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Meratoliages having been selectively bred for over a century to fit this honorable job. Black-art hearts were their blessing and curse, killing quite a few valuable males at a young age. Her own father had been cast aside from active duty because of coronary weakness, and he had resented it, especially when Lilly had been called to duty.
    When Nigel stepped away from the shadows, her heart stopped aching, her chest actually chilling at the sight of him: the sandy hair, combed back from a face with light green eyes, a tilted patrician nose, a slight overbite. He was a male mirror of her.
    The air quivered, digging into Lilly, just as it always did so far down in this Underground.
    Nigel’s gaze rested on the monitor showcasing Mihas and his girls, and the tips of his mouth turned down.
    “He still has no idea why his darlings turned on Claudia,” he said.
    “I accessed earlier audio from when the girls first approached him last night, when they told him that Claudia suddenly attacked Noreen and they responded in kind. He didn’t entirely buy their explanation, I gather, but if I know Mihas, I would say that he believes he’s got plenty of time to care later, after he’s had his fill.”
    “Did you discover the reason the girls did attack Claudia?”
    “I assume they somehow fit the pieces together and discovered that she was selectively feeding on and killing their classmates. I’m not certain that they suspect Mihas knows about this, but I’d like to tune the girls so they never realize he was involved. If they already do suspect, they haven’t told him, and it needs to stay that way. It would come to no good if they knew that Mihas had been a party to Claudia’s hobbies.”
    “They need to stay subservient, just as all proper soldiers do.”
    “Yes. But even if they suspect, Mihas seems to have them in his thrall right now.” Lilly paused, just now realizing that the main master’s greatest talent might rest in his charisma. It had certainly swayed Claudia, along with the rest of the girls. It occurred to Lilly that, perhaps, even she might have been slightly fascinated by the main master’s charms, as well. Not appreciating the thought of that, she added, “We can begin our tuning after Mihas has finished amusing himself. The girls haven’t allowed him a moment away since Claudia left.”
    Nigel nodded. “We can’t be too careful. We’ve tuned the girls before when they’ve shown too much adolescent overexcitement. I see no problem in doing it again.”
    With every passing second, Lilly relaxed all the more, delighted that she’d already become so proficient at tuning, even if she had only recently been activated to take Charles’s place.
    “As long as Mihas doesn’t know we’re tuning them, we’ll be fine,” she said. Up until recently, as the masters had increasingly shown a reliance on the custode s, the keepers had worked independently. They had been created to serve a higher purpose than merely guarding the homes of an individual blood brother, who hailed from a group that, in general, had grown complacent and lazy over the years. When the dragon had commanded his progeny to go forth and populate, he had never guessed that his best men would fail him by pursuing their own base desires and straying from his directive.
    Lilly didn’t add to Nigel that she planned to correct this course and make Mihas into the perfect soldier again. He had once been quite a destructive terror, and now that Claudia was out, true rehabilitation could begin. Every male custode up until Nigel hadn’t seen how the dragon’s mandates had been degraded, and it had taken her, a mere woman by Meratoliage standards, to bring about some much required change.
    “I’ve never seen anyone assert his manhood the way Mihas does,” Nigel said, leaning closer to the pirate room monitor.
    “If your mistress was such a scold, you, too, would be quite taken with the younger ones.”
    He switched his focus to the Highgate