"yes, sir. shall i return to raej and obtain the list?"

"yes. by the time you return, lord maryk will be here with the slaves. we'll keep any that may be of interest to the high priestess and send the others back to raej to sell on the last auction day."

the guard saluted smartly and left.

krelis rubbed his hands over his face. maryk should be back by nightfall, the task completed. then, perhaps, he could get some sleep.

chapter five

his stomach growled and threatened to chew his backbone.

jared ignored it.

his muscles ached and begged to be stretched.

he ignored them, too.

the fierce need to piss had him swinging his legs over the side of the narrow bed. he pushed himself into a sitting position and fuzzily tried to remember what came next.

rubbing sleep-crusted eyes, jared looked blearily at the dark-eyed, dark-haired boy sitting cross-legged beside the bed.

"davin?" jared said hoarsely, knowing itcouldn't be even before the boy's expression turned wary. his youngest brother would be nineteen now, not the ten-year-old he'd cheerfully said good-bye to before he'd torn his life apart.

"i'm tomas," the boy said. "there's no davin here."

thank the darkness for that.

there was something peculiar and faint about the boy's psychic scent, but jared was too preoccupied to figure it out. "where-"

"we're in the guest servants' quarters."

jared shook his head and tried again. "where-"

"don't know what territory-"

"where's the damn chamber pot?"

"oh." tomas pointed at a door in the wall. "over there."

despite the urgency, jared hesitated, finally awake enough to realize he was naked and only had a wadded sheet covering his groin.

tomas grinned. "they're all outside, and ladies don't care if you show your dangle to other males." he scratched his head. "other males don't care either."

"sometimes they do," jared muttered, remembering confrontations between pleasure slaves that had turned bloody because desperation had pushed someone over the edge. "sometimes they care very much."

tomas's grin faded. his face paled. he scrambled to his feet and bolted for the door. the jerky movement and the fear that now filled his dark eyes told jared more than the fading bruises on the boy's bare arms, more than the old scars on the stick-thin legs that poked out of a pair of ragged short pants. and he realized what the boy's diminished psychic scent meant. tomas was a half-blood.

having too much psychic strength to be landen but not enough to be blood, half-bloods were outcast bastards, wanted by neither society. if the blood sire thought the unclaimed offspring showed potential, the child might be taken in and raised as a servant, maybe even trained to become an overseer for a landen village. most of the time, half-bloods became the slaves that looked after, and were used by, blood slaves.

and sometimes there was no one cruder than someone who was, himself, enduring cruelty.

cursing under his breath, jared followed tomas.

the bathroom had two toilets, three sinks, and two bathtubs. there were no partitions to give anyone the illusion of privacy, but at least the toilets were better than stinking privy holes.

sighing with relief, jared took care of business and tried to ignore the boy standing next to him. tomas might have learned fear in the slave quarters, but the boy was just too brash to have learned caution.

"you ain't wearing a ring," tomas said in a hushed voice.

"it's invisible," jared replied curtly, hoping that would end it.

"you sight shield a ring so people don't know you're a slave, you'll get your back whipped off for good."

jared clenched his teeth at the honest concern in the boy's voice and pulled the chain to flush the toilet. "it's not sight shielded, it's invisible."

"well, i cansee that."

how could he explain something he didn't understand himself? "it's an invisible ring. it's like the ring of obedience, but stronger."

tomas's eyes widened. "you have to wear somethingstronger than a ring of obedience? you that dangerous?"

"i guess so."

"as dangerous as the sadist?"

jared started to say something reassuring, but there was no fear in the boy's face, just a held-breath excitement. aristos had good reason to fear daemon sadi, but not young half-blood boys. so he said solemnly, "he taught me everything i know."

tomas looked at him for a long minute, his mouth silently forming the word, "oh," and jared realized he couldn't have presented better credentials to reassure the boy he was a "safe" male.

that grin that seemed to be tomas's natural expression flashed again. "you'll be wanting a bath. we've got hot water and everything."

as jared watched the boy dart around the room preparing a bath for him, the full import of their surroundings finally hit him. he wandered over to the tub that was already half-full of steaming water. "why are we in the guest servants' quarters?"

