The Mahrkagir's quarters were cold and barren, like the rest of Daršanga, the walls stripped of adornment, booty piled in careless piles on the floor. His faithful guard Tahmuras escorted us there, taking up a post in the hallway when the doors were barred. I shivered in my gown—the saffron riding-attire that Favrielle nó Eglantine had made for me, in light wool for the Jebean heat—and looked about me.

Dirt and debris were mounded in the corners, and there were stains on the uncarpeted stone floor of the bedchamber. There was a flagellary ... I suppose one would call it a flagellary. In Terre d'Ange, the implements of pleasure, violent or otherwise, are lovingly tended. Whips are cleaned and oiled, shackles polished, the mechanisms of stocks and barrels and wheels exquisitely maintained. Aides d'amour are kept in velvet-lined cases. Even Melisande ... I remembered her flechettes, im maculate and gleaming, honed to a razor-blue edge.

Not here.

I gazed at the Mahrkagir's cupboard, a jumbled array of devices tossed here and there, leather dry and cracked, rusty iron, caked with black blood. And I bit my tongue to keep from weeping.

"Duzhvarshta," he said gently, freeing my hair from behind and running both hands through it. "Ill deeds. You understand?" He turned me around to face him, laying one hand over my groin. "Nothing that begets life."

I nodded, tears in my eyes. And to show I understood, I went to my knees before him, undoing the drawstring of his trousers and per forming the languisement.

Whatever else he might have experienced in the worship of Angra Mainyu, I do not think it prepared the Mahrkagir of Drujan for the attentions of a D'Angeline courtesan trained by one of the greatest adepts of the Night Court. I felt his entire body shudder as I took him into my mouth. Unlike his hands, his phallus was warm; rigid with blood, erect and straining. A strange feeling of relief enveloped me as his hands clamped hard on my head, fingers tangling in my hair, forcing me. I plied my art with consummate skill, working with lips and tongue, the small muscles deep in my throat, grateful for his groan of pleasure.

Until he pushed me away, and I fell sprawling on the cold flag stones.

"I decide," the Mahrkagir said, and struck me across the face with the back of his hand, so hard that my ears rang and I tasted blood. He smiled calmly, ignoring his erect phallus, so hard that the head of it brushed his belly, and struck me again, splitting my lower lip. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord," I mumbled thickly, blood trickling down my chin.

"Good." He crouched over me and took my face in both hands, licking the blood from my chin and lip with one long swipe of his tongue. "Mm."

It shocked and appalled me more than anything I have known; and still, even now, aroused me. There are a thousand reasons I do not care to remember these nights, but that is chiefest among them, always. Not what he did, but how I responded.

"Ill thoughts," he whispered, and I could see my own blood spreading scarlet on his tongue as he said it, his left hand sliding beneath my gown, my undergarments. Cold, so cold! His fingers parted the folds of my nether lips, finding me moist and eager. "Ill words, whore of the gods." With a sudden thrust, he slid two ice-cold fingers inside me. I made a helpless noise and surged forward, meeting his hand. "Ill deeds." Deftly, his thumb penetrated me to the rear, and now with one hand, he held my entire nether region in a viselike grip. It hurt, and the force of my climax shook me. The Mahrkagir smiled tenderly at me, watching with his mad, mad eyes. "Now you understand."

I nodded dumbly, licking my split lip.

"Ishtâ." Murmuring a Persian endearment, he withdrew his hand from me. "I think you will become very, very special to me. Now take off your clothes."

That was the beginning.

There was more, a good deal more. Much of it hurt. It was not that he was particularly skilled in the arts of pain. He wasn't. I have known better—or worse, as it may be. I am not even sure myself which is true. Your gods have chosen you for defilement, he had said, and that was his gift. In time, he made me beg for what he did to me. Ill words. I did. I said all that he wished to hear. It was cold and dark and filthy, and I meant every word of it.

And then it got worse.

I did not see, at first, what he took from the cupboard, only that he handled it reverently. It had been some hours, I think, and my vision was blurred with exhaustion and tears, my body aching in every part from the violent commingling of abuse and pleasure. "You see?" he asked, stroking the leather straps, the thick buckles, showing me how the inside was hollow, lined with a cushion of oiled kidskin. Alone among the rest, this device had been tended with love. "A blacksmith made it for me. You see?"

I nodded dully, a knot of terror in my belly. I saw.

The Mahrkagir smiled, easing himself inside it, fastening the sturdy buckles. Man-shaped, the cold iron glinted, nubbed with hundreds of blunt spikes. It jutted from his loins like some terrible implement of war. "It is for you, ishtâ," he said fondly, stroking my hair. "All for you."

