Maralah coughed into her glass and shook her head. “They don’t know, Kadaan.”

“Don’t they?” Kadaan frowned. “I suppose that’s wise.”

“What don’t I know?”

“You know little of… death,” Kadaan said.

“Death is less extraordinary than a sanisi would have people believe.”

Kadaan finally chuckled. “I tire of foreigners cluttering our table.”

Roh sat back, only a little wounded. He looked longingly down at the table where his friends sat. Luna and Kihin were lost in conversation. Aramey and one of the Saiduan scholars were locked in a heated discussion. Only Chali appeared melancholy. He brooded over his clean plate and empty liquor glasses. After a moment, he caught Roh’s look and smiled wanly.

Roh saw someone moving behind Chali, a spry man with dark hair and a pinched face. He was not a Saiduan, from the look of his tawny skin and small stature; he looked like a Dhai. He did not have the shaved head of a slave, though he wore a short coat and trousers as the slaves did. Roh saw more movement at the corner of his eye. Another man, similar to the first, walked along the opposite wall. Roh had not noticed them during the dance. Seeing those two, he became aware of others – four more ahead of the first, five ahead of the second man on the opposite wall. They walked without any particular urgency, weaving among the slaves, pacing themselves with the ebb and tide of the crowd. They were making their way toward the high table. The other dancers sat around the lower tables, laughing and joking with soldiers and lower-ranking sanisi. No one paid any heed to the men along the walls. Were they some underclass of people Roh hadn’t seen before? One he hadn’t read about?

Kadaan was looking at him again. The first of the unknown men reached either end of the high table. Kadaan followed Roh’s stare, and said, “What are you looking at, boy?”

“Those men,” Roh said. “Who are they?”

“Which men?” Kadaan asked.

“The ones there,” Roh said, and pointed. He felt a chill. “Don’t you see them?”

Kadaan looked again. Something in his expression hardened. The first of the men reached the ends of the dais and mounted the steps.

Roh felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The tips of his fingers tingled.

The men advanced across the dais. A woman stepped past them. Roh watched one of the men slide his hands behind his back. Roh felt Abas lean over, put his hand on Roh’s knee.

Abas snickered, said, “Roh, did you–”

Roh started to speak–

–and Kadaan pushed himself up, brought his hand back over his shoulder, and gripped the hilt of his infused blade. The blue breath of Para surrounded him.

Kadaan’s piercing yell, merging with the hiss of the blade, “Ohkair!”