gone, Kenton noted, and while he expected to find, when he turned, nought but thin air and a fresh mystery to arouse his flagging passions, he saw the feline's back, black-furred paw pressed against the glass of a display-case. "What is it?" Kenton asked, touching Anxur's arm.

The cat looked up, past Kenton's fine-featured head and, curious, the lad turned to see what he was looking at. There was nothing, naturally, and just as naturally there was nothing when Kenton looked back. The vanishing trick he'd expected a moment earlier had now taken place, though it gave him no thrill now.

He stepped closer to the case, placing his paw where Anxur's had been as if there were some intimacy to that gesture. He regarded the object in the case-a simple statue, about a forearm high, carved from some matte black stone, though at intervals and in little groups, small nuggets of shinier stone had been artfully inserted, so flush with the surface their presence would go unnoticed upon cursory inspection.

"That's an interesting piece," said a fox, stepping up from behind, with a jaunty set to his ear and a swish to his tail that was a little more than friendly. "It's from the southern kingdoms; a gift from an envoy some ten years ago. Supposedly he said that by giving the King's man this statue, the unprovoked raids at the west of our adjoining border would cease. This gesture, and this information, is part of the Academy curriculum, you know, a regular subject of debate in the political classes. Did the envoy mean it as an apology? Was it some sort of religious token? Are you free for lunch?"

No doubt the rakish fox had meant for Kenton to realize that last suggestion only after a second's thought, but the wolf's senses and intellect were still on edge from being near Anxur and he saw through the fox's game so quickly that all the fun was stripped from it. Without a word, he turned away, leaving the fox no doubt to shrug. Some other day, Kenton might have enjoyed the diversion as a pleasant change from the usual rough males he consorted with. Some other day he might, perhaps, have been wooed by the fox's smooth manner, but not today.

A bitterness had crept into his heart, Kenton noticed as he walked that lonely path back to what was nominally his home. He didn't pause at the tree from which Anxur had miraculously spoken and then sprang, certain the feline wouldn't be there. Coming home, he handed Farthing his coat and plodded up the stairs, pushing thoughtlessly into his room and throwing himself onto his bed-noticing only after he'd rolled around to dry his inexplicable tears on his pillow, that Anxur was already between the sheets, wearing not a stitch.

There was no explanation given for Anxur's sudden disappearance earlier, nor was one asked. Kenton was fast outgrowing his childish desire for answers, gaining a more mature acceptance of the unknown and unknowable. Fresh lusts were awakened at the mere touch of that strong, compact body, every muscle a wound coil ready to spring at a moment's notice, and those claws! Such was the delight of their tantalizing threat, as the cat raked them over Kenton's limbs and neck and nethers that the moon was pitched high before Kenton realized he hadn't yet disrobed. He was panting and tingling from ears to toes and no union had yet transpired.

Or rather, no union to which the lad was accustomed. It now seemed to him that using so sublime a word to describe such unfeeling, unsharing rutting was a crime. That was consorting or dallying as the polite euphemisms went, union was this... this togetherness, this harmony. Anxur was generous as a lover, or rather, he was commanding, thrusting sensations and pleasures on young Kenton to no benefit of his own, merely to sate his desire for the young wolf to feel these things. Kenton had not the maturity to act in kind, though he had generosity of his own to offer.

Shortly after realizing he was still clothed (and, hard as he was, unexposed) he resolved that issue. This was lucid loving, Kenton realized, fully aware his mind was addled by neither drink nor the deathly lust that had gripped him That Night. He would remember everything of this night... the touching and feeling of two lovers familiarizing themselves with one another's body, the teasing procession of modesties teased, explored and then pounced upon.

There was the rutting, naturally, and Kenton had his place therein. He held no truck with trading roles, nor did Anxur. It was Kenton who awoke with a familiar and pleasant ache under his tail, Kenton who tasted salt on his lips, Kenton whose wrists were tender from fierce gripping. And Kenton who was surprised to find, when he awoke, not only that dawn had not yet broken, but that his company had not yet departed.

"Is Anxur really your name?" Kenton asked, daring to roll closer to his bedfellow and found, to his delight, warm arms enveloping him, pulling him close to that powerful heartbeat. He felt silly and small and giddy at the realization he cared not a jot about either.

The cat rolled onto his back, pulling the wolf atop him and pointed, upside-down, through the sliver of night-time sky between the folds of Kenton's hastily-drawn curtains. "Do you see the stars above the moon? To the left, somewhat like a crown? Those are my family's stars. We pray to them as you pray to Wolf-if you prayed, that is. And our prayers are purer."

Kenton giggled, the hard body under him so intoxicating it made his head spin. "It's a contest, now? Whose faith is the deeper?"

Anxur shook his head. "No contest," he said, yawning expansively, then settling his long whiskers back in place, "but truth regardless. Your gods... or spirits, or ancestors or whatever you primitives call it. They teach you tolerance, and kindness and while these are all fine words, they're hardly divine lessons. They don't teach you repentance, nor sacrifice."

Kenton leaned down on the broad expanse of Anxur's black-furred chest, synchronizing his breath with the cat's, finding himself ever more taken with Anxur's mere presence and sensing the danger of that attachment. "That's not true, Anxur. There's the song of Wolf giving up his first share to the Pack's Omega when he was ill, and-"

There was genuine anger in Anxur's snarl. "You speak of your Wolf as if he were your neighbor. You have no fear of him! You have no awe, nor do you tremble in his shadow. What value has such a god? What can you learn from him, if he is not above you? Our... my gods are fearsome creatures in whose august company I am not worthy to stalk and when I die, I will stand before their judgment."

The young wolf felt his arousal stir at this impassioned speech, unable to explain it and unwilling to ponder. He ground his slender body against the strong form of the man beneath him, rubbing lips to lips as he asked, "And do you fear that?"

