YEARS OF BEING ATTACKED by night in the streets of Borosevo had taught me panic, and taught me the strength to overcome panic. Exhaling through my nose, I tucked my chin and—gripping the thin arms about my neck with one hand—reached back with the other to seize my attacker by the scruff of the neck. I tugged downward, pulling his chin over my shoulder that I might strike his face.

“Please!” The voice startled me. It was not a man at all.

Her arms slackened, and I released them, turning quickly and snatching up my sword. I did not conjure its blade, but stood ready, processing. The woman—for woman she undeniably was—stood a head shorter than I. Where she had come from I could not at first guess, for the hall door had not opened, nor any of the doors to the secondary chambers. Only the door to my sleeping room was open, and I’d a sudden, horrible feeling that she’d been waiting there for me. In bed, to judge by the disheveled nature of her raven hair and her gauzy white dress.

“Who are you?” I asked, not lowering my sword. Completely oblivious, the unthinking circuits in my terminal continued translating Impatian’s text into placid tones. Emperor Victor’s biography filled the silence.

The invader massaged the back of her neck, eyes downcast, reproached. “Naia,” she said, voice rich as candle smoke. She looked up suddenly, and I felt a lurch. Her pupils were twice the proper size, the irises large and blue as ice. They gave the look of one permanently startled. Or permanently aroused. With exquisite care, she removed her hand from her neck, raked fingers through her fall of black hair. “You hurt me.”

I did not apologize. “You startled me.” Whatever chivalric impulse had made me free her at the sound of her voice was gone, and I was on my guard. The eyes betrayed her. She was a homunculus, and so designed . . . but designed for what? She was a bed servant, the full and perfect shape of her announced that plain as sunrise. But was that all she was? My own grandfather, Lord Timon, had been killed by a concubine homunculus. And there was always a vague inhumanity to many of them. Something of the machine in the way they were tailored, cut to fit a purpose and design. I supposed that I—a nobile of the Peerage, a palatine—was little different. But like Ilex, I had the freedom of my own thoughts, whereas who knew what impulses had been built into the deep structures of this woman’s brain? No doubt she had been designed to be the perfect courtesan: coy, alluring, but ultimately pliant. She could not choose, could not say no.

That she might say no would never even occur to her.

“I did not mean to,” she said, still clutching at her hair as though it was a lifeline. “I only wondered when you would come to bed. You were in here so long.” She took a step, fine gold chains tinkling at wrist and throat and ankle.

I took a measured step back, circling to put the table between us. “Why are you here?” I asked, as though the answer were not obvious. With my free hand I silenced the chattering terminal.

“The Master sent me,” she said into the fresh silence, fingers worrying at her neckline, tugging the fabric lower. Her skin was paler even than mine. It shone like milk by moonlight. “He thought you would like me.” I did. There was something in the hard bones of her face, a hawkish severity softened by full lips and that pouting expression, that reminded me of . . . something. I could not put my finger on it. She took a step closer, following me round the table, one finger trailing on its surface, hunting, teasing. “Do you not like me?”

Like those brave and foolish men who came before the Medusa, I was transfixed. My sword was at the ready, fingers on the trigger. How small she was, how slight—though in her kind smallness was no guarantee of weakness. She might have overpowered me if she wished, or torn my arms from their sockets for all I knew, or strangled me just like my poor grandfather.

Her robe vanished, and I realized it was no robe at all. Only a holograph shell: gossamer light spun to conceal what lay beneath. A marble sculpture of a woman, perfect as Pygmalion had made. Dark hair and soft curves and eyes like frozen stars. An anklet she wore—fashioned in the likeness of a gold snake devouring—and gold were the chains that hung between her breasts. Silver would have suited her better, so pale was she. A creature of the night, and with those terrible, frightened and furiously loving eyes she might have been a vampire out of some antique fable. Some monstress to frighten and allure, to teach men fear. How could I have thought her reproached by me? Shrinking? I have seen demons less frightening.

I did not move, not even when one cool hand closed over mine, or pressed my sword’s emitter to her breast. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked, breathless, mouth open and turned up to my face. “Do you want to? You can.” Her breath was hot in my ear, her voice gone all husky. “It would not be the first time.” She seized me between the legs, and a grunt escaped me.

My hand moved of itself, shoved her away. I tried not to think on what she’d said about dying, about being killed. Repulsed, I put the sword down on the table, keeping my eyes on the homunculus. She tossed her hair and smiled. I was relieved to see only ordinary teeth. “Are you frightened? Of me?”

I was. My hands burned where she had touched me—where I had touched her—as if with fever, and my breath came in ragged gasps. “Of this place,” I said, “of your master.”

“Why? He likes you. He must like you—else he’d not have sent you me.” She advanced, leaning—leaning—over the table. “I like you, too—but then . . . I like everyone. It’s . . . my nature.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had a suspicion. “You mean you don’t have a choice?”

