Madam Butterfly felt cold.

The air inside the house was moist and cold, and she had been waiting close to three hours, and she was hungry.

She hated these sneaking killings — the lying in wait, the patience of them. She had always preferred one-to-one, frontal combat. The stronger the opponent, the sweeter the torture and the kill, the hotter it ran in her blood, and what it stirred in her she would carry afterward to the brothels and satisfy there.

This contract was beneath her.

*The target is an average adolescent, awakened his bloodline only today. Why do they hand me such jobs? It is like asking a tigress to go and kill a chick.*

*And how, in the name of the Black Mother, am I to make this look an accident? They never taught me such things at the Temple of Bellicus.*

The thought of the Temple of Bellicus dragged something up out of the past, and she turned her mind off it at once, and went back to the problem of the accident.

Then she heard someone come into the house.

She grew cautious, and quick as a cat she slipped into one of the bedrooms and peered out into the hall.

Saana came in.

The damp of the house touched her, and she lit a fire in the hearth, and warmth and light spread through the small hall. Her eye fell on a thick woolen bedroll, folded into a cylinder, clawed from top to bottom, stood upright beside the hearth.

" Oh, dear. Who did this? "

She opened the bedroll out and laid it clawed-side down on the moist, cold floor, and sat on it beside the fire, and waited.

Soon the closed room heated, and she grew warm, and drew off her cloak, and sat in her small skin-tight pink apparel. She took out the prism-shaped white bone bead and nurtured it, and smiled to herself, thinking of the new life coming to her.

*The other commoner women in the village would hang themselves in jealousy, seeing me married to a noble. Hee hee. Lucky, to be so beautiful, so seductive. And once I am a noble — perhaps I seduce a duke of the royal clan. I would give anything to be a mistress of the Rukhs. All in good time.*

She was still building her castles in the air when she heard someone else enter, and on instinct she hid the bead under the bedroll and looked.

Kervyn came in.

He saw the fire in the hearth, and Saana on the bedroll in her seductive pink, and the sight fed his drunken lust. He threw his cloak aside and came toward her.

" Oh — you have laid the bedroll out here in the hall. More eager than I am, I see. "

Saana’s instincts told her something was wrong.

" Kaiser, what are you talking about? Go inside, take any of the other rooms. I will wait here in the hall for Markus. We stay a while, then leave. "

Kervyn, close to her now, was hugely aroused. " Sure, sure. I know what you are into. I will play along. Move over, let me sit — it is cold in the other rooms, and here at least I have the fire. "

Saana hesitated, then shifted to one end of the bedroll, and Kervyn sat at the other.

" So — how was your day, Saana? " he asked, his eyes crawling over her.

" It was fine, Kaiser. And yours? I heard you had gotten yourself into some trouble. "

" Mine was good too. Trouble? No — nothing I could not handle. I can face any trouble, thinking of coming home to you. " His eyes were on her chest as he said it.

" What? What are you saying, Kaiser? Are you drunk? "

" A little. But I promise never to drink again — if you give me a kiss. "

And with that he lunged at her, going for her mouth.

Saana, caught wholly off guard, froze for a breath — and then her anger came, and she slapped him hard across the cheek.

" Kaiser! How dare you touch me? "

" Enough of this, you commoner bitch. How dare you slap a noble? "

His pride was cut, and the drink turned it to fury, and he struck her back across the face, hard enough to knock her off the bedroll to the floor.

She was up at once.

" Kaiser, you drunk bastard — what are you doing? I am leaving. I will tell Markus how you have treated me. "

She ran for the door and had it open — and Kervyn caught her by the hair from behind, and hauled her back, and threw her down onto the bedroll.

" Enough of your roleplaying, " he said, standing over her, the onyx-black skin of him shining with the room’s heat, and there was nothing in his drunken face now but the ugly thing his want had turned into.

Saana understood, all at once, exactly what she had walked into.

" Kaiser — no. No! Someone — someone, please, help me — someone help — "

Her scream tore through the small hall and out into the night.

Two pairs of eyes were watching.

One pair was cautious, and indifferent to what was unfolding.

The other pair had gone still — caught in a trance, as some long-forgotten past rose up and flashed before it