We Gather

By M.C. Burnell

1000 years ago, the mighty empire of Barracheh lost its magic. After 9 years of exile, pursued by agents of his twin brother—the emperor—Sathriel may succeed in his quest to recover the secrets of their people’s ancient sorcery.
But everything comes at a cost.
A foreign witch is the only one who understands that Sathriel is reawakening a foe that laid the empire low in its golden age. In the dream of a desert, she will gather a band of champions chosen by her gods, leaders, scholars, and warriors from Barracheh and beyond. Before they can save the world, she’ll have to convince them they’re not enemies.
We Gather is the first installment of this new epic fantasy series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.C. Burnell
• Release date: Jul 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463892664

M.C. Burnell

M.C. Burnell had the good fortune to be born to a couple of bon vivants with a Renaissance approach to intellectual curiosity, who taught her how to taste wine, build a campfire, and think in terms of geologic time before she flew the nest. Since then, she’s acquired a degree in English literature and a J.D. She makes her home in the city of Chicago with her husband.

Book preview

The city lies in the west, upon grassland empty of trees, not so arid that large-scale agriculture is untenable. It’s surrounded by a sizeable quilt of farmland and pasturage, surrounded first by a ring of shabby neighborhoods. They encircle walls that are tall, thick, impressive, soldiers in uniforms patrolling the height. Still, the presence of those brick or plaster tenements nuzzling up against the defensive edifice makes it clear it’s been a long time since whoever is in charge here worried much about military threats.

Don’t bother looking for a river: the water comes from an underground aquifer pumped up to cisterns beneath the city by means of magic, the use of which has since been lost. The magic, not the infrastructure. It was all put in place back when the city was built, those impressive, now-decorative fortifications raised. Back when this was called an empire, rather than the Eastern Federation of Allied Principalities.

Within the walls, it’s mostly nicer. There are a few neighborhoods where structures of disintegrating plaster and mortar-flaked brick lean toward one another drunkenly across too-narrow streets. By and large, though, these are the more well-heeled neighborhoods, enterprises concealed modestly within shops rather than spread out for the world’s delectation in open-air bazaars. There are trees planted along the streets, many of the homes set back within a patch of lawn. It is to one of those we go, where the household is stirring as the sun stains the eastern sky one autumn day in the three thousand three hundredth year since the first stone of the pyramid at Rai Selu was placed.

On the day when his life fell apart—On the day that would mark the second time his life fell apart, he did not wake feeling a presentiment that his entire world was about to be turned upside down. He was up with the dawn according to his usual routine and ate his morning meal standing in one corner of the kitchen amongst the other slaves, each of them draining their allotted cup of tea. He added his dishes to the neat stack on the nearby counter and stepped out into a day that promised to be as sunny as most of them were.

BAYAM: A youth in his late teens, tall and willowy, black hair clipped off at the scalp with blunt-force simplicity. That austere haircut is played out in his downcast eyes and simple garments, lacking in ornamentation of any kind, and his feet are bare, but both ears bear a wealth of jewelry, precious-metal rings and jeweled pins. There’s something haughty in his high-boned cheeks that clashes with his inward-drawing stance; it’s hard to make sense of him, especially since he will not look at you. Still, it seems unlikely that his face would be so blank, were he not thinking many things he cannot share.

There was a hint of wintry chill on the morning air, and he rubbed at his bare arms as he made for the house. The grass remained soft and wet with dew against his feet: it was rare that it should frost at this latitude. Ramposi lay far out into the western hinterlands, northerly-enough that everything that took place here acquired a taint of barbarism in the capital. The wealth of their extensive ochre mines forced their neighbors to take them more seriously than they wanted to—if it wasn’t on the coast or in the south, it was scarcely real and unquestionably gauche—but they had fine centers of learning here in addition to the bazaars and garrisons.

Within its guardian walls, the manse sprawled, secure in its security. It was only one, sometimes two stories, its windows broad and low. Guards walked a circuit within the outer limestone bulwark, half again as tall as them, swords at their belts like any Federation soldiers, slim their trousers and stiff the upright collars of their coats. It was the cased bows on their backs that would tell you where you were: it was from the people of the plains that the rest of Barracheh learned archery, and they were still the masters of speeding arrows and thundering hoofs beneath open skies.

Bayam did not turn his eyes on the soldiers or their bows as he passed within the home, but what might be taken for coyness was unstudied disinterest. There was nothing untoward in his knowing what he did about the particulars of their armaments; it was true that he knew of his own experience, having traveled more widely than people would expect, but it was no secret he was literate. His mistress made no use of it: she had professionals in her employ to handle those affairs she didn’t handle for herself. He ran his index fingers along the rim of either ear, touching the wealth of jewelry as he wondered what the world looked like from inside the mind of a person who liked to have literate slaves because it lent her household tone.

The mistress had not taught him; she didn’t care that he existed. She probably knew his name, hers was the sort of exacting personality that always knew precisely what was happening in its vicinity and took the time to learn about traditions and sciences of no immediate interest because they might someday become relevant. That was the extent of their relationship.

