I felt a single tear escape my eye and trickle down the side of my face. The rider’s lips tightened, and he straightened up.

  “He trafficks with the rodanion. It is enough.”

  “But, my lord, we have no proof.”

  “He tried to assassinate me. Isn’t that cause enough?”

  I tried to follow them with my gaze, but my eyelids were growing heavy, so I let them close. In truth, I could not stop it happening.

  When I opened them again, I was in a bed, sandwiched between clean sheets and weighted down by blankets. Bandages wrapped my waist and leg, but I could move—which I discovered when a familiar growling chur greeted me as I opened my eyes.

  I was out of the bed and on the floor in a tangle of sheets and blankets, scrambling backward until I fetched up against a warm scaly hide. A second chur greeted me, and I felt teeth close over my hair and the nightshirt I didn’t remember putting on.

  It lifted me off the floor, and I flailed, trying to break free, but my arms connected with nothing and one leg sang with pain, so I stopped. Looking around, I saw I was in a long room, set up with several beds like the one I’d been sleeping in. Beside each, was something like a furry spurline—not as big, and not with saddles, but sitting taller than the bed.

  I wondered what they were, and saw movement at one end of the room.

  “So, you are awake,”—that voice was familiar—“and causing trouble, already.”

  I wanted to deny causing trouble, but my voice failed me. One of the first things the rodanions taught their slaves was not to speak, and I couldn’t bring myself to do so, now. I opened my mouth and closed it, several times, but decided silence was safer, and took refuge in staring at the floor. Eye contact was something else the rodanions discouraged.

  “Drop it,” the voice commanded, and the creature holding me, lowered me to the ground.

  I backed up, until I felt warmth and fur at my back. The beast did not move, and I felt a weight settle on top of my head. Presumably the monster had rested its chin on me. The thought was strangely comforting.

  I stared at the floor, until the speaker stood in front of me and curled a finger under my chin, lifting gently until I had to look him in the face. It was, I thought, the same rider from the…from when the spurline had turned against me.

  “Remember me?” he asked, and I nodded, trying very hard not to meet his eyes.

  He held out a hand, and, when I did not take it, reached out to take one of mine.

  “Come with me,” he said, and led me from the room, slowing when I stumbled.

  I saw his lips tighten, and I flinched. They compressed even further, but he did not raise a hand in punishment.

  “I am sorry you were hurt,” he said. “I did not realize…”

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  I shrugged. What was it to him, if I were hurt? Slaves were hurt all the time. When he saw I wasn’t going to say anything more, he took me to another room, one in which there was a table flanked by two chairs.

  “Sit,” he said, and I obeyed. I nearly stood up and ran for the door, when he set my diary before me.

  “You can read and write?” he asked, and I nodded.

  He sighed.

  “You must answer me with words, understood?” This time, it was an order, a command I dared not ignore, even with the absence of punishment, so far.

  I nodded, and then hurried to speak.

  “Yes,” I managed, and flinched, waiting for the blow to fall for not giving him a title I did not know.

  He placed both his hands on the table.

  “Jovan was your master,” he said, and looked at me. It took me a moment to realize he wanted an answer. Again, I risked the simplest reply—with no honorific.

  “Yes.”

  He placed his hand on the diary.

  “Did he read this?”

  “I think so.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why he chose you?”

  “No.”

  “It was not your task to take messages?”

  “Not beyond the gates.”

  “But you knew how to ride a spurline.”

  “From before,” I said, and hunched in on myself, waiting for the blow to land; it was forbidden to speak of ‘before’.

  “I am not going to hurt you,” he said, and I whimpered, waiting for him to begin what usually followed such words.

  To my surprise, all that followed was an exasperated look, as though he knew what I expected, but he did not pursue it.

  “If I said you were free to go and make a life for yourself, what would you do?” he asked, and I burst into tears, barely able to hear it, when he muttered, “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  He rested his head in his hands, for a long moment, and then looked at me.

  “Did you know what you were given?” he asked, and I knew he meant when I’d left the Master’s.

  I shook my head.

  “Speak!” The snapped command had me startle in fright.

  “No, master!”

  “Who were you going to meet at the Maple?”

  “I don’t know. I was not told. There was a note.”

  He nodded.

  “We found the note.” He studied me for a long moment, then said, “Did you know we were told of your coming?”

  “No.” My mind scrambled to keep up. I had suspected our pursuers knew of us. That they had been told was a suspicion I had been planning to report.

  “Were you aware of what you were carrying?”

  “No! A bag for someone. Nothing more.”

  “Do you always open bags intended for someone else?”

  I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair, as I responded.

  “No. I was hoping it might be a letter, with a name.”

  “Why didn’t you wait until you reached the Maple?”

  “I didn’t know I could. I was hoping the letter would give me a name and somewhere else to look.”

  “But you know, now, that it wasn’t a letter, don’t you?”

  I opened my mouth to deny it, but the exchange between the spurline lizardman and the rider returned to mind, so I nodded, following the gesture with a hasty, “Yes,” when he frowned.

  “What is chothra?” I ventured, when he didn’t immediately ask another question.

  “Poison,” he said. “Opening the bag in the Maple would have killed every person in the room, and some on the street outside.”

  It sank in that this meant I, too, would have died, that my master had meant for me to look inside the bag in an attempt to complete his mission, and that he had meant for me to die. I felt tears well up in my eyes, and wondered what I had done to earn his wrath.

  Hadn’t I served him well? Hadn’t I warned him when I’d seen the rodanions creeping up on the mansion?

  I sat and stared at the man standing across the table, and it felt like my world had been torn apart.

  “Are you my new master?” I asked, and saw the horror cross his face.

  “We don’t have slaves here,” he said, when the silence had stretched between us—and I burst into tears anew.

  “Then who do I belong to?” I asked. “Do I return to my first master?”

  I wondered if Jovan would take me back. He had intended me to die, after all—and I had failed to do as he’d intended. What sort of slave was I? I didn’t know what to do, what to think, or what to feel, could not imagine my place in the world without an owner. And then the man spoke again.

  “What did you mean when you wrote you had chosen to be a servant, rather than a master?”

  I stared at him. Now, what was I supposed to say in response to that? That the rodanion had sworn me to secrecy, had threatened death if I should tell? I said what I thought might answer the question without betraying them.