"I am terrified," said Anxur, and spun so fast that Kenton scarcely had time to feel dizzy before he found himself pinned on his back and mounted once more, looking up into Anxur's family stars.

The weather turned sharper, biting cold and then gentler and balmier in what appeared to Anxur to be the blink of an eye-and cats can blink quite quickly. The days he did not spend in Kenton's ravishing company he devoted to philosophizing about the nature of his attraction to the boy, or the correct definition of their relationship, both of which were fruitless endeavors from which he could not bring himself to break. Mostly, though, he spent this empty time with petty thievery, buoying his finances to lengthen his stay in Caril and delay and delay his inevitable visit to the Academy to offer his services as an agent against Divalia.

He would spend little time thinking on it, but frequently an idea would strike him as to how he could arrange a new meeting with his favored boy, a means at once to meet and impress the lad, and no sooner would inspiration strike than he'd set his plan into action.

He donned different disguises, chuckling as he heard, in the taverns, that there seemed to be a good many black-pelted felines in Caril this year, whereas the tavern-goers could count on one paw the number of such creatures they'd seen in years past.

He would leave messages in the most unlikely places, with the most outrageous demands and Kenton would follow them, trustingly. Once, he had the lad wander into the alley where they'd met and remove his clothing, and simply wait, which the lad did. Men came by, of course (it was the tavern's rear exit, that alley, after all) and he did what they paid him for, and after they left and the young wolf returned to shivering, still he waited.

With every passing moment, with every puff of misted breath that Anxur observed from his perch atop the tavern's roof, the panther's excitement grew. Here was a boy who'd do anything for him... even freeze, if it came to it.

It didn't, of course. Like some weightless shadow, Anxur leapt from wall to wall, alighting finally beside his wolfling-his wolfling-and swept him up in his arms. He made it his mission to broaden the lad's world, to show him skills which his father's refusal to admit the lad to the Academy denied him, and Anxur was astonished at how naturally Kenton took to each new challenge.

Lock-picking came easier to Kenton than it had ever done to Anxur, and the sly young wolf explained this to his discretely jealous bedmate by describle how similar that practice was to the arts of his muzzle. "It's all about feeling the pressure-points, sensing what clicks and sticking with it," the lad had explained before setting aside his picks and dropping to his knees to give Anxur a most informative demonstration.

Stealth did not come naturally to the wolf, nor climbing, which both stroked Anxur's feline pride. Guile, on the other hand, and bluffing... Kenton gained first competence and then increasing degrees of excellence.

While wise old Farthing, the Westermarch family's loyal servant and Kenton's caretaker since birth, wouldn't be fooled by Kenton's new smile and kindly manner, the Duke swelled with pride at the new leaf his son seemed to be turning over. Appearing attentive and well-kempt, courteous and familiarly cheeky at the same time, the old wolf gained a glow that all the Academy could see. When he sat at worship with his son beside him, the Duke's glow was such that one could have snuffed all the candles and still read one's prayer-book by the light of Avery's elation.

It was deceit, of course, and while old Farthing expressed his regret that Kenton's sentiments could not be genuine, he did acknowledge that the household was a better place, with a happy Duke, and even posited he thought it a sign of maturity on Kenton's part, that he should go to such lengths to appease his father.

Anxur knew better. Making peace with his father had been a challenge Anxur had set for his new protégé, and Kenton lept at it. In fact, Anxur gradually began to realize, Kenton consumed his teaching and his challenges not only quite readily, but too voraciously also.

All during the winter he had practiced archery with his wolfling, in all its aspects; from the cutting of saplings and the waxing of twine to make bows, to observing a target's swaying in the wind to predict its movements. One day, Anxur sought to shock his boy by taking him across the city's rooftops at night-time, bows strung and slung over their shoulders, quivers at their thighs.

He had ignored Kenton's inquiries as to their aim for that night until he came across the scene he was looking for: ill dealings in the night. And ill indeed they were: from their perch overlooking one of the city's many dead-end alleys, the panther and wolf observed a tavern wench, a pretty if somehwat well-fed vixen, being bullied deeper into the alley by two drunken sailors, both stags.

Anxur hadn't been sure what exactly his aim was, but whatever the case it went sour in a flash. The lead stag, his left antler broken, drew a knife and approached the frightened vixen-and then Kenton, before Anxur could so much as glance his way, had drawn his bow, nocked an arrow and sent it silently slicing through the night-time air, spearing the one-antlered ruffian's forearm clear through.

The knife clattered to the ground, the stags made themselves scarce and the vixen gathered her skirts about her as she ran back home, and while Anxur was taking this in gape-mouthed, Kenton pulled on his sleeve. "We should go," he'd whispered.

The boy's rapid progression from a mere novice to a journeyman thief put his feline mentor to a good deal of secret shame. Anxur became aware of his own stagnation, and while he allowed that his skills had achieved a level of excellence beyond which it was hard to improve and that his skills had never proved less than adequate, he did consider how much time he'd been wsting on activities that did not drive him to greater glory in the eyes of his gods.

Such thoughts led to notions of travel, of seeking greater challenges, richer experiences, but those would always be reined in by the simple knowledge that wherever he went, Kenton would not be there. And that mattered more and more to the feline spy, and that worried him more and more. But his worries were just beginning.

Winter was a time of rest and transformation, rest for the Westmarch household and transformation for Kenton, but it was also a season of death, and death would not wait patiently in the wings until Kenton had finished rehearsing his part.

