"Ask me something else," she said.

Heat rushed across Dariel's cheeks. He very much wished that Tunnel and the scribe weren't in the room. He felt a sudden urge to reach across and touch her sky-blue skin. It was not an entirely new desire. Alone so often, his thoughts of Wren had grown increasingly blurred, intermingled with Skylene's sharp avian features and Mor's feline grace. More than once, he had woken from dreams of coupling in ways he had never imagined in life. But such thoughts had no place here. He pushed them away.

"Why don't you revolt?" Dariel asked. "The People. With their skills and their numbers they could slaughter the Auldek."

Skylene mulled the question over, something that was both a smile and an expression of grief residing on her features. "The league, the Lothan Aklun, and the Auldek have had hundreds of years to perfect their institutions. They know our minds. When we first arrived, the Lothan Aklun kept us on an isle called Lithram Len. They tested us there, asked us things, watched us; and for a time they let us struggle among ourselves. They observed who shared; who fought; who showed compassion; and who was cold inside, calculating, greedy, savage. They learned our individual weaknesses and strengths, though they saw both as traits to be exploited. Eventually, they sent us to the role that suited each best. The meek went to their work. The savage to theirs. The devious to theirs. Those with the most rebellion in them become spirit children."

"The ones who get eaten?"

Skylene nodded.

"But still, you all know where you came from. You're more the same than different. Obviously, you haven't forgotten-"

"Dariel, our lives here have many faces." She placed one of her fine-boned hands on his knee, her fingers light. "There are many who work in the fields to harvest mist. The generous seeds they are called. They labor. They don't know they're laboring, because the oil from the leaves of the plants numbs their minds. They walk dazed, seeing a world different from ours. They're only in this world enough to be sent to work, to follow instructions."

Dariel asked, "Mist comes from a plant? Harvested in a field?"

"Yes. The very thing that helps buy the children from your land is worked by slaves in this one. That is the system the Lothan Aklun and the Auldek set up. It perpetuates itself while they live mostly at ease." She let this sit with him a moment. "But not everyone is drugged like that. We can't all be. There are many who work the myriad tasks that sustain the Auldek. Every job imaginable is done, somewhere, by the People, but not necessarily by Free People. Some hate us. Ones called the golden eyes handle commerce. They trade and live lives of some plenty, though they are not free. Others, like the divine children… kill. They are warriors almost to match the Auldek. They thrive in palaces, with slaves of their own. They live like nobles until the moment the Auldek call for them to fight, and then they do that with joy as well. Some even forget that they are not free, forget that their individual desires could be any different from the orders given to them. That Lvin you saw in the arena a few days back-he was chosen because the Lothan Aklun knew what he might become. I don't know how, but they see things in us that we don't see ourselves."

The Lvin in the arena. Dariel wished he had dreamed that as well. It had been the only time since his captivity began that he had seen the light of day. Tunnel, who had watch duty over him that day, explained that he had something he wished to show him. Dariel had followed him through the passageways, stumbling on legs stiff from disuse. Tunnel had taken off his ankle chains for the walk. Hobbling along behind the man, it was obvious to both of them that Dariel was no flight risk.

They met several other slaves in a cramped bend in a corridor, a few Dariel recognized, a few he did not. Together, they crowded around slots in the wall that looked out upon some sort of exhibition ground. Dariel's view was partly cut off by beams, but it was enough. He soon understood-by the sights of carnage he witnessed and by the roars of adulation and by the tremors driven down into the stone around him-that he was somewhere within the foundations of a massive structure, a stadium of some sort.

On the field below him, a mass of warriors butchered one another with a speed and furious precision Dariel had never witnessed before. The figures-lightly armored or not armored at all-were clearly human. At least, they were the human-animal merging that he knew marked the People. Tattooed in the various totem patterns, adorned with tusks or feathered plumes or what looked like scaly protrusions enhancing their backbones. They fought in clan groups, each group standing against all the rest. They leaped and spun, slashed and ducked and kicked and even snapped out somersaults. It could have been some mad, frenzied acrobatics exhibition, except that they worked with weapons: swords and axes, long spears and jointed staffs that whirled about at bone-breaking velocity. Death blows were announced by gouts of blood. Limbs wheeled through the air. Heads were sliced from shoulders and kicked beneath the churning legs.

The battle was short-lived. By the time Dariel understood that one band of warriors-marked by white tattoos and dangling hair locks-had gained the advantage, the fighting was all but over. The soldiers of the prevailing group relaxed, straightened, and let the blood and bits of tissue drip from their bodies. There were several opponents left before them, survivors from among the other clan groups. The chanting in the crowd and the thrum of what must have been thousands of feet on the stone indicated that the action was not concluded yet.

Still, it was a moment before one of the winning band stepped out before the others. The lone warrior was massive. A man muscled like Tunnel but as tall as a Numrek. He carried wide-bladed axes in both hands. His skin was white from midway up his torso, over his shoulders and arms and face. As grand as any lion's, his mane framed his head with a bulk of knotted hair and swaying locks, nearly white but with a slightly gold tint. Dariel would have stared at him for a long time, but he was still only long enough for his remaining opponents to line up across from him. Once they did, he stepped toward them.

"You see him? The chief warrior among the Lvin?"

Dariel whispered, "Yeah, I see him. How could I not see him?"

Tunnel said, "Good. Good that you see. He is sublime motion, the most honored class of divine children."

As if to demonstrate the definition of this, the Lvin chief unleashed a long-limbed choreography of slaughter that had touched each of the four opponents before the first one had even dropped to the ground, falling from the height of his severed legs. It was like a single movement that they did not even try to fight. The last Dariel saw of the Lvin was when he threw his arms out and yanked back his head, mouth open. He might have roared. Surely he roared, but if so it was drowned out by the booming applause of the unseen crowd.

Saw," Dariel said, correcting Skylene's last statement. "The Lothan Aklun saw your traits. They don't see anything anymore."

Skylene brushed this aside. "That Lvin-Menteus Nemre is his name-lives in a palace with his own slaves, his own women, whatever he wants. He has all of that as long as he fights when the Auldek tell him to. You see? We're not so different here from your people over there. One man-one child, even-will sell out another just so quick." She snapped her fingers. "Considering all these things, the fact that the People have survived so long in defiance is a wonder."

"Whom do you mean when you say 'the People'? Those in rebellion, or all the slaves?"

"Both. It depends on the context in which it's used. We fight for all the quota slaves, even those who harm us, and especially those too numb and beaten down to understand their plight. Privileged or shackled, it doesn't matter. We are all the People, and none of us are free. 'Divine children' is an Auldek title. When we are free, we will put that name away and just be people instead.