PART I
A DIALOG BETWEEN A JAILER AND HER PRISONER
“Tell me a story.”
The monster slouched down by the iron bars of Kihrin’s jail cell. She set a small, plain stone down on the ground between them and pushed it forward.
She didn’t look like a monster. Talon looked like a girl in her twenties, with wheat-gold skin and soft brown hair. Most men would give their eyeteeth to spend an evening with someone so beautiful. Most men didn’t know of her talent for shaping her body into forms crafted from pure terror. She mocked her victims with the forms of murdered loved ones, before they too became her next meal. That she was Kihrin’s jailer was like leaving a shark to guard a fish tank.
“You must be joking.” Kihrin raised his head and stared at her.
Talon picked at the mortar of the wall behind her with a wicked black nail. “I’m bored.”
“Knit something.” The young man stood up and walked over to the line of iron bars. “Or why don’t you make yourself useful and help me escape?”
Talon leaned forward. “Ah, my love, you know I can’t do that. But come now, it’s been so long since we’ve talked. We have all this catching up to do and ages before they’re ready for us. Tell me everything that’s happened to you. We’ll use it to pass the time—until your brother comes back to murder you.”
“No.”
He searched for somewhere to rest his gaze, but the walls were blank, with no windows, no distractions. The room’s only illumination shone from a mage-light lamp hanging outside the cell. Kihrin couldn’t use it to start a fire. He would have loved to set the straw bedding ablaze—if they’d given him any.
“Aren’t you bored too?” Talon asked.
Kihrin paused in his search for a hidden escape tunnel. “When they return, they’re going to sacrifice me to a demon. So, no. I’m not bored.” His gaze wandered once more around the room.
He could use magic to escape. He could change the tenyé of the bars and rocks to soften iron or make stone fragile as dried grass. He could do that—if Talon wasn’t watching his every movement. Worse, if she wasn’t capable of plucking thoughts of escape from his mind the moment they entered.
And she never slept.
“But I do eat,” she said, answering his thoughts with a gleam in her eye, “especially when I’m bored.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to kill me. Someone else has that honor.”
“I don’t consider it murder. I’d be saving you. Your personality would be with me forever, along with—”
“Stop.”
Talon pouted and made a show of examining the clawed tips of her fingers.
“Anyway, if you can read my mind, you don’t need me to tell you what happened. Take my memories—the same as you’ve taken everything else.”
She stood up again. “Boring. Anyway, I haven’t taken everything from you. I haven’t taken all your friends. I haven’t taken your parents.” Talon paused. “Well, not your real parents.”
Kihrin stared at her.
She laughed and leaned back. “Should I leave then? If you don’t tell me a story, I’ll go pay your mother and father a visit. They’d entertain me. Though the visit might not be so much fun for them.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Who would stop me? They don’t care about your parents. All they care about is their little scheme, and they don’t need your mother and father for that.”
“You wouldn’t—”
“I would,” Talon growled, her voice inhuman and shrieking. “Play my game, Bright-Eyes, or I’ll come back here wearing your mother’s skin cinched by a belt of your father’s intestines. I’ll reenact the moments of their deaths for you, over and over, until your brother returns.”
Kihrin turned away, shuddering, and paced the length of his cell. He examined the empty bucket and the thin blanket tucked into a corner. He searched the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. He studied the iron bars and the lock. He even checked himself over, in case his captors had missed something, anything, when they’d taken his weapons, his lockpicks, the intaglio ring, and his talismans. They’d only left the necklace they didn’t care about, the one worth a fortune.
“Well. When you put it that way…” Kihrin said. “How can I refuse?”
Talon brought her hands together in front of her face and made a tiny clap of delight. “Wonderful.” Then she tossed him the small rock she’d put between them earlier.
Kihrin caught it. “What’s this?”
“A rock.”
“Talon—”
“It’s a magic rock,” she said. “Don’t tell me a man in your position doesn’t believe in magic rocks?”
He studied the stone again, frowning. “Someone’s changed this stone’s tenyé.”
“Magic. Rock.”
“And what does it do again?”
“It listens. Since you’re telling the story, you hold the stone. Those are the rules.” She grinned. “Start at the beginning.”
1: THE SLAVE AUCTION
(Kihrin’s story)
When they brought me up to the auction block, I looked out over the crowd and thought: I would kill you all if I had a knife.
And if I wasn’t naked, I amended.
And shackled. I had never felt so helpless, and—
* * *
What? You don’t think this is the beginning, Talon?*
What do you mean by “beginning” anyway? Whose beginning? Mine? I don’t remember it that well. Yours? Talon, you’re thousands of years old and have stored the memories of as many people. You’re the one who wanted to hear this. And you will, but under my terms, not yours.
Let’s start over.
* * *
The auctioneer’s voice boomed out over the amphitheater: “Lot six this morning is a fine specimen. What will I hear for this human Doltari male?† He’s a trained musician with an excellent singing voice. Just sixteen years old. Look at that golden hair, those blue eyes, those handsome features. Why, this one might even have vané blood in him! He’ll make a welcome addition to any household, but he’s not gelded, so don’t buy him to guard your harem, ladies and gentlemen!” The auctioneer waved his finger with a sly grin, and was answered with a few disinterested chuckles. “Opening bid is ten thousand ords.”
Several members of the audience sniggered at the price.
It was too much.
I didn’t look any prize that day. The Kishna-Farriga slave masters had bathed me but the scrubbing only made the raw whip wounds on my back stand out in angry red stripes. Copper bangles on my wrists did a poor job of camouflaging sores from long months spent in chains. The friction blisters on my left ankle were swollen, infected, and oozing. Bruises and welts covered me: all the marks of a defiant slave. My body shook from hunger and a growing fever. I wasn’t worth ten thousand ords. I wasn’t worth one hundred ords.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have bought me.