"I don't understand why a burial has to be such an involved ritual," said a familiar voice behind Kenton as he stood by Farthing's grave. It was open, still, and would not be filled until the evening. All the other attendees of the funeral had left hours before-fellow servants, mostly; the Duke himself had been unable to attend the short service in the Church cemetary. Kenton had toyed with the idea of pleading with his father to give the old ram, of whom he had more and fonder memories than the Duke himself, a place in the Nobles Quarter cemetary, but Farthing wouldn't have wanted that. He wouldn't have felt comfortable there. Here, among the plain folk, he'd be at home.

While Kenton had his fur collar up high and his paws stuffed in his pockets to brace against the chill, Anxur wore his casual leather, as if he were a noble coming home from a hunt outside the city. "Why do you show such reverence to carrion?"

The wolf bristled at the panther's earnest but grating inquiries. "What else have we to show reverence to? I had love for Farthing such as I never had for my father. I know that my caretaker isn't in that coffin, I know Gaia's teachings well enough," the wolf said, ignoring Anxur's whuffle at Gaia's name. "But a part of me feels as if he's simply in slumber. If he were ill, I'd try to make him comfortable. Now he has a condition from which he won't recover, and all I can do is to show him my love."

Anxur bent to look in the grave, seeming not to feel the chill. No doubt he had some trick, Kenton thought, since Southern cats were not known for their resilience to cold. "In my tribe, when someone died their body would be disposed of and all who knew him would devote a day to making a drawing of a memory which they alone shared with the deceased, on good vellum and with bright inks, and these would be bound together by a skilled seamstress, and his friends and family would visit each other and open the book and tell each other the stories behind the drawings. We had not the art of writing in my tribe, but you do. I see you writing in that diary-book of yours every day. Did you write of Farthing?"

Kenton nodded. "Infrequently. I miss him dreadfully, now, but I took him for granted when he was alive, barely mentioning him in my notes."

"Such is the way of these things," sighed Anxur and looked up at the clouded sky. "There will be no stars tonight... your friend will have to climb to heaven on his own, without the guidance of their light. But he was a goat, was he not? And hardy, if I recall. His hooves will carry him swiftly."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were being kind," said Kenton, turning his back on the grave after staring at it for hours, and finding it much easier than he'd expected. Snow crunched under his paws, though he heard nothing from Anxur's footsteps. "Did you make drawings for your family?"

Anxur shook his head without bitterness, and then again to dislodge the gently descending snow. "I was too young to have memories of them, or to learn the arts of my people."

"I... have a gift for you," said Kenton and held his steps at the cemetary's gate, leaning against the ice-cold iron, ears folded to hide a blush. Anxur stepped around him, laying a paw on his shoulder. "I know it's a sudden thing to say, but I brought it to the funeral because I knew you'd come, and I want you to have it, or it'll eat my nerves and leave me a shivering cub."

Anxur leaned forward to lick each of Kenton's cheeks; rough tongue combing bristly fur. "I rather like you when you're a shivering cub..." Then, suddenly, a thought struck the feline. His eyes showed their whites and his heart performed acrobatic feats within his chest. "Do you mean to kill me?" he breathed, his mind too clogged with the shocking abruptness of the thought to fully process its implications or reasons.The deadly danger that had spiced their lusts that first night had smoldered since, and both realized in a fleeting moment that they had almost forgotten it, but that it still persisted.

"What?" said Kenton, though he, too, responded with that same flare of excitement."No," Kenton repeated, repressing his desire to explore that thought further and, no doubt, end up with Anxur's muscular loins between his thighs. "A proper gift. Here," he said awkwardly, and reached into the folds of his coat to pull out a cloth-wrapped bundle, thrusting it out toward Anxur.

"I can count on one paw the number of gifts I've received, jaxif'ha. I can't accept this, however, not without giving you something in return. It is the way of my people, the way-"

Kenton silenced him by reaching between his thighs and cupping the gentle bulge in Anxur's leather trousers. "This. Later, you can give me this. I'd consider that a fair trade. But for now, please open it," Kenton pleaded, giving Anxur a last squeeze before hurriedly pushing his paws back in his pockets.

Anxur unwrapped the bundle, and was silent for a full minute. Two. Three. Four, five, ten. Kenton could't keep track, his thoughts wandering between the fenceposts of Farthing's passing, Anxur's gift and sex, death's age-old brother. He hungered for it as he seldom did-surely there was hardly a time of day when the wolf didn't feel like letting one of the fine, broad-shouldered stablehands have a ride on him, but that was rarely more than an indulgence. As a sip of brandy for the taste and to warm the stomach rather than a drink of water to lave a parched throat.

He thirsted for Anxur, now, and more with every second that passed. He forgot he was waiting for the cat's response, or that they were still in the graveyard. He wanted to pull Anxur's clothes off, to be thrown into the snow and mounted till the ice around them turned to steam, making a bath of their own...

"Do you know what this is?" came Anxur's voice, thin and stretched, breaking Kenton's reverie and forcing the lad to slurp up the tongue he'd been lolling and return his breath to normal after panting.

"The statue from the display cabinet in the Academy. I saw you looking at it... I stole it myself, days ago, and it hasn't been missed. I had a sculptor I met in a tavern make me a likeness of it after my description in exchange for a few nights of my favors, and I left that forgery in the display cabinet. You would have been proud of me; I first scouted the grounds to see-"

"I hate that I love you so much, Kenton. I hate it with every fibre," the cat mused, cradling the black sculpture in his arm like a babe, wiping away the tears that fell from his cheeks to its face. "This was at the heart of my tribe's worship. Our oracle divined justice from it; it seemed to us endowed with command over life and death and all between for all our tribe."

Kenton was still. The cold didn't touch him and Farthing's death was a long-distant memory. Nothing would bring him to interrupt the spilling of Anxur's heart into his lap.