He spent the next few hours dusting furnishings that remained clean since he last dusted them the previous day. It was midmorning when Gobel, who had charge of the household’s male slaves, informed him that the mistress required a tea service for two in her study. The green service, he stipulated, so Bayam went to the pantry to retrieve the pottery. He set the cups upon a tray of burnished maple from the north, simple and elegant; crumbled leaves from the edge of a cake of Duchow into each, a tea of intermediate quality in keeping with the pottery.

Mistress had a set of what was known as Brownware, a service of mind-bending antiquity from the defunct kilns of Zuta Areh, treasured for the deceptive simplicity that made the pieces appear primitive. It was nothing more than a pot and two cups, not suited to a party, but you wouldn’t have used it at a party if you could: it was fit to serve the emperor. Himur, the goddess who showed men her face in pottery, might have had a hand in it.

Bayam had never been permitted to handle the Brownware, no one but Gobel was. Even the crimson glaze out of Zemsar would have been more impressive. The green set was handsome, but local and modern. Mistress wanted to be gracious to this guest but felt no need to wow whoever it might be.

Once the pot was filled with boiling water from the kettle on the stove, he added a shallow bowl of candied mint to the tray. Taking it in hand, he passed along the cool, uncarpeted stone corridors of the manse, making for the western wing. The study was a large room; the mistress spent most of her time here, so it needed to be big enough to pace, big enough to harbor shelves housing all the books she might wish to consult regularly.

She was sitting behind the desk, the broad chamber flooded by sunlight. She didn’t meet the exacting standards of beauty amongst the upper-upper class, being a plebian brown instead of one of the much-desired metal hues—bronze, copper, brass—the celestial trinity. Mistress wasn’t from this area originally, and there were those within her household who claimed she hadn’t been able to hold on in more competitive locales because of faults in her acumen. There were those who said she was the bastard scion of this or that powerful family, instead, sent to extend their influence in the hinterlands.

Bayam didn’t have friends in the household, though, and didn’t engage in gossip. It was possible cause and effect worked the other way around, which he knew and didn’t care.

Across from his mistress sat the most porcine man he had ever seen, jowly and snouted, whiskers coming up on his cheeks as if he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He was wearing a military uniform, but Bayam didn’t recognize it. There were a thousand small armies in their part of the world, and the agents of the emperor were less numerous than the trading-families’ guards, soldiers sworn to aristocrats. The guest was in his thirties, younger than mistress by a decade, and seemed too well-dressed to be employed by the authorities.

He wore stiff trousers tucked into stiff boots, blue and black respectively. His shirt was sewed into small panels, neat squares of cloth that creaked when he moved and bent in strange ways, as if each reticule contained a rigid plate. It had no sleeves, leaving his arms bare, practical for the warm autumn weather. His accent said: aristocrat from the south, where people cultivated unintelligibility as a sign of pedigree, his words all in a rush and the consonants mush.

Bayam was uncomfortably aware of the man’s gaze on him as he set out the cups, examining him in return, as if he were equally a mystery. He poured hot water onto the tea, the guest’s first. The dish of candies, he placed between them. The man’s unblinking interest made his skin crawl, but he didn’t look at his mistress’s guest, concentrating on his hands, on performing his chore faultlessly.

The instant he was no longer occupied with the pottery, a hand slipped between his thighs, gripping his upper leg familiarly. Bayam froze, staring at the wall. The hand let go when mistress said, Lobar honestly. You might have thought she’d caught him with his finger up his nose: she was disgusted, but not disgust of the sort one attached moral relevance to.

The boy is incredible! The gods’ own copper, this far west! And grey eyes, that’s not usual. Where did you find him?

An understated gesture with one hand dismissed the first eighteen years of Bayam’s life as immaterial. I wish to get back to the topic at hand. Will his presence distract you, or help to concentrate your thoughts?

I would be a fool not to say that my disposition will be materially improved by it.

Very well, hold onto him. Briefly, her eyes fell on Bayam, making a command of it.

He didn’t resist as thick, coarse hands returned, allowing himself to be steered backward onto the seat of the visitor’s upper leg. He must have sat that way for an hour, while they talked about people and places none of which meant anything to him. His skin burned hot and cold by turns, and a ringing filled his ears. The epoch of his servitude had been lacking in incident, but he understood what was happening, he knew his mistress was buying something with his flesh.

He felt as if he was waking up, as if cold water had been dashed in his face. Over and over again, he said to himself, Did you never think it would cost you anything?

He was startled to be dismissed at the hour’s end. As he passed out the door, he was just able to hear, over the thundering of blood in his ears, mistress promising that he would be waiting when the man returned. His left butt cheek had gone numb from sitting on the man’s leg, but all of him was numb, it barely registered.

Limping faintly, he made his way across the grounds to the building where the slaves were kept, where he collected his lunch. He forced himself to choke down his meal, feeling no enthusiasm for the food and half-expecting it to come back up. Then he stood in a corner and stared at a rectangle of light on the wall as he contemplated something he had never contemplated before, which was running.

