Having lost patience with the woman about four seconds after first laying eyes on her, and not wishing to inflict her on Tirana, Calbit fobbed her off on Jago. “You take her.”
Shrugging, Jago said, “Very well. Follow me.”
Gan wasn’t sure how things could possibly get worse.
Just by thinking that, he knew that things probably would.
They should have just kept walking. Gone around the caravan and let the raiders have their way with them. Maybe they would’ve killed that old bastard Calbit and his treacherous daughter.
Failing that, they should have rejected the slaver’s hospitality. Both he and Rol should have known better than to trust someone who trafficked in human flesh to be in any way compassionate.
Since they’d taken Rol away, Gan had come up with several dozen scenarios that would have removed him from his predicament, with Fehrd actually winning his fight against the Black Sands leader and keeping them from being captured.
But the one scenario he’d been avoiding was the one that would have guaranteed that Fehrd would still be alive and that Rol wouldn’t be all sick and strong and weird and that Gan wouldn’t be stuck in a dungeon fighting people every night.
Because the guilt was too much for him to handle.
It was all his own damn fault for playing in that thrice-damned frolik game.
Fehrd had been right, of course. Fehrd was always right. It was why he was such a good friend and why he was such a spectacular pain in the ass. He had told him beforehand that playing in the frolik game was stupid, and he’d told him afterward that it was stupid, and like an idiot, Gan hadn’t listened to him.
And so Fehrd was dead, and it was all Gan’s fault.
Rol was missing, taken by the Imperial Guard somewhere, and that was Gan’s fault too.
Whatever was wrong with Rol was probably Gan’s fault as well.
He would never see Feena again, but spend what was left of his life fighting other idiots in the arena. He’d been lucky so far, but eventually one of them was going to figure out that all they had to do was approach him from the left, and he’d be doomed.
If he could just see Feena one last time …
The wish was so fervent within him, that when he heard Feena’s voice from the corridor, he simply assumed it to be a hallucination of his rapidly-becoming-deranged state.
“This is where you keep the fighters? I’m impressed-my slaves don’t live anywhere near this well back home.”
Gan wondered why, if he was hallucinating Feena’s voice, she sounded so brutal and nasty.
Jago’s voice came next. “Perhaps he won’t want to leave.”
“I was not under the impression that he would be given a choice.”
“No,” Jago said in response to Feena’s harsh words, “the choice is ours. If we choose to trade your mul for our slave-”
“He’s not your slave, he’s mine.”
“So you insist.”
Gan could hear three sets of footfalls: Jago and the nasty woman who spoke with Feena’s voice were two, with the third likely being one of the guards.
Sure enough, it was the latter who barked at him. “Stand away from the door.”
It was turning into a very odd hallucination.
And then he hallucinated Feena’s voice in his head. Play along, Gan. My name is Wimma Anspah, and Fehrd was my husband, and we owned you and Rol.
When the door opened, Gan saw his sister wearing the most ridiculous outfit he’d ever seen, and realized that it was no hallucination. His sister had come to rescue him. Untrained as she was, there weren’t many people that Feena could simply project thoughts into without burning their brain out, but the blood tie with Gan made it possible for her to do so.
His first thought was, Rol’s not here-the Imperial Guard took him-
We know, Feena assured him.
And there’s something wrong with him.
Aloud, he said, “You know, I was just sitting here wondering how this day could possibly get worse, and then you go and find me.” He gave Feena-or rather, “Wimma”; obviously she was supposed to be from Raam, based on the absurd outfit-a derisive look.
“It wasn’t difficult, Gan,” Feena said with a vicious smile. “I simply followed the cloud of stupidity that hangs over your head. You thought that my husband’s death would allow you to escape your rightful bondage.”
“There’s nothing ‘rightful’ about being bonded to you and that bastard of a husband of yours.” Gan tried to channel all his self-loathing into bile directed at Feena. He just hoped she’d forgive him-then rejected the notion as ludicrous, since she was the one who wanted him to behave like this.
The good news, of course, was that if Feena was there playing dress-up, it meant that all of the Serthlara Emporium was there as well. It was the first thing to go right in Gan’s entire life since he lost the frolik game, and it killed him that it wasn’t going to go quite according to plan thanks to the Imperial Guard’s apparent interest in Rol.
“Just me now, thanks to you getting the bastard killed.” Feena then turned to Jago. “Very well, I’m satisfied that you have Storvis, at least. I’ll take up retrieving Mandred with the king.”
Jago laughed at that. “Good luck with that.”
“We’ll meet tomorrow to make the exchange.”
The guard slammed the door, leaving Gan to wonder what he was being exchanged for.
Feena continued to hold “Wimma Anspah’s” vicious smile during her entire walk down Obsidian Way toward the Slave Gate and the emporium’s carriage, currently parked at the Three Brothers Stable just outside Urik’s walls near the City of the Dead, Urik’s cemetery.
Only when she passed the City of the Dead-a place she had truly feared she would find Rol and Gan-with its forbidding, rusted iron fence topped with lions’ head posts, did she put her own face back on.
The stable was located just past the boneyard. Feena had thought it an odd location for a stable, but it was near the crossroads where the four thoroughfares that went through Urik all met. Besides, the cemetery’s caretaker was one of the Three Brothers.
As she climbed into the back, Feena said without preamble, “We have a problem.”
Since they were running a game, and since there really wasn’t anywhere in Urik for them to set up shop as merchants, the members of the emporium had to continue to live out of the carriage even after arriving at the city-state. You never knew when running a game who might be needed, so anyone who wasn’t in play had to stay out of sight.
When Feena arrived, they were all sitting in a circle in the center section of the carriage-the only spot that had anything like proper floor space-eating. On either side were the shelves, all tightly packed with the emporium’s merchandise (on the left) and everyone’s personal belongings (on the right), with hammocks for everyone hanging from the roof over the shelves.
Zabaj handed her some jerky as she entered, and she swallowed it hungrily. The sort of role playing that the game required often made her hungry.
“What’s the problem?” Karalith asked before gulping down some water.
Quickly, Feena outlined the situation. She finished by saying, “Gan’s fine, at least. A bit cut and bruised, but that’s to be expected.”
“Whatever your brother’s failings,” Tricht’tha said, “he brawls well. In fact, that arena may be the best place for him.”
“Not as a slave,” Feena said tightly, using some of Wimma’s iron on the thri-kreen.
Komir spoke up before Tricht’tha retorted. “In any case, we need to make this exchange, and then bring down the arena.”