"I pass, in your city, for any number of feline races, all of whom occasionally bear young with dark pelts. Few take the time to regard my pelt with any attention and none notice-for, how could they? None notice the marks you see in the gleaming of my fur, marks in patterns like these." Anxur stroked the inlaid clusters of shiny rock in the sculpture's surface. "You've noticed. It excites you. I'm what you call a jaguar, from the southern kingdoms, sometime enemies of your land, but I am not as they are or were. My night-black hide is no mere fluke; all my tribe were shadows. Kafdexu. We held no regard for the unclean kings; we lived as I live. Taking what is feebly protected, defending what is valuable to us. Shedding no tears for what we lose to greater forces."

A deep sigh and a puff of breath, and Kenton interrupted with a confidence that he'd learned from his mentor, though he was unsure whether that would mean Farthing or Anxur, now. "You inhabited the western jungles south of our borders. You raided Ferrennian trade routes... The jaguar king had your tribe killed as a means of securing more peaceful relations with Ferrenis. He gave this statue to Ferrenis as a sign that the deed was done and that your tribe would cause no more inconvenience."

"Our spilled blood made fertile soil, for peace to grow on... perhaps that is our fate?" Anxur mused and Kenton could tell by the distant gleam in Anxur's eyes that the cat was alone and he could not be reached, though he was close enough to touch. Which he so dearly longed to do. "Perhaps that is our destiny? To taunt and in taunting bring about... Is there time, still, for me, do you think?"

Kenton took his lover's cheeks in his paws, a possessive and parental gesture he would not have dreamed before the winter. "You're confusing me, Anxur."

"Good. Good! Kenton, answer me in no unclear terms: have you a fate you can't avoid, but aren't ready for?"

The answer came before the wolf could think about it. "To be a Lord, I suppose. Anxur, what do you-"

Anxur pounced the wolf, suddenly, without warning. Kenton was on his back, gasping to fill uncooperative lungs with air, while the cat pinned him into onto the rock-hard ground. He snarled like a mad beast, all teeth and menace, and his claws were unsheathed. "Know that I love you despite my loathing of it. I will forge a wolf with bristles of steel out of the silver strands of your pup's pelt. I will be the instrument of your destiny, and my blood will make a river that sweeps you to your fate. Overcome me, Kenton," said Anxur to the bewilderd, gasping wolf beneath him, kissed him hard on the mouth and vanished like the flicker of a flame.

Anxur paid his young lover no more visits after that; none, to Kenton's knowledge anyway. Selfishly he skulked, observing the young lad as Kenton searched the town for signs of his mysterious teacher, or sobbing over his journal, scratching frail poems in chaotic script on tear-damp pages. A knot wrung Anxur's heart at those sights, driving him to madness with desire to go to him and abandon his plan and simply indulge in the drug to which he and the boy had become addicted: each other.

But that was over. There was no future in it. At best it would be more of the same, but given the rate at which the lad was evolving that was an unlikely fate. He had a chance, now, to fulfill a purpose. One purpose, in all his life.

He was born for this, he thought, just as his tribe had been. Born to die for the betterment of others, and that was no doom to be ashamed of. He would carve from the formless boy he'd loved so fiercely and so often a lord, the likes of which this city's dry mortar had not known. All that would take was blood.

A lot of blood.

The killing started the day after Indulgence, as if death itself had staid its reaching until after the day of feasting; but when time came for fasting, death's patience was spent, its hunger too great. On the first day of Priva, two bodies were found in grizzly circumstance.

Kenton heard of it at the dinner-table, pointedly ignoing the new servant, an aging badger for whom Kenton had felt an instant animosity. The servant, Yarel, was filling his cup with water when Duke Avery broke the silence at the table where they both sat. "It's a disgrace," the old wolf had spat and for an instant Kenton thought his father referred to the meal they were consuming, and agreed. Meatless stew with beans and nuts was hardly the favored diet of wolves, but this wasn't what he Duke had bristled at.

Two bodies had been found in the alleys of the the Merchants' Quarter, their chests split, hearts absent, and with a stake driven through their open muzzles, through the back of their heads and into the ground.

Cubbish glee at such gory horrors vied with more mature distaste for such matters as Kenton skilfully formulated a response, but behind all that, there brewed a dread certainty which stilled his tongue before he could remark.

He excused himself from the table and rushed to his room, where he spent all of a second before he was on the rooftop, then dancing, sure-footed, along the fence. He didn't even have to think about hopping off and stepping onto the well-lit path to smile and nod to guards when that was more convenient than skulking past them, nor about scaling the ancient tree whose limbs offered no easy path over the Academy's outer walls, but which were springy enough that, if he judged the feat properly, would catapult him over it and into the tree on the other side. The hundred things that could have gone wrong when he did this, something he'd only talked and thought about and the hundred different deaths he dodged by landing safely didn't occur to him either.

Only the message rolled through what passed for the wolf's mind, flickering strands of thought, intuition as much as they were reason. More so, he'd realize if he had time for such pondering-but it was the message that ate all his consciousness. Anxur's message, two words to match the two bodies that black creature had left: "Overcome me."

Kenton was the essence of haste, moving through Caril so fast, so shark-like, it was as if he merely floated and the city coursed and swirled past him to deliver his destination to him. He half-wished the city would make a mistake, and spin under his furious footfalls to confuse his proceeding and bring him somewhere that was not so drenched in death and sorrow.

The city of Caril, capital of Ferrenis, boasted many squares and plazas and wide avenues, funded largely by the wealthier herbivores out of generosity, desire for prestige, and an inherent discomfort with the narrow alleys and secluded spaces that the carnivores and rodents preferred, but it was just such a place, a little crossing in a warren of shoulder-width alleys, where the two gazelle had been found. The City Guard were employing their usual strategy: the larger hooved officers at the perimeter to keep the crowds at bay, canids roaming past them to track scents, sniffing passers-by to correlate them to the scene or filter them from it, and the agile felines around the bodies themselves, clinging to walls and ledges so as to investigate the foottreads and other marks on the bloodied ground around the bodies without disturbing them.