Six years he spent in bondage, trapped and yet not, because he had not truly minded it. He was a child when he landed in mistress’s house, and he had been alone, he had wanted someone to take care of him. No one loved him here, but no one was cruel to him either. It had felt as close to ideal as anything could be in a world where everyone he knew was dead.

The rest of the day passed in a blur, and he could not recollect, when the sun went down, what he had done with the remaining hours of light. After supper, he found himself upstairs in the dormitory he shared with the other men. There were six of them, from ancient, white-haired Harts down to prepubescent Tisip, and the way they looked at him made it obvious word had got around.

The response appeared to be mixed; the older men were as sympathetic as they were grim. Gori and Gorsha, though, closer to him in age, both looked vindicated, and readied themselves for bed with a blazing light of satisfaction in their faces. There had been envy when mistress chose to pierce his ears; the jewelry he was wearing was worth considerably more than Bayam himself.

His fellows found it off-putting, even insulting, that he kept to himself. Then there was his face: to have flesh that was umber- or caramel- or honey-hued was to be a citizen of the empire, to be Barrachite. But did you have that luster, that special metallic sheen, this was, to their people, the epitome of beauty, of good breeding, of quality. Bayam could hardly help the way he was born, his opinion hadn’t been solicited, but his peers often acted as if he was putting on airs simply by being.

He lay down atop his covers fully dressed, and he saw them take note of it. He saw the way their eyes lingered on him, and Gobel made it more than a glance, standing in the room’s center for a length of minutes studying him openly. If he did try to run, it could have repercussions on the others, and Gobel was going to want to shelter them in whatever way he could. Eventually, the man blew out the lamp and made for his bed without saying anything, but Bayam wondered if he meant to lay awake all night listening.

He wasn’t sure what he would do, whether he might ever find the courage to act on his distress. It had, to him, an appalling element of disillusionment. As if he had not understood the precise nature of his life since his family died, as if he had not truly grasped how little he meant as an individual to anyone. Still, to run… Even if he could manage to get away, what was out there for him?

He hadn’t been debating it more than an hour when voices rose outside. The manse was in a fancy neighborhood where the only nighttime noise might come from a party at a neighbor’s house, and this wasn’t the usual music or cheerful, inebriated talk. This was a sound of alarm, and it was coming from too close. It sounded like it was on the lawn, and the cry was taken up by a second voice, followed by a third. Metal clashed, and Bayam sat up.

The sounds of violence were rising, drawing closer, and Gobel had climbed out of bed. Making for the door, he said, in his authoritative voice, Come along. Hop to, all. There’s a spot of bother, but it’s got nothing to do with us.

There was a crash that sounded as if it was right downstairs, and Bayam heard screams from the women’s room. It reminded him terribly of that night six years earlier, when his first life was destroyed by sudden violence, and the memory finally pushed him off his bed. By then, the other men were in the way, shoving bedsteads toward the door to make a barricade. A thundering of footfalls upon the stairs announced the arrival of what felt in the dark like fifty warriors visible only as movement in shadow, the flickering of distant streetlights catching off of weaponry. The barricade was thrown back and they flooded in.

Bayam didn’t respond how he might have liked: uttering a shout that could easily be called a scream, he stumbled back until he sat down on his bed. He rolled over, struggling with the blanket that seemed to be grabbing at him. He heard cries of pain behind him, horrifying meaty sounds. A smell of sewage flooded the small space, and he couldn’t think where it was coming from. Tisip was screaming in fear, and when he stopped abruptly, Bayam wanted more than anything to hear him scream again. Gobel should have been right, no one should have cared about them, whatever trouble mistress might have gotten moiled in. It made no sense that this was happening.

The light entering through the windows flared suddenly: the manse was on fire. Someone had hold of his leg, and he kicked. His foot connected, and he heard a curse, but the hand didn’t relinquish him. He was being dragged across the bed, and when he rolled over frantically in an effort to defend himself, he recognized the man from that morning. For one idiotic moment, he actually went so far as to think the man had come back for the purpose of touching him again.

But he wouldn’t have returned with soldiers out of desire. The sword in his hand made that clear, curving as a crescent moon with a murderous hook on the end, the classic soldier’s sword. Now boy— he began. Bayam kicked him again, and the kindly mask he had attempted to don dropped away. Snarling, he jerked on the leg he held, pulling Bayam into reach.

The man raised his sword, but there was something in the room with them. A fleeting darkness that wasn’t the friend of his enemies. He couldn’t see enough detail to understand what was happening as blackness swirled and soldiers cried out, flickering flames painting lurid splashes across the chaos. The man holding onto him slackened his grip as one of his own men stumbled into him, nearly knocking him forward onto the bed. Bayam jerked against his grasp with desperate strength and slipped free so suddenly he tumbled ass over ears off the far side of the bed. He landed on his shoulders, neck bent awkwardly, and ended his summersault on his hands and knees on the bald wooden floor.

