won't deny that from then on Nadia's mother was Dinu's ... or should I simply say that she submitted to Dinu, and leave it at that? But his? His property? His obedient woman? Ah, wait and see ...'The fact was that Melana Zetra had loved her husband, and when she was over the horror of his being taken in the tithe - and when she was close to my father, and after she had covertly investigated the way he worked the list - then she made up her mind to act. I cannot state Melana's reasons for doing what she next did; perhaps it was madness brought on by grief, but if so she had hidden her condition extremely well. Or then again, she may have been crazy like a fox and simply biding her time.'My best theory is that she would be with her husband Banos again, regardless of the conditions, and had determined to sacrifice herself to that end. Banos had been taken by Malinari of the Wamphyri; now Melana would be taken also. But along the way she would settle a few old scores. The Szgany can be devious in their own right, and I cannot help but wonder if that is where the Wamphyri get it: is it perhaps in the blood? For the blood is the life, after all.'But if this secretly incensed or maddened Melana would be with her husband in Starside, why not make it a family affair? What of her daughter, Nadia? Would she be safe on her own with the Szgany Vadastra, or better off in Starside with her mother and father? Being comely, it was unlikely she'd be fodder; why, given time she might even become a Lady! Could it be any worse to be undead with the Wamphyri than to live under the constant threat of being stolen away or eaten by the Wamphyri? And what of an informer? Might not he, or she - as a supplicant in the fullest, truest meaning of the word - gain favour in the red-litten lamps of their eyes? I suspect it was a mixture of all of these imponderables that motivated the maddened or scheming Melana to do what she did next.'The time of the tithe was at hand, and Dinu Vadastra had calculated correctly that Malinari would come with his lieutenant tithesmen out of Starside. It had been some time since The Mind himself had deigned to venture forth from Malstack across the barrier mountains into the velvet of Sunside's night.
'The skies were clear and the moon tumbling on high; all the familiar constellations were twinkling in the smoke of our signal fires, while low over the barrier mountains the star of ill-omen - the Northstar, which lights the aeries of the Wamphyri - bathed the peaks with its silvery-blue ice-chip gleaming. A fine night, aye, for some ...'... As it might have been for me had it not been for my now barely-remembered love of Nadia Zetra. Still, I cannot blame her, for I am sure that Nadia knew nothing of her mother's plan. If she had... it's more than likely we would have fled from our fate, becoming loners; or we might have journeyed west and joined up with some band of true Travellers in their constant evasion of the Wamphyri; or perhaps we would have been happy simply to be free a while, together she and I, and let the future take care of itself. Oh, a great many possibilities, if Nadia had known.'As for my father: if he had so much as suspected ... then Melana's life were forfeit long before the first of Malinari's flyers touched down on Vadastra soil. But of course none of us knew, except Melana herself.'And so to the preparations.'All was in order. As the dusk settled in, Dinu had called for the tributes (in fact the ransom, for the life of the clan Vadastra) to be displayed on trestle tables to one side of the clearing, where he had tallied them as was his wont. Six barrels of oil, six of white wine and six of red; six of good plum brandy (and all of it ^oo^ plum brandy, mind, because Malinari was coming) and six more of wild honey. A pair of young bull shads, freshly butchered, fifteen brace of pigeon, and five of wild boar; and a very special prize indeed: a live, caged wolf of