Perhaps it was evidence of his compromised mental state, because before he could censor himself, Rialus heard this question escape his lips. “Why is it the slaves who are so adorned?”

The group answered him with incredulous silence.

“I would have thought that—” Rialus stopped, unsure what he might have thought. He changed tack. “I mean, why not yourselves? Since the animals are your totems—”

Mulat murmured a curse under his breath, and then added, “Stupid piss pot of a man. The totems are not animals. They are gods who live in the animals!”

Several Auldek faces continued to stare at him. Words came from his mouth, unbidden. “Very interesting that they—just slaves, I mean—decide this spear-point thing.”

“That is what the slaves are for!” Calrach barked over his shoulder. “It is a blood test, you fool!”

“I see,” Rialus said. “That explains it, then.”

Devoth studied Rialus, making him unsure whether he was about to reach out and smash him across the nose or—

“Have a glass of juice,” the Auldek said, motioning that a passing tray should be held for the Acacian’s consideration.

Rialus obliged. He took the glass of red liquid in both hands, clenching it tightly to keep his hands from trembling.

“Calrach is correct,” Devoth said. “This is the way it is. Our slaves are our children. Their fate is inseparable from ours. The changes to their bodies are called ‘belonging.’ We don’t make all the belonging changes to them ourselves. Some they make themselves. Some things only the Lothan Aklun had the magic for. That, it seems, has come to an end because of the league. We will have to be repaid for this. Very much so.”

And that closed the subject. A relief, for Rialus. They turned their attention to the spectacle before them. To begin with, individual warriors from the different groups taunted others into single combat. Listening to the banter they threw around, the way they laughed and swore and taunted, put Rialus in mind of the children who dove for oysters at the docks of Acacia’s western harbor. Those suntanned, shirtless youths had the same easy competitive air about them. But the divers did not strike blows that severed a crow woman’s arm at the shoulder or split a cat man’s head so that the crown down to below the eyes went spinning end over end, or that smashed a lovely crane woman’s knee between two war hammers.