He was back on his feet in an instant, clambering across his bed, which lay between him and the exit to this shadowy abattoir. The man who couldn’t seem to decide what manner of interest to take in him was now dueling someone Bayam couldn’t see. The Pig was fighting very hard to stay alive, his breathing a rasping, desperate sound that Bayam would recall with pleasure later when he thought about Tisip.

He ran right past them, pelting for the door, and he heard someone behind him shout, Oh for the love of—Stop! Kid, I’m— It wasn’t the man he’d met that morning—it wasn’t a voice he recognized—but he didn’t stick around to investigate.

Wanting only to leave the violence behind, he flung himself down the stairs. There was a landing two-thirds of the way to the ground floor, and he was moving with too much haste and too little control, so that he careened into the railing with enough force he nearly knocked the wind out of himself. He hung briefly balanced on his middle over the balustrade, feeling stunned, but it hadn’t knocked any sense into him. Making no effort to control the panic that had taken him over, he threw himself sideways with incautious vigor, tripped over his own feet, and rolled down the final steps onto the cold stone of the kitchen floor.

He was too keyed up to feel any bruises he might have acquired and ran on hands and knees toward the door until he could get back on his feet. Outside the slaves’ house where so much of the attack had inexplicably been concentrated, he made for the gate at the rear of the yard. He was hoping it would be lightly guarded; all the ongoing noise was coming from the main entrance on the far side of the house.

The door wasn’t guarded at all, but when he got there, he remembered it was locked. No one had bothered to open it for him when they ran to join the fight out front. Bayam had never seriously contemplated flight in all his years of slavery, not until today, but now the possibility of staying here felt equally impossible as fleeing had twelve hours earlier. There was a trellis nearby, set against the wall and covered in a flowering vine. He scrambled up it while it bounced and swayed alarmingly, smashing his knuckles into the stone wall repeatedly as it leaned out under his weight and was snatched back by the vine. There were tears in his eyes as a thousand tiny, fuzz-short thorns tore into his palms like the prickers on a berry briar. Sounds of violent confrontation in the building behind him were ongoing, and he took off running the instant his feet hit the street.

It was early-enough in the autumn that one might call it late summer, many flowers still in bloom and the daylight lingering. Even in more northerly climes, it remained warm; it was that season when you could only really tell the year was dying first thing in the morning. There were a lot of people still out on the streets, going out to eat or taking a walk, and all of them stopped to watch him go, mouths opening. He left in his wake a wave of sound, people asking if he needed help or demanding to know where he was going.

Very little was happening in his head, where his thoughts were a long-drawn-out-echoing scream. He didn’t have a long-term plan, but took corners in favor of darker streets and fewer people, trying to get away from the concerned citizens who kept trying to talk to him. He wasn’t yet afraid of being punished for running away: he was afraid they would force him to go back to the manor, where The Pig would murder him.

He ran until his limbs couldn’t support him and a stitch in his side made it painful to breathe. Then he leaned against a wall and cried, hiding behind his hands. It was fully dark by then, the sky strewn with stars that didn’t light the streets, and he was grateful for it. His life might not have been great, but it had been peaceful and predictable. There hadn’t been bloody death, there hadn’t been violence. There hadn’t been strangers trying to murder him.

The chill on the air bit down harder in the darkness, and he could really feel it now the terror-sweat was cooling on his skin. Uncertain where to go or what to do with himself, he crept into a lightless alley, where he looked for the most densely-shadowed corner. He had the sense that he had found his way into a poorer neighborhood, on account of the profusion of trash on the streets and the narrower ways where broken pavement turned under his feet. In his corner, he curled up, hiding his face in his knees as he struggled to make sense of it.

He had spent the early years of his life on the road with his family, never staying in one place for more than a year. They were Keepers of the Word, his parents told him, tasked with protecting the world from the sacred secret known in ancient days. They had never really explained what this meant; he was young and didn’t need to know. They traveled with two other families, all descendants of the same dire tradition, and there were many hands to share the task, whatever it might entail. He had asked to see this word more than once, assuming it was a book, or several books, they must keep in the trunk that was always locked. No one ever let him look.

He was twelve when this happy way of life came to an end. They were in the midst of another move, from Bulasa to Procalias, when bandits hit their humble caravan. It was happenstance, however grim, a result of rising taxes and destructive weather patterns that had turned people to banditry and brought them onto what should have been a safe and well-policed path in the empire’s center. A part of him had wondered every now and then, particularly when he was younger, if it hadn’t been the evil writings calling to these wicked men, wanting to be liberated.

As concerned the bandits, he was one of the lucky ones. The adults were killed, aside from the younger women, and Bayam could wish he didn’t know what happened to them. The children under sixteen, of whom there had been three, were taken captive more gently than you might expect in the circumstances. Kept in bonds and not allowed to stray, but not abused more than necessary to keep them quiet and obedient. It was only when they reached the vast slave markets of Manulmanar that he learned why this was the case.

