"Down! Down!" Emel yelled.

Magiere descended, taking the steps three at a time. As they rushed into the lower corridor, Chap ducked into an archway along the passage and whirled about, looking for Emel.

The baron ran down the corridor toward Chap, and then he pitched sharply forward to sprawl on the stone floor.

Faris crouched atop him. Out of the dark passage, Ventina leaped over her mate. Her front paws touched down, and she swerved through the first archway toward Magiere.

Chap let his canine nature take hold. He bared his teeth and lunged forward into Faris's snarling face.

Darmouth couldn't remember a night of so much stupidity. Even Omasta had failed him, and he was one of the few to whom Darmouth gave his full trust. The raid on Byrd's inn found the place empty. Now some lack-beard guard from the bridge burst in with a muddled message of escaped prisoners and a breach of the keep.

"What-Lady Progae is gone?" Darmouth shouted. "And what breach? Make sense!"

The young man cowered, lowering his eyes. "Faris came running out to see if we'd admitted or released anyone. I told him Devid brought in that count and his manservant, but they never came back out. When Devid came out, he rushed off into the city, saying that you'd sent for him.

"How, if I'm still here?" Darmouth asked, and his voice grew louder in frustration, "Where is Faris? Where is that useless trash? Find him!"

Omasta stepped to the hall's archway, looking out. "My lord, if the keep is breached, we must get you to safety."

"No-I want Andraso," Darmouth growled. "That outlander and his servant are the only breach here. Andraso must be working with the hunter, and Emel will answer for it. And Devid will be crows' food on the city wall!"

Darmouth pushed past Omasta toward the archway. A bestial roar and hiss echoed through the keep from the south corridor.

Omasta raised his arm in front of Darmouth. "My lord, please. If Faris… He wouldn't take such action inside the keep, in plain sight, without great need. We must get you to safety."

Omasta's concern did move Darmouth. It was the reason he'd never punished his lieutenant, even when the man faltered. And his bastard son's failures were rare. Omasta was sensible and skilled, like his sire.

"Take six more men oft" the keep walls," Darmouth said. "You'll need them."

"And you will let me secure you away?" Omasta insisted. "In time! Now call those guards."

When Westiel felt certain he was safe from discovery, he silently stepped down the stairway behind the counsel hall's tapestry. The wolfhounds followed.

At the bottom was an opening covered by a heavy cloth. He touched it, realized it was the backside of another tapestry, and let his senses reach beyond the fabric. He detected nothing living beyond and lifted the tapestry aside. The hounds trotted out ahead of him.

Welstiel stood in an empty room with a door in the far wail. I here was only an old wooden chair and a table strewn with broken quills. The tapestry was too faded and worn to make out anything but the oak-leaf pattern along its border. Then he heard snarls and cries, and the roar of a predator.

Welstiel reached the door and slid open its metal peephole shutter to look out. He tensed at the scream of a raging cat. It took two blinks to truly grasp what he saw.

Magiere rolled across a stone floor between stacked crates and barrels, tangled with an enormous brown-black cat. Lees was nowhere in sight, but to the right through a set of archways, Chap lunged into a second feline. The two animals tumbled off the back of Baron Milea.

Welstiel looked back to Magiere.

She snarled as savagely as the beast that grappled with her. One upper arm bled through claw tears in her wool sleeve beneath the hauberk. She had abandoned her sword and stabbed at the cat with a dagger. The cat thrashed so rapidly it countered every swing of her blade.

The baron regained his feet but looked unsteady.

Welstiel could lose Magiere here and now, but he could not allow himself to be seen. He looked about the room for anything he might use, and his gaze fell upon the wolfhounds.

They might not last, but they could give Magiere time and advantage.

Welstiel focused, calling upon the dogs' dormant predator nature. That latent ancestry lay suppressed beneath generations of domestication, but some spark of the beast buried within them was necessary for his effort to work.

He built an image of the great cats in his own mind. One hound bared its teeth with a growl, and the other quivered as it inched toward him.

Welstiel ducked behind the door as he pulled it open, and the hounds rushed through.

Hunger burned strength into Magiere, and instinct was all that kept her dodging Ventina's quick and fluid strikes. Each time Magiere lashed out with the dagger, Ventina's muscles shifted rapidly, and the cat aimed another slash of her claws.

Magiere heard Chap's snarls, but Paris yowled with equal rage from beyond the storage room's archways.

She twisted right on the floor, as Ventina slammed a large paw down toward her face, then whipped back and stabbed for the cat's throat. Her dagger sank into Ventina's shoulder, and the cat squalled in pain. Magiere rolled free, scrambling to her knees with the dagger poised. Ventina tried to lunge, but her foreleg wouldn't hold, and she stumbled.

Growls rang out behind Magiere, and she glanced toward the sound.

Two wolfhounds rushed between stacked crates, and despair crippled Magiere's rage. She heaved herself backward to her feet.

Emel was up again, and Magiere shouted, "Watch Chap's back!"

She steeled herself as the lead hound charged toward her. It barreled straight into Ventina, and the second dog leaped to the top of a wide crate. As Ventina roared and twisted about at her new attacker, the second hound leaped from the crate toward Paris.

Magiere hesitated in confusion.

Ventina's hindquarters became exposed when she turned on the hound, and Emel stepped in, straight saber gripped two-handed. He rammed the blade through her back.

Its point came out the bottom of her rib cage. She squalled and crumpled to thrash wildly upon the floor.

Magiere rushed out the nearest archway into the passage. Faris faced both Chap and the second wolfhound, but Magiere saw no way to join in the narrow space. Chap looked as feral as he had the day at the Stravinan border. He snapped like a wild animal.

The wolfhound had landed behind Faris, and the cat was boxed between the two dogs. It clamped its jaws on Faris's hind leg. As the cat twisted back to snap at the hound, Chap lunged in. His teeth closed on Faris's throat just below his jaw, and Chap thrashed his head wildly.

Blood spattered the wall and floor as Faris's throat tore away. Chap leaped to the side, the silver fur of his face stained red and dripping.

Faris's panicked yowl ended in strangled choking. He collapsed, squirming, with the wolfhound still tearing at his leg.

Magiere saw Faris's fur begin to recede.

His body writhed within his skin as if another form hid within it and struggled to emerge. Fur on his head grew to dark hair as his one ear slipped down the side of his elongating head. The more he changed, the feebler his movements became.

Faris's naked body lay dead before Magiere, with the torn muscle and sinew of his throat still leaking blood across the stone floor.

"Stop," Magiere shouted at the wolfhound.

Her voice sounded clear to her own ears, and her teeth had shifted halfway back to normal. With the change came returning fatigue and a burning ache in her left arm where she'd been clawed.

Someone coughed.

Magiere stepped through the archway toward the strangled weeping among the crates and barrels. Ventina had changed as well and lay naked with Emel's blade through her back. She tried to gasp air while tears ran down her face.