"Get their clothes," he said. "We can pretend to be them."

"Good idea." Kayan helped him tug off their earth-brown tunics and short breeches, blushing a bit at stripping them naked, but she didn't hesitate. Nor did she hesitate to strip out of her own halter and loincloth to put on the psionicists' clothing. Jedra didn't either. They lad been more intimate than this only moments ago. In only a minute more they had both transformed themselves from gladiator-slaves into respectable servants wearing the livery of their noble. Both tunics were loose on them-nobles' servants ate well-but they gathered them up and tied them at the waist.

"Walk like you've got every right to be there," Jedra said, stepping to the door. "Ready?"

"I used to be a templar's assistant," Kayan reminded him. She was smiling again. They were getting out of here!

Jedra opened the door and stepped outside. Kayan followed right behind him, and together they strode across the compound, past the cookhouse and the storage sheds and the servants' quarters, toward the back gate. Jedra concentrated on twisting the light around them to blur their faces. He couldn't control it well enough to project an image of the psionicists they were trying to impersonate, but he hoped that anyone who looked their way would merely think the heat was affecting their eyes.

They made it almost to the gate before Jedra's danger sense began to tingle. Someone had taken an interest in them, or was about to. He tried to locate whoever it was, but could find no one in the guard towers, anywhere behind them, or to either side. That left only-

"Run!" Jedra said, and this time Kayan took his advice. They both sprinted down the alley, with Shani right behind them shouting, "Escape! Guards! Slaves loose!"

She was full-blooded elf, and faster than either of them. Jedra heard her footsteps draw closer and heard Kayan shriek as Shani grabbed her. He skidded to a stop and turned around just in time to see Shani draw her dagger from its scabbard at her belt and hold it across Kayan's neck.

"Don't move, either of you," Shani panted.

Link up! Kayan mindsent. Jedra did, and they suddenly became a single mind again. Effortlessly, they snatched the knife away from Shani and broke her hold on Kayan, forcing her back into the wall hard enough to rattle her teeth when she hit. Slowly, clumsily, they moved their bodies together and put their arms around one another, then levitated themselves into the air.

The last time Jedra had tried this he'd only had his own power to draw on. Now with the synergy of Kayan's presence they leaped upward, and when they shoved off against the alley wall they shot away like an arrow from a bow.

But a sudden wind howled up from the end of the alley and blew them backward, swirling dust around them at the same time to blind them and make them cough and gasp for air. They tried to still the wind, but it merely became more turbulent. They searched for the source of it, but in the moment it took to locate the psionicist in the guard tower on the wall, it had blown them up and over that same wall and back into the compound.

No! they shouted. They struggled to rise up again, but the wind forced them to the ground, pinning them there while another less substantial but equally strong force battered at their minds. They recognized the new power from before: multiple minds in convergence, all pressing their combined will against Jedra's and Kayan's own. Where they had come from was no mystery, either; when Jedra and Kayan looked with the right focus, they could see tendrils of psionic energy reaching out from all the guard towers and from many of the buildings inside. Nearly all of Rokur's soldiers must have been psionicists as well. Either that or the ones who were had been posted on guard duty just in case their prisoners made a break today.

Either way, the combined effort of all those linked minds once again overpowered Jedra's and Kayan's wild and still largely uncontrolled talent. Lightning and thunder flashed and boomed around them as they struggled to break free, but the guards' grip slowly tightened on them, blocking their powers one at a time until they became trapped in a lightless, soundless, formless prison of thought. Their universe shrank to nothing, then with one final squeeze the psionicists took their very consciousness away.

When Jedra awoke, it was late evening. He was once again chained to the wall in the gladiators' quarters, and the noble himself, Rokur, stood before him. Kayan was not on her bunk beside him, nor anywhere else in the building's single room.

"Where is she?" Jedra asked.

"She is safe," Rokur said. "I'm keeping you in separate quarters until your... ah... final encounter."

"Why?"

The noble laughed. "You don't think I'm going to risk losing you twice, do you? Not now that the king has taken an interest in your welfare. He'd have me in the arena if that happened. No, I prefer watching, so I've made sure you can't escape or hurt yourselves before the game."

Jedra couldn't resist saying, "We would have made it if Shani hadn't been there."

The noble said, "No. If she hadn't distracted the tower guards by returning early from the stadium, you wouldn't have made it even to the gate. We were expecting you to try something."

That seemed likely, given how fast the guards had come down on them. "We'll try again," Jedra said, knowing it was bravado speaking. Then the other thing that Rokur had said penetrated, and he cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. There was one sure way to make sure he and Kayan didn't have to fight: If he killed himself first, she wouldn't have to do it.

He certainly wasn't going to kill her, no matter what the king wanted. Kalak could use his defiling sorcery to turn Jedra into a quivering pile of goo first, but he would never harm Kayan. He said so to Rokur, but the noble merely laughed.

"You'll fight, because if you don't, you'll both die," he said. "As it is, at least one of you will live. You'll both fight to lose, but you'll fight." He laughed, and added, "And who knows what will happen when you feel the first bite of the blade? You may find that sweet life is more important to you than your precious love." Then he turned away and left Jedra alone with his psionicist guards.

Sahalik showed up a few hours later, smelling of sweat and cheap wine. He carried a jug with him, which he held precariously in his right hand as he sat down heavily on Kayan's bunk and belched. A fresh scar drew an angry red line across his forehead. "That was a good fight you put up this afternoon," he said.

Jedra snorted. "I feel like I won the battle but lost the war."

"Hah." Sahalik scratched at another scar on his abdomen, swigged from the jug, then offered it to Jedra. "I didn't exactly make out like a champion, either."

"You must've won, if you're here talking to me."

"Barely."

Jedra took the bottle from him and sniffed it cautiously. Rotgut. But it was the only wine he was liable to get, and he could use a little dulling of the senses. He took a mouthful and swallowed slowly, trying not to let the fumes make him cough.

"Tough luck about next week," Sahalik said. "Kalak's a malicious bastard for making you two fight each other." "That he is."

"I'm sorry it worked out this way."

"Me, too."

Jedra handed the jug back, and Sahalik took a long draught. "Nothing ever seems to work out the way we expect, does it?"

"Not very often," Jedra admitted, then he laughed softly.

"What?"

"Well," Jedra said, "I sure never would have expected to be sitting here sharing a jug of wine with you, not considering the way we met."

Sahalik grinned. He was missing another tooth. "Ah, that. I was a malicious bastard, too, there's no denying it. I'd been second in command for so long I was going crazy waiting for that old kank of a chief to die. I led all the raids, but he took all the glory. It ate on me. Made me mean."