Shadows Return

stroked his hair. Without thinking, Alec closed his eyes and leaned into the touch; it felt like years since anyone had touched him with anything like kindness.
    Khenir smiled sadly and trailed his fingers down Alec’s cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as it’s allowed, I promise. Just do as you’re told. It will be better for you if you do, and perhaps Ilban will give you more freedom in the house.”
    He went out and took the candle with him. Alec groped in the dark for the pitcher. The tincture had left him thirsty.
    More freedom, eh?
Alec pulled the quilts up to his chin. A little moonlight found its way through the grate, and he could see the white puff of his breath on the air.
    He knew he shouldn’t get his hopes up too much, but Khenir had unwittingly given him a great deal of useful information. There were at least two others like him here, and if he could lull “Ilban” into giving him the run of the house, as Khenir and the nurse evidently had, then sooner or later he could find a way to escape. Given the very real possibility of having his balls cut off, sooner would be better. So, he reasoned, he’d play the good slave and take the tinctures, and use every opportunity he had to learn the layout of the house. But he’d have to be very careful. Yhakobin had made it clear that he knew too much of Alec’s past to be fooled easily.
    Burrowing down into the deeper warmth of the quilts, he kissed his palm and pressed it to his heart.
Keep well, talí, and don’t think I’ve forgotten you. I’ll get out of here and I’ll find you, no matter what it takes.
    As he drifted off to sleep, hoping for dreams of Seregil, it occurred to him to wonder what had happened to the other slaves Khenir had alluded to, the ones their master preferred.

CHAPTER 17
    Kind Words. Bad News

    “HABA?”
    Cool fingers and Adzriel’s scent brought Seregil close to the surface of waking again. He dreamed of her face, sometimes smiling and kind as she almost always had been, during the years she’d raised him. But in other dreams he was a child again, standing before the judges at Sarikali with blood on his tunic, and she was weeping.
    And always that pet name—Haba, “little black squirrel”—whispered close to his ear. Adzriel had called him that first, and then only the ones who loved him—his friends, Kheeta, his sisters…
    Another, too.
    Haba, come back to us.
    Haba, wake up.
    Wake…
    “Are you awake at last? Open your eyes and show me.” A woman’s voice, speaking in Aurënfaie.
    Seregil let out a soft groan as someone lightly slapped his cheek. “Mydri, don’t. Sick.”
    “Wake up, now. You must drink something.”
    Consciousness returned slowly. At first he was aware only of a tremendous heaviness, then that scent, and of how hard it was to open his eyes. Something cool and moist passed across his eyelids, then his brow and cheeks. Someone was washing his face.
    “Adzriel?” It came out a faint, cracked whisper. His mouth was so dry, and his tongue felt thick. “Where—?”
    He didn’t recall reaching Bôkthersa. Something had happened…
    “Open your eyes, young son.”
    Young son?
It was said in the formal style, rather than familial. His gummy lids parted at last and he found himself in a curtained bed in a dimly lit room. A candle burned somewhere beyond the bed curtains and someone sat beside the bed, a dark shape, with no visible face. A scrap of memory stirred—a dark, faceless shape lurching at him, a horrid, rotting stench…
    A dra’gorgos!
    But there was nothing but the scent of wax here, and the faintest whiff of Adzriel’s perfume still lingering in the air. Too weak to reach out or even turn his head, he blinked up at the woman, needing to hear a friendly voice.
    “Ah, that’s better.” A woman, certainly, but not any of his sisters.
    “Where—?” he asked, his voice a raw whisper.
    “Hush, now, and stay still. You’ve been terribly ill.” As she leaned forward and brought a horn spoon to his lips, his saw that she was very old. A long white braid hung over one shoulder, and what he could see of her face above an embroidered veil was lined with age.
    Cool sweet water trickled over his parched tongue and he swallowed eagerly, though it hurt like fire. He opened his mouth for more.
    The faded blue eyes above the veil crinkled at the corners, revealing her hidden smile. “There now, a little more. Slowly though. We didn’t think you’d live, young son.”
    “Who