"You displease me, husband," She snarled from the doorway.

Diartr smiled bitterly. "How surprising, my wife." He poured himself another goblet of the vinegary wine and took a drink, grimacing at more than just the vile taste of it. He sighed and leaned back resignedly into the once fine chair. He stared at her with black eyes. "To what do I owe this lovely visit?"

Ajeya was through the doorway and across the room so fast he heard the smashing of his goblet against the far wall before he even registered the pain in his hand from her blow. "Don't mock me," she hissed, rage twisting her features demonically.

"Then don't act worthy of it!" he snapped.

Her skin mottled impossibly and then she whirled away to glare down at the pitiful remains of a fire in his brazier.

He wiped the sudden sweat of his palms on his plain gray trousers and eyed the smear of wine along the wall and across the cracked tiles, his mouth turning rueful. "It is fortunate we already sold the tapestries and rugs; that would have stained for certain."

Ajeya barked an ugly laugh and shook her head. "You are unbelievable." Then she turned and her eyes glittered dangerously. "You interfered. Again."

He sighed. "I did."

She all but bared her teeth at him. "Out of weakness."

"If you wish to believe that."

She glared at him, than snarled again. "The little thing needs to learn her place."

His mouth twisted and he reached for another goblet, this one chipped on the rim, and poured more of the distasteful wine. "I am certain your lessons have more than sufficiently taught her that." He looked up at her and his face was hard and, for once, actually challenging. "There is no honor in them."

"Honor," she sneered, "would have been to drown her in her own birth fluids."

His lips thinned and he looked away. "Slaves have right to honor. Even beasts have right to honor."

Ajeya's laugh was harsh. "Slaves have value! Beasts have use!" She crossed her arms and shook her head at him. "She's nothing! How many times must we return to this?"

"Until I am satisfied with the answer!" he shouted.

Ajeya's jaw actually dropped.

Diartr's skin flushed and he looked away again. "Leave me," he said bitterly, "go take pleasure in torturing your nothing."

Ajeya felt a moment's burst of bitter shame.

And then the towering rage came.

She spun on her heel and when hunting her.

The mongrel bastard bitch was supposed to have been their House's return to glory.

They had promised.

And every scientific analysis, every computer projection, even every battle honed instinct she had for tactics screamed success.

Brilliant, blazing, unfailable success.

She had even begun to dare hope again.

Fool.

There had been no success.

Because for all their science, all their projections, all her instincts, they had neglected to take into account one critical thing.

Every living thing came into existence with an inborn sense of self-preservation.

A natural drive for survival.

And while careful psychological indoctrination, relentless behavior training, and the deliberate emotional introduction of despair broke the vast majority of subjects down to use, for a very, very few the will to survive was actually enhanced by such procedures.

Became something almost pathologically obsessive.

Something capable of . . . anything.

Even what should have been utterly impossible.

Ajeya's ugly grieving laughter filled the emptied and slowly decaying abandoned halls.

And in true Elements Themselves befitting justice, it had been hers who had defied it all.

It had been hers that had destroyed everything.

There would be no return to glory for their House.

Because of their House.

Ajeya dug feverishly through her last chest of possessions, beginning to sweat with the suddenly starved longing for blood and agony as her shaking hands found the knotted whip she favored and slowly caressed its stained leather, wanting desperately to weep.

And that left only vengeance now.

She smiled the feral mad smile of the well and truly damned.

And Ajeya walked once more down to the worn stone steps to Saavik's cage.