Flux

“And you! Concurring with this stranger, this…imposter.”
    Both Ennek and the advisor opened their mouths to protest, but before they could say anything the king barked out an order and the guards seized Ennek by the arms. Miner instinctively lunged toward them.
    “No, Mine! Don’t!” Ennek yelled, as he struggled futilely in the men’s strong grip. Miner didn’t listen. He closed the space between them and launched himself at the guards, landing a hard punch to one man’s face and twisting at the fingers of the other. But reinforcements had arrived and Miner was now held tightly by at least six strong hands. He noticed with some satisfaction that the nose of Ennek's guard was spurting blood and the other’s fingers looked broken.
    “Let him go!” Ennek said. “He means you no harm.”
    “Throw the whore into the sea!” the king shouted, pointing towards the railing.
    “No! Gods, no!” screamed Ennek, and Miner used a few moves he distantly remembered from Guard training to wriggle out of the soldiers’ holds. But as he darted for his bag—where he knew his knife was at the top—someone tackled him, sending him crashing to the ground. He rolled around with his assailant, desperate to get free, but the other soldiers were there at once, pinning him in place.
    “Miner!” Ennek shouted. His face was splattered with blood from the guard’s nose.
    “Ennek, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
    The king walked over to stand over him, frowning down at Miner’s supine form. But just as Miner was bracing himself to be lifted and tossed off the cliff, the king put up his hand and tilted his head. “What’s that?” he said, pointing at Miner. At Miner’s neck, in fact, where the scarf had come loose during the fray and the metal of his collar was now plainly visible.
    The king bent down and yanked the scarf roughly away; he tossed it carelessly off to the side. And then he smiled in a very nasty way. “Not a whore at all, but a slave. This man has brought a slave into the royal presence.”
    “He’s not a bloody slave!” said Ennek. “Gods, Miner, please!”
    Miner simply concentrated on trying to breathe.
    “I’ll bring a wave,” Ennek threatened. “I’ll destroy your entire bloody city.”
    “No, don’t En, please don’t. All those people…and it won’t do us any good, will it? We’re too high up.”
    “I can—” Ennek began. But his words cut off abruptly when the soldier with the bleeding nose dealt him a vicious blow to the head. Ennek slumped in his captors’ arms, unconscious.
    “Ennek!” Miner cried.
    The king kicked him very hard in the side, then stepped back. In a calm, clear voice, the king gave a series of orders. The soldiers dragged Ennek’s body away. Miner tried again to get free, but then one of the guards lifted the butt end of a spear over his head and brought it down hard, and everything went black.

Chapter Eleven
    h

    H is head hurt.
    At first that was all that was important because his thoughts were gray and tumbled and he couldn’t have managed so much as his name. But very gradually his mind cleared a bit—enough for him to crack open his eyes, in any case—and then he remembered everything and he rolled on his side and retched into the dirt. Only after his stomach felt as if it had been turned inside-out was he able to sit up and truly take stock of his situation.
    He was in the slave pen that they’d passed on the way to the palace.
    He was within the inner fence, sitting on damp soil. Straight ahead of him little waves frolicked happily in the harbor, chasing each other in foam-capped exuberance like puppies at play. Behind him, three guards were gathered in the space between fences. They were quite obviously talking about him, and an animated discussion it was, but of course he couldn’t understand a word. And all around him in the big enclosure, men and women crouched or paced or simply stood as motionless as statues.
    There was no sign at all of Ennek.
    Slightly belatedly, Miner realized he was completely naked—except for the collar, of course—and he blushed and hunched in on himself, bending his knees and pressing his legs up against his body. This made the guards laugh uproariously.
    Suddenly, Miner wasn’t embarrassed anymore. He was hurting and afraid and grief-stricken over Ennek’s potential fate, but most of all he was furious , angrier than he had ever been in his life, angrier even than he had been when he’d learned that the