He was sold within that frigid city with its bloody walls after two days in the pens, which was a good outcome as such woes were measured. The elderly man who purchased him had liked the look of him, particularly the color of his skin, and particularly when they learned that he could read. So, the people who murdered his parents were well-rewarded for their sin. What became of the trunk, he never learned.

Bayam had never been a noisy or disruptive boy and didn’t make a nuisance of himself along the journey. Only aristocrats were permitted to own slaves, but brokering them to one another like merchants, he was to learn, was a not-uncommon compromise they’d made with fate in this fallen modern age. He was sold again immediately upon reaching the city of Ramposi, to a buyer the old man had already known would snap him up. Mistress liked for her people to be attractive, silent, and intelligent, handsome animate fixtures of the house.

Six years, he lived with her. He had never formulated an opinion about it: his family was dead, he had no idea what else he might do with himself. It wasn’t a bad life, as servitudes went. Mistress wished for her home to be clean and quiet; she judged strife distasteful and unseemliness worse. She took no personal interest in her servants, and he never developed a relationship with her, but it was Bayam’s nature to be studious, to wish to please without drawing attention to himself. He had fit into her household like a hand in a glove. All of that was over now, and he didn’t know what came next.

He hadn’t expected to doze off, but woke with a jerk to the revelation that he was no longer by himself. Dawn tinted the sky behind the buildings to the east, and he realized he must have slept for hours, hunched against this wall amidst crumpled bits of paper and pistachio shells. While he dozed, a woman had come to crouch in front of him. She was somewhere in her forties, it looked like, heavy makeup on her face despite the hour and a frilly black gown that seemed out of place in an alley in any part of town.

Oh, lovey, we’re in a spot of bother aren’t we?

Bayam blinked at her.

I know a runaway for looking at one. Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you?

I-I had to…

I’m sure you did, lovey, I’m sure you did. Her voice was kind, and when she pushed herself to her feet, she held a hand down to him.

He took it automatically, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. As he moved, he became aware of how stiff he was, the bruises on his hands and knees. His neck ached, but he couldn’t remember what he had done to it. The woman had locked her elbow with his and was steering him out onto the street. I shouldn’t—

But you already did, and I bet now you’d like to get in the warm and have a bite to eat. Yeah?

Bayam let her lead him down the street, looking over his shoulder nervously. He didn’t understand why this woman was being so kind to him but didn’t question it. He had never had charge of himself, first a child, then a slave, he had no idea what he ought to be doing if not following.

The place she took him to was just around the corner in the waking city, where she opened a door covered in peeling green paint. Bayam was desperately conscious of the people out on the streets in increasing numbers and didn’t hesitate to cross the threshold. There was no one thing that might happen to a runaway slave; it all depended on who had charge of you at the time when you got caught. People who got dragged home by their owner and beaten were the lucky ones, and mistress would not, he thought, have wasted her own resources chasing any of them. She would have sold his contract straight off to a hunter, and the people they caught only ever went to the mines, where they died. He had no idea whether mistress had been alive to greet the dawn, but it was the same result for him either way, a result he didn’t want to face.

The room they entered was large but cramped with furniture, its ceiling too low. The air was fogged by smoke too sweet and thick to be tobacco, clinging to the underside of the ceiling like puddles of aromatic soup. There were people seated at tables despite the hour, drinking what didn’t strike him as tea, scantily-clad figures moving among them in the half-light. He took a step to the rear, and his companion’s hand tightened on his elbow.

Before either of them could speak, the door behind them opened and a man entered the establishment in a blaze of alcohol fumes and early-morning sunlight. He bumped right into them, and Bayam was trying to step aside, apologizing automatically, when the man slung an arm around his waist. Oh, he’ll do! Yes indeed. His words were slurred, and you could only just scent the spice of some subtle perfume under the overwhelming odor of fortified wine.

The woman had taken two steps to the rear in order to give the man who was embracing him the respectful space he wasn’t giving other people. Her voice was apologetic. Forgive me, sir, I’ve only just hired him, he won’t know—

Adds to the charm, the man said brusquely, fumbling money from the purse at his belt. Bayam didn’t see what he gave her, but it caused her to stop arguing. The man was dragging him through a door at the rear of the room, and Bayam finally got a proper look at him.

SATHRIEL: He wears a rippling shirt of barely-opaque silk, a skirt of shocking brevity, sandals laced up to the knees that do not hide the tattoos on his feet or his legs’ shapeliness. His face is square and proud and more than a little mischievous, full lips pursued above his dimpled chin as if he is blowing you a kiss. His skin has that metallic sheen so prized by the upper classes, his hair a crazy mess of curls with blue-dyed tips, sprouting upward as if excited to be part of this. His stance conveys indolence, in one hand the drapes of a cloak, as if he might need to wrap up against a chill on the way home from whatever party he’s heading to, but you can’t help but note the contours of a long, thin object concealed within. Like a mirror, his eyes give no answers, only hand your questions back to you.

