He was nineteen years old, and barely mortal. Trolling the streets for those older, wiser, perhaps just those more experienced than he was. Even before his transformation he had learned what power his body had over older men, older women. Afterwards there was a dangerous and half-wild look to him that many seemed to find appealing.

It wasn't something he had ever had experienced, never wanted, never even considered. The idea that sex could be used as a weapon had occurred to him when he had realized how much it hurt. The idea that the hurt could be inflicted in such pleasurable ways, that he could be twisted all upside down by something so simple as a touch. That was new. Everything about what happened to him was new.

She found him in a contingent of mercenary soldiers whom she had hired to guard her caravan as she traveled home. The first twelve days she watched him, did nothing but watch him, much to his bemusement and not a little bit of wariness. She studied him, and he was aware that he was being studied, what it felt like. Not for this purpose, though. He wasn't sure what she wanted, and it bothered him.

When she called him into her tent at the end of the day, with the city at least in sight although another day and a half to two days of travel ahead, he went with formal stiffness.

She talked to him. He only listened enough to answer any question put to him, to act as she directed. He started listening a bit more when she ordered him closer, close enough to feel her breath on his collarbone.

Her fingers undid the laces of his shirt without touching his skin, but the way the cloth slid over his body was titillation enough to send him shuddering. The air was cold at this time of the year, but by now he was used to it enough that he didn't flinch. No gooseflesh raised on his arms. She commented on it as she ran her hands over his arms, close enough to raise hairs, not close enough to touch. He noted her precision of movement and wondered if he could learn to match it.

She stepped back and gestured him forward, until they were on the bed. Or, at first, she was on the bed and he was next to it, and then she snapped something that was very like a command from an officer and he obeyed. He did everything that she told him too. Like a good little boy.

It was pleasurable. It was ecstasy, actually, especially compared to what had come before. Her mouth knew all sorts of tricks that he catalogued and learned as he arched and moaned, her hands taught his fingers where and how to touch. She brought him again, let him rest, showed him how to pleasure her in return. And then she brought him again. And then again.

She seemed to draw pleasure from his pleasure, and while he didn't understand why he wasn't going to question it now. In fact, he asked no questions except those he felt necessary to clarify what she wanted. He did not know what the questions were to which he wanted answers, although the most urgent of them could, he thought, be summed up as 'why?'

Afterwards she called him to her tent for two more nights, until they reached the city and his company took their leave of her. The soldiers teased him until his blandness and lack of response told them that he didn't know what they were talking about, and then they teased him even more for his ignorance. His virginity, they said, but in that at least he knew what they were talking about and knew that they had no idea what they were talking about, and let it go with a disdainful grunt.

But he had learned something, even if they hadn't. Something that he realized from their teasing and their comments that they had never known, or if they had they had discarded it as useless and unworthy of a warrior. He had learned a little more of the relations between people. Not between man and woman per se, although he now knew more about that than he had, never having had inclination to indulge his attractions before. But between people in general.

Later, he would seek her out, because she would have done worse to him if she had thought of it. Because she had been in control and he had not, and she had ordered him to her bed to perform as surely as he had performed for her as part of the mercenary company. With no expectation that he would disobey, with every assurance that he would be her perfect little pet.

He would not tolerate such expectations. He would not allow such mistaken assumptions to be supported by his silence. He obeyed the mercenary company and its officers because he had signed a contract. He obeyed their temporary superiors because the company had signed a contract. He was not a lapdog, a plaything, a toy for someone's amusement. He had renounced that part of his life when he was fourteen years old.

It was easy enough to find her. Easier still to convince her to let him in. He was always good at convincing people to let him in.

It took her only moments to realize the first level of what he intended to do. It took her a few hours to realize what lay underneath that. It took her a little longer to realize what the implications, the consequences, all that lay beneath and around his actions, and by that time it was too late. She never screamed. She begged, but she never screamed.

Morning came. She was still alive, something he had not intended at first but had never fixed on. This time, when he left, she would not dismiss him so easily.

"Look at him."

They laughed. The young man snarled.

He had been in the cage for three days while they traveled through a corner of the country that did not belong to his wolfen master. In the cage for three stinking days, with a corner for his filth and another for his bed and scraps tossed through the bars like an animal. He was not an animal. He was a thinking being, he could understand what they were saying even if they didn't think he could. He'd learned enough of the language for that.

Which was only even more galling. He spoke four languages now, three of them not native to any species that shared his mouth structure, and he spoke them well. And yet he was being displayed like some sort of pet, washed every day with a spray of water and a rag as though he was too stupid to wash himself. Given no clothes, nothing to warm himself but the bundle of grasses into which he huddled at night.

"Do you think he understands what we're saying?"