My lips shaped the sound of my signale, no; enough, no more.

Hyacinthe.

He took me with it from behind, one hand shoving my face into the stained bedclothes. I do not have words to describe the pain of it. How eager is he to plant his iron rod inside you? More fool I, I had thought it a figure of speech. It wasn't. At the first thrust, I thought I would die, split asunder. My breath caught in my throat; I heard a mewling sound, unaware it was me. It was the sound of a dumb animal in pain. Surely now, here, there could be only agony . . .

Would that it were so.

Even this . . . even this. My body betrayed me, accommodating the agony, inner flesh torn, slick with desire and blood, accommodating. . . him, the dreadful iron reaving me in twain, all of it. I laid my cheek on the bedclothes, scratching roughly with the rhythm of his thrusting, staring onto darkness. Let him kill me with it, I thought. Let him. Pleasure mounted, inexorable, unspeakable. My fingers clenched on the bedclothes, clenched and released. A crimson veil fell over my vision. I could hear his breath, coming harshly now; he had released my nape, both hands clutching my hips, loins thrusting. The iron nubs . . . Elua! What damage was it doing? I hoped he would never stop. I hoped I would die.

In the scarlet haze, Kushiel's face swam before me, loving and re morseless, bronze eyes heavy-lidded and downcast. In one hand ... in one hand he held forth a diamond, hanging from a velvet cord. I stared at it, blinking, while the Mahrkagir labored behind me. Darkness surged in waves as Kushiel bent low over me, murmuring a tender benediction over my averted face, offering. The diamond dangled from his hand, refracting light from myriad facets, filling my gaze as the awful pleasure rose and rose. . . .

. . . until I breathed in, sharply, uttering a broken cry, and the di amond fractured; light, Blessed Elua, the light, dazzling, a thousand stars, drawn in through my gasping mouth, spangling the very blood in my veins, bursting inside of me, opening a window onto a universe more vast, more unfathomable . . .

The Mahrkagir groaned and stiffened, his entire body going rigid with the force of his climax. When it was done, he slumped over me a moment, laying his face against my back, my fair skin adorned with the work of a master marquist, striped by the weals of a crop.

"Phèdre," he murmured, withdrawing from me. "Ah, Phèdre!"

Empty of him, Kushiel's presence deserted me. I curled on my side, willing the last agonizing throbs of desire to fade. With all pleasure gone, the pain came in its wake, and it was formidable. The Mahrkagir sat beside me and stroked my face, delighted with himself, with me. "You love me," he said. "At least a little bit. Is it not so?"

"It is," I said wearily, unable to lift my head. "At least a little bit. It is so, my lord."

"I knew it!" He rose from the sleeping pallet, heedless of the iron phallus still jouncing at his loins, unbuckling its straps. "This," he said, raising it reverently, tasting the mingled fluids that darkened it with the tip of his tongue. "This will be for you and no other."

"As my lord wishes." I looked away, unable to watch.

Ignoring me, he went to rummage in a chest, throwing aside sundry gifts of tribute; pelts, gold chains, a box of Bhodistani spices. "Ah!" Pleased at having found what he desired, the Mahrkagir returned to the bed-pallet, clutching in one hand a carved jade effigy of a dog. "Here," he said, presenting it to me. "It is a gift, for you. From Ch'in, I think. Because you are my favorite, now."

I made myself kneel, dragging my aching limbs into position, huddling against the cold shivers that had begun to overtake me. "My lord is too kind."

"Yes." He smiled at the scowling jade face of the dog, its fierce features. "There was a dog tonight, do you remember it burning?" I nodded, unable to speak for the lump of horror in my throat. "This is so you will not forget."

"I do not think, my lord," I forced the words out, "that I will ever forget tonight."

"I forget things." The Mahrkagir's unfocused gaze wandered about the room. "Tahmuras said I had a dog, once. It was in the zenana, where he found me. Someone had flung it against a wall. It had blood on its jaws, though." He laughed. "I think it bit an Akkadian."

"You remember nothing from before?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Only the weight of bodies piled atop me. There was a woman's face, so close." He put one hand against his nose. "She had been strangled, and her eyes bulged in their sockets. I could feel one touching my cheek. Maybe it was my mother, I don't know."

A horrible wave of nausea and pity swamped me, making my heart lurch oddly. "When I was four," I said, "I was sold into servitude in a brothel."

"And you were born again as something else." The Mahrkagir's face glowed with understanding. "Something more." He held my face with his cold, cold hands. "Your gods were shaping you, Phèdre. There are forces at work here I dared not dream. But Angra Mainyu knew! Oh, he knew. We are alike, you and I. I summoned you, through the three-fold path. You were made for me."