No-one saw the horror on Kenton's face, nor saw him at all. When he'd reached the rooftop where the scent of blood had drawn him, he wasn't sure if his body would halt or if his anxiety would cause him to leap without looking, to jump across the alley to the next rooftop and keep running until his breath and his tears and his muscles gave out. Or if, out of some sense of self-pitying tragedy, he would willfully withhold his legs' full potency, would deliberately miss the next roof by a claw's width and join the two corpses below.

His paws had broken their pace, though, and now he knelt high above, downwind and with his chin pressed to the cold stone of the roof's edge to peer down with one eye while keeping his muzzle out of the feline guardsmen's merciless gaze. There they lay, two gazelle, a male and a female, married to one another judging by the matching bands of carefully-woven flowers each wore on their arm. Two cherub-lillies, then a Blue Rook, then a tightly packed circle of honey blossoms and then the pattern repeated again. The craftsmanship required to keep such a complex arrangement together on so taxing a location as the wrist was a secret passed down from mother to daughter, and the sheer amount of work that had gone into these bracelets told such a wealth about the love between these two poor victims that Kenton's body convulsed and had he not swiftly rolled back onto his stomach he would have rained the contents of his stomach onto the scene below.

Shivering and mumbling, seeing the stars overhead spin and sparkle, he thought he saw a beautiful shadow cross them, a blue-black cloud reaching down a clawed tendril to stroke his cheek and whisper, "This was for you, my young Lord. This and many more; these will be the flames with which I will temper you into sword-ready steel. To kill and die for another, is that not true love? Am I not romantic? Learn all you can from this flame, my beautiful Lord, and remember well. The next flame will be a hotter one, and will lap at your heels like a hungry dog. This was for you, my love."

The mechanics of returning home were unproblematic, curiously. After only a scant winter of occasional training and frequent recreation it was difficult to imagine how Kenton had gained the certainty of foot and the breadth of judgment required to cross the city to the Nobles' Quarter, now a hornet's nest of alarm and excitement, without drawing attention to himself. Being a well-known face in both taverns and parlours-where in one he was the ill-mannered son of the King's Minister of Intelligence and in the other he was cause to all manner of raucous banter, and source of some of the most sublime pleasures available to the flesh-he had only to cast a wayward glance and someone would have called to him to ask if he'd heard the deliciously ghastly news.

The secret was all in his bearing. A shroud of misery clung to his slender shoulders, not enough to cause concern in any onlookers but amply enough to drive their sight elsewhere. No-one's eye desires to see a sadness so profound it might spill into one's own heart from the mere sight of it, and so even in his fine clothes, even with the tears matting his cheek-fur, even with the stink of vomit about him, he was an invisible leaf in the swirling pond.

Such murders! people cried, hiding their muzzles behind their paws to signify their outrage and hide their thrilled grins. Murders were not new to Caril, having its share of cutpurses and bandits and other toxins coursing through its urban veins, but the brutality of these ones and the timing of them caused a riot of gossip within hours. By the time Kenton returned home, he overheard, from the shadows through which he stealthily crept, the groundsmen whispering that it was not just two gazelle that had been killed, but twenty-an entire family, three generations. The young had been killed with their parents' snapped-off horns.

They would not be the last. Kenton withdrew to his room through the open window as quietly and stealthily as he'd left. He listened as he lay on his bed, on the brink of tears and a part of him that was younger than his years listened intently for comforting sounds in the house. The maid singing as she made the beds. Farthing's stoic, direct hoofsteps as he inspected the house to satisfy himself as to its perfection before making preparations for the Duke's arrival in the evening. Even his father's rumbling coughing would have given him some comfort to cling to as he lay on his bed in shivering isolation. But the maid had already finished her work. Farthing was resting in his family plot, and Kenton's father was in the library across the grounds, making a great show of reviewing his students' exam papers.

His tears dried. His sobbing subsided. His shivers were crushed from him by a weight, a terrible weight, though his body itself felt as light as air when he sat up. It was as if his clothes indeed were heavier than his limbs, and watching his arms move was like seeing a cloud of milk billow in a cup of tea, unreal, defying the laws of time and motion. He knew he'd find no sleep and, wisp-like, he made his way to his desk. He licked his quill, dipped it in the ink jar, and by the light of the lantern outside the window, he wrote about the day's events. The words were a jumble and would read like the ravings of a lunatic, but that wasn't important. He'd scarcely blinked before the page was filled, then licked his quill again, dipped it, and began the next.

The thief had never in his life been so aware of his heart. He frequently found himself clutching at his chest, pushing his fingers through whatever linen or silk or leather he was wearing, pressing into the hard muscle beneath to feel its urgent beat. The rhythm was not unusual to him, he felt this exhilaration during every mission he went on--for Ferrenis or Tephos, for petty lords or covetous merchants, or even for his own gain. But the drumming was a constant now, and broke his sleep whether he was in some inn's bed, or on the bare ground in the bushes of the Nobles' Quarter Park, which smelled so strongly of his ancestral home.

It wearied him far worse than the cold loneliness ever had. He was conflicted at every turn. When he kept a vigil over Kenton, waiting patiently for days to see how the young wolf would respond to the latest murder, his resolve would waver and he would think of giving up, of abandoning his intentions and his life to simply be with his fledgeling Lord, however illicitly such a relationship would have to be conducted. When he killed, he would wonder if, perhaps, the herbivores he stalked would have died for nothing. And he noticed that he'd avoided goats of any kind, convincing himself that there was not enough opportunity for a kill, even though he'd shortly thereafter fell a deer or a hard under far less fortuitous conditions.

