"No!" Denisius struggled to his knees. Breathing was painful and speaking was worse, but still he managed enough volume to catch his servant's attention. "Vos, don't! Don't hurt her!"

"Milord," Vos answered through gritted teeth, not taking his eyes off the black-furred creature, "this is not your princess anymore. Let me end it quickly. Before she remembers what she is and tries to kill us too."

"This is still a child of the Emperor," Varallo Thray said gently. If not for the dust clinging to his robes and the disarray of his thinning hair, he might have been in a salon complimenting the musicians' skill, never mind the dead werewolf or the headless servant sprawled only a few feet away. "His Imperial Majesty would be most displeased if no effort were made to attempt a cure for her."

Still Vos did not lower his blade. "Death in a wolf's jaws, death at the hands of your fucking Emperor -- you don't make it easy, do you, Chancellor?" The sheen of blood on one side of his face gave his furious green eyes a mad gleam.

"Let Lord Marhollow decide. Aside from the Emperor and of course poor Carala, he is the most injured party here."

"What about him?" Vos roared, taking his eyes off the she-wolf long enough to point his chin toward Quilla's body.

"He gave his life in the service of his lord. Surely that is an honor?"

Vos swore violently under his breath, his dripping blade still pointed firmly in the she-wolf's direction. "Well, milord?" he demanded in tones that would have been quite insolent in other circumstances. "What's your order? Kill this thing or, gods help us, try to take it alive?"

Nursing his side, his sword forgotten on the ground, Denisius shambled toward Vos and the Chancellor. "Just . . . just let me see if I can talk to her. If she recognizes me."

Vos didn't protest, but nor did he lower his blade as Denisius hesitantly approached the trembling wolf. Its amber eyes seemed to implore him, tears streaking down its muzzle. Denisius's mouth felt as dry and rough as the blossoms that grew on the seretto trees outside Coldspring Hall in late summer. The creature that had been Carala crouched and shivered before him, and nothing in his education had prepared him for what he saw. Even though he had studied what few texts on the matter existed in his father's library, for the most part he knew no more about werewolves than what he remembered from childhood fancies and fireside tales in taverns whispered on a winter's night.

He had not expected they might be beautiful.

The she-wolf's body was as Carala's had been from throat to knees -- sleek and smooth and slender, but now sheened with fur as dark as a raven's wing, her breasts as full as they had been (Denisius realized with a start that he was seeing them uncovered for the first time). At the end of slender but sinewy arms curled a pair of hands that had thickened to resemble paws -- but a thumb clenched against each, although those thumbs were tipped with vicious, curving claws even blacker than her pelt. If anything her build was even more pleasing to the eye than it had been before her metamorphosis, for the fur limned her fine muscles and illuminated their every curve and tiny pulsing movement in the flickering candlelight and the pale light of the white moon. Below the knees her feet resembled paws even more than her hands, clawed toes clutching the ancient stones of the grand old room's floor. Denisius supposed if the urge struck her she might move on all fours as swiftly as on two feet -- perhaps even more swiftly. From the base of her spine a tail had sprouted, lush and full and darting from side to side erratically.

Only her face, the face of the wolf framed with what was now a wild fringe of trailing black fur so lush one might properly call it a mane, pointed lupine ears twitching anxiously through its thickness, seemed purely inhuman. Even so, somehow, the shadow of a woman's face could be seen. This was a wolf that could smile, or scowl, or narrow its eyes in rage or clench them in laughter. And, in spite of the amber wolf hues that had consumed the hazel irises of her eyes, that woman's face was one Denisius knew well. That fleeting shadow was what let him find his voice and speak to this creature, which shook and darted its eyes from one man to the next less like the most fearsome predator a human might see and more like a panic-stricken rabbit in a snare.

"Carala? Do you . . . do you know me?"

The she-wolf's jaws opened, its tongue shocking pink against that black fur, its fangs a pure white. Heated breath drew in and out of her lungs, her slender but powerful body heaving like a bellows. A low whimper escaped her throat. Her gaze moved from Denisius to Vos, from Vos to the Chancellor, at last to the one man speaking to her. A sound murmured from her lungs, through vocal cords unsuited for human speech: "Deni," it said.

Then she turned and leaped through one of the mullioned windows, a rain of shattered glass and twisted ironwork showering down upon them. White moonlight flooded the room, and from below them came an agonized howl, diminishing as the she-wolf escaped across the crumbled rooftops of the Maathinhold down into the streets of Talinara, and beyond them into the vastness of the night.

Vos and Denisius stormed toward the broken window, Denisius half-limping, and stared down into the slumbering city. They could see no trace of her, but her howls lingered on the air.

"Well, gentlemen," said Varallo Thray from behind them as he inspected his boots for fire damage. "Which of us shall raise the constabulary?"

In the end, they all went together.

The throne room of the Chalcedony Palace should not have been capable of hosting an intimate gathering, but somehow they had managed it. Denisius, Varallo Thray, Vos, and an elderly priestess of the Graces named Galena Orthis were huddled before the Malachite Throne, its polished sea-green surface dazzling the eye despite the sorry appearance of its occupant.