"Of course he doesn't. Hi yi yi, pink fleshy thing! Stupid beast." And there came the predictable stick, through the bars. He grabbed it and threw it back at the other creature, narrowly missing its, or his, head.

He wasn't supposed to do that, but it made him feel better.

"I think it heard you."

The other creature seemed shaken, at least. "Are you... it couldn't have heard me. It doesn't understand a civilized tongue..."

Whatever else they thought he did or didn't understand was lost as they moved past. Glaucon flopped back into the corner again and ignored them.

His wolfen master, whose name Glaucon was stubbornly refusing to even think, had said that this was the best and safest way to get his human servants through the land. Through this small ass-crack of land in a filthy corner of the world, travel was so unsafe for humans as to be deadly for all who were rumored to have attempted it. Or at least, that's what the master had said.

Glaucon didn't quite believe it, but he wasn't bold enough or stupid enough to try it on his own. And yet none of the other humans in the wolfen's pack, in his slave troupe or warbrand or whatever it was he was calling it today seemed to object to his treatment of them. Putting them behind bars like criminals. Feeding and watering them like animals.

Never mind.

He paced up and down in his cage at night, when the demented circus was asleep and there was nothing else to watch or disturb or throw things at him. It wouldn't be that hard to escape. He was thin enough to slip through the bars, something he wasn't sure but that might have been was an oversight in the wolfen's thinking.

But if he escaped he would have to content with a hundred times more dangers on the outside than he would inside, and that was what his wolfen master was counting on.

There was a lesson to be taken from that.

So, fine. He would be an animal on display for them. Maybe he would do something interesting like scratch himself or throw things back from his cage. And when they got out of this spit's worth of territory, he would re-take his status as a person. And then they would see who got stuck in the cage.

It hurt. Everywhere, all over, even his teeth hurt. Even his hair. He hurt in places he had never expected to feel pain and even that was a welcome relief from the pain of irretrievable loss.

He was, at the Captain's insistence, in the infirmary. What passed for it these days, at any rate. There were few healers remaining, after all those kidnapped or killed or fled for their own safety or simply returning to their homes, moving away from what was seen as a capital without a seat of government, a throne without a queen, a temple that no longer held its Goddess.

The finality of it rang in his head like a bell set to music and made his heart hurt. The Captain caught his look as he raised his head and turned from the table, frowning as best he could.

"If you are thinking of..."

His lip curled. "I am not so far gone as that."

Several of the higher guard had taken their own lives out of unthinking, blind and overpowering grief. Glaucon was not so convinced as the Captain that there was anything left to be done, but he had followed his Goddess out of faith in her. He would follow his Captain for the same reason, until it became clear that there was no more faith or hope to be had.

"Good."

For a creature with two great tusks sprouting from his mouth the Captain had a clear, interrupted way of speaking. Glaucon had asked him once out of curiosity only to be told, with what passed for a smile for the other creature, that he spoke the way birds do. He had puzzled that one out but there were still some expressions that he had never been able to decipher, some times when both his speech and his face were blurred underneath a layer of unfamiliarity with both his species and his deeper thoughts. The Captain kept things very close.

Now, of course, being one of those times, although Glaucon could agree that certain things it was important to keep secret, now more than ever. Among other things, what exactly had happened on that fateful, horrifying day.

"The days ahead will not be easy," the Captain looked at him once, gravely, and turned back to the table where he was preparing a poultice for the gash along his soldier's side. "We will have a great deal of work to do, all of it on short supplies of nearly everything except enemies."

"To do what?" But he was being sullen, and they both knew it. "Do you really except that we can ..."

"We must hold the empire." Only empire wasn't the word he used, but it translated well enough. When he had been his own warlord, Glaucon had never bothered to learn the speech of any of his slaves or servants. In service to his Goddess he had learned over ten new languages, stretching his mind in a way he had not thought possible since before he had died. "We have little else left, we must protect what we have."

There were arguments to be made against it, none of which he wanted to say out loud. But he had been, was still questioning whether or not what was left was worth protecting, after she was gone.

He nodded and let the Captain apply the poultice to the side, speaking words that served the same purpose for his mind and spirit. He was, after all, the Captain, a title that had been bought with a long list of merits and accomplishments rather than a heap of precious items. Glaucon allowed himself a tiny smile despite his usual inclinations. Some things had not changed at least. Grateful for the small things.

His arm was still in a splint for another day or two, after he'd rebroken it trying to use it too soon. That time the Captain had ordered it left to heal naturally, as a reminder not to be too impatient or impetuous. The gash in his side was more recent, but still the only other wound left on his body. He healed well, and swiftly. A natural advantage or one that he had acquired in his changes, he wasn't sure.

They walked through the hall, the Captain leading, the soldier following. Through the open spaces of the temple that was more maze than corridor. There were very few separations from room to room. All of it along the same lines in terms of function and even form, the kind of grace that had seemed strange to him when he had first arrived and now seeing the damage that had been done to the halls, even after the bodies were cleared away. It hurt to see. Everything hurt, now.