Anxur had only infrequently had doubts about anything in his life, but it wasn't the frequency of his uncertainty that concerned him now. What concerned him was that he could not simply will them away. In the past, any indecision would trouble him only until he noticed it--the realization would free him from its grip, and he would focus and proceed without hindsight or reflection. In the past, if he'd noticed he were sparing goats simply because a boy he dallied with had recently lost a friend of that species, he'd force himself to seek and kill one, just to harden himself. But here he stood, in a house that was little more than a room on the second floor of a sagging building, standing amid six sleeping goats, an entire family... and his paw would not move.

He stared at the knife in utter shock as he held it over the mother's throat, so exposed in her sleep, her jugular vein so inviting. The knife he clutched in his leather-gloved paw barely glinted in the moonlight from the window--an assassin's blade this was, its shine properly dulled. But he could not bring himself to draw blood. His breathing quickened and broke his silence; he felt as if he were losing his mind. The room seemed too bright to endure, suddenly, even though the only light was from the moon outside the window, and the stench of herbivores was suddenly nauseating.

If his breathing had stirred the sleeping family into a lighter slumber, they were woken fully by the shrieking jowl the cat let out as he threw himself out the window, planting a footpaw on the ledge to leap across the narrow alley. He had made no calculations for the jump, nor did he curl into a ball in flight to protect himself from the window he crashed through. Crude, milky glass shattered and Anxur found himself rolling over the wooden floorboards of a room identical to the home of the goat family, though the hares who lived here had crammed even more children into the tiny space. They lay in straw mats on the floor, the smaller ones even laid out under the table.

Howling his curses and ignoring the sting of glass cuts on his face and paws he spun with his knife. A rage such as he had never felt before sparked through his nerves; his knife plunged into something hard and wet--a leg? a skull?--and he abandoned it without thinking, unsheathing his claws. He was a whirlwind of death and blood and in a matter of mere seconds the family of hares were reduced to cooling corpses and blood on the walls, but Anxur's fire was by no means doused. With a roar he kicked the wooden door to splinters and spilled int the corridor, spitting out some fur he'd bitten when he tore out a throat and made for the nearest noise he could hear, heedless of the fact that another door stood in the way. He was as lethal as a poison, as unstoppable as a plague and as swift as a thunderstrike.

And all he could think of as he butchered anyone he saw, was Kenton. That beautiful young wolf. The grace, the seduction, the potential and the debauchery. The unspeakable passion he'd felt when he first met the lad, just after he'd finished the job for the Tephossian--and the countless encounters after that. His supple thighs, so willingly parted, his bushy, deliciously soft tail, so eagerly raised. His eyes, glinting so coyly with such tremendous reserves of raw power hidden behind them. The training he'd given the boy, frequently interrupted by the urgent spending of his passion... he had learned so quickly, so very quickly! The black-pelted cat had wanted to teach him forever, to marvel at his development and take a father's pride in them. Although fathers would not usually spend so much time mounting their sons.

And then there had been the statue. No more than a trinket, unregarded in a display case that dozens of students and staff passed every day. It had been a gift, a token, which he should have gracefully accepted, and given the boy, in return, a mating that would leave him speechless. Holding it in his paws, however, had brought back the bitterness he'd clothed himself with all those years, the pain of his tribe, a proud people he never really knew. He'd spent his youth scraping out an existence in the jungles, sneaking into the villages to steal food, and all the while listening and looking for anything that would teach him who his people were, desperate to learn exactly what it was that had been robbed from him.

And how it came that he survived.

Destiny. It was the only explanation he had ever found. The stars had a purpose for him, and in that moment, in that icy cemetery--such an alien concept to his mind--he thought he knew what it was. He would give his life to forge a Duke out of the boy, and be forever remembered by him. He had set out to kill and kill again, using all his talents, waiting excitedly for the day when Kenton's resolve would hone his skills until he came upon Anxur, and killed him. Oh, to die at the hands of that beautiful young creature, to be slain for the noble purpose of saving the lives he would otherwise surely take. To see the boy become a man when he laid aside his emotions for the greater good, and killed his lover.

But it had not happened. He had killed, and killed again. And killed again, and killed again, and still Kenton had not come. He'd followed the boy, day after day, watched him visit the murder sites, watched him study the display, watched him weep and gnash his teeth. But every time the boy would turn away, shrugging off his splendid coat to dash into the nearest tavern to offer his pleasures to the first burly male who had two coins to rub together, or to a bath-house to soak, or to a smoke den to lose himself in an intoxicated stupor... Kenton was still a cub, no matter how much blood Anxur spilled for him.

The cat's rage bore him to the roof of the building. His paws were dripping with blood. He had no idea how many he'd slain, but it had not taken more than a minute. There was screaming coming from everywhere, and soon the rough shouting of male voices, and after that the glint of city guard armor in the streets below. Anxur disappeared across the rooftops like smoke. Smoke that flew against the wind, toward the Nobles' Quarter, and the Westermarch mansion.

Kenton had never before been in this room of his family's estate, nor had anyone in recent years. His mother, before she passed away, had practically lived here, amid the canvases, the jars of powder, the skins of oil. She would sit, as the young wolf now did, by the window, an easel set before her, and gaze at the Academy's grounds, and paint what she saw. It was never the grounds she would paint, of course, but the things that came to her mind when she looked at the young men and women practicing their fencing or archery or merely frolicking in the last gasps of youth before their education cast them into the reality of espionage, danger and death. This room, abandoned since his mother's death, was a monument to an artful mind, a mausoleum of brilliant paintings. Farthing, when he lived, would clean the room, ensure that the drapes hung properly over the canvases, refresh the herbs that warded off moths, let in fresh air and then seal the room again, all without the Duke's knowing. He'd often confided in the boy, who was in body and mind so much like the late Lady, that he did this in case one day Kenton would pick up a brush.

