"They like me," Dar smiled, scratching the drake under the chin fondly. "It looks like the next object is a ways off. Looks like we'll be marching some more," he sighed.

"This will be the last one," Camara Tal said as they started out. "It's well past midnight, and we'll need to get back so we can get some sleep. We don't want to walk into tomorrow's performance sleeping on our feet. That fat circus master will get mad at us."

"He's not that bad," he protested.

"You're not the one he tried to get into a couple of well placed thongs," she grunted.

"Pardon my asking, but why did that bother you?" he asked. "I remember what you said about why you dress the way you do, and you've never seemed all that shy to me. Did that costume bother you that much?"

"It bothered me that he didn't ask," she replied bluntly. "I still wouldn't have worn it, though. I'll not be paraded around like a love slave."

"I doubt anyone would have made that mistake," he told her. "They'd probably still dream, though."

Camara Tal chuckled. "You've been hanging around us too long, kid," she smiled at him. "You talk like a veteran sailor, not a young pup."

Dar smiled slightly. "I'm Arkisian, Camara Tal," he said. "Our society isn't quite as, inhibited, as the other Western kingdoms."

"You make me sound like an old maid, kid," she grinned. "Call me Camara. Calling me Camara Tal is the same as if you were saying 'Mistress Camara.' We only call someone by their family name if we don't know them well enough to drop it. I think you know me well enough by now."

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence," he said with a faint blush.

"I'm surprised that you're not as innocent as some of them think you are," she noted with a wink. "All the girls in the circus would strip naked and dance in front of you if you gave them half a reason."

"I know," he replied simply. "I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so I pretend to not know what they're trying to do. That way nobody gets hurt."

"Sounds like you've got a girl," she said. "That, or you have more self control than any teenage boy I've ever seen in my life."

"Not really," he replied with a deep blush. "Just someone I'd like to get to know better."

"Does this girl have a name?" she pressed, looking down at him.

"You don't know her, Camara Ta-uh, Camara. She's in the Tower. Her name is-"

"Tiella," she finished. "The Selani told me about her when she was telling me about what happened before I got here. She helped you out in the Tower."

"Yes, Tiella. She's a nice girl, but sometimes I worry about her. The Tower's not a very safe place right now."

"I remember them saying that too," she told him.

The pair followed the medallion's lead through the streets of Dala Yar Arak, Camara Tal keeping track of where they were as Dar held up the medallion. They continued to talk about little things as they moved, moved past rich nobles and merchants travelling in their litters or carriages, surrounded by their guards, or the trios or groups of off-duty mercenaries or soldiers, past thieves, pickpockets, harlots, and street people who milled about in the night, seeking customers, victims, or food. Just about every Arakite eye wandered over the Amazon's body, and all of them immediately looked to her neck or wrist, where a replica of a slave cuff was resting on her right wrist. More than one man seemed to size them up for what they were carrying, but the Amazon's intimidating size, and the fact that she was a slave that happened to be carrying a sword, dissuaded them. In their eyes, for Dar to trust a slave with a weapon when he carried none of his own was a powerful symbol of where her loyalties lay. The drake as well got a great deal of attention, and Turnkey probably gave the street predators another reason for them to leave the pair alone. For the Arkisian to have both an exotic armed slave and such a unique animal for a pet marked him as a young man of great status, and therefore nobody to be trifled with. Thieves were not fools, or at least the thieves who had lived for any amount of time.

They seemed to cross an invisible boundary, moving from a maintained street that was well lit into an area where there were only a few lanterns on the street, a street that had some missing cobblestones. The buildings had begun to show signs of decay. They were moving into a poor neighborhood, where the litters and carriages and well-dressed merchants and processions of drunken mercenaries gave way to more street-dwelling homeless and night predators. The streets began to take on a slightly ominous feel, a sense of foreboding and danger that hadn't existed in the better lit areas, a feeling that danger was just around the next corner. Dar had felt that many times during his travels with the group, and he had never gotten used to it. The others always seemed to be so fearless, it sometimes made him feel a bit out of place, nearly cowardly that he always felt terrified at the things that the others seemed to shrug off out of hand. They were all so much older than him, except for Tarrin, and Tarrin's condition gave him a maturity that Dar couldn't match for another fifty years.

Being turned Were had aged the young man, aged him dramatically. He was nothing like what he'd been when he'd first met him. Back then, he wasn't mean or vindictive. He was afraid of what he was and what it may cause, but he had been so eager to show friendship, so willing to accept Dar immediately for who and what he was. He'd been looking for friends when nobody wanted anything to do with him. It seemed sad to Dar that now, when he needed friends the most, he wouldn't accept them. What he was had eaten away at the amiable youthful personality that Dar remembered, and replaced it with a bitter shell covering a hard, unforgiving man. And he never smiled anymore, or laughed. That worried him more than anything else.

Turnkey suddenly began to hiss, and it beat its wings hard enough to muss Dar's short black hair.

"Something has it spooked," Camara Tal said as they stopped, putting a hand on the falcon-hilt sword that had once been Faalken's.

"I don't see anything," Dar said quietly as the drake took off from his shoulder, landing on the edge of a flat roof across the street.

The drake suddenly dove off the roof, the claws on its forepaws leading, and there was a sound of impact just outside the light of the street's lantern. There was a surprised barking sound from beyond the light, and then, to Dar's shock, there was a short blast of fire that emanated from the darkness. It illuminated the drake, flying away, but it also illuminated a trio of dog-like animals that were nearly the size of a small pony. They had fur of utter black, but there was a powerful red glow coming from their eyes, an aura that remained after the light of the fire faded with it.

Camara Tal swore sulfurously. "Hellhounds!" she snapped, immediately grabbing for the silver amulet around her neck. "Get behind me!" she ordered of her teenage companion.

"What are those things?" Dar asked nervously as he did what she told him to do.

"Demonspawn," she replied, then immediately began to chant. Her words were unintelligible, but within them was a power that could not be contained by the sound of a mortal's voice. The medallion in her hand suddenly erupted in a blaze of incandescent light, and it brought light to everything within sight of them. Dar looked in stunned awe as the three dog-like creatures, powerfully muscled and with black teeth, flinched away from the brilliant light, whining and yelping as if in pain, shying away from the pair. Camara Tal held the amulet up higher, and it blazed even more brilliantly when she literally began shouting her mystical words, and that seemed to be more than they could take. The three black-furred animals backed away from the priestess quickly, then turned and fled back down the street.