“Which one is Ito?” David asked quietly, as they passed through the still wide-open gates of the camp.

Greg looked around. “Don’t think he’s on duty yet,” he said after a moment. “They change when the gates close.”

David ran a hand over the bars of one of the huge cages Greg was supposed to spend the next hours in. It didn’t even have some straw or anything to make it a little more comfortable while he was human. And he could only see two cages, one on either side of the gates.

“How many werewolves are still around?” he asked after a moment.

“Six,” Greg said. “There’re cages on each wall of the camp.”

He started walking up and down across the path leading to the train station.

“I hate full moon,” he muttered after a while, but other than that, they didn’t speak. There was nothing to say, really. David would have liked to hear more about this pack that had been mentioned several times, but he had a feeling that Greg didn’t want to talk about them right now.

They hadn’t been out long when a single werewolf walked up to the gates, already in his wolf form: a huge beast with an unusually light brown, almost sand-coloured coat.

“Boris,” Greg said through gritted teeth.

David wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a greeting or information for him. “Big guy,” he said noncommittally.

“Yeah,” Greg muttered. “Funny, cause as a human he’s kinda small.”

“Part of the pack?”

Greg nodded and eyed the other werewolf nervously. Boris had halted about fifteen yards away from them, on the other side of the path. He wasn’t looking at Greg though. He was staring at David, wide-eyed and panting. After a second, he turned around and ran away.

“You don’t like each other?” David asked.

Greg huffed and shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said quietly. “I thought we were friends. Reckon that was my mistake though.” He paused and added: “But why would he run away?"

“Probably scared of me,” David said and stared after the other werewolf. He hoped things would work out here. Greg had never really had that many friends of his own, and especially not of his own age and peer group. Of course, David had no idea what age “Boris” was as a human. But he was still likely to be closer to an equal of Greg’s than Mr. Higgins was these days, wasn’t he?

David couldn’t help but wonder what exactly had happened between Greg and this pack, but Greg was already so agitated that he decided to ask him later.

After a while, Boris returned to wait but made no move to come closer. In fact, he kept the cage between them the whole time. Greg started pacing back and forth again, now alongside the short road to the station, instead of across it.

Right before the sun vanished completely, a row of six guards walked through the still open gates: four of them carried halberds that looked like they were silver-tipped. The last two each held a big key. The guards with the halberds watched over their backs while the two with the keys each opened one of the cages.

Greg nodded towards the guy with the key who had opened his door for him.

“Midnight, remember,” the man said, and then turned to look at David: “Are you going to stay out here?”

“I’ll keep him company,” David affirmed.

“Okay,” the man said. “We can’t let you back inside, though, till sunrise.”

“That’s fine,” David shrugged. “Mind if I build a fire?”

The guard gave him a strange look. “Do as you like out here,” he said after a moment. “Just don’t set anything important on fire.”

Boris whined softly, already inside his cage.

Greg entered his own cage slowly, clearly reluctant. “This is going to be fun,” he grumbled.

David sat down on the ground while Ito locked the cage after him. After a few seconds, Greg followed his example. He sighed deeply and leaned his forehead against the bars.

“Thanks,” he said quietly after a moment.

“Didn’t Nathan stay with you like this?” David asked.

“Never spent a night in these cages,” Greg said.

David waited a few seconds, and Greg did explain: “The other camps aren’t like this. We always spent full moon out in the forest.”

David eyed him carefully in the gloom. Greg was shaking, visibly struggling. Even more than he when they had last gone through this. Of course, that had been in the drawing room of Heron Hall, not a cage.

“Do you want me to keep talking or keep quiet?” David asked after a few seconds.

“Tell me – tell me more about you and Lane,” Greg muttered through gritted teeth. “I mean – what the hell?”

David smiled wryly. “It was her idea,” he said and began to explain all about how George Louis had threatened her, how the same threat, though unspoken, hung over his own head.

