When they were announced, Roh and the dancers purled into the room. Roh took note of the room as he swept in, aware that he would not have time to measure it properly again until after the dance. There were three long tables adorned in sinuous carvings: the heads of snarling men, fanged wolves, and other creatures Roh only knew from books. The high table stood on a dais of pale stone. Seated at the lower tables were dozens of northern soldiers with purple ribbons at their collars. A dozen lower-ranking sanisi sat with them, marked by their infused blades and dark clothes. The Dhai scholars were there as well, though Roh’s gaze did not take in individuals, merely the blur of their paler faces. At the high table was the Patron. Sitting with him were the most prized of his sanisi. Slaves removed empty dishes and replenished the bread. Roh saw more women among the servants than he had in all these weeks in Kuonrada.

And then Roh was dancing.

Roh lost himself to it. He was no longer himself but one of the Talamynii fighting foreigners from a distant shore – fighting the Dhai, the empire that had once stretched from Saiduan all the way south to the opposite pole, before the middle of the world sank into the sea. Abas was not his friend but his enemy, a shadow, his face a stony crag of cruelty; he played the Dhai emperor. Green eye shadow licked the faces of the dancers playing Talamynii from eyelid to eyebrow.

Roh’s people were overwhelmed. They retreated to the hearth, ducking and cowering as the sanisi approached. Abas was supposed to pull one of the other dancers, Taralik, from the stir of others before the sanisi put them to the sword. Taralik was to be the last living Talamynii, all that remained of the brown, green-eyed race the Dhai had purged from this continent four millennia ago.

But as Roh and the other Talamynii crouched by the hearth, Roh watching as the paint melted from the faces of his fellow captives, Abas’s hands fell not to Taralik’s shoulders but Roh’s.

Abas pulled Roh from the condemned. Behind them, the dancers playing the Dhai circled the Talamynii, and the Talamynii gave great cries. Roh and Abas continued to regard one another, Roh breathless, Abas’s gaze filled with mirth.

The dancers portraying the Dhai pulled back from the circle of Talamynii who lay motionless on the floor behind Roh and Abas. The dancers playing Dhai moved into the final set, ending in a uniform pirouette that became a long bow of the body toward the long tables.

There was a long silence before the Patron stood to thank the dancers. The audience tapped their plates with their long soup spoons.

“My captive for the night,” the Patron said to Abas, “do bring yourself and your chosen to my table.”