“Aurënfaie?”

“Freed slaves. Bunch of rubbish, you ask me, all beaten down and branded. Better off throwing ’em into the sea. But we get paid by the head, so we took good care of them. Only lost one.”

“You got paid to bring slaves out of Plenimar?” Micum shook his head. “I never heard of such a thing!”

“Ransom,” the Zengat said, licking his lips. “Pays better than slaving sometimes. Trouble is, so many of the freed ones kill themselves before we can get them back.”

“So that’s the agreement?” Thero asked.

“Keep your voice down, fish priest!” the man hissed, looking around nervously. “You want to get us lynched? It’s all-how do you say it?”

“Under the table,” Notis explained with a wink. “No one in this port takes slaves from Virésse, and there’s a good bounty for any brought home again. Been going on for years.”

“Ulan í Sathil ransoms his people back?” Thero whispered. “But if he knows they are being taken, why does he trade with you at all?”

“He only does business with those who bring him word of his people in Plenimar. And with the Zengati clans he’s got treaties with.”

“So you carried a load of that cargo recently?” asked Micum, filling Notis’s mug again.

“Good raiding. Full load! And good ones, too.”

“Except for those we had to leave behind…” the other Zengat muttered, and was elbowed into silence by one of the others.

“Lots of gold to go around this time,” the scar-faced one said, grinning.

“Then you must have had a good time in Benshâl, I’d guess!” laughed Micum.

“Not Benshâl! Riga, I told you.” Notis gave Micum a bleary grin. “I think you are drunk, friend. How ’bout you, fish priest?”

Thero did his best to smile, but in reality he wanted to throttle the bastard until he told them what had happened to their friends. But the pressure of Micum’s knee against his own under the table made him hold his tongue.

“What was so special about this load?” Micum asked casually.

“Lots ’faie. Special ones, too,” Notis whispered.

“But I thought those always went to Benshâl?” said Thero, casually as he could manage.

Notis was deep in his cups now. Leaning heavily across Micum, he whispered loudly, “Special raid, fish man, just for two. Killed a damn lot of others we could have sold, but orders are orders. You see? Just the two, and no witnesses. Sent a voron to catch ’em, too.”

A necromancer. That explained the damage to the swords.

“Who sent the voron?” Thero asked, gripping his wine cup tightly with both hands.

Notis shrugged. “Who cares? Our captain orders. We go. And then?” He patted his purse again.

“What was so special about them?” Micum demanded drunkenly. “Pretty ones? Big trai?” He raised his hands like he was cupping a pair of breasts.

Notis and the others laughed. “When you ever see big trai on a ’faie? Can’t hardly tell the boys from the girls half the time!”

“Not that it much matters,” one of the others said, giving Thero a leer that made his skin crawl.

“No, just a couple of poor bastards.”

“The dark one was a westerbok,” the unscarred Zengat opined solemnly.

“Oh, how do you know that?” one of the Plenimarans challenged.

“All my family great slavers, way back!” the Zengat bragged, poking the other man in the chest. “I can tell ’em all apart. Don’t even need those head rags to tell. But the other one, he was different, a mongrel with yellow hair.”

“Yellow hair, eh? That sells good?” asked Micum.

Notis shrugged. “To some, but the rich customers generally want ’ em pure. This one didn’t look like much, compared to your southern stock, but they kept him apart from the others and I seen the captain’s own slaves goin’ in to him.”

“I told you, they was wizards!” a younger Plenimaran piped up. “Put the branks on ’em, didn’t they? And the cuffs.”

The Zengats both made some sort of hand sign, as if to ward off evil.

“How much did they fetch?” Micum asked.

“We unload ’em at the docks and that’s the last we see of ’em.” Notis grinned wider, showing the gap where his tooth had been knocked out. Thero hoped Alec had done that to him.

To Thero’s dismay, the conversation turned to other things as Micum continued to buy round after round. And although he seemed to be drinking as much as the rest of them, when the last of the slavers fell asleep with their heads on the table, Micum sat back and said quietly, “Time we were moving on, Thorwin.”

“What about them?” Thero whispered, gesturing around at the drunken slavers.

Micum shook his head. “Don’t make a fuss. No sense getting noticed.”

With a last glare at Notis and his compatriots, Thero followed Micum out into the dark street.

It was a cloudy night, with a cold breeze in off the sea. Thero shivered, feeling a little ill. He hadn’t had enough of the strong turab to be drunk, really. No, he thought, it’s leaving those men alive that sickens me.

“Where to now?” he asked.

“Well, as much as I hate to disappoint poor Rosie, I think this would be a good time to take our leave. Unless you’d care to spend a night with her?”

“I think I’ll take my chances in the woods.”

They made their way back through the crooked streets, meeting no one but a few drunken sailors and a would-be footpad, who thought better of it when Micum showed his sword.

No one challenged them at the stables when they came for their horses. The tavern windows were dark now.

Thero drew a sigh of relief when they were finally away from the city and in the cover of the trees again. “So this is what you did, you and Seregil, when you were out on the road for Nysander?”

“In part.”

“And the parts that gave you all those scars?”

“This was an easy night, Thero. You were quick-witted back there, by the way. Not bad, for a wet-behind-the-ears tower wizard.”

Pleased, Thero took that for the compliment it was.

CHAPTER 40 Silver Eyes

JUST BEFORE SUNRISE, Seregil and the others found shelter in the ruins of an abandoned stone barn. The house it had served had fallen into the foundation hole and there were no signs of life about the place, just ruined fences and a dry well.

The barn had been struck by lightning and half the roof had burned and fallen in. Rats and bats had taken over, and seemed none too pleased to entertain unexpected guests. A rodent half the size of Ruetha leaped from the shadows and snapped at the little bundle of food Alec had brought.

Ilar let out a startled cry and tried to run, but Seregil dragged him into the shadows by the back wall. “Behave yourself, or this can be your permanent resting place. It’s your choice.”

Ilar went sulky and made a great show of scraping the ground with his foot to clear away the various droppings before he sat down.

Alec kept the rhekaro with him as he and Seregil made a survey of the place. A brightening sky showed through the large holes in the roof.

“Yhakobin is bound to come looking for us,” Alec murmured, peering out through the broken doorway.

“Us, or you and that?” Seregil asked, pointing at the rhekaro. “Ilar told me it was you that he was after when we were ambushed. Because you’re from the Hâzadriëlfaie line.”

Alec nodded slowly. “He needed my kind of blood to make the rhekaro. He even tried to treat me well, sometimes, because of it.”

“Only sometimes?”

“I didn’t like him or the things he did to me.”

“Like what?”

“No, nothing like that. It was just-Can we talk about this later? I’m so tired.”

“Of course!” Seregil embraced him as best he could and felt Alec go limp against him for a moment, resting his head on Seregil’s shoulder. It was the first proper embrace they’d been able to share, and he didn’t want to let him go. “After the ambush, for the longest time, I was so afraid you might be dead.”