At first, David was worried about the other werewolf, just a few yards away from them, catching his voice, but Boris was pacing in his cage and throwing himself against the bar, growling almost incessantly. Even if he did hear anything about the noise he was making, David had no doubt that he wouldn’t remember any of it the next morning. And no guard would hear him over that racket.

“You said,” Greg managed through his clenched teeth, “you said you won this.”

“Oh, yes,” David said, grinning. “Let me get some wood,” he added.

“Keep talking?” Greg asked.

“Sure,” David said. “See, Lane has a lot of nobles hoping for her favour. There’s her land, her title, the fame, and let’s face it, she’s not exactly ugly, either.”

There were splinters of wood and larger pieces from when the palisades had been built all around them. He picked up a handful of smaller logs, and went on: “There’s Count deVale, for example, some viscounts, too. Much higher ranking than me, in any case. So if Lane had just announced that her mourning period is over, I’d have pretty much had to get in line.

So instead, Lane claimed that she’d only accept courtship from a man who could beat her at hunting,” David continued. “Like in the legends.”

“Atalante,” Greg whispered.

“Exactly,” David said. “So she made an announcement at the Flower Dance.”

“Classy,” Greg chuckled darkly.

“Quite so,” David said, and pulled out his lighter. Even after the rain earlier today, it wasn’t too hard to get the fire going. “And then we all gathered the next day at the edge of the Royal Forests – all the interested guys and Lane – and we went to hunt a lynx. I mean, I hunted a lynx. DeVale came back with a fox, but anyway, that made it sort of official and kept everyone else out of our business.”

David shrugged. “Mind you, we probably could have saved ourselves the trouble, since d’Evier raised the Rot just a day later. I reckon after that most people have lost interest in the gossip anyway.”

“Don’t count on it,” Greg said, stretching out his hands between the bars, to get closer to the fire David was building. “Werewolves are strange and scary. I bet lots of people prefer a good old fashioned scandal like the countess running off into the forest with some baron’s son.”

David grinned at that. “Yeah, you might be right about that,” he said. “Anyway, now it’s official.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

In the cage next to them, Boris threw his head back and howled, and for a second, David was sure Greg would lose it. He could see Greg’s hands starting to shift in the firelight, fingers shortening, palms growing longer.

“Mum?” Greg asked, eyes closed. “Dad?”

“Oh, they’re fine,” David said. “Dad and Andrew are in Deva right now, if they didn’t go back to Courtenay already.”

“Tell them?” Greg interrupted.

“Did I tell them? I told Dad. Most of it, in any case. Andrew already knew about me and George Louis, but he and Dad were there when Lane challenged her suitors to the hunt. So yes, they know.”

“The duke,” Greg prompted him to keep talking. “How did that...”

“Happen?” David guessed when Boris howled again and Greg broke off.

Greg shook his head. “End,” he managed after a few seconds. “You – don’t like him. Now.”

“Ah,” David sighed. He would have preferred to think about that answer a little longer, but Greg was staring at him anxiously. “Remember how I told you that George had two of my friends killed to become duke?”

Greg nodded.

“Lester and Clarence,” David said, staring into the flames. “George handed them to the Inquisition on a silver platter. Then he watched, while they got stoned. I have no idea, how he could... They were his friends, too, I thought.”

“Why?” Greg asked.

“Why did he do it? I can only guess. There was a rumour, back then,” David added. “Supposedly – well, see, this all happened ten years ago. George Louis had just returned from his stint at fighting the Kujawen tribes in the east, back when he was still Marquess of Mannin, not Duke. He only stayed at the border there for a few months, but he always knew how to make friends, and he managed to make it look like he was this really efficient military leader, loyal to the Empire, and all that. And the Roi Solei, well, I guess he fell for it. I’m sure he only made George Louis a duke because he was hoping to get a better hold on the northern regions of Loegrion, you see?”

Greg nodded.

