He could make out little of the occupants beyond silhouettes, their faces cast in shadow by the lights behind and the slanted light above, but he noticed one of the squarish men from outside the poppy den standing beside one of the central chairs, his head bowed in conference with the chair’s owner. He now wasn’t sure which of the two had been the one to grab and hood him, which had been the one behind, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He was among his people now. His mother would be so pleased.

His escort put a thick hand on his arm, then steered him before the table’s flat side. He could by now discern more of the people sitting opposite, detecting familiar dark hair and grey eyes on each. Quite the enclave, this place. His people hailed from the plains and deserts of the arid west, far, far from Vistirlar and its provinces, and he’d assumed that he was one of only a handful of travelling curiosities within their borders.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

The speaker was a woman, her age indeterminate, her skin appearing smooth but her hair a wall of silver sheen. Gold gleamed in the braids of her hair, at her throat, and at her fingers and wrist as she raised a hand to beckon him forward. In the same motion she waved away the lump hovering behind her. Her accent matched that of his escort, nigglingly familiar, something from long ago. He didn’t answer. Two could play silly buggers.

The man in the chair next to hers, short and no less silver, leaned forward over table and said something, but the words had no meaning. He was a child again, hearing angry foreign words echo from the walls of the manor while he and his sisters supposedly slept above, his mother’s angry growl, his father’s placations, robbed of meaning and left purely as tone. Seeing once more the black door, the door unopened, while his father lay dying beyond and would speak through it to his mother only in those meaningless words, her anguish and rage voiceless for the children but screaming behind her eyes.

Emotion roiled within him, a great surge of physical pain like burning, like impalement. Of course, he recognized their accents. They spoke like his father.

He gasped and rocked on his heels, one hand going to his chest. The woman leaned forward, affecting concern. ‘Heavens, boy. We only asked you your name.’

He swallowed. The burning was receding, but every in-breath felt sharp.

‘Chel.’

‘Your family name, if it please you.’ Her words were polite, the tone anything but.

‘That is my family name.’