Shadows Return

staring at the door, heart beating loud in his ears. There was no reason to think it
was
Seregil, but he couldn’t quash the sudden rush of hope that it might be. Perhaps the alchemist had purchased both of them that night. Maybe Seregil had even been in the same slave barn, and Alec hadn’t seen him.
To have been that close!
    And if it
was
Seregil, and if he
had
gotten out, then he was out there somewhere, looking for a way to get Alec out, too.
    But only if he knows I’m here.
    He decided not to think about that right now. No matter what, it was time to get out. He reached under the bed and felt for his pick. It was still there.
             
    Alec paced and fretted, wishing he had a window to tell the time by. He slept and woke and paced some more, empty belly reminding him that no one had appeared with a meal for too long. He was still at it when the door swung open and two of Yhakobin’s warders stormed in and dragged him upstairs to the workshop garden. It was late afternoon, or at least he thought so. Black clouds hid the sun, heavy with the promise of rain.
    A dozen or more household servants were there, along with a great number of armed men. Alec recognized several as those who had dragged him back and forth from his cellar prison. They all stood around a stout post that had been set into the ground. Beside it, on a litter, lay the nursemaid, Rhania. A cloth had been bound across her eyes and another under her jaw; she was dead. Flies buzzed around the blood staining the front of her rain-soaked gown.
    If it was Seregil who’d escaped, why would he kill another ’faie?
    Yhakobin stood by the post, holding his crop in one hand. Alec began to tremble, wondering what in Bilairy’s name he’d done to deserve this?
    But it soon became apparent that this wasn’t about him. More men emerged from the workshop, dragging Khenir between them. The fine golden collar was gone, replaced by one of cruder iron. Alec was shocked at his appearance. The normally reserved man was screaming and struggling, hair wild about his face as if he’d been tearing at it. And he was naked.
    Worse, the scars of Khenir’s gelding and terrible whippings were revealed for all to see.
    Alec watched, grief-stricken, as the struggling man was dragged to the post and chained by his collar to it.
    “Ilban?” Alec gasped faintly.
    “Watch well, Alec.” Yhakobin flexed the crop between his hands. “This wretch Khenir, whom I loved and trusted above all others, has brought shame on my house, and death. He begged a slave of me and promised to tame him, then allowed him to escape and kill poor Rhania.” He looked down at the dead woman and shook his head. “Such a waste!”
    Khenir had a slave? One who needed taming? Is that what Ahmol had been trying to say? But how could a slave own another slave?
    Yhakobin brought the crop down on the cowering man’s bare shoulders and back. “You are cast out of my household!”
    The alchemist continued to vent his rage on the huddled, screaming man. Watching helplessly, Alec forgot all his suspicions and questions for the moment; Khenir had befriended him, comforted him. And Alec couldn’t save him.
    Yhakobin whipped Khenir until he was out of breath, then threw the crop aside. “I should have you skinned alive for this, but in light of your past good services, I am sparing your life. You’ll be flogged, and tomorrow you’ll be taken to the markets and sold, with your sins known.”
    “Please, Ilban, no! Kill me if you will, merciful Ilban, but not the markets, I beg you!” Khenir wailed.
    When Yhakobin turned his face away, Khenir grew more frantic. “The door was locked! I know it was locked! It had to be locked. The key. I have it. Please, Ilban, let me show you!”
    “Silence! He was your responsibility and you failed. You know the laws, Khenir. Your shame falls on me.”
    Men tied Khenir’s hands and hung him from a large peg set high on the post. Another unlimbered a short, thick drayman’s whip and took his place.
    “Thirty lashes,” Yhakobin ordered. “Don’t cripple him. I want him fit for the block.”
    Alec closed his eyes, but there was no escaping the screams that followed.
             
    Seregil lay with his face pressed to the wooden screen, and was surprised at how little pleasure he took in the sight of Ilar being brought low. How many times had Ilar endured the whip, he wondered, thinking of all the scars on the man’s body. And who knew what sort