Shadows Return

met in a moment of shared anguish. On the next block, two little boys stood weeping and clinging to each other as the auctioneer harangued the crowd. A blind fiddler stood on a street corner, playing a bright jig.
    A sudden turn in the street spared Alec any more such sights, but it had been enough. Angry tears blurred his vision as he screamed and struggled, helpless to stop, as his captors hurried him into a long, low building.
    It was like a barn inside, and lined with stall-like cages. They put him in one of these, laying him down carefully on a thick bed of straw and slamming the iron door shut behind them.
    The place was brightly lit. Alec pushed himself up on his hands and looked around. The walls of his little cell were made of heavy boards, so he could only see out the front. Across the room, most of the cages held one or more captives.
    Still hampered by the iron bar between his hands and the ropes cutting into his legs, he crawled to the back corner of his cage and covered himself in the straw as best he could. His heart was pounding, the sound of his own blood loud in his ears as he fought a renewed rush of panic. He had no tools, and there were people everywhere, talking or haggling loudly in languages he could not understand. He wished now he’d let Seregil teach him Plenimaran. After his last experience, he’d wanted nothing to do with this country, not even its language. Now he kicked himself for his stubbornness.
    How long until someone dragged him back out to the blocks and put him on display? How would he know what was going on?
    It was a busy place, this slave barn, not unlike a horse dealer’s market. People of all sorts strolled up and down the line of cages, laughing and chatting together as they inspected the merchandise. Many stopped to look at Alec, but none came in after him. There were a number of Zengati about in their salt-stained boots and striped tunics. Most, however, had the look of nobles or merchants, and dressed more in the Skalan fashion. Alec studied them all carefully. Aside from Duke Mardus and his necromancer, the only Plenimarans he’d had any experience with were their marines, and they were a cruel, hard-bitten lot. By comparison, these people looked like any ordinary market crowd, except for the goods in which they were trading.
    An elegantly dressed young woman paused to stare at him, attended by several servants and friends. Her bodice was more modestly cut than that favored by Skalan women of fashion, but she had brilliant feathers and jewels in her upswept hair. Her face was covered in some sort of white powder and her lips were painted dark red. The unnatural cast of it, and the appraising look in her hard, dark eyes, made Alec nervous. She gestured at him, then moved on, casting back some remark that set her companions laughing and pointing.
    Alec guessed she must be one of the courtesans the veiled man had mentioned. What little he’d ever heard about proper Plenimaran women was that they were kept at home and closely guarded.
    I’ll be damned if I end up the toy of some whore!
    He tried to ignore the crowd after that, until a few ruffians crowded up to the bars and threw pebbles at him until he looked up. They were dressed like butchers, in leather aprons streaked with dried blood, and had curved knives and oddly made pincers dangling from their wide leather belts. One of them caught Alec staring and cupped his groin through his apron, making an unmistakable slicing motion with his other hand.
    A distinguished-looking Plenimaran man spoke sharply to them and shooed them off. He was past his prime, but not old. He wore a black velvet surcoat with silver chains and wide cuffs of lace, a number of gold rings and a jeweled chain.
    “Calm yourself, boy,” he said to Alec in perfect Skalan. “If you are what I’ve been led to believe, then you are in no danger of the gelding knife.”
    The stranger was accompanied by a smaller man in a deeply hooded cloak that obscured his face, and a small entourage of manservants, all of them dark-skinned, with close-cropped hair and beards. These looked more like the Plenimaran marines Alec had known, and he wedged himself more tightly into his back corner, even though he’d already guessed it wouldn’t do any good.
    There was no mistaking the look on the well-dressed man’s face; he’d found something he’d been looking for, and Alec was it. He spoke softly to the hooded man, who in turn motioned forward someone