In the time it took to do an inventory, he had been hustled up a flight of precipitous, groaning stairs into a hallway of surpassing dreariness. The man tried two doors, which he closed as quickly as he opened them, not allowing Bayam a glimpse of their interiors. The third door along the left side of the hallway suited him better, and he pushed Bayam through it, his touch impersonal and his manner businesslike. It didn’t square with what Bayam had thought was happening, and he discovered he was more confused than anything.

The man went past him to the small bed at the room’s center, draped in lustrous fabrics in sultry hues, the stale stink of incense and old sweat urging visitors not to pull back the heavy curtains and take a closer look. A pitcher stood upon the bedside table, and he poured it into a waiting paste-crystal goblet before coming back, not meeting Bayam’s eyes or explaining himself. Before he could do more than utter a startled squawk, the man had grabbed the hem of his shirt and yanked it up off his chest, so his arms were over his head, face and limbs tangled in the material. He yelped as cold water was dumped over his head, and before he had gathered his wits to fight back, his shirt had been jerked back into place. The man patted at his back and chest, so the fabric stuck to his wet flesh, then ruffled his short hair to cast away the excess, eyes intent on his work and never straying onto Bayam’s face.

It startled him when the man spoke to him: My pride rebels at doing this so swiftly: how tongues will wag! Don’t feel confident I lost my tail, though, just shook it for a few. Ha! Shook my tail. He gave his hips a saucy flick before passing him the glass. Fill that up, bring it back.

Bayam complied, and it was only partly out of wrongfootedness: this man had the voice of command. Combine that with his southerly accent and the palpable aura of wealth he exuded, and you had the sort of person Bayam had been trained, even before he lost his freedom, to leap to obey. By the time he turned back with the water, the man had pulled the silken boudoir sheath he was using as a shirt up onto his neck. There was no reason a person inclined to a lifestyle of frivolity and too much wine might not have the chiseled muscles of a gladiator, not at his age, but Bayam took note of several long, pale scars that marred his skin like seams.

Once he had anointed himself, he pulled his shirt back in place, sinking both hands into his nest of coarse black curls. When he gave his hair a shake, the wild blue tips shook like anemones in a tidal wave. Thanks to his efforts, they both now looked sweaty and disheveled, although Bayam wasn’t certain why that was desirable. From the bed where he had discarded it, the stranger snatched his cloak, lightweight blue cloth with the luster of silk, covered in a dense mesh of red embroidery. Bayam noted the way the fabric bent at curious angles as if there were something concealed within, something thin, straight, roughly the length of his arm.

What is happening? he finally thought to ask.

I’m rescuing you. For the first time, the man looked into his face. The stranger’s black eyes struck Bayam, not as a window, but a door, firmly closed. Unless you were good with this change of careers?

Huh? he said stupidly. And sure, he’d figured out why that woman brought him here, but that was the extent of it. He felt like this man was running, Bayam clinging desperately to his heels.

I hope you weren’t keen to spend your few remaining moments in this shitty brothel, because you’re leaving with me now, like it or not. Twenty-four hours, I give it, before they find you again and cut your throat.

Before he could respond to this alarming pronouncement, the man had him by the arm and was hustling him out the door. Back along the hallway and down the stairs, and he didn’t dare to ask more questions where anyone might overhear. It seemed impossible to him that he was in danger in the way the stranger had implied, danger that was personal and calculated, but he still felt as if everything was moving too fast. It was all he could do not to be swept off his feet.

They made straight for the proprietor, standing in a shadow where she could observe her clientele without being observed by them in turn. The stranger marched Bayam forward in front of him by means of a hand on his shoulder, as if he meant to complain. As soon as they stopped, though, he came up behind him, wrapping him in an embrace so warm, so affectionate, that he was almost fooled and almost wanted to lean into it. He’s perfect! I have to have him.

I’m pleased to hear—

How much?

Sir—

It was clear she meant to decline, but the man didn’t give her time. Look, I can tell he’s a runaway. Do you want to deal with the heat when the authorities find out you’re harboring him?

She hesitated, eyes on Bayam, weighing what she thought he might be worth.

How about this: you take all that shit in his ears. You earn a bit of cash up front and pass the risk to me, you’ve made more this morning than you usually do in a month.

The madame in her frilly black gown gave in to this proposal, and even in the limited light, Bayam could see how intent her eyes were on his self-proclaimed rescuer. While he removed his earrings with shaking fingers, he wondered if she knew who the man was. She could sense—just as Bayam had—that he was powerful, someone she didn’t dare cross. If she didn’t know the details now, she would by noon: her regard was fixed on the man’s face, memorizing him.

Then it was over and he was being hurried out the door, sped on his way by a slap on the ass he was too off-balance to be offended by. The crisp dewy air out of doors struck him after the stifling smoke within, and he paused to draw in breath gratefully. He couldn’t move on anyway: there was a parked carriage blocking the door, small but brightly painted, a matching team of chestnuts waiting patiently.

