He lay flat on his back, the rhythmic, heavy swaying of the ship worsening the dull ache that throbbed behind his temples.

The air in the hold was thick with the scent of brine, old wood, and the cold air promising of rain.

"I will be sending my physician to you," Lucius had said the morning they embarked.

He had noticed Latio’s paleness, and thought it better to have the prisoner checked.

As it turned out that was the right choice, he had developed a high burning fever, which, had he remained with the hounds for another week, would have probably claimed his life and deprived them of their prize.

The physician was skilled, however, cooling his brow with damp cloths and forcing a bitter willow-bark concoction down his throat to dull the fire in his joints.

In two days he had notably improved, with only some dull aching in his head being all that remained of that sickness.

Latio knew he should have been relieved that his captivity had changed hands. He had clean sheets now, water that didn’t taste of waste, and his feet were finally beginning to heal. But the destination remained an immutable fact.

The scenery had improved, but the gallows at the end of the road had not moved an inch.

He was bound for his death.

The thought made his stomach churn with a fresh spike of anxiety that no willow-bark could soothe. When he was being marched like a dog by Rykio’s men, the sheer physical agony had been a distraction from the hopeless sky looming above him. Now, in the quiet of the cabin, the silence was an enemy.

He looked at his hands. They were free of the coarse ropes that had chewed his wrists to the bone, yet he felt even more of a prisoner now than when he was bound.

Lucius may not gloat it in his face, but he was still a captive.

In those first days with the Hounds, Latio had tried to bribe them. He had whispered of gold, of ransoms, of the vast wealth his father would pour into their laps if they simply turned their horses toward the south. He had tried to explain the hopelessness of their cause, the sheer weight of the League’s numbers. He had earned nothing for his trouble but a boot in the mouth for it.

He hadn’t tried it with Lucius. He had begun to understand the breed of men the Prince of Yarzat kept at his side.

"Blunt, brusque, cruel,loyal... simple soldiers at heart," Lucius had remarked when Latio finally found the strength to ask about the Hounds.

Latio couldn’t fathom how such a unit wasn’t a byword for infamy across the continent. Everyone knew the Prince of Yarzat was a "noble-slayer," and that the now-dead Egil had been his primary butcher, but the world assumed the rot started and ended at the top. Latio now knew better. The blackness was in the marrow of the rank and file.

"I was a soldier once too," Lucius had confided during one of the long evenings at sea, as the physician administered a dose of willow bark laced with oppium to combat the peak of the fever. Perhaps the boredom of the voyage had loosened even his tongue. "I have served with men possessed of the same souls as those who marched you. You would be surprised how easily a man can shed his humanity.

They will kill at a word, rape when the blood is hot after a breach, and then take their pay and sing songs by the fire."

Lucius had leaned back, his lake-like eyes fixed on the flickering candle’s light . "Then, after a lifetime of blood, they dream of going home. They trade the steel for a hoe, take a wife, and father half a dozen bawling children. Most of us dream of such an end, you know? And you, your father, and your allies, you tried to take that dream away.

Do not be surprised that they don’t have your best interests at heart. You are the embodiment of everything they hate. Yarzat is their home, and you sought to burn it.Their garden and you are but a pest."

Now, left alone in the belly of the vessel, Latio breathed shallowly through his mouth, trying to offset the rising nausea and the stale smell of the hold. A profound, tired dread settled over him. He felt the crushing weight of his loneliness, a cold realization that his death would be a footnote in a war that cared nothing for his name.

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, hot and shameful. He felt them about to spill, a final surrender to the dark. But he caught himself. He gritted his teeth, forcing the moisture back.

He wouldn’t let them see him weep. Not again.

He heard the sharp, rhythmic thud of boots echoing down the wooden stairs leading to his cabin. Latio sat up as best he could, masking his fear with the hollow shadow of a prince’s dignity long lost.

The thought made him laugh. Prince....yes the prince who would never be.

"I see your health has mended," a cold voice rang out from the top of the stairs, punctuated by the rhythmic, heavy thud of boots on old timber. "It would be a cruel jest of the gods to grant you life after you survived a week with our friends on horseback, only to let a fever take you now."