" 'cause the lady took one look at the slave quarters and threw a polite icy fit."

jared scratched the back of his head. hell's fire, he was looking forward to getting clean. "how does one throw a polite icy fit?"

tomas tugged on his earlobe and scrunched up his face. "well, like the lady did, i guess."

that told him a lot.

tomas turned off the water. "in you go," he said, waving the wash sponge at jared.

"yes, tomas," jared said meekly.

tomas hesitated, as if wanting to be sure that the adult male he was ordering around really was teasing him. then he grinned and dropped the wash sponge into the water.

jared settled into the tub, closed his eyes, and groaned in pleasure. after soaking for a couple of minutes, he opened one eye and looked at the boy kneeling beside the tub. "so what did she do?"

"well, the innkeeper was pleased enough at first to have a queen staying at his place, even if itwas the gray lady. he told her his servants would get her slaves settled into quarters, but she insisted on seeing them before she'd go to her own room. so he showed her the slave quarters and she said, no, they wouldn't do."

"were they that bad?" jared asked. pleasure slaves were usually quartered together in a comfortable "stable" or in tiny rooms adjoining the main bedchambers so they'd be close by to indulge their ladies' whims. since they were also kept fairly isolated from everyone except the court and each other, he really didn't know what was considered normal slave quarters.

tomas shrugged. "looked like any other as far as i could tell, although the privy holes did stink something fierce. but the lady said she wasn't going to have half of us coming down sick with a chill or worse by trying to sleep with no blankets and nothing but bars and broken shutters over the windows. now, anybody could have told her you don't seal up slave quarters tight 'cause breathing the stink would make us sicker than fresh cold air, but the innkeeper just eyed thera and polli and told the lady if she just eased the rings a bit, the males would keep the females warm enough, and with their blood heated like that, they wouldn't even notice the cold.

"well, the lady just looked at the innkeeper until he started to sweat, and she said, mild as if she was asking for a cup of tea, 'have you ever seen what happens to a man's balls when you freeze them so deep they'll shatter if you flick a finger against them?' you could tell he thought she was bluffing, but he was sweating, too. then one drop of sweat rolled off his chin. it froze before it hit the ground and bounced up like a little hailstone. and she just kept looking at him. i thought he was going to mess his pants."

having experienced that hard gray stare, jared understood the man's discomfort all too well.

"so right away he offered these quarters," tomas continued, handing jared the soap. "thera and polli made up a bed for you, and randolf and brock carried you in. the lady fussed over you for a bit and kept muttering to herself about whether the damage was permanent. after she approved the food the servants brought, she went back to the inn."

the lady fussed over you. jared soaped the sponge and started washing. in a way, it made sense. badly scarred pleasure slaves weren't as valuable-except to witches who were aroused by the evidence of pain inflicted-and a healing man didn't perform at his best. but something in tomas's voice told him that, even without knowing about the invisible ring, the others had realized that the lady considered him different from the rest of them, and they weren't sure what to think about it ... or about him.

he wasn't sure what to think about it either.

"course, blaed's going to be relieved to find out you're a pleasure slave," tomas said. "the way thera tore into him, i don't think he wants to stiffen anytime soon, and he's been worried that the lady would want to be pleasured and he hasn't had much training. not like you, being trained by the sadist and all."

jared bit his tongue and concentrated on washing his legs.

tomas frowned. "course, you don't need a stiff dangle, do you? they say the sadist never gets stiff, and he's the best there is."

at a lot of things that were better left unmentioned.

jared resoaped the sponge and started scrubbing his arms and chest. he didn't want to talk about sadi, and he didn't want to think about pleasuring the gray lady. "why did thera tear into blaed?"

tomas shook his head. his voice filled with cautious admiration. "that thera. when she gets pissy, she gets a look in her eyes that can singe your ball hairs."

the sponge stuttered to a halt. "that's a colorful way of putting it," jared finally choked out.