She showed her teeth again, knowing too well whence my treasonous eyes were drawn. “Ooh . . . none of us has a choice. We like what we like. We can’t explain it. We can only . . . explain it away.” Advancing, she pressed her hands against my chest. “Take off your boots, soldier. Stay a while.” She was very close. One arm snaked back behind my head and bent it down. Lips pressed against mine. Tongue. I’d forgotten where I put my hands, forgotten where to find them. She broke away, stepped back so that she could look over the length of me. I wore the same belted black tunic, high boots, and piped trousers I had worn on Rustam. “You look fit for the parade ground and I’m not wearing a stitch.” She pouted, then did something with her hand that pulled some howling animal from the lowest dungeons of my brain. “Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

It didn’t seem fair at all, put that way. My tongue felt thick, and a red mist was rising in my mind. But there was yet a piece of me—the piece that drove me to write this account, I don’t doubt—which replied, “What makes you think I’m a soldier?”

“Ooh”—Naia bit her lip—“the shoes mostly. Those boots. Like I said. I bet if you took them off you wouldn’t be a soldier, though. Only a man. Men are only men when you take their uniforms away.”

I had no intention of allowing such to be done to me, and hurried past Naia to the door. As I did, I brushed up against my journal where it lay on the table’s edge and knocked it to the floor. “You should go,” I managed to say, fumbling with the locks.

I wanted her to go. I wanted her to stay. I didn’t know what I wanted. We like to imagine that we are ourselves a unity: one mind, one spirit. Not so. In truth we are each a little legion, a pack of little personae—each one-eyed in its attentions and single-minded in its aim. I pulled in two directions, and so fumbled the door controls even as her hand seized mine and pinned it to the wall. I might have resisted, but resistance seemed wrong, somehow. Surely there was no harm in letting her stay? She wanted to stay.

“Don’t say that,” she said, putting a hand on my cheek. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like me?” She took my hand and dragged it to her breast.

I kept seeing Brevon’s secretary in the corner of my eye. Her dumb obedience. Her hobbled gait. The way she simply stood there, waiting. How many were there in her inner legion? How many had she been allowed to have? Brevon had made her that way to suit his own purposes. Kharn had made Naia, or bought her, to be precisely what she was. She’d said it herself. She could not choose, and my choices were narrowing, drowned by the red fog behind my eyes.

A chill went through me even as she kissed me again. I felt her pressed against me. Her breasts, her hands in my sweating hair. What had been done to me? I could feel the resistant piece of me fading and threw up my hands to knock hers away. I told myself it was thoughts of Jinan that stayed me, some nostalgia for our shattered romance. I told myself it was principle, what I learned from Kyra. What I’d loathed in Crispin. In Bordelon. In my own mother. The tendency of power to corrupt and abuse. But I still wonder if it was only terror, fear of that place and its dread lord. Fear of the woman herself. Aching, I pushed her away.

There was no hurt in her eyes. Laughing, she danced back. It was like she didn’t understand, like I was speaking to someone in the wrong language, communicating by the wrong signs.

“Did you draw these?” she asked, stooping—legs apart—to collect my journal where it had fallen. From her smile I knew she’d acted deliberately.

Relieved to have her off me a moment and to be able to marshal my thoughts and smooth my tunic, I said, “I did, yes.”

Naia flipped through the little journal, images fluttering by one after another. She did not linger on any of them, not even on the images of Jinan that no eye was meant to see. She doubled back once or twice, shoulders folding in as she studied. After a moment she shut the book with a snap and fully turning said, “Do me.” She thrust the book at me, and I took it, studying it for damage. I don’t know why I bothered. The old thing had traveled in my coat through many dangers, and there wasn’t an angstrom of it undamaged. I must have studied it too long, for the woman said, “Draw me.”

She didn’t wait for a response, but threw herself on the fainting couch, arching her back in a display worth commemorating. I could draw her, couldn’t I? Just draw her? Keep her off me, keep her at arm’s length long enough to gain a measure of control over the situation. So I seated myself opposite her and took out my stylus, pausing only long enough to master my breathing.

I could hardly think, hardly hold the pen. My hand was shaking, but I began to draw her. Broad strokes, just taking in her shape. I did not speak, for to speak seemed too much an invitation, and I did not trust myself. She did not speak either, only watched me with unquiet intent, those dusky eyes alert and alive.

I never finished that drawing. I tore it out after, contaminated by the event. She moved quickly—more quickly than I could have believed. She brushed my hands away, knocking my journal again to the floor, and straddled me, grinding her hips against me. Her lips found mine as she forced my head back, making me think again of the vampire. There was a strength in her clean limbs and an urgency that scattered my legion and left a single, one-eyed soldier at attention. Her breath came hot across my face and on the hollow of my throat and all my thoughts were drowned in that red and fevered fog. Her tongue was in my mouth. I remember the taste of spiced wine and the mint-like tang of hilatar.

Naia let out a little moan and pressed herself closer to me. My hands traced up along her sides until I held her face between them, fingers in her hair.

That was when I felt it, and froze.