"Friends of your horse, perhaps," Latio croaked, his throat still hurting.

Lucius finally appeared as he descended the final three steps, the dim light catching the gold of his hair. "I brought a physician with me because I expected to be tending to stumps where limbs would have once stood, not soothing a brow. Rykio and his men have been... generously disciplined for their excess." He offered a small, wintry smile, his eyes trailing over Latio with the detached precision of a butcher with pig. "You look worse than I had hoped, but far better than I had feared."

"I saw what they did," Latio said, his breath hitching. "I saw how they scalped my men while they still breathed."

"Did you now?" Lucius asked, his tone flat, offering no apology for the world’s cruelty.’’What of it?

Latio tried to pull a mask of courage over his features, but it slipped and shattered the closer Lucius drew. The man radiated a stillness that was far more terrifying than Rykio’s loud savagery.

"How can your Prince allow such monsters at his side?" Latio demanded, his hands trembling a bit beneath the sheets.

"Every man in power requires a tool to be gripped when dealing with unsavory matters," Lucius said, stepping to the side of the bed. He sat in the chair the physician had occupied, his unblinking gaze roaming over Latio. "There is also the simple fact of sentiment. The Prince favors the Hounds because they are one of the few things left behind by one of his oldest friend, Egil. As long as they don’t get too jolly with someone they shouldn’t, the Prince finds it convenient to turn a blind eye.

They are, also, of course, exceptional warriors of great courage...but of course their ear-taking tradition is a bit of chilling, I admit...but it is a fine tool to sodomize enemies into fear. Just a tactic if you will...."

The casualness of the statement sent a shiver down Latio’s spine. Desperate to change the subject, he looked around the cramped, swaying cabin. "Is this how you did it?"

"How we did what, my Lord?"

"The ambush. How you moved two hundred riders through the heart of the province without being detected. You brought them by sea." Latio had turned the puzzle over in his mind for days. It was impossible for a force that size to remain hidden on open ground; the castles, the dust, someone should have seen them. Yet, the trap had closed around him as if the earth had simply birthed the Hounds.

"Oh," Lucius murmured, giving away nothing. He reached for a small vial on the bedside table and brought it to his nose, wincing as he caught the scent. "It seems the doctor went heavy on the opium.And seeing how you are able to speak....’’ he sighed ’’ Perhaps that is why he is working for me instead of the high legions. Ah... I truly hate my job.Can’t even have a proper medic."

"Don’t hide behind a drunk’s medicine," Latio pressed, though he knew his authority was a phantom. "How could you do it? There is no way you could have moved ships large enough for two hundred mounts without being stopped at the port of Pardum."

"There are many roads through a mountain, my Lord. Only because you see one path doesn’t mean the others don’t exist. If you cannot move the mountain, a single stone moved at the right time is enough." Lucius leaned forward, his eyes boring into Latio’s. "What prohibits a ship from passing unbothered? Usually, it is just the pride of one man and the heavy purse of another. Corruption is the swiftest galley in the world."

He gave a small pleased smile.

Latio felt a cold sinkhole to the man’s honesty. A man didn’t reveal the secrets of his logistics to someone he expected to see at dinner in a month’s time. He only told these things to the dead.

Latio settled back into the thin mattress, the realization anchoring him in a dark sort of peace.

"Why are you here?" he then asked quietly. "To gloat over me as your friends on horseback did?"

"Perhaps I just wished to see how you fared," Lucius replied smoothly. He reached out and adjusted the blanket, pulling it up toward Latio’s neck with a gesture that was almost tender, but really was just insulting. "You are, after all, an incredibly important guest. Some would be most displeased if you arrived at our destination looking like a common beggar."

Latio just stared at him, his eyes hollow.

"But I am also here to offer you something.

Something you may find much more worthwhile than a lecture on ships and how we did that or this...but of course it would be most apt before that , to have you made informed of some regards entailing your cousins, not really pleasing for you, I fear."