And today, for the first time in his life, he had. He felt no guilt that he'd done so only after Farthing had died. It vexed him somewhat, as he felt no guilt over anything at all. The last weeks had been a maelstrom of emotion, of loss and fear and horror and childish desire for things to be right again, but nowhere in his heart was there even a shadow of guilt.

Kenton's paws were muddied with smudges of paint, even his face bore streaks from when he's thoughtlessly rubbed his cheek. He'd discarded his clothes, only partly to spare them from being stained, and though spring was well underway, the lone candle that lit the painting-room did little to ease the chill of night. And yet he didn't shiver. He'd worked with devotion since mid-day, studying the jars, his mother's meticulous handwriting quickly revealing to him the correct proportions of powders and liquids to make fresh paints. He'd made small quantities to begin with, and used cheap parchment to practice simple shapes and combinations, finding that the stock his mother had left in the room before passing was more than ample for a bright young Lordling to teach himself this art in a mere few hours.

Or at least, he thought, to teach him the craft of it. His first canvas had been a crude mess of shapes and splashes, and bore a resemblance to the scene outside the window only through the prevalence of green pigment to match the grass on the grounds. His second he'd painted from memory, and was much better. Though Kenton himself was barely identifiable in the composition, the equine stablehand was rendered such that it impressed even Kenton himself. The look of ecstasy on his rough-hewn face, the gleam of sweat on his muscles, even the dust that flew up from the hay-bale on which he mounted the young wolf... Impressive as it was, for such a novice, that canvas lay in a crumpled, sticky heap, amid the likewise defiled ruins of his later attempts.

They were merely practice, after all. Like the archery and lockpicking he'd learned from his black-pelted lover. In a single winter he'd gained the patience and discipline to push himself through self-imposed training, to set himself a standard, and to practice without distraction until he achieved it. He was ready, now, and on the easel he'd pinned a fine, white canvas. It was the smallest he could find, even he could smother it by planting both his slender paws upon it. He treated it with the smallest brush he could find, and worked with steadfast determination, resisting the urge to hasten his strokes and fill the square more rapidly, instead devoting himself to the perfection of each detail before moving on to the next.

He hadn't noticed the passing of time. He hadn't noticed the dimming of the light outside, the cooling of the air on his naked lupine body. He didn't even notice the blade held to his throat until a hoarse voice croaked behind him.

"Why?"

It was a pitiful plea, a far cry from the dignity and vigor that had so enthralled him. Even as Anxur pressed the tip of the blade harder into his neck, dimpling the skin of his jugular, Kenton continued to paint, delicate, feather-light strokes.

"I asked you a question, jaxif-ha, and if I am entitled to anything from you at all, let it be an answer. Why did you not come for me? I killed for you, I left a trail of blood and tears, all for you!" The voice was barely a whisper, even someone listening at the keyhole of the door wouldn't hear it over the sound of the gentle breeze whistling by the window. "It was my destiny to make you ready for yours, so why did you shun me? Did you ignore me to spite me, as you once spited the honor of your family by offering your tail to the filthiest men you could find?"

Kenton painted. "Do you truly think me so petty, Anxur?"

The cat shivered, though his leather attire should have warmed him far better than the naked wolf's pelt. The knife's press slackened for an instant. Anxur's hackles rose, a brief spark of fright and hope flared as he expected Kenton to move, to wrestle, perhaps successfully, for the blade... but still the boy painted, and Anxur withdrew, letting the knife clatter to the ground. He came around to face his young lover, kneeling beside the canvas, looking up into the wolf's eyes. The cat's breath froze in his throat at the sight of the resolve he saw there. "I was blind... My love, I'm sorry, I didn't see!"

At last, Kenton lowered the brush, set it in its jar of solvent to keep the bristles from hardening, and turned his eyes to the kneeling, quivering wreck of a cat, the man he'd worshipped as a god of death and lust. "I didn't see either, Anxur. Not until you left me alone, and I found I didn't pine for you as I once would have. Oh, I wanted you," the wolf said with a serene smile, and reached out to stroke the cat's cheeks, the dried paint on his fingers crumbling and smearing the black fur. "I wanted it to be winter again, to have you teach me during the day and slake your needs in me at night. But the desire didn't overwhelm me. That's how I knew."

Anxur purred at Kenton's touch. The sound was soft and ended as soon as he heard it himself, and realized that never in his life had he done so before. "You'd forged yourself already," the cat whispered, cupping Kenton's hand on his cheek. "You've been a sword from birth, never drawn from its scabbard."

Kenton giggled lightly, leaning forward to kiss Anxur on the lips. "You speak in such curious metaphors, my love, I wonder sometimes if you even know what you mean. But you're right. I only thought so when I gave you your gift at Farthing's funeral, but I knew for certain when you started killing, and I found that I could wait. Wait, and watch you kill, and not take action. It tore my heart, but not to breaking, and not beyond healing. And if I had to wait longer, I think I could have."

Anxur canted his head, seeming almost like a canine cub trying to comprehend something confusing. "You knew I'd come for you, this day? Do you have the sight?" Anxur asked the question so innocently that, when he heard his voice, he was grateful that the darkness of his pelt hid his blush. "Your heathen gods have no such gifts to bestow," he said quickly, grudgingly. "Then tell me, swordling, how did you know I'd come to you on this night? Why did you come here, the quietest room in the house, the finest place for an ambush, to draw me out on this night, and no other?"

"I didn't know you'd come. But I knew tonight would be the night I killed you."

