“I comprehend that in Eshkorek the women are vipers, and the men dogs walking on their hind limbs.”

He struck me with the back of his hand, as if it were an idle blow, simply correction to a stupid slave who knew no better, and his bronze guard took me. Zrenn had them throw me flat a second time and drag me by my ropes to amuse his master and himself.

Outside I was permitted to walk, traveling down the length of the palace now, and below it into dank underground chambers. In one of these, small as the great room above had been large, my bindings were exchanged for fetters, the fetters mated with rings of black metal in the sweating stone.

When my guard had gone and taken the light with them, the rats commenced adventuring in and out, but none came too close, as yet. I did not relish the cell, however, if I should begin to bleed.

The scene in the hall reenacted itself in my skull, the gold-mask’s horror, my pride, the demands of Demizdor. It began to seem an hallucination. No shade was any longer at my shoulder to guide me. I had had the power to kill Ettook, but not enough to burst my bonds, it appeared.

I fell into a brief sleep and woke with the rats about my feet like a tide come in. I slashed a length of my chain among the red stars of their eyes and they fled chittering, till I should be quiescent once more.

I thought of Tathra weeping as she struggled to birth Ettook’s child, of Demizdor weeping when she believed she had slain me.

I wondered if the sow who bore me had ever shed tears.

3

Three bronze guards came through the passage beyond the cell and opened the metal door. It was their torches and the sound of their boots that had woken me this time; a change from the rats.

In the doorway, Kortis. Somehow I had been expecting a visit from him, and was not enormously amazed. He moved into the cell, and set one of the torches in a rusty bracket, and the guard closed the door, and walked a good way off. It was to be a private audience, it seemed.

The torch splashed sallowly on Kortis’ golden face and the gold of his great seal-rings. He said, “After the luxurious night you have no doubt spent here, perhaps your family history has altered somewhat.”

“The truth can’t be altered,” I said, “but I expected nothing more of your hospitality. There are rats in all the rooms. Some squeak, and some wear gold on their faces.”

On this occasion he did not strike me.

“Your father,” he said, “would have answered with more care.”

“My father would have seen you dead.”