He stayed on bended knee until she indicated with barely a twist of her hand that he could rise. And then he stood straight and at attention, eyes never leaving the dais until she dismissed him. Perfect obedience in front of others was part of what made him a valued subject. He knew to show respect for his Goddess to others, and why.

Around the back, to the practice fields. He oversaw several impromptu lessons in hand-to-hand combat before the word came down that he was requested. The messenger didn't say about what, and he didn't ask. She wouldn't have told them, she would have expected him to know already, and he did.

They waited for him in the war room, table spread with notes and ideas covering an impression of the land around them wrought in metal, all of it fair useless for this. War was too often an exercise in bloodshed, and less than sufficient, efficient, for her purposes. It was called the war room for lack of a better name for it, and out of their impulses. She felt less of a need to name something so simple as a room.

"Your thoughts."

Most of the people in the room were of higher rank than he; those that were not, were equal. They were excellent at finding solutions for things, advising on when to push forward and when to lie in wait, experts on every type of terrain and sky and water, weather-witches and so forth. All of them with history on the continent from whence the messenger had come.

His expertise was somewhat different.

Today, as he had on several other days previous, he would prove that.

"The messenger displayed only the most cursory manners; he has the arrogance of believing that you will not punish him for this, either out of fear of his master or of your own sense of politesse and right. Since he did not otherwise show any kind of extensive knowledge as to your habits and mannerisms, it is more likely the former."

One or two of the other commanders curled a lip or wrinkled a brow at the idea that anyone would display less than absolute courtesy to their Goddess. It was not Glaucon's place to approve or disapprove, only to interpret.

"He was upset at the lack of response when he revealed his master's name. He is used to his rank and master being known wherever he travels, which I would further judge is not so far from home as he ventured today. His eyes stared while his face tried to keep the staring from our notice. There were several in the room whose races he did not recognize."

"Which ones?"

He rattled off six or seven names worthy of note, by which they could determine the borders of the messenger's experience. Not a locale last known to be under the dominion of the demon who the messenger purported to represent.

"Could he be lying?"

"It is possible he was mistaken, but he did not lie. He believed everything that he told us, up to and including the threat at the end." Glaucon shrugged, a tiny gesture that barely shook his isolate stance and expression.

"And they believe they can carry out this threat." That was derisive, and from one of the generals.

"Yes." Glaucon shook his head. "And it is possible that whatever force he chooses to muster might indeed give us troubles. At the moment there is too little information to determine, but I believe that he believes he has seen nothing here to contravene his self-confessed status as representatives of one of the largest empires in this and several other worlds."

No one looked terribly impressed with that belief.

He went on, speaking clear and with an even rhythm, beginning with the manner in which the messenger had arrived unexpectedly on their doorstep with a proposition, or an embassy, or a set of demands depending on how they decided his missive was to be taken. He wound his way through every moment for which he had been present, the man's impatience with being led through winding halls, his disdain for the plainness of it (Glaucon wondered, though not aloud, what on all the worlds the man could be used to if this was plain) and for what he saw as a lack of manners. Ending with his audience with the Goddess herself, for he had demanded no less, and what he had determined from that behavior.

"His arrogance is his weakness. He noted very little of the areas through which he passed to be brought to his audience, and even less so of the people who inhabited them. He will take back a report to his master, if we permit him so," that was directed more to his Goddess, at whose sufferance the messenger lived. "That will be full of criticisms over how he was treated and very little of tactical importance."

Which, he frowned, turning that over again, seemed a foolish thing for someone to do, who had made such an empire out of what was such a small holding, at first.

"He may be simply the showpiece, the person with whom we are to occupy ourselves while others play the servants and see more of how we live and in what numbers. I did not see anyone observing half so well in his retinue, but it is possible. And it would be likely, if his lord and master is half so clever."

"It is equally possible that he has become complacent," she said, and while her voice in this particular form was not given to great expression, he thought he could hear a note of scorn in it. "Take your rest, we will consider, and call you again when you are bathed and refreshed."

"As my Goddess commands."

He smiled a little, taking the statement for the command it was and heading first for the bathing rooms to clean off the offending sweat and grime. Capable as he was of battlefield decisions, he preferred to let the others determine how things would fall out if there was to be a war. Even a small one.

But his observations had been useful, he had seen that much. In the faces of the generals and soldiers, as they considered implications and questions he had raised about things they had taken for granted for perhaps many years. In the quiet approval of their Goddess, as she said little and learned much. There would be action as a result, and if he did not know what, now, he would learn soon. He sank into the tub with a little thrill of anticipation, a quiet moment of excited contentment and gratitude for his life in service to his Goddess.

