"Get that far and you can sit, rest, drink some water."
"Water," he repeated, a hoarse, painful-sounding whisper.
Xantcha hoped his problems weren't serious. If Garve had damaged him, Garve wouldn't live to see the sun set. Her slave shoved one foot forward; she helped him with his balance. In five steps, Xantcha learned to hate that treacherous chain between his ankles. He fell one stride short of the fountain curb. Xantcha looked the other way while he dragged himself onto it. Then she drew a knife from the seam of her boot.
The blade was tempered steel from another world, and it made fast work of the wrist manacles. Xantcha gasped when she saw rings of weeping sores. Without a second thought she hurled the slashed leather across the cobblestones. Her slave was already washing his face and slurping water from the fountain. Xantcha thought it was a good sign, but wasn't surprised when her next question, "Are you hungry?" won her nothing more than another cold, piercing stare.
She retrieved a loaf of black bread, tore off a chunk, and offered it to him. He reached past her offering toward the loaf in her other hand.
"You're bold for a slave."
"You're small for a master," he countered and closed his hand over the bread he wanted.
Xantcha dropped the smaller piece and seized his arm. She didn't like the feel of open sores beneath her fingers, and she had every intention of giving him the whole loaf eventually, but points had to be made. She tightened her grip. Appearances, her still nameless slave needed to learn, could be deceiving. In Phyrexia, newts were soft, useless creatures, but on most other worlds, Xantcha was as
strong as a well-muscled man half again her size. With a groan, the slave let go of the larger portion, and when she'd released him, picked up the smaller portion from the ground.
"Slowly," Xantcha chided him, though she knew it would be impossible for him to obey. "Swallow, breathe, take a sip of water."
His hand shot out, while Xantcha wondered what she should do next. He captured the unguarded bread and held it tight. Only his eyes moved from Xantcha's face to the black prod she'd tucked through her belt.
"Ask first," she suggested but made no move for her belt.
Even if, by some miracle of carelessness, he stole the prod and struck her with it, Urza's armor would protect her.
"Master, may I eat?"
For a man still short of his final growth, Xantcha's slave had a mature grasp of sarcasm. He definitely had Mishra's attitude in addition to Mishra's appearance.
"I didn't buy you to starve you."
"Why did you, then?" he asked through a mouthful of bread.
"I have need of a man like you."
He gave Xantcha the same look the slaver and Garve had given her, and she began to think she'd gotten herself into the position of a fisherman who'd hooked a fish larger than his boat. Only time would tell if she'd bring him aboard or he'd drown her.
"Your name will be Mishra. You will answer to it when you hear it."
Mishra laughed, a short, snorting sound. "Oh, yes, Master Urza."
Despite what she'd told Urza, the details of Kayla BinKroog's Antiquity Wars weren't that widely spread across what remained of Terisiare. Xantcha hadn't expected her slave to recognize his new name; nor was she prepared for his aggressive insolence. I've made a mistake, she told herself. I've done a terrible thing. Then Mishra started choking. He tugged on the tight leather band around his throat and managed to gulp down his mouthful of bread. His fingers came away stained with blood and pus.
Xantcha looked at her own feet. She might have made a mistake, but she hadn't done anything terrible.
"You may call me Xantcha. And when you meet him, Urza is just Urza. He would not like to be called Master, especially not by his brother."
"Xantcha? What kind of name is that? If I'm Mishra and you work for Urza, shouldn't your name be Tawnos? You're a little bit small for the part. Grow out your hair and you could play Kayla-an ugly Kayla. By the love of Avohir, I was better off with Tuck-tah and Garve."
"You know The Antiquity Wars?"
"Surprised? I can read and write, too, and count without using my fingers." He held up his hand but saw something-the stains, perhaps, that she'd already noticed- that cracked his insolence. "I wasn't born a slave," he concluded softly, staring across the plaza at his memories. "I had a life ... a name."
"What name?"
"Rat."
"What?" she thought she'd misunderstood.
"Rat. Short for Ratepe. I grew into it." Another snorted laugh-or maybe a strangled sob. Either way, it ended when the neck leather brought on another choking spell.
"Hold still," Xantcha told him and drew out her knife again. "I don't want to cut you."
There wasn't even a flicker of trust in Rat's eyes as she laid the blade against his neck. He winced as she slid it beneath the leather. She had to saw through the sweat- hardened leather and pricked his skin a handful of times before she was done. The tip was bloody when it emerged on the other side, but he didn't make a grab for her or the weapon.
"I'm sorry," she said when she was finished.
Xantcha raised her arm to hurl the collar away as she'd hurled the manacles. Rat caught the trailing leash. The leather fell into his lap.
"I'll keep it."
Xantcha knew that in the usual order of such things, slaves didn't have personal property, but she wasn't about to take the filthy collar away from him. "I have a task for you," she said as he worried the collar between his hands. "I would have offered you the gold, if you'd been free. You will be free, I swear it, when you've done what I need you to do."
"And if I don't?"
While Xantcha wrestled with an answer for that question, a noisy claque of Red-Stripes entered the plaza from the east, the direction through which Xantcha had hoped to leave. She and
Rat were far from alone on the cobblestones, and she reasonably hoped that despite their mismatched appearance- him in rags and weeping sores, her with her boots and sword-they wouldn't draw too much attention. Rat saw the Red-Stripes as well. He snapped the leather against his thigh like a whip.
Red-Stripes, Xantcha guessed, had something to do with his transformation from free to slave. Considering his apparent education and remembering the farmer's gesture, she wondered if he'd once worn the sort of garments she was wearing.
"Hold it in," she advised him. "You've got a chain...." She left the thought incomplete as a gentle breeze brought her the last scent she ever wanted to smelclass="underline" glistening oil.
One of the Red-Stripes was a sleeper, a newt like her, but different, too. Newts of this new invasion had born- folk ways and didn't clump together in cadres. In truth, they didn't seem to know they were Phyrexian. Xantcha didn't care to test her theory. She hunched on her knees as she sat, catching her breath in her hands, hiding the exhalations that might reveal her glistening scent. She couldn't relax or be too careful.
Beside Xantcha, Rat beat a counterpoint of curses and leather. There was a chance that the Red-Stripe sleeper could hear every word.
"Quiet!" Xantcha hissed a command as she clamped her hand over Rat's. "Quiet!" She squeezed until she felt the
sores and sinews pop.
"Afraid of the Red-Stripes?"
She took a deep breath and admitted, "They're not my friends. Quiet!"
Rat bent over to match her posture, blocking her view as well. He wouldn't stop talking. "And who are your friends-the Shratta? You keep strange company: Urza, Mishra, the Shratta. You're asking for trouble."