Fingel pivoted. He followed her, his eyes incapable of looking away from her figure. He almost detoured to the toilet chamber before he left. There, in the near privacy, he regularly used mental images of Fingel as he pleasured himself. He knew he could have physically taken her anytime he wanted to. She was a slave in his complete power. Devoth had made that clear. For that matter, he had bedded servants back in Acacia who he knew were not terribly willing. Just a part of the privilege of his office, it had seemed. But here he was not so sure he could face Fingel’s reaction.

She deposited Rialus in the care of four of Devoth’s slave soldiers. They were young men, thick about the chest and as haughty as newly appointed Marah, though sullen as well. Two of them had the Lvin clan’s white facial tattooing. The third had whiskers. None of them were a match in appearance to the victor of the mêlée, but few men would be. Like Fingel, they spared no words for Rialus. As they trudged through the city streets, Rialus framed by the square of them, they occasionally talked among themselves. When Rialus offered a thought or question, however, stone silence. They acted as if they were waiting for an excuse to ram their rather horrific-looking pikes through his guts.

Nothing new. All the slaves he had interacted with in Ushen Brae made it clear that they held him in complete disdain. Total lack of interest. He could make no sense of it. Shouldn’t they look to him as a connection with their homeland? Anger or hope. Either emotion would have made more sense to him. They gave him nothing. Despite his strangely privileged position, this troubled Rialus. Might he find no allies here? Nobody to turn toward to help him find the means to defy his captors? Though he could not define the shape of his eventual defiance, he was sure it must come. Must, if he could find the way to achieve it. But he was no closer now, weeks later. He still knew nothing, it seemed, of this land or people.

If he could slip away on his own for a bit, explore where he wanted to, probe around … Devoth had promised him that he would learn about Ushen Brae. What had he said? You’ll see many grand things. You’re our guest, so you’ll see the things that make us great. So much for that. He had never left the environs of his own quarters except for excursions of a mile or so to meet with other Auldek officials, escorted always by slave guards. Would that he could see what they were hiding from him.