“Let her soul be pierced and made open. Let her womb be warmed to receive my spirit and Yours.” His head swam. He closed his eyes to concentrate. Through the fires of Sheul, each word seemed alive with significance and nuance, like the girl herself. He could feel her hands pulling at him, lost in her own fires, and his heart swelled with sudden affection for her. “If it be Your will, raise her up with Your blessing and give her the gift of new life,” said Meoraq, and found that he meant it, which he very rarely did these days, a subject of much meditation when he was at his prayers.

Sheul heard, and perhaps His mortal son’s sincerity pleased him, for He blessed her. She flung her head back in a silent, eerily graceful arc, the top of her head slapping home against his chest and pressing hard, outwardly motionless in the grip of Sheul’s blessing while her small body bloomed with exquisite heat. Meoraq cupped her jaw and breathed into her gasping mouth just as his own fires overwhelmed him. He came, offering his seed and spirit for Sheul to do as He willed.

The moment could not last, and when it ended, Meoraq nuzzled her head aside and made his mark upon her. She flinched, which made the bite quite a bit deeper than he otherwise would have wanted, but the marks of his teeth were distinct and that was what mattered.

“Now you are mine,” said Meoraq formally and licked the wound to stop its bleeding.

Her answer was a wordless mewl—the sort of soft, feminine sound that girls are coached early to make when their man requires no special reply, and which Meoraq had always found personally to be repulsive, a cringing animal sound that did not belong in any person’s mouth, much less the mouth of a person he had just been joined to sexually.

Meoraq resheathed himself and stepped back, holding her arm until she steadied and seeing to it that her skirts fell properly. He’d had more than one conquest wander out into the hall with her skirts tucked into her girdle and her freshly-opened slit exposed and glistening for all the world and her own father to see.

“Thank you, honored one,” said the girl, bowing. “May the House of Arug be strengthened by the blood of conquest.”

‘That is a flat head,’ thought Meoraq, studying it with a weary eye as he dressed. A churlish thought, unworthy of a Sheulek. Oh, she was polite and earnest—not that earnestness was a particularly desirable trait in a woman—and pretty enough from the brows down. If she struck him as a bit vapid, that could be just her youth and the sheltered life of any high-born girl (and if not, well, most men found a streak of stupidity a charming quality in a woman. Many women actually feigned it whenever circumstance forced them into a man’s company, often to such a degree that Meoraq couldn’t stand to be around them at all).

They were waiting in the hall and all made the appropriate sounds of subdued respect to see the mark upon the girl’s shoulder. Her father took her back with pride and perhaps even a gleam of avarice, and why not? If she did nothing else in her life, still she had received Sheul’s fires and her womb would be strengthened immeasurably. In fact, it was not impossible that she might conceive of Meoraq, even from just this one encounter. And if the child opened up male and Meoraq had no wife, Arug had every reason to expect his daughter to be taken in, flat head and all, and installed in House Uyane where she would give glorious birth to the sons of one who would be that bloodline’s steward in his own time. If the father of such a woman were the doting sort, he certainly had the right to visit her in her husband’s House…where he could expect rooms and servants and other such amenities…for however long he chose to stay…for years, if the lord of the House were not so vulgar as to throw him out.

Meoraq was not a vulgar man, but he did have every intention of dying long before he was made to assume his father’s place. Ha. Let Arug call on his House all he pleased. Rasozul would throw him out on his snout without a moment’s regret.

“House Arug thanks you for your service, honored one. Let me extend the humblest and most sincere invitation of hospitality. Please, come to my House tonight,” said the steward, actually patting at his daughter’s bent back as he made the offer. Meoraq thought it very likely that if he accepted, he would find Tem tucked away in his cupboard like a spare cushion. Perhaps she had been a virgin—maidenly panic could be contrived and he was experienced enough in the ways of women to know that he had surely been deceived before—but her virginity had served its purpose and now it seemed Lord Arug was eager to see it well and truly rubbed away.

“I understand Ni’ichok Shuiv leaves his woman and a child to your House,” Meoraq said bluntly. “You will keep them.”

Arug hesitated, his smile fading before he forced it broadly back. “House Arug is honored to care for the mother of her champion’s son.”

“I will return to see the child placed at the appropriate time.” Meoraq inclined his head toward heaven. “If Sheul wills that I should return. If not, I suppose I must trust you.” His gaze shifted to the bailiff. “I require a witness.”

The bailiff bent his neck briefly and produced a tablet and stylus.

“I want the woman’s rooms inspected,” said Meoraq, his eyes back on Arug. “Regularly. She is owed the respect of a Sheulteb’s wife. She is also owed a widow’s stipend. See that it is not misplaced into her father’s coffers.”

Lord Arug kept smiling, but his spines were very low, visibly shaking with the effort not to flatten them completely. “She shall be kept as one of my greatest treasures,” he said. “You may see her chambers for yourself, if you like.”

“I prefer to stay in the Temple,” he said. Which was true enough, and also more tactful then commenting aloud on the man’s perceived willingness to turn his daughter into a common dip for the first Sheulek who came along.

Arug bowed to conceal his obvious disappointment—that’s rather a flat head as well—and withdrew with Tem. She looked back once, shyly seeking his eye until her father hissed and yanked her hood down. Then they were gone.

“You may show me to my room,” said Meoraq, prodding at his wound. The edges had sealed beneath his scales, but it still ached abysmally and would probably swell and bleed again by morning if it were not properly cleaned and tended. He was tempted to neglect it. Shuiv had seemed a good man and a brave warrior; Meoraq was not ashamed to wear his last scar.

The bailiff merely bowed, rather than walking ahead of him down the hall. “Forgive me, honored one, there is a dispute awaiting your judgment.”

Of course there was. Tothax was not the most remote city in the world, but it was easily the most remote on Meoraq’s circuit. On his last visit, there had been four disputes awaiting his judgment, one of them half a year old and so entirely irrelevant by the day of Meoraq’s arrival that he had been divinely compelled to slap both parties across their petty-minded faces before walking into the arena. But however many disputes there might be awaiting him, it was customary to separate them over the course of many days. To judge two trials in a single night, so soon after his long journey, bordered on insult.

His temper flared, but six breaths brought him reason. Just because the first of their disputes had been a paltry one did not mean they were all so. And besides that, Meoraq’s blood was still warmed by battle and a second fight had its appeal (as well as the promise of a second conquest once the fight was done, perhaps even with a pretty woman, or at least one who had a properly-shaped head). In either case, he was Sheulek, and it was his duty and his privilege to serve Sheul, no matter the hour or the inconvenience to his mortal clay.

“Then I will hear it,” he told the waiting bailiff, but he took six more slow breaths before he followed. He loved God and would never question His commands, but there were times he wished he was not quite so often in His eye.