“In any case, rumour has it that the Church’s higher-ups demanded proof of his loyalty to Mithras, and—Lester and Clarence, they were poets. Together, they founded this little ‘reading circle,’ as Lester called it. It wasn’t really my thing.”

He’d been interested in neither poetry nor the politics.

“You know these kinds of groups, don’t you?” he added, looking at Greg. “Handful of young nobles who write bad poetry and make each other suffer through it?”

Greg nodded with enough vehemence at the description to make David smile.

“Well, except the one Lester and Clarence founded was a little different. They had put up some pretty successful amateur plays, so nobody thought anything about them founding a reading circle, but they didn’t just draw in wannabe poets. Like I said, George Louis went there, too, and other people with even wilder dreams. You see, what Lester and Clarence were best at, really, was satire. Especially about the Church and the Roi Solei.”

David took a deep breath. He still couldn’t quite believe the two of them had been foolish enough…

“That was what Lester and Clarence took to their little reading circle. I guess they were feeling pretty safe because Lester’s family was quite powerful... So yeah. They could have stuck to the poetry and plays, but no. They read their lampoons there.”

Greg shuddered in his cage.

David poked the fire again. “It didn’t take long for word to get around. There’s always someone who can’t keep their mouth shut. Thing is, Lester’s family really was influential. So much that the Church couldn’t move against them with only hearsay to base their accusation on. So the rumour has it that the Church demanded that George Louis testify against Lester and Clarence, or they would oppose his promotion.”

“And he did.”

“He didn’t just testify, he handed over one of their texts to High Inquisitor d’Evier, too. It’s pretty hard to argue against your own handwriting. So Lester and Clarence were sentenced for blasphemy, lèse-majesté, profanity, and anything else the Church could make stick.”

David grimaced. “One of the charges was sodomy, rather ironically, since Lester and Clarence weren’t actually together, or even interested in guys.”

David took a deep breath. “George Louis on the other hand was crowned a duke,” he finished. “He had the gall to apologise to me, afterwards. I told him where he could stick it and left Deva Castle. Managed to avoid him until Nathan and I ran into him while we were looking for you last year.”

“Think he was already planning to become king, back then?” Greg asked.

“Yes,” David said. “From all I heard, everything he’s done during those ten years had the only aim to further his influence here in Loegrion. And more people died when they got into his way.”

Greg looked at him questioningly, head tilted like the Morgulon when she had a question.

“Who?” David shrugged. “Aren’t you the one who was supposed to go to parliament?”

He grinned when Greg rolled his eyes at him.

“Yeah, I know, you were just a kid,” David added. “Let’s see. The first one to die—even before Lester and Clarence—was probably Lord Felton. Marquess Felton of Deeshire. He was the other guy who had a chance to become a duke here in Loegrion. He really was a military man, had spent years and years fighting at the eastern border. Most sadly, George Louis and his men didn’t reach his emplacement fast enough, when the Kujawens threatened to overrun him.”

David shrugged. “It might have really been bad luck,” he added. “But there’s just a touch too much of it surrounding George for it to be nothing but luck, I think. After Marquess Felton, there were Lester and Clarence and a couple of other members of their little club, and next, there was George Louis’s wife, Annabelle. Sure, it might have been just a normal fever that took her. But the timing was weird, you know? Most women who die in childbed do so soon after the kid is born, right? Not four months later. And considering that I’m pretty sure George didn’t love her... And she had already given him an heir.”

David shrugged. “As I said, maybe I’m painting him a much worse devil than he is. But I know for sure he was behind the accusation of treason against Lord Stenton. Mind you, that wasn’t a false accusation, but I mean—George Louis is way beyond committing treason at this point.”

David sighed and poked his little fire. The wind was getting stronger, and more rain was in the air. “Guess I shouldn’t talk,” he said after a moment. “How many innocent people did I kill?”

He wished he hadn’t voiced the thought, not with Greg fighting the monster inside himself so successfully. Thinking of all the werewolves David had killed probably wouldn’t help him keeping calm.