There was silence, utter silence, as if even the owls in the grounds beyond the window held their breath. Anxur's mind raced, struggling to free itself from the rage and love and confusion long enough to solve this puzzle, and Kenton was kind, waiting, allowing his lover the dignity of discerning the truth for himself. The cat's eyes flashed with realization, and locked on Kenton's. "The gift... you poisoned me with it." The cat's eyes sparkled as brightly as his teeth as he broke into a grin, and rushed forward, bowling the slender lupine off his wooden stool, carrying the boy in a tight embrace. "I sensed it! That's surely why I asked if you meant to kill me!"

Kenton was surprised, but shared the cat's elation, perverse as it was, and clung tightly to that hard, supple body. "I meant to surprise you. It's an experimental poison our alchemists concocted. I stole some, using the skills you taught me, I studied it... it's extremely clever," the boy said excitedly, and Anxur hung on his every word, as if he were a cub listening raptly to a thrilling story, eager to hear more of the heroes' adventures. "When it dries it leaves a residue, that can pass through the skin of a fingerpad, or an ear -- I thought of giving you an earring, but you would have suspected, so I stole the black statue, and painted on the poison. The batch I stole from the alchemist would cause death after three million heartbeats. Can your people count that high? It's a thousand thousand... roughly thirty days."

Anxur kissed Kenton's stained cheeks, feeling a peace and a warmth unlike any he'd ever felt. This wasn't the ravaging sexual fury of the night he first mounted Kenton's delightful rear, nor the contented comfort of the many nights they spent together in winter. This was the peace of a man who knew his life had purpose, that all was right. "You would have given me the antidote, and it would have been a game, but now, of course..."

Kenton grinned. "The alchemist who knows how to make the antidote is on a secret mission to the other side of the country. I forged the papers myself."

Strong arms squeezed the boy's body tightly. It was morbid, to think that both lovers were so satisfied, so enraptured by the boy's cleverness in ensuring the cat's death, but neither felt at all unnatural. "I love you, Kenton, as I've never loved anyone. And I thank you for loving me in return, even when I abandoned you. You let my life have meaning, didn't you... I thought you heartless for refusing to chase and kill me. Did you put my murders to good use?"

Eagerly, Kenton nodded. "I did, I did! I had anonymous messages passed to my father, pretending to be a rogue agent, offering my services in tracking down the murderer. He investigated the messages of course, interrogating the messengers, but I kept myself secret. I dined with him every day, cheering him up while he brooded over that mystery!" the clever boy said, and shared a laugh with the murderer. "Your body will be delivered to my father's very home as proof of the rogue's allegiances, and I've no doubt that he'll put that new resource to good use. As my father's agent I'll cut my teeth on challenges even alumni of the Academy wouldn't be entrusted with. All thanks to you, Anxur."

For a fleeting instant, there was the purr again. Swiftly it became a muted growl, and the lean, athletic cat fell to the ground, dropping the naked wolf, both their paws eagerly going toward the fastenings of the feline's breeches, to free his manhood, and both shared a sigh as it once more slid deeply into the young wolf. "You'll have to clean my corpse quite carefully to get your scent off me," Anxur rumbled, "and yourself as well. I intend to leave quite a mark on your body before my three 'million' heartbeats are up."

Kenton stretched out on the ground, and looked up at the man who now mated him as he'd yearned for so deeply, for so long. The first man he'd truly loved. The first man he'd killed. The wolf's hands wandered over that tight, leather-clad body, his aching need for Anxur finally satisfied after thirty days of withdrawal. The young lord didn't need to drive the thoughts of the future out of his mind. His lover's imminent death, the efforts he'd have to spend on cleaning the body. These painful realities couldn't overwhelm him any more, not man he'd become since he met this dark stranger who now thrust so powerfully between his naked, parted thighs. They were truths, and they stung, but he had the strength to bear them, and so did Anxur.

After all, the cat had told him how his people regarded their dead, and while there would be no pleasure in scrubbing the cat's cold body to hide his own identity, Anxur would have been the first to assert that a corpse is no different from a chair or a book. He would have spat at Kenton for doting on his corpse, but swelled with pride at the thought that the wolf would use it as a stepping-stone to achieve the life he wanted.

Anxur tried to make his remaining heartbeats last, gazing into the eyes of his young lover, happy that Kenton exceeded his expectations, happy that Kenton so honored his life and death by putting both to good use. He saw Kenton glance aside, and turned his head to follow the gaze, never missing a stroke into the silky depths of the boy's bowels, which he'd missed so much. When he saw the canvas, and saw that Kenton had taken his brief mentioning of his tribe's funerary rites to heart, he looked out the window, and smiled at what he saw.

"They're your stars, aren't they? I picked this room because you can see them from here," Kenton whispered, but the words were useless. Of course that's why he picked this room, in which to paint his fondest memory of Anxur, and even though he couldn't know that Anxur would come to visit him before his heart died, that his family's stars at least could bear witness to this last honor.

"I'm glad I could help you face your destiny, young lord," Anxur said, pinning Kenton to the ground. "You mustn't ever fear it again. My destiny led me here, to you, and to the finest death I could have hoped for. And yours will lead you to greatness in the shadows. Your primitive gods will stand in awe as you stride across the world, they will tremble in your shadow, and whisper your name."

It was the last word Anxur would ever speak. Death wasn't swift, of course; alchemy is an imprecise art, and heartbeats aren't so easily measured out. It wouldn't be until well after dawn that Kenton would have to start preparing the body, with aching limbs an sore under the tail, and grinning from ear to ear at the magnificence of the life he had, at the gratitude for the months he'd been given to share with this dark-pelted stranger. After the word was spoken, there were many more hours of silent pleasures and thrills, each of them slaking a month of sadness and thirst, eager to drink their fill before the well ran dry. And all in silence, after one last word.

"Kenton."