It wasn’t until his new acquaintance stepped around him and pulled the door open impatiently that he realized it was here for them. He climbed into its perfumed interior and settled onto one velveteen cushion gingerly. The stranger with his crazy black-and-blue hair followed him, tossing his cloak onto the cushion next to Bayam and pulling the door closed behind him. He sat himself on the bench opposite, and he hadn’t stopped moving when he was rapping a knuckle on the roof, signaling the driver to move.

Bayam’s eyes had gone to the length of fabric spilling onto the floor from his seat: it had fallen in such a way as to reveal the true nature of that object it concealed. He could see now a sheath, or rather two of them conjoined along their sides. He couldn’t know there were swords within these thin wooden casings, the cloak still masked most of it, but he couldn’t think what else they might be.

Why would anyone want to kill me? His voice sounded strange in his ears, and it was an effort to pull his eyes off the swords.

Mm, his companion replied. There was a window in either wall, an intricate pierced-work wooden lattice that let in light and fresh air, and the man was squinting through the one at his left hand at the street.

That man. Last night. He had business with my mistress.

His business with your mistress was you, but she wasn’t to know. Fat lot of good her ignorance did her.

No, that was just, she was going to lend me… When he realized what he was saying, he trailed off.

That made this new fellow’s brows climb, but he was only modestly interested and definitely didn’t care about Bayam’s shame or Bayam’s fear. He was older than him, more than a year, less than a decade, old enough there was no boyhood left in his face, young enough that time had yet to leave a mark on him. So that’s the line he went with, eh?

A spark of outrage, such as he had not felt in the whole of his adult life, kindled suddenly. Are you telling me it was a, a, a, a, a— He couldn’t stop stuttering that single dumb article, and had to stop, taking a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was shrill. "A ruse?"

The man snorted, a grimace passing across his face before falling away. His eyes flicked toward Bayam, but he was too interested in the street and they never made it all the way to his face before they were back at the window again. I assumed you would be intelligent, I have no idea why.

What?

You’ll learn for yourself in the next few years, provided I can keep you alive, that one of the chief occupations of the mighty is concealing their actions from one another. A person like you is beneath their notice, it’s one of your defining qualities. If someone like that is taking notice of you anyway, that is curious, isn’t it? Worthy of investigation, which they would like more than anything to avoid. What other reason can you think of why someone with the soldiers to level cities would give a damn about you? Do you have a genius with a flute? Can you dance with the grace to make cruel men weep? Do you cook with such skill that an aristocrat accustomed to dining on cricket soup would travel from another region to sample your offerings?

He couldn’t answer yes to any of these questions and sat mute, torn between indignation and embarrassment.

This leaves one obvious excuse. Anyway, I caught up with you in a brothel: if you want to complain my gambit was unoriginal, tell yourself. You’re the one who authored that scene, not me.

Bayam felt anger such as he hadn’t known in all his years of servitude. He opened his mouth to argue against all of this event that had entered his life without his consent, but the man was already talking again: I don’t like this, it was too easy. They should have come into the brothel to keep an eye on me. If the tail pulled back, someone’s going to ambush us.

He swallowed his protests, sudden fear piercing him.

The second the carriage comes to a stop, we’re moving. Okay? Let me get out the door first, but I want you right behind me. I know you’re scared, and your instincts are going to be telling you to hide, but that’s not safe. You stay in the carriage, they’ll just kill the driver and drive off with you. Take you somewhere private and find out what you’re doing in my company with a knife.

I don’t have a knife.

Absently, the man corrected: I meant they would torture you.

Oh.

He felt the carriage begin to slow at the same time the driver called, Excuse me, sir?

You’re good, the man called back, raising his voice. He liberated the swords from their sheaths, passing the bound-together wooden housing to Bayam. In a quieter voice, he said, Here we go. Hold on to that for me, would you?

The carriage rocked to a halt. As promised, the man flung the door open instantly and dove through it. Bayam went right after him: the stranger had been wrong in this particular, that Bayam’s immediate, overwhelming urge wasn’t to hide, but to cling to the decisive person with weapons who knew what was happening. Unfortunately, the sheaths he was holding were still tangled in the cloak, and it caught his feet as he made hastily for the rung descending toward the street. Instead of stepping down, he tripped and fell hard onto his hands and knees, so far down that he had time to acknowledge how much it was going to hurt.

By the time he surfaced from his shock such that he could raise his head, his rescuer was already engaged with the warriors who had blocked the street. There were five of them, and as Bayam struggled to take control of his shaking, battered limbs, he was certain they were dead. He pulled himself up with the help of the carriage door, and he’d changed his mind as he gained his feet.

His companion’s swords were long and thin, straight and glistening. So sharp they had a startling, lambent quality in the shadows of this narrow lane where they had been waylaid. They were fashioned of the precious white metal whose strength and resiliency was the basis of the traders’ preeminence, the secret smelting of which was the origin of the modern age, in which the emperor sat upon the throne looking pretty while merchants ruled behind the scenes.

He watched his rescuer duck beneath a slash aimed at his head, one sword describing a circle around him, keeping the others away. The other sword, he had reversed in his grip, and as he stood behind the blow meant to decapitate him, he punched his opponent in the face with his fist. The man staggered back a step, and now the swords were together, facing the same way, as he slashed down across his opponent’s face and chest. Blood sprayed, and with a strangled scream the man fell away.

