House Oclair was one of the great noble houses of the Rakshasa clan.

Down the generations its members had given to the growth and the prosperity of the clan, and for it they were counted the crème of the Ramiz. Its daughters married, again and again, into the royal family, to dukes and archdukes. Its sons, when they showed enough potential and valor, were taken up by the Rukhs into the royal army.

The bloodline ran differently in the men and the women of the house. The males came out of the awakening with light amber skin and a high affinity in the martial domain. The females came out ivory-skinned, with a high affinity in the air.

Oclair Castle stood in the northern part of Vitium, and to the eyes of outsiders — commoners especially, but nobles of other houses too — it gave off splendor and grandeur. But the majestic thing was a velvet curtain, hung long enough to hide the sinister thing behind it. The violence. The carnage.

Anastas — one of the lords of the main branch of House Oclair — walked toward his younger brother’s quarters with a gloom on his face.

The servants and maids bowed as he came, and told him their master was in his personal chambers. Anastas reached the chamber and did not wait for the guards to announce him; he swung the door open and went straight in, and the guards, held by his stature and his place in the castle, could do nothing but let him.

And what he found inside vexed him past bearing.

Rodon, his younger brother, sat at his ease. Drinking surah — an intoxicating drink — and reading a manuscript, relaxed in a velvet chair.

" What in the name of the Black Earth Mother are you doing? " Anastas came apart at the top of his lungs. " Have you lost your mind? How are you *relaxed*, after what we saw? "

Rodon closed the manuscript and took a sip before he answered.

" Calm yourself, Anastas. I am relaxed because I am thinking — trying to work out what we missed. It should not have been possible for him to wake the beast-blood, and he woke it, and took multiple affinities besides. There is something we overlooked. Something we may be overlooking still. "

The reminder of the multiple affinities threw fuel on Anastas. He hurled his glass at a mirror and shattered it.

" How did this happen. Damn it — he is foul-blood, no, worse than foul-blood, he has weak human blood in his veins, so how did he — " He caught himself. " Rodon. What if he finds out what we did? And if our — mmph — "

Rodon was across the room before the sentence finished, his hand over his brother’s mouth.

" Quiet. Walls have ears. " He said it low, his eyes fixed on Anastas’s.

There was something in those eyes that put a cold down Anastas’s spine, and he stilled.

" I know what troubles you. " Rodon let his hand fall. " But even awakened, it means nothing until he reaches master level. And he will not live that long. "

" How can you be so certain? He has high affinity — you saw it — he could reach master far sooner than most. And if he does, the house elders will be forced to induct him into Oclair, and I do not think he refuses. Our whore of a sister raised him in the gutter; he does not turn down a life of luxury dropped in his lap. And if that happens, my — *our* — goals are finished. That is why I am angry. "

He had gone quiet by the end of it, the anger burned down to something colder.

" He will not survive that long. " Rodon’s voice was soft. " I have seen to it. Look. "

He showed Anastas a black coin the size of a fist, one deep scratch cut into one face of it.

The token of the Order of Mercy. A mercenary company. When they took a contract, the client was given a black coin with a single claw-scratch on one side; when the contract was done, the client returned it to the Order with a scratch on the other.

" So. You have set them on him. " Anastas was surprised, and then eased. " That is why you are calm. I had thought you would be raging with me, watching our long plan come apart. "

" I raged too, at first. " Rodon set the coin down. " But you shout to let it out. I let mine out in other ways. "

" How? By reading manuscripts and drinking surah? " Anastas began to laugh.

He stopped laughing when his eyes followed Rodon’s pointing finger to the far corner of the chamber.

The naked body of a commoner woman lay there. Battered. Bruised over the whole of her. Her skull caved on one side where it had been struck, and struck, and struck again.

" That , " Rodon said, smiling ear to ear, " is how I let mine out. "