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her tail twitching violently as she left the tiny hut, taking the lantern with her. Arkady stared at Jaxyn in the gloom, not sure what disturbed her most—his arbitrary orders or the fact that the Crasii had followed them without question.
    â€œThey’re not your slaves, Jaxyn,” she reminded him. “You have no right to order them about like that.”
    â€œI’m Kennel Master here, your grace. It’s my job to see they behave.” When Arkady said nothing in reply, he shrugged. “I’ll just let them attack you next time, shall I?”
    â€œI’m in no danger from the Crasii,” she declared gamely, determined not to let this man think she owed him any favours.
    He stared at her thoughtfully for a time, so long that Arkady thought he might argue the point with her, but then the moment passed and he smiled, the sly, facetious Jaxyn she knew so well back in force. “Well, you know them best, your grace. Shall we return to your dinner guests? They must be wondering where we are.”

Chapter 7
    Cayal woke to the first faint rays of dawn slicing through the darkness in his cell, wondering if his dream had woken him. He couldn’t recall the details and didn’t want to in any case. Cayal’s dreams were something he could well live without.
    He sat up slowly, sighing. Tides, what’s it going to take?
    Glaeban justice, being what it was, had little interest in the facts, only what appeared to be the facts. On the face of it, the wainwright from Caelum had attacked and killed seven men without provocation, left seven widows and twenty-six orphaned children, not to mention a village without a leader and seven families without a breadwinner.
    His sentence was so predictable Cayal wondered why they’d bothered with the cost of a trial.
    But they had and they’d brought him, guilty as charged, here, to the Lebec Prison, fed him a last meal of baked fish, soggy cabbage and foaming ale, and then put a noose around his neck, when by every circumstance imaginable, they should have decapitated him.
    The headsman was on vacation, for pity’s sake?
    Until Cayal repeated his assertion that he was a Tide Lord, it never really occurred to him just how completely his kind had been forgotten. The Warden and the prison guards didn’t fall to their knees, as they would have done a thousand years ago. They’d actually laughed at him, even accusing him of trying to fake insanity in order to escape the noose.
    If only they knew how he longed for it.
    â€œSo the suzerain awakes. Feeling better, are we?”
    Cayal looked up at the remark, not sure what surprised him most, the contempt with which it was spoken or the fact that he’d been referred to as a suzerain. The name was an ancient insult, used only among the Crasii, a feeble attempt to spit in the eyes of their masters.
    The creature who had uttered the words was leaning against the bars of the cell across the corridor. Although they’d been separated by nothing more than a corridor for several days now, this was the first time the creature had spoken. He was a huge beast, easily six and a half feet tall. His features were human enough at first glance, his dark eyes large and intelligent, his ears pert and pointed, his forearms displaying a disturbingly well-defined musculature lurking beneath his ragged prison shift. He was covered in a fine pelt of brown hair and his fingernails were more claws than nails. A Crasii, then, Cayal decided. One of the canines. He knew the type. Dumb as a plank, strong as an ox and pathetically eager to serve.
    Obviously, something this one had forgotten.
    â€œBow in the presence of your master, gemang.”
    â€œLook around, suzerain. You’re not the master here.”
    â€œI’m your master, Flea-trap,” Cayal responded. “Something you’ll never be able to change.”
    The Crasii smiled, baring his pointed canines at Cayal. “Don’t be