He pivoted to face the others, catching a blow to his lower legs with a rising stroke, slashing sidelong at the man drawing up at his shoulder. He was facing the lone woman dead-on, and as she disengaged, he kneed her in the hip, kicked her in the waist, kicked her shoulder hard enough to send her spinning. He flung himself into the space where she had been as he pivoted to meet the attack of another man carrying twinned straight swords. There was a swift clang-clang-clang as they exchanged blows too fast for Bayam to follow before he slipped right through the whirling defense to plunge one sword into the fellow’s neck, tip pointing accusingly at Bayam through the nape.

This should have been dreadful to him. He should have been weeping and sicking up. He had heard that people grew accustomed to violence if exposed to enough of it, but he had never had the chance. He hadn’t found within himself, on that cobbled street in the early light of a sunny autumn day, some cold kernel of martial discipline: he was still too astonished by all of this to form an opinion of it.

The woman was back, but as if he had eyes on the back of his head, his rescuer knew. He twisted unexpectedly as she drew up at his side, kicked the hand holding her sword so she nearly lost hold of it, cut her across the side while she was still making certain of her weapon. The two men who were still on their feet moved to flank him, lunging forward in unison, and Bayam hadn’t planned to do it, his arms just reached out of their own will, inserting the sheaths he held between the legs of the man closer to him.

Bayam’s companion slashed the other fellow across the face with one sword, catching him a blow in the abdomen from the other direction with its twin. He never stopped moving, kicking the man Bayam had staggered across the face, and when he fell, plunging a sword between his shoulder blades. He stood in the midst of the massacre, chest heaving, as he did an inventory. Then he spun on his heel, making for the woman, who might pull through. Her eyes fixed on him as he came to stand over her, and her expression told Bayam what was about to happen, a fraction of a second before a sword plunged into the side of her head.

This finally got through the shock, and he bent over in order to retch bitter fluid onto the blood pooling amidst the cobblestones. His eyes had fixed on his own knees, bloody from his fall, and he didn’t dare look anywhere else. His rescuer was coming back for him by then, fluttering white garments spoilt now by crimson spots. He gave Bayam’s back a slap, and it wasn’t very comforting, he didn’t think it had been intended to be. But it had an unexpectedly comradely familiarity in it, as if they were brothers-in-arms, as if they were, not a helpless slave and the upper-class warrior who had taken possession of him, but compatriots.

Can’t have anyone carrying tales.

I thought you said it would take a day. His voice was thin and strange, but at least he wasn’t crying.

Well I was talking about the people hunting you, these were after me. You know the old saw about things going from bad to worse.

Bayam forced himself to straighten up and look the man in the eyes. His entire face felt numb, and his head was sparkling. Are you going to kill me?

This seemed to surprise him. That wasn’t what I meant. Just, you know, ideally you get rescued by someone with a low profile and an estate way out in the country where you can recuperate while all your questions get answered. Unfortunately for you, I’m what there is, and I’ve got problems of my own.

Oh.

The man flashed him a grin. Thanks for helping out, it’s good to see you’re getting into the spirit of the thing. Shall we?

Unable to decide whether he actually wanted to, Bayam climbed back into the carriage. Then he sank back against the bench’s cushioned backrest, head spinning. He knew there were many questions he ought to be asking but had no idea what they were. He passed the remainder of the journey watching his companion, who had resumed his squinting inspection of the street. If he felt Bayam’s gaze, he didn’t acknowledge it.

The carriage rolled to a halt again after a journey of as much as twenty minutes. This time, there was no crouching by the door, no leaping about: they waited while the carriage bounced, the driver climbing down. The door was opened for them, and they descended onto the pavement of a street in a much nicer neighborhood than the last had been. His companion made straight for the building in front of them, but Bayam hesitated. They had come to a three-story townhouse, a handsome place made of yellow brick with decorative stonework around the lintels and glass in the windows. The man in his red-stained silk had just reached the landing of a porch at the top of the short flight of steps, and the door was opened from within before he had to knock. He turned back, beckoning.

Bayam ascended between potted flowers drooping and turning brown as the season wore on, into the darker recesses indoors. The servant who let them in was asking his rescuer if he would like a refreshment of any sort, or if breakfast could be brought to him. The man demurred, making straight for the stairs, waving for Bayam to stick to his heels. He glanced at the fine brass fixtures and decorative art but took little note of it; he had known that his rescuer possessed wealth and influence before he laid eyes on him, or knew he meant to rescue him. It was, thus far, the least interesting thing about the man.

They made their way up to the top floor, where they entered a bedroom. This wasn’t to Bayam’s liking, and he hung back near the door. His companion had told him the business at the brothel was a stratagem meant to paint a false trail; he had never suggested he wouldn’t cheerfully make good at a later date when he felt less of a sense of urgency. Something about the way the man laid hands on him made Bayam suspect that, if it was a