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as “the man”.
    The building he’d brought her to was made of stone, with low
ceilings except for the center, where the angling of the roof gave it more
height.
    The floor was stone to match the walls, though the floor was
of large flat rocks rather than the smaller round rocks of the walls. The walls
had been lined on the insides with heavy vertical bars. The bars were spaced
close together and painted gray, so at first they seemed to blend with the
stone.
    She took a few more steps into the room. A table and stools,
a plush armchair and several trunks filled the high-ceilinged center of the
rectangular building. To her right a set of bars cut across from one wall to
the other, sectioning off about a third of the total interior space.
    To her left there was another wall of bars, again sectioning
off about a third of the space, though there was an additional wall of bars
running perpendicular to the first, dividing the space in two.
    There were many carpenters in Mirela’s family and a few stonemasons,
so she knew something of building and remodeling old structures. Whoever had
put in these bars to support the building had been very stupid. It was very
ugly.
    The wolf walked up to one of the bar-walls and rattled it.
The sound was loud in the quiet building.
    “What the fuck is this?” he growled.
    Mirela’s skin prickled with fright. The wolf’s tone was dark
and dangerous. She took a step back, accidentally running into the man—William.
He was warm and solid at her back, and when he put his hands on her shoulders
she felt safe.
    “Mirela,” William said, “please put this on.” As he spoke he
released her and went to one of the trunks. He pulled a key from his pocket and
used it to unlock the trunk, pulling out two brass-colored things before
closing the trunk again.
    He handed her one of the two things he held.
    Mirela took it with a murmured, “Thank you.” It was a
necklace, so stiff that it held its shape on its own. It was made of thousands
of small filigrees braided into threads that were braided into ropes and
finally braided into one large piece, capped by disks printed with the image of
a bird in flight.
    She loved it.
    The necklace was weighty and beautiful, archaic in look and
feel. She ran it between her fingers, the exquisite craftsmanship alluring to
one such as she who had grown up surround by skilled artisans.
    “It is very beautiful,” she said, looking up with a smile.
“Thank you.”
    William nodded stiffly. “Put it on please.”
    “How?”
    He took the necklace from her, pointing out the hinges, then
handing it back. Mirela slipped it around her neck and carefully closed it,
scared of catching her hair in the clasps. When the falcon disks were an inch
apart the necklace snapped closed, as if the disks were magnetic, startling a
yelp from Mirela.
    Her vision went blurry, the ground wobbled beneath her. She
cried out, asking what was wrong, what was happening, but the words came out a
garbled mixture of English and Romani. She sank to the ground.

Chapter Three
     
    Christoffer backed away from the falcon, who’d fallen to the
floor.
    “What did you do to her?” he barked, looking up. The spot
where William had been standing was empty. Christoffer took another step back
and smacked into William, who’d snuck up behind him. Christoffer whirled,
dropping to a crouch. He could smell the damp undergrowth of the forest as he
called forward his wolf. William’s nostrils widened and he fell back a step, in
surprise or fear.
    Christoffer hoped it was fear.
    He didn’t know what the lord had done to the falcon, but he
didn’t want it done to him. He’d been the last one to enter this little chamber
of horrors, and only shock had kept him from turning tail and running. He
couldn’t believe William intended to keep them in cages. The arrangement
between the wolves and the lord was a civil one, nothing more than a formality
after all these years.
    Wasn’t it?
    William shook his head as