There was something. There. On the edge of his consciousness.

"Go to sleep," she whispered. He did.

It hurt. Everything hurt, the tingling of limbs coming back to life, blood running at a pace it had not flowed in years. Maybe decades. His body was so atrophied it was barely recognizable as his own, even to him. His mind felt slow and sluggish and frustrated him almost to screaming. Nothing worked properly, not even his skin, flaking and disgusting as it was. He had become a tiny fraction of what he had been and it angered even more than it frustrated.

And it shamed him. That he had allowed himself to become so far gone, but it didn't seem to bother her. He wasn't exactly sure why.

She bathed his forehead while he took fever, shook it off, until the next one came. She fed him broth, which was all he could manage to let trickle down his throat and stay in his stomach for the moment. He thought he was awake for the space of two whole hours once and then he slipped back under again. His dreams, though, were more distant than they had previously been. Something to do with the real Goddess, his Goddess, there and alive and he being aware of her even unconscious.

He woke again and this time his eyes seemed clearer, the crust and pus lining underneath that usually caked them wiped clean. And his face was still damp, which explained that.

"Where am I?"

He spoke it to the empty room but she was still there in half a breath, sitting down next to him as though she might never have crossed a hall and a room in an instant.

She sat down next to him, brushing her fingertips through what was left of his hair. Bits of hair and what were very close to feathers, down, flaked out onto the pillows. He supposed that one of the side effects of being partly vulture demon was molting. Or it was simply the lack of nutrition. "You are in the home of an ally, safe. With me." She said it firmly, and she said it quietly, as though increasing her volume would incite him to attempt to speak in a normal voice, which it might have. "That is all you need concern yourself with at this time."

If he had been capable of it he might have nodded. He didn't, but his chin and eyes made the movement for him, at least as much movement as he was capable of. She understood his meaning. And they both shared a sense of welcome relief each at finding the other.

But having found her, he didn't want to lose her again. Every time he slipped back into unconsciousness, for what seemed like irritatingly long times and often enough to make him want to snap and snarl, he wondered that he might lose her. He asked, often enough that it would have (and did) tried even his patience, "Will you still be there when I wake again?"

"Of course."

If she was impatient or cross with him, she never said. Perhaps she understood more what it was like than she would have done in the past. They had both endured lengths of time alone, long enough to nearly go mad with the pain of it.

The thought gave him pause when he awoke again, wondering if it was really her. If it wasn't some dream that he was having, a stuttering fantasy that broke apart when he was truly awake and reoccurred when he was asleep. It might have been. He'd had such dreams in the past, long ones, ones he wished so hard had been real. The way a child might wish.

"Are you real?" he asked once, in a period of lucidity.

"I am," she told him. As though he hadn't asked her before. Or he might have only asked her in dreams, it was hard to be certain. "And you are real, and you are not dreaming or dead."

He must have asked her before; those sounded like the sorts of things he would have tried to have made sure of. He tried to nod again, and even managed a greater movement of the head. It was still hard to do much more than twitch his fingertips, though.

"I thought you were dead." It sounded more accusatory than he felt. He frowned, tried again. "I thought..."

"Rest," she told him. "No more questions." Not that it had really been a question. "I was dead, I am not any longer. But you were very near death, and you must recover a while yet."

He slipped away again.

In time he could even move his hands, curling them around a bowl of broth as she propped him up so that he could drink it. Still no solid foods yet, not even a proper soup, but at least he was something resembling upright, and drinking. It made him dizzy the first time he was tugged upright. But staying prone made it harder to drink. He would deal with the nausea if it meant getting out of the damn bed.

Unfortunately he sputtered up perhaps a third of the broth, still. And he didn't even have the strength to throw a pillow across the room.

It did make him scream, finally, when he had the strength for it. She didn't come running or look alarmed when she entered the room. She simply looked at him as if to ask if he needed assistance or was in any sort of pain, and then left again. He hated her a little for that, and then felt guilty when the frustration passed.

He slipped out of consciousness again, and then woke up. And then out again, and then up again and this time he was able to eat the broth without choking on it. An improvement, he thought.

The first time he swallowed solid food was a victory. He threw it right back up again, of course, but even holding it in his stomach for an hour or two was triumph enough for now. Back to broth. Spoonfuls at a time, and he was able to keep it down on almost every occasion. Nearly a month later he was allowed again to try solid food. Or, pseudo-solid, which was to say half-dissolved meat and mashed potatoes. He allowed himself four bites and then waited to see if it would return. It didn't. They celebrated a little bit that night.

The other side effect of eating solid food again was actual waste. He had to be helped up out of the bed and over to the toilet, and back in again. It frustrated and angered him until he realized that that meant his legs were getting exercise. Which meant...

He walked out, albeit with the aid of crutches, into the sun. It felt like opening his eyes again.