The slave finished making the tea. He bowed to his master and left the chamber without having said a word. Belatedly, Zvain wondered if the other boy's tongue had been cut out and, not surprisingly, his own tongue soured. "There's caution, Zvain-"
He sat bolt upright; until that moment he'd believed- hoped-the slavemaster hadn't known his name. He didn't remember giving it away, but the lump on his skull covered an empty spot in his memory. Maybe he had been delirious___Certainly, he couldn't be too cautious, now.
"And there's foolishness. I can taste your fear, Zvain: that's the taste of foolishness. I know you're thirsty; I offer you tea." Using his left hand only, the slave-master filled a shallow bowl with fragrant, red-amber tea and pushed it closer.
He shrank away as if the tea were poison, as it could well be.
"A man can starve himself in the presence of food, but he can't not drink. You're thirsty, Zvain. Desperately thirsty. Why not slake your thirst? What are you afraid of?"
Zvain shook his head, not daring to speak. The hard-eyed slave-master was right. With each breath, each heartbeat, the tea grew less resistible.
"Watch-I'll drink from your bowl myself-" And the half-elf did, draining it in two deep swallows. When he lowered his hands, the tea had stained his lips crimson. "Would I do that if it were poisoned?"
Possibly, poisoners usually developed a tolerance for their preferred poisons, strictly to reassure their victims. But Zvain's concerns weren't about the purity of the tea.
"I won't eat your food or drink your tea. I won't take anything from you. I'm free, and I don't want to become a slave."
The slave-master sat back with a dramatic sigh. "First it's prisons, now it's freedom and slavery! Where do you get such suspicious thoughts, Zvain? You were brought to my house sick and witless. If it's awing you're worried about"- his voice turned harsh and Zvain looked up; owing was exactly what he was worried about-"it's a little late for caution. You already owe me your life, boy."
Zvain was speechless. His jaw dropped, but words refused to form.
"Eat the food I offer, Zvain; you've eaten it already." The slave-master brought his right hand out of the folds of his tunic, revealing red-and-black enameled talons fastened over the tip of each finger. He speared one of the spiced fruits and brought it delicately to his mouth. He reached for another, but paused with one talon pointed at Zvain's heart "If I meant you harm, boy, nothing would spare you. Do not tempt me with what you do not want."
An enameled talon flicked downward, piercing a honeyed bit of fruit. "Take what I offer you," the slave-master purred as he raised the talon.
Touch that food, Zvain told himself, and he'd be fed, clothed, sheltered, and owned as surely as if he'd been paraded naked through the slave market. But freedom was precious only when you had coins in your pocket.
Deliberately ignoring the morsel on the slavemaster's talon, he selected the smallest of the remaining fruits. He chewed it slowly. The spices crunched, the honey filled his throat with a subtle warmth that tickled his nose from the inside and made his eyes water. He'd seen folks drinking mead, broy, and the other liquors that reddened their faces and made them laugh too loudly at things that weren't funny. He'd seen folks slumped in corners, half-empty bowls still clutched in their hands, and he'd seen them retching when the morning sun struck their eyes. He'd sworn to his mother that he'd never be so foolish.
And his mother was dead.
He reached for a second morsel and chewed it as slowly as he had the first, meeting the slave-master's black eyes as he did. The fear was still there, but far to the back of his thoughts. He pretended it was gone, and, after a moment, it was.
"How did a fine, intelligent boy like you come to be dressed in rags, scrounging garbage in the elven market?" Wariness nudged his rapidly blurring thoughts: He didn't now where he'd been when he'd been hit over the head, but
"Not th' elven market. Not scroungin', neither." His mouth felt... odd. His tongue, odder.
"What were you doing?" the slave-master asked patiently, using his unencumbered hand to pour another bowl of tea.
Zvain slurped the amber liquid eagerly. He was wiping his mouth on his forearm when the chamber began to spin. A fast grab to the cushions steadied the chamber, but sent the bowl flying. The slave-master held out his taloned hand. The bowl slowed, swerved, and drifted to a halt on the pale palm.
"Oh, no-" Zvain murmured. His gut rolled. Color drained from his vision.
"What were you doing in dyers' plaza? Why were you running? What were you looking for in the cloth maze? What or whom?"
Dyers' plaza...? The cloth maze? Yes, he began to remember more clearly. The people he'd asked about Pavek and the itinerants bad said that they'd seen a quartet of that description going into the dyers' tangle of freshly colored lengths of cloth. He'd entered the maze blindly, full of anger that Pavek had abandoned him before he'd been able to abandon Pavek. An errant breeze had brought a familiar voice to his ears.
... that... powder... turned into... Laq-
Laq.
Zvain and his anger lurched sideways, then righted themselves.
Pavek's groveling and sweating had been part of a plan after alclass="underline" he'd found the Laq-sellers. If vengeance was to be had for his mother's death, for the death of the man he called his father, he'd been determined to be a part of it. Deep in drunken memories of unusual vividness, he flailed through the dyers' cloth, but the air was still. Pavek's voice no longer came to him.
He almost shouted Pavek"s name aloud before he remembered that there was a price on the former templar's head.
"Who, Zvain? Who are you looking for? Who do you seek?"
He blinked and rubbed his eyes. A shadowy outline of the slave-master's gaunt face rippled across the lengths of red and yellow cloth. "No," he whispered, something was terribly wrong, but he couldn't quite decide what it was. He shook bis head. A mistake: everything started to spin. "No one." He reached for the cloth to keep himself from falling. It melted in his hands.
"Who, Zvain?"
He heard the cracks and groans of a man being beaten. Pavek. Templars weren't clever, not the way boys raised beneath the city streets were clever, the way he was clever. Pavek had blundered in some typically templar way, and the Laq-sellers were pounding him.
The dyers' cloth became gauzy, then transparent, then disappeared completely and the square was deserted, except for three people beating a fourth. The itinerants were an ugly trio, the worst-looking specimens of their kind he could imagine: a warty human woman, a hairy dwarf, and an elf with a pendulous nose and sagging belly. But they had the better of Pavek, who was on his hands and knees, blood pooling on the paving stones.
Once again, the templar's name formed in his throat; once again he swallowed before it escaped.
"Who, Zvain?"
The voice came from behind. He spun and saw nothing.
"Who?"
He spun around again. The Laq-sellers continued to pummel Pavek, who was crawling toward him.
"Answer me, Zvain!"
There was nothing to account for the voice that echoed off the walls of the empty square. The speaker was unseen.
Unseen...
Mind-bending masters of the Unseen Way were, by the very nature of their talent and practice, more hidden than those who wore the Veil. To his knowledge, Zvain had never met an Unseen Master, but he knew how mind-benders could turn a young man's world inside out, trapping him in his own memory, attacking him with the horrors of his own imagination. Tales said that every sentient creature had the instinctive power to cast out even the most potent mind-bender, but he, staring in panic at the cloudless sky of his memory and imagination, had no idea how to defend himself.