“You didn’t do it for power,” Greg said.

“No, I did it for money,” David laughed darkly. “Much more noble.”

“Do you know?” Greg asked.

“Know what?”

“Any that were sane, for sure.”

“No,” David sighed. “We really didn’t take those contracts. But how much difference does that even make? Innocent till proven guilty, and all that? But not when I‘m on your trail, then it’s the other way round?”

“You going to stop?” Greg wanted to know.

David stared into the darkness. A few heavy drops were starting to fall, but he hardly noticed. “I have no idea what I’d do with myself if I did,” he said after a moment.

“Good,” Greg said quietly.

David turned around to stare at him in surprise. “Good?”

“They’re making more werewolves, aren’t they?” Greg whispered. “And then they send them here, and then some of them go mad. And I don’t...” He buried his face in his arms. “I never want to do that again,” he whispered.

“We can probably hang around,” David said slowly. “Until they’ve sent you reinforcements, I mean. Don’t know if we can stay for four months, though.” He frowned. “On the other hand, I’m sure Lane will want to check on Morgulon. Maybe we’ll go back and forth for a while. We’re supposed to look for other elder werewolves, maybe we’ll get something out of Morgulon.”

Greg’s head snapped up. “How do you know...”

David looked at him surprised. “Know what?” he asked. “That werewolves can somehow sense each other? Fenn talked about it. And then we asked Lee about it, and he said it was another thing that gets stronger with age. Why?”

Greg bit his lips. “Bernadette said—but I’m not supposed to tell anyone...”

He rubbed his face. “The Morgulon visits the other elders,” he muttered after a while. “Those that live in the mountains, and beyond Mannin,” he added. “But humans are not supposed to know, I guess. That’s why she hasn’t told anybody about it. Maybe she thinks it should be their choice or something like that.”

“It should be their choice,” David said. “Especially since it doesn’t look like George is going to be reasonable about this.”

“About what?” Greg asked.

“About treating werewolves as anything but animals,” David grumbled.

Greg looked a little confused. “It’s fine out here,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what it’s like in the cities, of course, but the navvies all seem to have gotten used to having us around. Even Captain Reed. Maybe even a little too much, in his case,” Greg added. “It’s more like we’re specialists. Foreign specialists, you might say, with weird rituals they can’t really make sense of, but vital to the whole endeavour, anyway.”

“Interesting,” David said.

“Why didn’t you quit earlier?” Greg asked suddenly. “You could have gone to university, too, court, something. I mean, if you knew it was wrong.”

David poked the fire again, which was guttering in the rain. Heavy drops ran down his face, and he blinked them out of his eyes.

“I thought about it,” he said finally. “While George Louis and I were—well, not courting. But seeing each other. I considered staying with him. But then I had to get out, and... at first, I was scared, scared that George would turn me over to the Inquisition, too. Hunting took me away from people, into areas where the Church doesn’t reach. And—well. It’s so much easier to forget that what you’re doing is wrong when you’re welcomed, no, worshipped like a hero everywhere you go.

And anyway, I didn’t want to go back to court, I’m not really the merchant or scholarly type, and fighting for the Empire against some far-away people seemed no more justified than killing werewolves.”

David shrugged. “The first time I ever wondered about quitting again was when Andrew said he would. Six weeks later you got bitten, and here we are.”

“It’s too bad Andrew never did get to go to university in all this mess,” Greg sighed.

“At least he’s got a chance to do so later,” David said. He stared up into the black sky. There was no moon visible up there, no stars. “Must be close to midnight,” he said. “Can’t be sure in this weather, of course.”

Greg sighed. “Should have brought some food,” he said.

David watched him carefully. He looked tired by now rather than agitated. Boris in the other cage was still fighting against his prison, but Greg seemed to be better able to keep his shape than earlier.

“Maybe we can find some shelter in the woods, once they let you out,” David offered.

If someone really would leave the safety of the camp to free Greg.