There was a metallic spur behind her right ear. At first I thought it jewelry, but with the cymbal crash of memory recalled the gleaming implant behind Kharn’s own ear. Nausea turned in me, and I stood, lifting Naia to throw her bodily on the couch.

Boots still on, I towered over her. Those dark eyes turned to look at me, and I was unsure whether it was terror or longing in them. Her designer doubtless had not wanted me or any man to know. She laughed, thinking it some species of game, that I’d revealed myself—my soul—to her at last. Squirming, she spread her legs, small teeth playing against one lip.

She did not speak.

I did not stir.

Words at last. Hers. Not mine.

“What’s the matter, soldier?” she said. “Going to keep your boots on after all?” One hand descended, finding herself. “Fine by me.”

“You’re him,” I said, hands clenched. “You’re a SOM.”

Her brows furrowed, but she did not stir. “What?”

“Don’t lie to me!” I snapped. “There’s an implant behind your right ear.” Here I lifted a finger and tapped my own head with a finger. “Don’t deny it.”

Her hand stopped, whole body gone stiff. Something shifted behind those black and open eyes. The thin blue iris grew, pupils narrowing—as though she were coming down from some drug. Her posture shifted, and she crossed her arms, sat with knees apart, as a man does. The thing behind her eyes smiled up at me, mouth open. In a voice which was a parody of her voice, he said, “You are a strange one.”

“You should talk.” I wore my anger like a cloak, clung to its folds with a desperation to fend off the sense of violation stealing over my bones. Naia—Kharn—bared her teeth in a wicked grimace. She stood, and tapping one golden earring restored the gauzy holograph shell she had first worn. How I had thought it cloth before I couldn’t say. It shimmered, floated to a wind that was not there. She paced round the dining table, her back to me, her every contour yet visible through the cloth. “Why?”

Kharn’s characteristic silence answered me. I was suddenly too aware of the highmatter sword resting on the tabletop. The concubine stood between it and me, and I stood like a fool with his tunic unbelted. “Did you not like her? Our Naia?” He traced a hand down her flank, turning as he did so. The gesture was obscene, as though her hand belonged to someone else . . . which I suppose it did.

“Get out.”

“Does she not look a bit like that friend of yours?”

“Get out!” I almost shouted.

Kharn grinned at me. “You must care for her.” Valka. He was talking about Valka. My sense of violation sharpened, deepened in that now I was not the only one violated.

“Or else I’d have thrown myself on your slave?” I retrieved my journal from the floor. “You don’t know me, Lord Sagara.”

“I might have.”

I suppressed my creeping sense of horror and stood as before a firing squad, hands clasping my journal behind my back, chin raised. “You won’t.” He watched me with her eyes. I could see the light behind them. The shadow. Almost I could see Kharn’s ruined body on its pale throne, his craggy face upturned, staring into the darkness above him, peering out from Naia’s face. “Do you abuse all your guests?” I asked when I could stand his quiet no longer.

“Is that what you call it?” He frowned. “She was meant to honor you.”

“She was meant to amuse you,” I countered. “And what have you done with Naia?”

“She sleeps with the others. Until I call for her.”

“And she’s asleep now?” I had no idea what he meant, but decided that I did not want to know.

“Yes,” he said. I tucked my chin to shade my eyes from Kharn’s pitiless examination. “You know, I thought for certain you’d flee with your companions.” He moved Naia’s body all the way around the table, so that she stood beneath the replica of Cottages at Cordeville. The painting struck an odd contrast, so bright and wholesome beside the devil in her white dress.

I advanced to stand opposite the puppet homunculus across the table, placing my journal beside the half-finished remnant of my meal. My sword was still closer to Kharn, but I felt I stood a chance now if it came down to it. Trying to keep this concern from my face, I said, “I have a job to do.”

“Indeed,” Kharn replied. “You know . . . I almost believe you.”

“My companions will return the day after tomorrow,” I said with all the candor and sobriety I could muster. “You’ll soon see.”

“I expect I will.” He turned her back on me, regarded his painting a moment. “They said the artist was too intense. That he frightened people. Seem it strange to you that such a thing might be said of he who made so innocent a painting?”

I half-rounded the table, taking the opportunity to reclaim my sword, which I held carefully in one hand. A little closer now, I said, “It’s the color. People are afraid of color. Your painter saw too much of it.”

“Is that why you only work in black and white?” he asked. “Because you are afraid?” I did not rise to the bait, and so Naia’s voice added, “An artist afraid is no artist at all.”

“Is that why your palace is all gray stone?” I countered. “Because you are afraid?”

Kharn Sagara watched me out of that woman’s face, eyes old as empires. “And do you abuse all your hosts?”

“Is that what you call it?”

The Undying barked a laugh—an astonishingly rough sound from so fine a throat. “You argue like a Eudoran actor.” He paused a moment, then without warning said, “I will take my leave of you.” He turned and on bare feet moved toward the door. Halfway between painting and portal he stopped. “Shall I leave the girl with you, Marlowe?”

“Get. Out.”