Almost lost beneath the Emperor's bulk, the sculpted shape of the Throne was like a frozen ocean wave, its surface inscribed with the oaths of the long-extinct Munaz Emperors. Denisius knew nothing of sorcery, but even he had heard the legends of the Throne's enchantments. On the handful of occasions he had beheld the Throne, he had never seen any evidence of them. But its long history alone was enough to inspire veneration.

Seated beside the Throne in a far humbler chair was Yvelle Nessir, the Empress-Consort and Carala's mother, her face pale and shocked. No one else stood in the massive vaulted hall, save for a handful of soldiers from the Emperor's personal guard, nearly invisible in their alcoves by the entrances and behind the throne.

Denisius was helpless before his jangled nerves, utterly forgetting Imperial protocol and anxiously glancing all about the magnificent room, just waiting for the Emperor to give the order to execute the lot of them out of sheer pique. Restlessly his eyes traveled over the grand map of the known world that took up most of the western wall, the lands of the Anointed Realms and other regions subject to the Malachite Throne painted in purple while other lands made do with a nondescript brown. Obviously it was updated regularly as the influence of the Emperor waxed and waned; several regions sported a fresher coat than others. The Straits of Twilight, dominated by the former capital of Munazyr, was however a muddy gray, perhaps the artist not wanting to draw attention to its stubborn independence, or maybe just having abandoned any hope of maintaining the correct allegiance of the rambunctious city as it traded hands back and forth. At least, Denisius reflected, he had finally gotten his audience with the Emperor, even if was long past midnight and his Imperial Majesty was dressed for bed.

Vos maintained a more appropriate posture, but anger was baking off him like heat from an overworked oven. Among Galena Orthis's responsibilities was doctoring his injury and making sure he had not been tainted by the werewolf's attack. The stitched wounds stood out in stark relief against his scowling face. The Emperor's guard had relieved him of his weapons, as they had Denisius, but Denisius wasn't sure his manservant wouldn't launch himself at the Emperor and try to kill him with his bare hands if the old bastard said the wrong thing, which he surely would. His Imperial Majesty was not known for his civility.

Only Varallo Thray seemed at his ease, a slender volume in his gnarled hands. This was Carala's diary, and the Chancellor had secured it from her rooms with a speed Denisius found suspicious upon their return to the Palace. Lightly he thumbed through the pages of elegant handwriting, a look of regret on his face which Denisius thought looked rehearsed.

The Emperor Somilius Deyn III scratched his dirty fingernails across the scruff of beard on his swollen cheek, scowling at the assembled group with rheumy eyes, glaring balefully. Silently he drained a goblet of wine, an almost priceless vintage from Vos's homeland of Nythel that now dribbled down the Emperor's many chins and spilled down the front of his dressing gown. Drunkenness was not among Somilius's numerous vices, but clearly he had felt the need to fortify himself against the news his Grand Chancellor had provided tonight. His ulcerated and horned feet were propped up on a silk pillow, displaying his calluses and the dried sores of his ankles, his toes so purple they were nearly black. He was even fatter than Denisius remembered from his last visit to Talinara, perhaps because then he hadn't suffered the misfortune of witnessing the man in his dressing gown. At some point in the last few months his Imperial Majesty had developed a hideous rash of festering pustules between his left ear and his forehead, ill-concealed by the strings of his remaining hair.

When he spoke, it was to Galena. "Lord Marhollow's servant, you've prepared him for burial? Or is the constable still holding the remains?" The Emperor's voice was lovely beyond description, sweet and sonorous, winsome while in no way weak. Before he had ascended the Malachite Throne, he had been an accomplished minstrel, and betimes he still held concerts in the Palace.

"He is in the cathedral, your Majesty. The constable still holds the, ah, the creature." Galena was a city institution who was old enough to have known the Emperor as a boy, and was nearly as calm as Varallo Thray in his presence.

The Emperor nodded with a faint smile. "And you are quite sure the lord Marhollow's other servant is not infected with the wolf's blood?" His gaze roamed to Vos appraisingly. The old soldier had the good sense not to meet the Emperor's eye directly, but his scowl faded not a trace.

"Entirely sure, your Majesty. He assures me the wolf's fangs did not touch him. His injuries are consistent with that."

"Excellent. You are as skilled as ever, your Reverence." The Emperor shifted his attention to his Grand Chancellor now. "Three months. Three months you say this beast had been seducing my daughter, and no one noticed? Not her handmaidens? Not the household guard? Not you?"

Varallo Thray bowed deeply, his tone as regretful as his expression. "So it seems, your Majesty. The princess Carala has always been jealous of her privacy. Until now there never seemed a reason to deny it to her." Thray turned a few pages in the diary. "She did not know what the beast was until very recently, though, and by then I fear she was too deep in his thrall to come to anyone for help."

The Emperor nodded, glumly rolling a thick finger through the dregs of his wine and raising it to his lips for a loud suckle. It occurred to Denisius that he was witnessing genuine sorrow on Somilius III's face, and of all the expressions he had ever seen there it might have been the most grotesque.